At Kloone University Purefoy Osbert finished his day of Continuous Assessment, the monthly process of reading his students' essays, appending a short commentary to each of them and giving them grades. He had driven up from Cambridge with the satisfying feeling that he had something to tell Mrs Ndhlovo that would surely convince her he was a proper man. It had taken him some days to get over his cold and the fear he had experienced in the maze but during that time his view of himself had changed. He had come to Porterhouse to find out who had murdered Sir Godber Evans and in the space of a few weeks he had succeeded where lawyers and trained private detectives, who had spent months and even years, had failed. He had recorded the time and place, the Dean's presence and the circumstances surrounding the event most carefully and had even gone to the expense of hiring a safety deposit box in Benet Street in which to keep these documents. On the other hand he had rejected his first impulse to go down to London to tell Goodenough and his cousin Vera, on the grounds that they would either consider his findings inconclusive or take immediate and, in his opinion, precipitate action. He needed time to think things over, and besides his own theories about the causes of crime and the role of the police and law as being responsible for criminal behaviour had been thrown in doubt. Worse still, for the first time in his life Purefoy had, if not met a murderer face to face, seen his shape and heard the violence in his voice. There'd been no reasoned argument, no plausible excuse or even explanation for his action, only the threat to tell Purefoy that he had murdered Sir Godber if the Dean and Fellows tried to send him to Porterhouse Park. Purefoy Osbert had never heard of Porterhouse Park before. Now he knew it was where old Fellows went when they became a nuisance or got in trouble with the police. That much he had learnt. But basically the mystery of Skullion's motive remained unsolved. There was a lot of groundwork still to do before he could submit convincing findings to Lady Mary and to Goodenough and Lapline.

The more he thought about the problem the more he found fresh snags. He had disclosed his reasons for being the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow to the Dean and to the other Fellows in the Combination Room and they would be on their guard. Purefoy cursed himself for his drunken indiscretion. It meant that every question that he asked would meet with silence or a deliberately misleading answer. In short, he had learnt what he had come to learn, but could do nothing with it. There was another reason for not knowing what to do, and one that weighed upon him all the time. Skullion was old and crippled, a tragic figure in his wheelchair and his ancient bowler hat, and to expose him now would do no good to anyone. Only Lady Mary's sense of vengeance would be satisfied and Purefoy had come to feel no sympathy for her. The murderer would never kill again and, even if the case against him could be proved, what good would prison do? Not that, in Purefoy's informed opinion, prisons did any good to anyone. They were the symptoms of society's failure and infected what they were supposed to cure. Skullion was already punished and imprisoned by his immobility. With so many conflicting thoughts colliding in his mind Purefoy Osbert sought escape by concentrating on his love for Mrs Ndhlovo. He would explain it all to her and, being a woman who had seen so much of life, she would be bound to know exactly what to do.

Having finished his marking and made arrangements to meet all fourteen students the following day for lunch in the University Canteen to discuss any problems they might be having with their reading list, he went off rather more cheerfully to visit Mrs Ndhlovo. On his way he bought some red roses. Mrs Ndhlovo's flat was on the first floor of a large Edwardian house. Purefoy climbed the stairs and was about to knock on the door when it was opened and he found himself looking at a woman who resembled Mrs Ndhlovo, but wasn't, and who didn't seem surprised to see him. She was dark-haired, wore glasses and was dressed rather formally in a skirt and a high-necked sweater. 'Oh my God, it's you,' she said. 'I might have guessed it. You don't give up do you?'

With a feeling that something was very wrong, though for the life of him he couldn't think what except that he had somehow come to the wrong house and that the woman must suppose he was a rent collector, or someone who looked like him and who had been making a nuisance of himself or even sexually harassing her, Purefoy stammered his apologies. 'I'm terribly sorry,' he said. 'I was looking for a Mrs Ndhlovo.'

'Mrs Ndhlovo doesn't live here any more,' said the woman.

'I see,' said Purefoy. 'Do you happen to know her new address?'

'You want to know Mrs Ndhlovo's new address? Is that what you're asking?' said the woman with what Purefoy could only consider rather gratuitous repetition and an almost sinister emphasis. He had a feeling too that her voice had changed.

'Yes, that is what I'm asking for,' he said staring at her blue eyes behind the thick lenses of her glasses. 'I'm an old friend of hers from the University.'

'So,' said the woman, and looked him up and down rather rudely. 'How old?'

'How old?' said Purefoy, feeling even more peculiar. The woman's accent had changed with that 'so'. It sounded middle-European. 'Oh, you mean how long have I known her? Well, actually I've known her-'

'Not vot I meant,' said the woman. 'I vant your age.'

Purefoy stared at her. Something was terribly wrong now. Her accent changed from relatively normal if upper-class English to something he had only heard before in movies featuring KGB interrogators. He glanced past her into the room. Mrs Ndhlovo's clothes were scattered on the sofa and an empty suitcase was lying open on the floor. 'Now look here-' he began, but the woman interrupted him.

'Mrs Ndhlovo has disappeared,' she said. 'Do you know where she has gone?'

'Of course I don't,' said Purefoy. 'I wouldn't be here if I did, would I?' Again the feeling hit him that whatever was going on made no sense. The woman's accent had changed once more. It was distinctly English.

'But you could identify her body?'

'Body?' said Purefoy, horribly alarmed. Within a very few minutes he had been assailed by the conviction that he had come to the wrong address, had met a total stranger who seemed to have been expecting him and who had then changed from talking normal English to something guttural and who had now switched back to English with a question that implied Mrs Ndhlovo was dead and if she hadn't entirely disappeared was in such a mutilated state that it required an old acquaintance to identify her. 'Body? You don't mean…'

'How often vere you intimate viz ze voman? You vere her loffer, ja?'

'Jesus,' said Purefoy, and clutched the side of the doorway for support. The beastly woman's changing accents, not to mention the appalling implications of her questions, had him reeling. And now she had taken him by the arm and was dragging him into the room. Purefoy Osbert clung to the doorway. 'Look,' he squawked. 'I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't a clue-'

'Ah, that was what I was waiting for. Clue,' said the woman. 'We rely on these little mistakes in cases of this sort, Dr Osbert. You said "Clue. "'

Purefoy Osbert's hand left the doorway partly as a result of the woman dragging him but far more because she had just called him Dr Osbert, and had added to his sense of utter horror by speaking about cases of this kind and clues. He staggered into the room and leaned against the wall. The woman locked the door and pocketed the key, then, with a distinctly sinister movement which involved keeping her eyes on him, sidled across the room to the bedroom door and shut that too.