“No, I only got the list about an hour ago. You want me to find out about them?”

“Let's leave that on our list of Things To Do. Before that, however, we need to look into this one.” He took from his pocket the piece of paper he'd copied at the hotel. “This woman was killed two weeks before the Longs were. That address is her home and her office as well. She was a psychiatrist. She was treating my wife.”

Hammett's eyes came up from the scrap of paper, meeting those of Holmes. “Your wife's doctor, your wife's family servants, your wife's parents. The same wife who got herself shot at the other day.”

“I want this settled before she gets back into town the day after tomorrow.” The grey eyes had gone cold and hard.

After a minute, Hammett looked away, and folded the page with the name into his note-book.

“Then I guess we'd better get to work.”

Book Three

BOOK THREE

Russell

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

I stood on the roadway that bright and blustery Sunday morning, inches away from the continent's edge, and looked at the rocks that had taken my family. In ten years, some things had changed; others were the same. The guard-rail had been repaired, for example, but the outline of the rocks against the sea—were I to walk over to a spot fifteen feet from Donny's front head-lamp, drop to the ground, and turn my head due west, the jagged shapes would match precisely those seared onto my brain. I had been thrown from the motor's backseat onto that place on the rough-graded roadway; the brother with whom I had been arguing, the father who had turned from the wheel in irritation, the mother who had sat sharply forward, her hand on the dash-board and her mouth open to cry a warning—all three of the motorcar's other passengers had remained where they were. I alone had shot out over the side and hit the road, hard and broken, and only chance had determined that I came to rest with my face pointing towards the sea. My stunned eyes had been open to receive the impression of the motorcar dropping out of existence, had stayed open to witness the rotund flare of exploding petrol, had remained open and passively staring as the other, on-coming motor swerved and slithered to a halt before disgorging one pair of legs, then another. One set of feet had hurried to where I lay, accompanied by unintelligible squawks of sound; the other went to the shattered guard-rail for a moment, only to retreat rapidly from the cloud of oily smoke roaring up the rocks.

As the second pair of shoes came towards me, my eyes had drifted shut.