This time I noticed that he was wearing clothes like Duff’s, a sweatshirt and jeans, but the shirt was too small for his bulging shoulders, and the jeans were open at the top, revealing an expanse of hairy belly.

I couldn’t scream. “Who are you?” was all I could manage.

“You know who I am.” It was that same guttural voice. “I am Duffin Caine.”

I shook my head. “You’re not my son.”

“I am Duffin Caine.” He lowered his feet and stood up. He was taller than he had seemed sitting, and even broader in the chest. He came limping toward me and then I managed to scream.

I ran out of the kitchen and through the dining room. Jack was still in the front room, struggling to his feet and trying to get his crutches under his arms. I yelled something about a man in the kitchen.

“What man?” He swung past me into the dining room.

“Don’t go out there, Jack!”

I expected to hear shouts, blows, the sound of Jack falling, but there was nothing. In a moment Jack reappeared.

“There’s no one in the kitchen but Duff,” he said.

9

Chapter Nine

“Calm down, Maggie. Get a grip on yourself.”

Jack stood aside and Duff came out of the kitchen. He was dressed in his usual sweatshirt and jeans.

“Mama, what happened?” He seemed genuinely concerned.

I went past both of them out to the kitchen. It was indeed empty.

I turned back to Duff. “When did you come in here?”

“There’s no need to shout, Mother. Ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

He was lying, I was certain.

“You came in the back way?”

“No, Mother. I haven’t been outside today. I came downstairs and went right into the kitchen.”

He was lying. He hadn’t been upstairs when I went looking for him. He must have come in the back door and the man must have gone out at the same instant I ran to the front of the house.

“What about school?” Jack asked him.

“I don’t feel well,” Duff said. “I thought I’d stay home today and work on my history of the Caine family.”

“You might have asked our permission,” Jack said. He went to the back door and tried it. It was locked. “No one could’ve gotten out this way without Duff seeing him and then locking the door afterward.”

Did he think that was impossible? “Where were you when I looked in your room a few minutes ago?” I asked Duff.

“In the storeroom, probably.”

“You weren’t there either.”

“Then in the bathroom.”

I hadn’t gone into the bathroom. The door had been partly open, so I had assumed he wasn’t there.

“You sounded perfectly well when I talked with you early this morning,” I said.

“I was all right then, but now I feel lightheaded and nauseated.”