'That depends on you.'

But out of horror and disbelief Meg had found courage. And she had found more than courage: authority. She said: 'Oh no, it doesn't. This isn't a responsibility I asked for and I don't want it.'

'But you can't evade it. You know what you know. Call Chief Inspector Rickards now. You can use this telephone.' When Meg made no move to use it she said: 'Surely you aren't going to do an E. M. Forster on me. If I had a choice between betraying my country and my friend I hope I would have the guts to betray my country.'

Meg said: 'That is one of those clever remarks that, when you analyse them, either mean nothing or mean something rather silly.'

Alice said: 'Remember, whatever you choose to do, you can't bring her back. You've got a number of options, but that isn't one. It's very satisfying to the human ego to discover the truth; ask Adam Dalgliesh. It's even more satisfying to human vanity to imagine you can avenge the innocent, restore the past, vindicate the right. But you can't. The dead stay dead. All you can do is to hurt the living in the name of justice or retribution or revenge. If that gives you any pleasure, then do it, but don't imagine that there's virtue in it. Whatever you decide, I know that you won't go back on it. I can believe you and I can trust you.'

Looking at Alice's face Meg saw that the look bent on her was serious, ironic, challenging; but it was not pleading. Alice said: 'Do you want some time to consider?'

'No. There's no point in having time. I know now what I have to do. I have to tell. But I'd rather you did.'

'Then give me until tomorrow. Once I've spoken there'll be no more privacy. There are things I need to do here. The proofs, affairs to arrange. And I should like twelve hours of freedom. If you can give me that I'll be grateful. I haven't the right to ask for more, but I am asking for that.'

Meg said: 'But when you confess you'll have to give them a motive, a reason, something they can believe in.'

'Oh, they'll believe it all right. Jealousy, hatred, the resentment of an ageing virgin for a woman who looked as she did, lived as she did. I'll say that she wanted to marry him, take him from me after all I've done for him. They'll see me as a neurotic, menopausal woman gone temporarily off her head. Unnatural affection. Suppressed sexuality. That's how men talk about women like me. That's the kind of motive that makes sense to a man like Rickards. I'll give it to him.'

'Even if it means you end up in Broadmoor? Alice, could you bear it?'

'Well, that's a possibility, isn't it? It's either that or prison. This was a carefully planned murder. Even the cleverest counsel won't be able to make it look like a sudden, unpremeditated act. And I doubt whether there's much to choose between Broadmoor and prison when it comes to the food.'

It seemed to Meg that nothing ever again would be certain. Not only had her inner world been shattered but the familiar objects of the external world no longer had reality. Alice's roll-top desk, the kitchen table, the high-backed cane chairs, the rows of gleaming pans, the stoves all seemed insubstantial, as if they would disappear at her touch. She was aware that the kitchen round which her eyes ranged was now empty. Alice had left. She leaned back, faint, and closed her eyes and then, opening them, she was aware of Alice's face bending low over hers, immense, almost moon-like. She was handing Meg a tumbler. She said: 'It's whisky. Drink this, you need it.'

'No, Alice, I can't. I can't really. You know I hate whisky, it makes me sick.'

'This won't make you sick. There are times when whisky is the only possible remedy. This is one of them. Drink it, Meg.'

She felt her knees tremble, and simultaneously the tears started like burning spurts of pain and began flowing unchecked, a salt stream over her cheeks, her mouth. She thought, This can't be happening. This can't be true. But that was how she had felt when Miss Mortimer, calling her from her class, had gently seated her in the chair opposite to her in the Head's private sitting room and had broken the news of Martin's death. The unthinkable had to be thought, the unbelievable believed. Words still meant what they had always meant; murder, death, grief, pain. She could see Miss Mortimer's mouth moving, the odd, disconnected phrases floating out, like balloons in a cartoon, noticing again how she must have wiped off her lipstick before the interview. Perhaps she had thought that only naked lips could give such appalling news. She saw again those restless blobs of flesh, noticed again that the top button on Miss Mortimer's cardigan was hanging loose on a single thread and heard herself say, actually say, 'Miss Mortimer, you're going to lose a button.'

She clasped her fingers round the glass. It seemed to her to have grown immensely large and heavy as a rock and the smell of the whisky almost turned her stomach. But she had no power to resist. She lifted it slowly to her mouth. She was aware of Alice's face still very close, of Alice's eyes watching her. She took the first small sip, and was about to throw back her head and gulp it down, when, firmly but gently, the glass was taken out of her hands, and she heard Alice's voice: 'You're quite right, Meg, it was never your drink. I'll make coffee for both of us then walk with you back to the Old Rectory.'

Fifteen minutes later Meg helped wash up the coffee cups as if this was the end of an ordinary evening. Then they set out together to walk over the headland. The wind was at their back and it seemed to Meg that they almost flew through the air, their feet hardly touching the turf, as if they were witches. At the door of the rectory Alice asked: 'What will you do tonight, Meg. Pray for me?'

'I shall pray for both of us.'

'As long as you don't expect me to repent. I'm not religious, as you know, and I don't understand that word unless, as I suppose, it means regret that something we've done has turned out less well for us than we hoped. On that definition I have little to repent of except ill luck that you, my dear Meg, are an incompetent car mechanic'

And then, as if on impulse, she grasped Meg's arms. The grip was so fierce that it hurt. Meg thought for a moment that Alice was going to kiss her but her hold loosened and her hands fell. She said a curt goodbye and turned away.

Putting her key in the lock and pushing the door open, Meg looked back, but Alice had disappeared into the darkness and the wild sobbing, which for an incredible moment she thought was a woman weeping, was only the wind.

Dalgliesh had just finished sorting the last of his aunt's papers when the telephone rang. It was Rickards. His voice, strong, high with euphoria, came over the line as clearly as if his presence filled the room. His wife had given birth to a daughter an hour earlier. He was ringing from the hospital. His wife was fine. The baby was wonderful. He only had a few minutes. They were carrying out some nursing procedure or other and then he'd be able to get back to Susie.

'She's got home just in time, Mr Dalgliesh. Lucky, wasn't it? And the midwife says she's hardly known such a quick labour for a first pregnancy. Only six hours. Seven and a half pounds, just a nice weight. And we wanted a girl. We're calling her Stella Louise. Louise is after Susie's mother. We may as well make the old trout happy.'

Replacing the receiver after warm congratulations which he suspected Rickards felt were hardly adequate, Dalgliesh wondered why he had been honoured with such early news and concluded that Rickards, possessed by joy, was ringing everyone who might have an interest, filling in the minutes before he was allowed back to his wife's bedside. His last words were: 'I can't tell you what it feels like, Mr Dalgliesh.'

But Dalgliesh could remember what it had felt like. He paused for a moment, the receiver still warm under his hand, and faced reactions which seemed to him overcomplicated for such ordinary and expected news, recognizing with distaste that part of what he was feeling was envy. Was it, he wondered, his coming to the headland, the sense there of man's transitory but continuing life, the everlasting cycle of birth and death, or was it the death of Jane Dalgliesh, his last living relative, that made him for a moment wish so keenly that he too had a living child?