Stone walked back to the desk and looked inside the safe. The estate papers he had stored in it were a sodden mass. He lifted them out in a big lump and deposited them on the newspaper. Then he reached inside and brought out Esme’s diary. It was heavier than before, being soaking wet. He opened the cover and found the pages stuck together, the ink running.

“Have you got a hair dryer?” Lance asked.

“In my bathroom upstairs,” Ginny replied.

“Ginny,” Lance said, “would you like to help?”

“Of course,” she replied, running over to the desk.

“Will you take the diary upstairs, put it on a table and start drying it?”

“Sure.”

Lance reached into a desk drawer and found a letter opener. “Use this to separate the pages as they dry, but don’t force them.”

“Okay.” Ginny took the diary and went upstairs.

A bell sounded in Dick’s little office almost simultaneously with the front doorbell.

Lance disappeared into the office, and Seth went to the front door and came back with Sergeant Young, who looked tired.

Stone introduced him to Ham; he’d already met everybody else.

“Anything new?” Stone asked.

“I’m afraid not. We’ve pretty much started the search over again, and this time we’re concentrating on the beaches and shoreline.”

“Why?” Ham asked.

Sergeant Young looked away.

Stone spoke up. “Because the bodies of the missing women were all found in the water.”

Ham nodded.

Lance came out of the office. “Afternoon, Sergeant,” he said, placing several sheets of acetate on the desk. “I have something that might be of use to you in your search. Do you have a current map of the island?”

“A very good one, showing all the houses,” Young replied. “I’ll get it out of my car.” He was back in a moment and spread the map on the desk. “This is the latest map available that shows all the occupied buildings. You can see, I’ve highlighted the ones already searched in green.”

“I see you’re better than half finished,” Lance said. He picked up a sheet of acetate and laid it next to the map. “This is a thermal image of the island taken from a satellite last night, or rather an image of the north end of the island. In order to get in close, we divided the island in half. This particular image was taken at nine P.M. last evening.”

Everybody crowded around. “As you can see, anything that radiates heat shows up in orange, to a greater or lesser degree.” He pointed at a house in the village. “Take this house, for example: There’s quite a lot of ambient light, and these concentrations are people,” he said, pointing to a group, “apparently gathered around the table, having dinner. Outside, you can see another orange object, which is the family car, its engine still warm.”

“That’s very sensitive,” Young said.