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Paternoster Review. Not altogether friendly, ! thought.'
    'Yes,' said Berowne shortly. 'I've seen it.' He increas his pace so that Mapleton, already out of breath, had choose between talking or using his energy to keep u When they reached the Treasury, he obviously decid, that the reward was no longer worth the effort and with valedictory wave disappeared up Parliament Street. Bu! Berowne had been seeking a moment for further con dences it had disappeared. The pedestrian signal h turned to green. No pedestrian, seeing the lights in 1 favour at Parliament Square, hesitates. Berowne gave hi a rueful glance as if to say: 'See how even the lights consp' against me,' and walked briskly across. Dalgliesh watc[ as he crossed Bridge Street, acknowledged the salute of policeman on duty and disappeared into New Pal: Yard. It had been a brief and unsatisfactory e.ncounl He had the feeling that Berowne was in some trou deeper and more subtly disturbing than poison ! messages. He turned back to the Yard telling himself t, if Berowne wanted to confide he would do it in his o good time.
    But that time had never come. And it had been on drive back from Bramshill a week later that he had tur on his radio and heard the news of Berowne's resignat of his ministerial post. The details had been sp Berowne's only explanation had been that he felt it time for his life to take a new direction. The Prime Minisl letter, printed in the next day's Times had been con tionally appreciative but brief. The great British pul most of whom would have been hard pressed to n three members of the Cabinet of this or any adminis tion, were pre-occupied with chasing the sun in one ot
    rainiest summers in recent years and took the loss of a junior minister with equanimity. Those parliamentary gossips still in London enduring the boredom of the silly season waited in happy expectation for the scandal to break. Dalgliesh waited with them. But there was, appar-ently, to be no scandal. Berowne's resignation remained mysterious.
    Dalgliesh had already sent while at Bramshill for the reports of the inquests on Theresa Nolan and Diana Travers. On the face of it there was no cause for concern. Theresa Nolan, after having a medical termination on psychiatric grounds, had left a suicide note for her grandparents which they had confirmed was in her handwriting and which made her intention to kill herself plain beyond any doubt. And Diana Travers, after drinking and eating unwisely, had apparently herself dived into the Thames to swim out to her companions who were messing about in a punt. Dalgliesh had been left with an uneasy feeling that neither case was as straightforward as the reports made it appear, but certainly there was no prima facie evidence of foul play in connection with either of the two deaths. He was uncertain how much further he was expected to probe or whether, in the light of Berowne's resignation, there was any point in his probing. He had decided to do nothing further for the present and leave it to Berowne to make the first move.
    And now Berowne, the harbinger of death, was himself dead, by his hand or another's. Whatever secret he had been hoping to confide on that short walk to the House would remain for ever unspoken. But if he had, indeed been murdered then the secrets would be told; through hi.s dead body, through the intimate detritus of his life, through the mouths, truthful, treacherous, faltering, reluct-ant of his family, his enemies, his friends. Murder was the first destroyer of privacy as it was of so much else. And it seemed to Dalgliesh an ironic twist of fate that it should be he, whom Berowne had shown a disposition to trust, who should now be travelling to begin that inexorable process of violation.
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    They were almost at the church before he wrenched his mind back to the present. Massingham had driven in, for him, an unusual silence as if sensing that his chief was grateful for this small hiatus between knowledge and discovery. And