He’d known who Aaron was. That was the key to the whole thing, and all his explanations made sense in the light of that. Probably the spiritualist-confidence fraternity exchanged notes on police? Or maybe this whole thing was an asinine practical joke on Paul’s part, and if it was, Aaron was going to give his cousin the sort of dressing-down that led strong men to emigrate. There was an explanation along those lines, even if Aaron didn’t yet know exactly what it was, because Wildsmith had quite clearly known the author of the third letter.

Children. What a damned filthy thing to use as a deception.

They’d found four small bodies wrapped in sacking under Wilfred Molesworth’s kitchen floor, and he had shown no remorse, no guilt, nothing at all. He had been a mild-mannered little man, blinking behind his spectacles as they levered up the floorboards, and he had blinked mildly just the same way while the hangman put the rope round his neck.

The papers had had a field day, of course. Probably one of the rags had reproduced a letter or some such: that might have been how Wildsmith had recognised the hand. From a newspaper photograph several years ago.

That was clutching at straws. Nonetheless it was, must be a trick, and he would find out how Joel Wildsmith had done it—how he’d known, and, as important, what he knew. And he’d do it carefully, because the man was a sufficiently brilliant confidence trickster to be positively dangerous.

He’d damn near persuaded Aaron with his first demonstrations, and he’d damn near got his liking as they’d talked. Aaron had wanted to argue more, had had all sorts of points to make and things to say. He’d felt like it would be enjoyable to thrash things out. He had in fact found the man remarkably easy to talk to: it was why he’d stopped.

Yes, Wildsmith was very good indeed. Why, when he’d read Molesworth’s letter, he’d gone quite grey, the blood visibly draining from his face. Even the greatest actors couldn’t do that on command.

Trick, Aaron thought again, and strode furiously down the road.

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

THREE DAYS LATER, AARON had reached no brilliant conclusions. He had looked further into Mr. Joel Wildsmith, or rather, asked Sergeant Hollis to have an informal look for him, since he didn’t want to put Paul’s complaint through official channels quite yet. Hollis was in the uniformed branch, a solid rugby-playing sort with an unexpected speciality in mediums, palmists, and fortune-tellers.

“Graphology is a new one on me,” he admitted over a pint of Aaron’s buying. “Is there anything to it?”