"The grand jury is meeting tomorrow," said Edith. "You have to testify for me."

"I haven't been asked."

Mallory walked into the kitchen. Edith followed close behind, her face wrinkled into anxious knots. Mallory opened the refrigerator. Mrs Ortega had cleaned it out. Good. Nothing left to spoil.

"You see, Edith, I was unable to give a coherent statement to the police or the district attorney. Whenever they tried to talk to me, I would begin to cry. After a while, they decided I was bad witness material. Your own attorney came to the same conclusion."

"But I killed him to save you. You saw the writing on the wall. You have to tell them about it."

"I don't believe the grand jury is allowed to hear occult evidence. They only get the solid, worldly stuff to work with. The bullet in Gaynor's shoulder came from my gun, the same gun they pried out of my hand while I was in shock. The bullet that killed him came from the unregistered gun in your possession. And so did the bullets they took out of Charles and the bullet lodged in my vest."

"Herbert's gun. But he won't – "

"Given your gift, I'm surprised you didn't foresee that Herbert would never own up to an illegally purchased gun. And Henrietta never saw the gun, did she? Well, there's Martin. But I imagine the district attorney got rather tired of trying to get three words out of Martin."

"They're going after a first-degree murder indictment and two counts of attempted murder. You know Gaynor was the killer. You know I couldn't have shot you or Charles. Gaynor had the gun in his hand. You saw it."

"I came from darkness into blinding light, and I don't remember what happened after I was shot. I'm told traumatic shock can do that. Gaynor wasn't holding a weapon when Coffey found him. You were. His hands had no trace of residue from a gun. Yours did."

No one had noticed the detail of the plastic bag which had been carried out of the cellar before the final shot, the plastic bag bearing prints and residue. Perhaps it had fallen in the street as they were loading her into the ambulance with Charles.

"You know Gaynor was the murderer. You have to tell them I shot in fear for my life."

"That's a tough one, Edith. According to the bullet trajectories for the entry wound, you shot him in the head at close range and while he was lying on the ground."

"He was a murderer!"

Edith's voice was climbing to the high notes where fear was.

"The law doesn't recognize him as a murderer," said Mallory as she opened her notebook and jotted a memo to cancel Charles's newspaper subscription. "There was no evidence against him. But they did find those computer printouts with insider-trading activity on Charles's body – everything they needed to connect you to Gaynor's aunt. And then there's the note they found in Gaynor's pocket – your invitation. It doesn't look good for you, Edith."

"Help me! Do you want to see me spend the rest of my life in prison?"

Mallory smiled, and psychic Edith did not understand the meaning of it and even began to take heart from this sign of humanity in Mallory.

"Edith, there's something I've always wanted to ask you. When your husband Max was in the water tank, who ordered the bus boy to break the glass, the glass that severed every artery and bled him to death? I found that bus boy in a retirement home upstate. It took me a long time to hunt him down. His memory of the night was very clear. It was the biggest event in his entire life. He said he didn't see the face of the person who called out the order, but it was a woman's voice, and a woman who put the fire axe into his hand."

Edith said nothing, and the last loose end was tied by silence.

"There's no justice, Edith, but it is a balanced universe after all."

"You have to help me. You're a civilized woman."

"I am?"

A carton of Charles's journals stood on the sidewalk by her feet. Her hand was rising to flag a passing cab when a familiar face caught her attention by the light of a streetlamp.

She dropped coins into the newspaper-dispenser, plucked out a paper and looked into the eyes of Maximilian Candle. It was an old photo of Charles's cousin in his prime. The front-page article spoke of an overdue tribute to a master. Celebrity magicians from round the world planned to recreate his old routines for a charity event. Max was a headliner once more.

She found a larger photograph on the inside page, with a description of Max's magnificent funeral of thirty years ago. In the foreground of the photo, she could pick out the little figure of a child with a large nose, the small version of Charles.

When Markowitz had died, the account of his less spectacular, unmagical funeral had been buried on page fifteen. That small column of type had been accompanied by a photograph of herself, her face dry of any of the normal signs of grief.

Of all the tears she had recently cried for Coffey, who knew her better than to believe in them, and all the tears she had cried for the more easily gulled district attorney who knew her not, not one drop had been the genuine article. Conversely and perversely, on principle, she had never shed one false drop for Markowitz on that day when they had laid his coffin in the ground. None of the words spoken over the grave had reached her when the rabbi cast his eyes up to the sky where the God of Sunday school was hiding out, laying low, behaving like a good New Yorker who didn't want to get involved.

She had kept the integrity of the hard case, one who believed that a stiff was a stiff and dead was dead, a dedicated unbeliever in the flight of souls.

Goodbye, Markowitz.

She closed her paper and stepped into the street, putting out her hand to wave down a cab. Near by, a car alarm went off in a shriek. A burst of pigeons took flight from the overhead branches of a tree, their wings rushing, all swirling as one, soaring up beyond the lamplight, screaming as one, night-blind in their flight, rising high above the woman with the wide, astonished eyes, and then gone over the rooftops, lost in the dark.

Carol O'Connell

Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.

At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.

Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.