“Yes. But what does that have to do with—”

Saori shrugged. “I just find it interesting.”

“You’re suggesting he used that knowledge to escape from the furnace?”

“I’m not suggesting anything, I’m merely gathering facts—and somehow I have to reconcile what I’ve been told about the funeral with the fact his charred body was pulled out of the remains of the newspaper office. Which I understand he also designed. And which is where the accident that allegedly killed him occurred.”

The way Saori had just arranged the facts made it sound like Weston had come back from the dead and taken fiery revenge on the building that killed him. But Iona wasn’t going to comment on this, because it was insane. Instead she leaned forward and said, “He was dead at the funeral, though. So why would someone steal his body and then put it in a building they were going to burn down? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I agree. Be grateful you’re not the one who has to make sense of it.”

* * *

When Iona returned to the school nobody asked her where she’d been or why they’d taken her away. Nobody spoke to her at all. They just spoke to each other in low voices as she passed them in the corridors. She wasn’t sure what to say: she wanted to assure people she wasn’t a suspect but she also didn’t want to spread these bizarre ideas about Weston.

Iona went back to her office, sat down, and quietly finished the pile of marking that still lay on her desk. Shortly after laying the final exercise book aside she heard a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she said, reluctantly.

Carter opened the door and hesitated on the threshold. “Are you—?”

“It’s fine. Come in.”

Carter closed the door and sat down opposite. “I took your afternoon class. I’m afraid nobody else was available.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“I had your lesson plan to follow, which made everything very easy.”

“Teaching’s not hard if the students are good.”

“They are good students.”

Here the platitudes ran out.

“They wanted to ask me about the fire,” said Iona.

“But nobody thinks . . . I mean, you didn’t—”

“No, it’s—it’s Weston.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell anyone, please.”

“Of course, but what do you mean—”

“His body was found at the site of the fire.”

“Which . . . is the place where he died.”

Iona nodded.

“But we saw his body go into the—”

“Yes, I know and I told them that. They had some idea that the mad fellow at the funeral smuggled his body out—”

“That’s impossible too.”

“I know. I don’t pretend to understand it at all.”

“So they brought you in—”

“Because I knew him and we designed the Point together. So they asked how sure I was that he was dead, could he have faked it . . .”

“Gosh. Glad you’re in the clear, anyway.”

The phrase in the clear resonated with Iona. She had a vision of a clear space, where she could breathe and move. She did not feel in the clear right now.