Therefore a rich man-and a man who loved children. There she was, back at it. Children again. The house by the canal and the bird in the chimney, and out of the chimney had fallen a child's doll, shoved up there by someone. A child's doll that held within its skin a handful of diamonds-the proceeds of crime. This was one of the headquarters of a big criminal undertaking. But there had been crimes more sinister than robberies. Mrs. Copleigh had said 'I always fancied myself as he might have done it.'

Sir Philip Starke. A murderer? Behind her half-closed eyelids, Tuppence studied him with the knowledge clearly in her mind that she was studying him to find out if he fitted in any way with her conception of a murderer-and a child murderer at that.

How old was he, she wondered. Seventy at least, perhaps older. A worn ascetic face. Yes, definitely ascetic. Very definitely a tortured face. Those large dark eyes. El Greco eyes.

The emaciated body.

He had come here this evening, why, she wondered? Her eyes went on to Miss Bligh. Sitting a little restlessly in her chair, occasionally moving to push a table nearer someone, to offer a cushion, to move the position of the cigarette box or matches. Restless, ill at ease. She was looking at Philip Starke.

Every time she relaxed, her eyes went to him.

'Doglike devotion,' thought Tuppence. 'I think she must have been in love with him once. I think in a way perhaps she still is. You don't stop being in love with anyone because you get old. People like Derek and Deborah think you do. They can't imagine anyone who isn't young being in love. But I think she-I think she is still in love with him, hopelessly, devotedly in love. Didn't someone say-was it Mrs. Copleigh or the vicar who had said-that Miss Bligh had been his secretary as a young woman, that she still looked after his affairs here?

'Well,' thought Tuppence, 'it's natural enough. Secretaries often fall in love with their bosses. So say Gertrude Bligh had loved Philip Starke. Was that a useful fact at all? Had Miss Bligh known or suspected that behind Philip Starke's calm ascetic personality there ran a horrifying thread of madness? So fond of children always.'

'Too fond of children, I thought,' Mrs. Copleigh had said.

Things did take you like that. Perhaps that was a reason for his looking so tortured.

'Unless one is a pathologist or a psychiatrist or something, one doesn't know anything about mad murderers,' thought Tuppence. 'Why do they want to kill children? What gives them that urge? Are they sorry about it afterwards? Are they disgusted, are they desperately unhappy, are they terrified?'

At that moment she noticed that his gaze had fallen on her.

His eyes met hers and seemed to leave some message.

'You are thinking about me,' those eyes said. 'Yes, it's true what you are thinking. I am a haunted man.'

Yes, that described him exactly. He was a haunted man.

She wrenched her eyes away. Her gaze went to the vicar. She liked the vicar. He was a dear. Did he know anything? He might, Tuppence thought, or he might be living in the middle of some evil tangle that he never even suspected. Things happened all round him, perhaps, but he wouldn't know about them, because he had that rather disturbing quality of innocence.

Mrs. Boscowan? But Mrs. Boscowan was difficult to know anything about. A middle-aged woman, a personality, as Tommy had said, but that didn't express enough. As though Tuppence had summoned her, Mrs. Boscowan rose suddenly to her feet.

'Do you mind if I go upstairs and have a wash?' she said.

'Oh! of course.' Miss Bligh jumped to her feet. 'I'll take you up, shall I, Vicar?'

'I know my way perfectly,' said Mrs. Boscowan. 'Don't bother. Mrs. Beresford?'

Tuppence jumped slightly.

'I'll show you,' said Mrs. Boscowan, 'where things are. Come with me?'

Tuppence got up as obediently as a child. She did not describe it so to herself. But she knew that she had been summoned and when Mrs. Boscowan summoned, you obeyed.

By then Mrs. Boscowan was through the door to the hall and Tuppence had followed her. Mrs. Boscowan started up the stairs-Tuppence came up behind her.

'The spare room is at the top of the stairs,' said Mrs. Boscowan. 'It's always kept ready. It has a bathroom leading out of it.'

She opened the door at the top of the stairs, went through, switched on the light and Tuppence followed her in.

'I'm very glad to have found you here,' said Mrs. Boscowan. 'I hoped I should. I was worried about you. Did your husband tell you?'

'I gathered you'd said something,' said Tuppence.

'Yes, I was worried.' She closed the door behind them, shutting them, as it were, into a private place of private consultation. 'Have you felt at all,' said Emma Boscowan, 'that Sutton Chancellor is a dangerous place?'

'It's been dangerous for me,' said Tuppence.

'Yes, I know. It's lucky it wasn't worse, but then-yes, I think I can understand that.'

'You know something,' said Tuppence. 'You know something about all this, don't you?'

'In a way,' said Emma Boscowan, 'in a way I do, and in a way I don't. One has instincts, feelings, you know. When they turn out to be right, it's worrying. This whole criminal gang business, it seems so extraordinary. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with-' She stopped abruptly.

'I mean, it's just one of those things that are going on-that have always gone on really. But they're very well organized now, like businesses. There's nothing really dangerous, you know, not about the criminal part of it. It's the other. It's knowing just where the danger is and how to guard against it. You must be careful, Mrs. Beresford, you really must. You're one of those people who rush into things and it wouldn't be safe to do that. Not here.'

Tuppence said slowly, 'My old aunt-or rather Tommy's old aunt, she wasn't mine-someone told her in the nursing home where she died-that there was a killer.'

Emma nodded her head slowly.

'There were two deaths in that nursing home,' said Tuppence, 'and the doctor isn't satisfied about them.'

'Is that what started you off?'

'No,' said Tuppence, 'it was before that.'

'If you have time,' said Emma Boscowan, 'will you tell me very quickly-as quickly as you can because someone may interrupt us-just what happened at that nursing home or old ladies' home or whatever it was, to start you off?'

'Yes, I can tell you very quickly,' said Tuppence. She proceeded to do so.

'I see,' said Emma Boscowan. 'And you don't know where this old lady, this Mrs. Lancaster, is now?'

'No, I don't.'

'Do you think she's dead?'

'I think she-might be.'

'Because she knew something?'

'Yes. She knew about something. Some murder. Some child perhaps who was killed.'

'I think you've gone wrong there,' said Mrs. Boscowan. 'I think the child got mixed up in it and perhaps she got it mixed up. Your old lady, I mean. She got the child mixed up with something else, some other kind of killing.'

'I suppose it's possible. Old people do get mixed up. But there was a child murderer loose here, wasn't there? Or so the woman I lodged with here said.'

'There were several child murders in this part of the country, yes. But that was a good long time ago, you know. I'm not sure. The vicar wouldn't know. He wasn't there then. But Miss Bligh was. Yes, yes, she must have been here. She must have been a fairly young girl then.'

'I suppose so.'

Tuppence said. 'Has she always been in love with Sir Philip Starke?'

'You saw that, did you? Yes, I think so. Completely devoted beyond idolatry. We noticed it when we first came here, William and I.'

'What made you come here? Did you live in the Canal House?'

'No, we never lived there. He liked to paint it. He painted it several times. What's happened to the picture your husband showed me?'

'He brought it home again,' said Tuppence. 'He told me what you said about the boat-that your husband didn't paint it-the boat called Waterlily.'

'Yes. It wasn't painted by my husband. When I last saw the picture there was no boat there. Somebody painted it in.'

'And called it Waterlily. And a man who didn't exist, Major Waters-wrote about a child's grave-a child called Lillian-but there was no child buried in that grave, only a child's coffin, full of the proceeds of a big robbery. The painting of the boat must have been a message-a message to say where the loot was hidden. It all seems to tie up with crime…'

'It seems to, yes. But one can't be sure what-' Emma Boscowan broke off abruptly. She said quickly, 'She's coming up to find us. Go into the bathroom.'

'Who?'

'Nellie Bligh. Pop into the bathroom-bolt the door.'

'She's just a busybody,' said Tuppence, disappearing into the bathroom.

'Something a little more than that,' said Mrs. Boscowan.

Miss Bligh opened the door and came in, brisk and helpful.

'Oh, I hope you found everything you wanted?' she said. 'There were fresh towels and soap, I hope? Mrs. Copleigh comes in to look after the vicar, but I really have to see she does things properly.'

Mrs. Boscowan and Miss Bligh went downstairs together.

Tuppence joined them just as they reached the drawing room door. Sir Philip Starke rose as she came into the room, rearranged her chair and sat down beside her.

'Is that the way you like it, Mrs. Beresford?'

'Yes, thank you,' said Tuppence. 'It's very comfortable.'

'I'm sorry to hear-' his voice had a vague charm to it, though it had some elements of a ghostlike voice, far-away, lacking in resonance, yet with a curious depth-'about your accident,' he said. 'It's so sad nowadays-all the accidents there are.'

His eyes were wandering over her face and she thought to herself, 'He's making just as much a study of me as I made of him.' She gave a sharp half-glance at Tommy, but Tommy was talking to Emma Boscowan.

'What made you come to Sutton Chancellor in the first place, Mrs. Beresford?'

'Oh, we're looking for a house in the country in a vague sort of way,' said Tuppence. 'My husband was away from home attending some congress or other and I thought I'd have a tour round a likely part of the countryside-just to see what there was going, and the kind of price one would have to pay, you know.'

'I hear you went and looked at the house by the canal bridge?'

'Yes, I did. I believe I'd once noticed it from the train. It's a very attractive-looking house-from the outside.'

'Yes. I should imagine, though, that even the outside needs a great deal doing to it, to the roof and things like that. Not so attractive on the wrong side, is it?'

'No, it seems to me a curious way to divide up a house.'

'Oh well,' said Philip Starke, 'people have different ideas, don't they?'