Michael and Cheta were serving drinks. Miranda drank gin and tonic now, surely that had never been so, before. Sasha took a cerise kir. And Eric had black brandy, as Stephan had done. Michael brought Rachaela a glass of white wine. She noticed its peculiar freshness, an undertaste of apples. She was about to ask Michael its origin, when a dire picture darkened the screen. It was the frame of a burned house.

Not, of course, like the Scarabae house, not remotely. This was the remnant of a terrace dwelling, and it had not, for example, collapsed. Yet the windows gaped in on a rabid, empty blackness.

"… The latest fire, which also occurred in southeast London, has now definitely been linked to the series of other fires police have been investigating since April of this year. The circumstances surrounding the first of these fires, which took place in Cheltenham, were quickly believed to be suspicious when the remains of a frying pan were found on the floor of the downstairs hall."

A shot of another burned ruin, in a different sort of terrace, with tall pillars now black and smoking. A fireman stood in his battle helmet, smudged and very tired.

"We don't like the look of it at all," he said. Under his chest appeared the caption of his name and rank and an April date. "There was no toxic material in the house, and the fire seems to have started downstairs. Two of the people don't seem to have woken up, and you'd expect they would. The third man looked funny. I mean, he looked odd. You get to know—the way they look. And it wasn't right."

To another angle of this blackened house, the announcer went on in the voice he reserved for ill tidings short of war and famine, "Two similar fires a few days later in the Oxford area alerted police nationwide."

And another view came up, another house, also charred and inimical. Followed by others. All were different and all had been rendered to a dreadful sameness.

The ruins were followed by montages of scenes, happy family groups, confetti weddings, school outings, such jolly, such ordinary occasions, days of roses and daisies the participants had not known would end in this. Names were read out, but they were gone in a flash.

The announcer resumed in his tragedy voice:

"A chain of fires in Oxford, Reading, and Guildford were soon firmly connected to the Cheltenham case. Forensic evidence, where available, revealed that all the victims had died before the fires took hold, of lacerations and punctures to the neck and throat. In the second of the Guildford fires, three small children were among the dead."

More photographs, three little unlived-in masks, like unbought toys.