“My God, yes. I believed her all right. You don’t lie like that. Not with so much obvious pain. She might well have felt like killing Lorna, but I don’t believe she did it. She’s had the guts to live like this for so long; she must have known inside herself that she could have dealt with any blow that bitch could hand out,” said Lindsay bitterly. “She may not have chosen to deal with it, but she had the strength to. You know, suddenly, this has stopped being a game. I didn’t really take it seriously till now.”

“I know what you mean,” said Cordelia, “we’ve been fooling ourselves into thinking this would be some civilized exercise in detection like it is in the books, without understanding that there are real emotions involved. While the only thing we had to think about was Paddy, it wasn’t difficult to imagine being detectives. The great righteous crusade. All that sort of rubbish. But I’m not at all certain that I can handle this kind of thing.”

Lindsay nodded. “I know,” she said. “But we’re committed now. We can’t back out. And if we don’t do something for Paddy, who will? None of us can afford proper private detectives—and anyway, would we have any notion how to find a good one? We’ve still got the advantage of knowing Paddy and knowing something about all these people, especially Lorna, and I’m hopeful that Paddy can give us some ideas. We have to keep pressing on, no matter how much we hate it. Haven’t we?”

For answer, Cordelia took out her notebook and started scribbling rapidly in it. “You should be doing this,” she complained. “You’re the journalist; you should remember what people say. Who’s next for the Lindsay Gordon Spanish Inquisition?”

In spite of herself, Lindsay smiled at the echo of Caroline’s words on Saturday night. She said, “James Cartwright. I feel like working off some of my spleen, and from the little I’ve heard of him, I reckon he’s a prime candidate for that.”

“But we’ve really got nothing on him at all. What the hell are we going to ask him?” Cordelia demanded.

“We’ll just have to try an elaborate con job, I suppose, and hope I can rattle him enough with my penetrating questions.”

“I’ll leave it to you, then. After all, you’ve already displayed your professional interrogation skills today,” said Cordelia drily.