He thought about the cases he had solved as a cop by interviewing people at the periphery of a case. Any thorough investigation would get to them soon enough. Should he get out of the country? No, that would be the worst thing he could do. The cab stopped in front of the Chester Street house; Stone paid the driver and rang the bell. Erica answered the door.

“Oh, Stone, come in,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek. “Where have you been?”

Already, he needed an alibi. “I was at the gallery for a while, then I did some window-shopping.” In the pouring rain? That was weak; he’d have to do better than that if the police questioned him.

“Come on in; Lance is on the phone.” She showed him into the drawing room, which was empty. The place was handsome and spacious, but it looked as though it had been decorated by a bachelor with the help of a maiden aunt; the furniture was comfortable, but dowdy, and the curtains were too elaborate. “Awful, isn’t it?” Erica asked cheerfully.

“Fairly.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Yes, please; bourbon, if there’s any in the house; Scotch, if there isn’t.”

She went away and came back with a double old-fashioned glass filled with ice and a brown liquor. “No bourbon; try this.”

He sipped it—strong and dark and peaty. “It’s excellent, what is it?”

“Laphroaig—a single-malt Scotch whiskey from the island of Islay.” (She pronounced it “Islah.”)

“I’m not usually a Scotch drinker, but this will do just fine.” He thought she seemed oddly cheerful and unaffected for a young woman who had had to leave her home on a moment’s notice, for very odd reasons. “Are you doing all right?”

“Just fine. Lance will be off the phone in a minute, I’m sure; he’s already been on it since we arrived here. Ali and Sheila are upstairs napping—or something.” She smiled impishly.

Stone thought they must be napping, not something else, not after having seen their business explode before their eyes earlier in the day.

“Tell me about Ali and Sheila,” Stone said. He wanted to hear what Erica had to say about them before Lance returned.

“They’re just friends of Lance’s,” she said. “They have an antique shop in Chelsea.”

Had, Stone thought. “What nationality are they?”

“Ali is Syrian, Sheila Lebanese, I think.”

Syrian? Lebanese? Did they have something against the Greeks, or vice versa? He couldn’t make any sense of this. “How did Lance meet them?”

“Business—some importing or exporting thing, I think.”

“Does Lance have a lot of friends in London?”

“Just the ones you’ve met,” she said. “Monica, Sarah, Ali, and Sheila. He’s the sort of person who seems to have lots of acquaintances and few friends.”

I’ll bet, Stone thought. “Have you met a lot of his acquaintances?”