‘After all these years, darling, I can read you like a book. Anyone can tell when you’re upset. You start messing around with the grapes.’

‘The grapes? What are you on about?’

‘You start playing around with them. Peeling them. Taking the skins off. You’ve done it since you were a kid.’

‘I may have done it since I was a kid but I’m not doing it tonight, I can assure you.’

‘Oh, come off it. I’ve got one of them in my hands right now.’

Roddy stroked the fruit between finger and thumb – it felt smooth and oily without its skin – and then popped it into his mouth. He closed his teeth upon it, but instead of the expected release of fresh, tangy syrup upon his tongue, he felt only a rubbery squelch, and his mouth was filled with an appalling taste, the nameless virulence of which he had never known before.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted, and spat it out. He began to retch violently.

Just then, the lights came back on. Squinting in the sudden brightness, it took him a few seconds to identify the object he had just coughed up, which was now lying on the table in front of him. It was a half-chewed eyeball. Its fellow stared balefully at him from the fruit bowl: the bloodshot eye of Thomas Winshaw, fixed for ever in its last, unblinking, lifeless gaze.

CHAPTER SIX

The Crowning Touch

‘HE should sleep now,’ said Phoebe, as Roddy lay back on the pillow, his breathing gradually taking on a slower, more regular rhythm. She gently took the glass from his hand, set it down on the bedside table, and put the bottle of pills away in her bag.

Hilary regarded her brother dispassionately. ‘He always was a squeamish little thing,’ she said. ‘Still, I’ve never seen him perform in quite that way before. Will he be all right, do you think?’

‘I expect he’s just in shock. A few hours’ rest ought to take care of it.’

‘Well, we could all do with that.’ Hilary glanced around the room, and went to check that the window was securely fastened. ‘I suppose he’ll be safe in here, will he? There’s not much point leaving him sleeping like a baby if our resident maniac is just going to sneak in and bump him off the minute our backs are turned.’

They decided that the best thing would be to lock him in. Phoebe didn’t think that he would wake before morning, and even if he did, the temporary inconvenience of being held captive was surely of little importance when set beside his personal safety.

‘I think I’d better keep the key,’ said Phoebe, slipping it into the pocket of her jeans as they set off down the corridor together.

‘Why’s that?’

‘I would have thought it was obvious. Michael and I were tied up when Thomas was killed. That puts us in the clear, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Hilary curtly, after a moment’s thought. ‘In any case, my congratulations go to whoever’s behind this whole set-up. They haven’t missed a trick. Disconnecting all the phones, for instance. I think I could forgive just about everything apart from that.’

‘Preventing us from calling the police, you mean?’

‘Worse than that – I can’t even use my modem. First time in six years I’ve missed a copy deadline. I’d got an absolute corker for them, too. All about the Labour Party peaceniks and how the Iraqis would have run rings around them. Ah well.’ She sighed. ‘It’ll just have to wait.’

They made their way back to the sitting room, where Tabitha was once again installed by the fire, now preoccupied not with her knitting but with the perusal of a bulky paperback which on closer inspection turned out to be Volume Four of The Air Pilot’s Manual. She looked up when Hilary and Phoebe came in, and said: ‘Why, there you are! I was beginning to think you were never coming back.’

‘What about Michael and Mr Sloane?’ Phoebe asked. ‘Are they still outside?’

‘I suppose they must be,’ said Tabitha. ‘Really, you know, I find it hard to keep track of all your comings and goings.’

‘And there’s been no sign of Dorothy, I suppose?’ Hilary ventured.

‘The only person I’ve seen,’ said the old woman, ‘was your father. He stopped by a few minutes ago. We had a lovely little chat.’

Phoebe and Hilary exchanged worried looks. Hilary knelt down beside her aunt and began to speak very slowly and distinctly.

‘Aunty, Mortimer isn’t with us any more. He died, the day before yesterday. That’s why we’re all here, remember? We came for the reading of his will.’

Tabitha frowned. ‘No, I think you must be quite mistaken, dear. I’m certain it was Morty. I must say, I didn’t think he was looking his best – he was very tired and out of breath, and he did have blood all over his clothes, now I come to think of it – but he wasn’t dead. Not a bit of it. Not at all like Henry, or Mark, or Thomas.’ She smiled at the last name, and shook her head fondly. ‘Now that's what I call dead.’

There were footsteps outside the room, and Michael returned, with Pyles and Mr Sloane in tow. Hilary rose from her kneeling position and took Michael aside to acquaint him with the latest turn of events.

‘Loony alert,’ she said, in a loud whisper. ‘The old biddy’s completely lost it this time.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘Says she’s just been talking to my father.’

‘I see.’ Michael paced the room for a few moments, sunk in thought. Then he looked up. ‘Well – who’s to say she’s not telling the truth? I mean, did anyone actually see Mortimer die?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Phoebe. ‘As I said, I wasn’t here when it happened. I’d gone back to Leeds for a couple of days.’

‘And was that your idea?’

‘Not really. He more or less forced it upon me. Told me I was looking under the weather and insisted that I took a break.’

‘And what about you, Pyles – did you ever see Mortimer’s body?’

‘No,’ said the butler, scratching his head. ‘Dr Quince – Dr Quince the younger, that is – simply came down that morning and informed me that the master had passed away. And then he very kindly offered to make all the arrangements with the funeral director himself. I wasn’t involved at all.’

‘But my father couldn’t be running around here killing people,’ Hilary protested. ‘He was confined to a wheelchair, for God’s sake.’

‘That was the impression he liked to give,’ said Phoebe. ‘But I saw him get up and walk once or twice, when he thought nobody was looking. He wasn’t nearly as ill as he liked to make out.’

‘I cannot find it in me to believe,’ the solicitor maintained, ‘that Mr Winshaw himself is still alive, somewhere in this house, and is responsible for all these dreadful murders.’

‘But it’s the only possible solution,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve known it all along.’

Hilary raised her eyebrows.

‘That’s a rather extraordinary statement,’ she said. ‘Since when have you known it, exactly?’

‘Well … since Henry was killed,’ said Michael; and then thought again. ‘No, before then: since I arrived here. No, before that, even: since Mr Sloane turned up at my flat yesterday. Or – oh, I don’t know: since I was first approached by Tabitha and started writing this wretched book about you all. I can’t say. I really can’t say. Perhaps it’s even longer than that. Perhaps it goes all the way back to my birthday.’

‘Your birthday?’ said Hilary. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

Michael sat down and put his head in his hands. He spoke wearily, without emotion.

‘Years ago, on my ninth birthday, I was taken to see a film. It was set in a house rather like this one, and it was about a family, rather like yours. I was an over-sensitive little boy and I should never have been allowed to see it, but because it was supposed to be a comedy my parents thought it would be all right. It wasn’t their fault. They could never have known the effect it was going to have. I know it sounds hard to believe, but it was … well, easily the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never seen anything like it before. And then half-way through – less than half-way through, probably – my mother made us get up and leave. She said we had to go home. And so we left: we left and I never found out what happened in the end. All I could do was wonder about it, for years afterwards.’