Joanna Hartmann looked shocked, but Faulkner seemed quite unperturbed. ‘He knows Joanna well. We’ve been there together often. I’d hardly be likely to tell him they belonged to another woman, would I? As I told you earlier, it was none of his business, anyway.’

‘That seems reasonable enough surely,’ Joanna said.

Miller looked at her gravely. ‘Does it?’

She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?’

Morgan had been listening to everything, a frown of con centration on his face and now he said quickly, ‘Just a minute. There’s something more here, isn’t there?’

‘There could be.’

For the first time Faulkner seemed to have had enough. The urbane mask slipped heavily and he said sharply, ‘I’m beginning to get rather bored with all this. Is this or is it not another Rainlover murder?’

Miller didn’t even hesitate. ‘It certainly has all the hallmarks.’

‘Then that settles it,’ Morgan said. ‘You surely can’t be suggesting that Mr Faulkner killed the other four as well?’

‘I couldn’t have done the previous one for a start,’ Faulkner said. ‘I just wasn’t available.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Easily. There were three statues up there two days ago. Now there are four. Believe me, I was occupied. When Jack called for me last night I hadn’t been out of the. flat since Thursday.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question, Sergeant,’ Morgan said. ‘The gloves … you were getting at something else, weren’t you?’

‘In killings of this kind there are always certain details not released to the Press,’ Miller said. ‘Sometimes because they are too unpleasant, but more often because public knowledge of them might prejudice police enquiries.’

He was on a course now which might well lead to disaster. he knew that, and if anything went wrong there would be no one to help him, no one to back him up. Mallory would be the first to reach for the axe, but he had gone too far to draw back now.

‘This type of compulsive killer is a prisoner of his own sickness. He not only has the compulsion to kill again. He can no more alter his method than stop breathing and that’s what always proves his undoing.’

‘Fascinating,’ Faulkner said. ‘Let’s see now, Jack the Ripper always chose a prostitute and performed a surgical operation. The Boston Strangler raped them first then choked them with a nylon stocking. What about the Rainlover?’

‘No pattern where the women themselves are concerned. The eldest was fifty and Grace Packard was the youngest. No sexual assault, no perversions. Everything neat and tidy. Always the neck broken cleanly from the rear. A man who knows what he’s doing.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you don’t need to be a karate expert to break a woman’s neck from the rear. One good rabbit punch is all it takes.’