"But your aunt wasn't. Mallory told me you quarreled with your aunt over the seances. I believe you did. It must have been a shock to discover her activities were ongoing and so extensive. Your aunt's fortune doubled after the merger Edith arranged. But subsequent deals with the cartel made it grow to ostentatious proportions. It was out of control, wasn't it? So many people in on the action. It was only a matter of time before the cartel was exposed. And the government people routinely take all the profits, don't they? Not to mention fines in the millions of dollars. But even the SEC can't seize a dead woman's estate once it's gone through probate. Mallory's first instincts were good. She liked money motives as much as Louis Markowitz did."

"Back to Samantha Siddon, if you don't mind. I don't see the connection to me."

"It was because Siddon followed Whitman. With a few reservations, I finally gave in to Mallory's fixation with money motives, the idea that, of the four murders, there was one main target. Pearl Whitman left no heirs, no one benefited by her death. The only motive for her murder could be the framing of Henry Cathery."

"One might take the view that Pearl had changed her mind about giving Henry a solid alibi for the time of his grandmother's death."

"I wouldn't. Four murders would be too complex for a young man who thrives on simplicity and lack of distraction. He wouldn't bother to go to all that trouble -certainly not for money. I gather you didn't know he was coming into a personal fortune of his own. You seemed surprised. That's a snag, isn't it?"

"You keep digressing. How does Samantha Siddon give me away?"

"Samantha Siddon was an interesting departure from the pattern. Everyone was so busy with patterns and common motives. And that place where Louis died with Pearl Whitman, that made another interesting departure. Then I realized it wasn't a departure at all. It was business as usual with an unexpected interruption."

"You're wandering off the path again, Charles."

"Sorry. Well, the order of the murders is important. You killed Anne Cathery first to put suspicion on Henry Cathery. He was perfect, wasn't he? A strange boy, reclusive. But even if he had been arrested, there were no witnesses, no physical evidence. All that Cathery money, what were the odds he couldn't make bail? So you didn't have to worry about his confinement while you were killing your aunt. You didn't count on Henry intimidating Pearl Whitman into an alibi after the police came around a second time. Then Miss Whitman was the third victim. That would have been predictable for Markowitz, once he sized Henry Cathery up for a frame. That would have occurred to him shortly after your aunt died. He was following the money motive."

Gaynor kicked the lamp, and the shifting light made his shadow smaller. "It couldn't have been that simple."

"Did it rattle you when he followed Pearl Whitman into the building? Yes, I suppose it did. You must have thought it was all over at that point. You left the plastic bag behind. Very sloppy. It was photographed at the site."

"Siddon," said Gaynor, bringing the knife close and then drawing it back. "Samantha Siddon."

"Right. The last one. It followed Markowitz's logic for the framing of the Cathery boy. You knew about that odd little symbiotic relationship between Henry and Margot. You'd lived in the square for several months by then. I expect you'd seen them together quite a few times. You would have been interested in every aspect of Henry's routine. You couldn't count on Henry not having an alibi for all the murders, so you implicated the only other human he had any ties to. It would destroy her credibility as an alibi and lead the police down the path of a conspiracy."

"I have an unbreakable alibi for the Siddon murder."

"Well, no you don't, not if you're counting on Mallory. I'm sure you noticed her staking out Gramercy Park and following you on campus. Her tragic flaw is beauty, or rather, the fact that she's unaware of it. She actually believes she can blend into her surroundings. So you were aware of her, and you made her your alibi."

"I was never out of her sight for more than twenty minutes."

"Nineteen minutes. She's obsessive about her notes. Do you know, she even has a note about the change in your physical characteristics during "the play? You do have a distinctively awkward body language, but you can lose it when you want to. On stage, you were even graceful."

"Nineteen minutes isn't enough time to go to Gramercy Park, kill the old woman and get back to the theater again."

"Oh, I don't believe any of them were killed in Gramercy Park. The university borders a seedy area with lots of places to do a murder unobserved."

"The police have no reason to believe she wasn't killed in the park."

"You mean because of the blood at the supposed crime sites? I liked the detail of the beads spread out all over creation. You arranged the bodies as they were when you killed the women. Once the bodies stiffened, it would have been easy to leave them in the same positions at another site, even working in the dark. Originally, the police believed the plastic bag was used to prevent the blood from splattering the killer. But the bags were used to retain all the blood necessary for a convincing crime scene. Excellent idea. The bag would keep it nice and moist so it would saturate the surroundings instead of lying caked on the surface. The bloody palm prints were another nice touch."

"They'll never prove it."

"No? But you've made so many errors. Shall I tell you what I believe tipped off Edith Candle? You mentioned the slashed breast from the seance. Blood and gore are not the mainstays of a medium's routine. Edith knew you'd filled the gaps in that performance from memory. You couldn't have seen it."

The knife had dropped away from his eye by a bare inch, and then another.

"It was more than money, wasn't it? I always thought that was a flaw in the police logic. You took an unnecessary risk planting the first body in the park. You craved the excitement, didn't you? How did it start?"

The lamp on the floor created the illusion of footlights and the drama of contrast. Gaynor's grin had a ghoulish aspect.

"It started with Anne Cathery's dog. He got away from her and led her out of the park. We were looking for him in the dustbins when I saw the monkey puzzle worked out for me."

"The monkey puzzle. That sounds familiar."

"When you were a schoolboy, did you have the paradigm of the monkey, the chair, the pole and the banana?"

"I think so. The banana is suspended from the ceiling by a thread?"

"Right," said Gaynor. "Just out of reach. And this very hungry monkey is given the tools to retrieve the banana – a chair and a pole. But the monkey doesn't know how to use them. So he paces back and forth until he gives up and sits in the corner, beaten. Suddenly, everything falls into line. From where he sits, he can see the pole leaning on the chair and pointing up to the banana. He grabs up the pole, leaps on the chair and swats the banana down."

"So it was spontaneous?"

"Yes. She was looking for the dog by a row of trash cans. Some building super had left half a box of large plastic bags by the cans. The garbage was bagged, just waiting to be put out on the street in the morning. There was a kitchen knife on the ground, someone had discarded it for a broken handle. The hilt of the knife was touching the box of trash bags and the blade was pointing at Anne Cathery. Beyond that silly woman, on the next street, was Henry Cathery, sitting in the park, playing chess with himself. I picked up one of the bags and punctured it with the knife. That gave me cover from the blood. I used another bag to put over her as soon as I'd put the knife in her throat. They were all small women. It wasn't difficult to bag her, so to speak. With the cover of a plastic bag around the body, I had all the leisure to make it look like the work of a lunatic."