The road continued for another half - mile, the properties growing larger, the houses set back further from the gates. It came to an abrupt halt at a thicket of cypress. There was no gate, no visible means of entry, just the forest like growth of thirty - foot trees, and for a moment I thought I'd been misled.

I put on my raincoat, pulled up the collar and got out. The ground was thick with pine needles and wet leaves. I walked to the thicket and peered through the branches. Twenty feet ahead, almost totally hidden by the overgrowth of tangled limbs and dripping vegetation, was a short stone pathway leading to a wooden gate. The trees had been planted to block the entry; from the size of them they were at least twenty years old. Discounting the possibility that someone had taken the trouble to transplant a score of full grown cypress to the site, I decided it had been a long time since the normal human business of living had taken place here.

I pushed my way to the gate and tried it. Nailed shut. I took a good look at it - two slabs of tongued and - grooved redwood hinged to brick posts. The posts connected to chain link fencing piled high with thorny spirals. No sign of electricity or barbed wire. I found a foothold on a wet rock, slipped a couple of times and finally managed to scale the gate.

I landed on another world. Acres of wasteland spread before me; what had once been a formal lawn was now a swamp of weeds, dead grass and broken rock. The ground had sunk in several places, creating pools of water that stagnated and provided oases for the mosquitoes and gnats that hovered overhead. Once - noble trees had been reduced to jagged stumps and felled, rotten hulls crawling with fungus. Rusted auto parts, old tires and discarded cans and bottles were scattered throughout what was now a sodden trash dump. Rain fell on metal and made a hollow, clanging sound.

I walked up a pathway paved in herringbone brick, choked with weeds and covered by slimy moss. In the places where the roots had pushed through, the bricks stuck out of the ground like loose teeth in a broken jaw. I kicked aside a drowned field mouse and slogged toward the former residence of the Hickle clan.

The house was massive, a three - story structure of hand - hewn stone that had blackened with age. I couldn't imagine it as ever being beautiful but doubtless it had once been grand: a brooding, slate - roofed mansion trimmed with gingerbread, festooned with eaves and gables and girdled by wide stone porches. There was rusted wrought - iron furniture on the front porch, a nine - foot - high cathedral door and a weather vane at the highest peak in the shape of a witch riding a broomstick. The old crone twirled in the wind, safely above the desolation.

I climbed the stairs to the front entry. Weeds had grown clear up to the door, which was nailed shut. The windows were similarly boarded and bolted tight. In spite of its size - perhaps because of it - the house seemed pathetic, a forgotten dowager, abandoned to the point where she no longer cared how she looked and sentenced to a fate of decaying in silence.

I forced my way through a makeshift barrier of rotting boards that had been stacked in front of the porte - cochere. The house was at least a hundred and fifty feet long and it took me a while to check each window on the ground floor: All were sealed.

The rear property was another three acres of swamp. A four - car garage, designed as a miniature of the house, was inaccessible - nailed and fastened. A fifty - foot swimming pool was empty save for several inches of muddy water in which floated a host of organic debris. The remains of a grape arbor and trellised rose garden were evident only as a jumble of peeling wood and cracked stone supporting a bird's nest of lifeless twigs. Stone benches and statues slanted and pitched on broken bases, Pompeii in the wake of Vesuvius.

The rain began to come down harder and colder. I put my hands in the pocket of my raincoat, by now soaked through, and looked for shelter. It would take tools - hammer and crowbar - to get into the house or the garage, and there were no large trees that could be trusted not to topple at any moment. I was out in the open like a bum caught in a blitz.

I saw a flash of light and braced myself for an electric storm. None came and the light flashed again. The heavy downpour made it difficult to see but the third time the light appeared I was able to draw a bead on it and walk in its direction. Several squishy footsteps later I could see it had come from a glass greenhouse at the rear of the estate, just beyond the bombed - out arbor. The panes were opaque with dirt, some of which ran in brown trickles, but they appeared intact. I ran toward it, following the light that flickered, danced, disappeared, then flickered again.

The door to the greenhouse was closed but it opened silently to the prompting of my hand. Inside it was warm, steamy and sour with the aroma of decomposition. Waist - high wooden tables ran along both sides of the glass room; between them was a walkway floored with wood chips peat, mulch and topsoil. A collection of tools - pitchforks, rakes, spades, hoes - stood in one corner.

Upon the tables were pots of gorgeously flowering plants: orchids, bromeliads, blue hydrangea, begonias of every hue, scarlet and white impatiens - all in full bloom and spilling abundantly from their terra cotta houses. A wooden beam into which metal hooks had been embedded was suspended above the tables. Hanging from the hooks were fuchsias dripping purple, ferns, spider plants, creeping char lies more begonias. It was the Garden of Eden in the Great Void.

The room was dim, and it reverberated with the sound of the rain assaulting the glass roof. The light that had drawn me appeared again, brighter and closer. I made out a shape at the other end of the greenhouse, a figure in yellow slicker and hood holding a flashlight. The figure shone the flashlight on plants, picking up a leaf here, a flower there, examining the soil, pinching off a dry branch, setting aside a ripe blossom.

"Hello," I said.

The figure whirled and the flashlight beam washed over my face. I squinted in the glare and brought my hand up to shield my eyes.

The figure came closer.

"Who are you?" demanded a voice, high and scared.

"Alex Delaware."

The beam lowered. I started to take a step.

"Stay right there!"

I put my foot down.

The hood was pulled back. The face it revealed was round, pale, flat, utterly Asian, female but not feminine. The eyes were two razor cuts in the parchment skin, the mouth an unsmiling hyphen.

"Hello, Mrs. Hickle."

"How do you know me - what do you want?" There was toughness diluted by fear in the voice, the toughness of the successful fugitive who knows vigilance must never cease.

"I just thought I'd pay you a visit."

"I don't want visitors. I don't know you."

"Don't you? Alex Delaware - doesn't the name mean anything to you?"

She didn't bother to lie, just said nothing.

"It was my office darling Stuart chose for his last big scene - or maybe it was chosen for him."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want your company." Her English was clipped and slightly accented.

"Why don't you call the butler and have me ejected?"

Her jaws worked; white fingers tightened around the flashlight.

"You refuse to leave?"

"It's wet and cold outside. I'd appreciate the chance to dry off."

"Then you'll go?"

"Then I stay and we talk awhile. About your late husband and some of his good buddies."

"Stuart's dead. There's nothing to talk about."

"I think there's plenty. Lots of questions."

She put down the flashlight and folded her arms in front of her. There was defiance in the gesture. Any trace of fear had faded and her demeanor was one of irritation at being disturbed. It puzzled me - she was a lone woman accosted by a stranger in a deserted place but there was no panic.