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magical agency at work that he had forgotten the brute facts.
    â€˜Oh yes.’ Stephen put a hand over his eyes, then removed it again quickly. ‘I saw her that night. She wasn’t well, but she wanted to go to the party. We’d been going to some strange parties then, I remember, mostly through Jane’s boyfriend who was in the film world. We went to a party given by some rich people called Berring … and then, a few nights later … on the night …’
    â€˜And you honestly think she was responsible for the death of Michael Dalzell’s daughter?’
    â€˜I don’t know if that’s who she thought it was, by then,’ Stephen said. He looked suddenly sad and tired. ‘Or if you could call her responsible. She seemed to be living in a perpetual state of sanctioned irresponsibility – the stateinduced by Meg, of course. And she couldn’t have done it anyway, could she? She was seen at the party at the time the girl was killed.’
    â€˜Unless it wasn’t really her who was seen,’ I heard myself saying. I stopped short, and avoided meeting Stephen’s eyes. ‘No … well,’ I corrected myself. ‘It was one of the gang perhaps – the point being that Jane lured her from the party to her death?’
    â€˜I just don’t know.’ Stephen glanced in the direction of the document, which was lying on my desk, and said: ‘If I’d read that then, I would have done everything in my power to find her after that evening. Not that I would necessarily have succeeded. She was secretive about her movements. She never talked about her childhood. I wouldn’t have known where to look.’
    â€˜No.’ I stared down at the identikit pictures, all ridiculously dissimilar to each other, of the girl seen by passers-by in Hampstead, and the girl seen in the street where Dalzell’s daughter was found. There were photographs of Jane in existence, of course, but it was hard to gauge anything about her from them. Her hair was blonde, but it looked as if it was probably tinted. Her face was curiously blank.
    â€˜What was Jane really like?’ I said.
    Stephen looked up at me, surprised. ‘I couldn’t describe her. At her best she was confident, but too often she was very uneasy with herself. I was fond of her. Being with her made me feel interested in things. Yet she often said she wished she was someone else.’
    â€˜Did she? This is a difficult era for women, I suppose.’
    â€˜Oh yes. She was always searching for some “missing male principle” or something.’
    â€˜Poor Jane!’
    For a time Stephen and I sat in silence, thinking of the sad and messy lives of Jane and women like her. Then Stephen said: ‘I think Meg’s cleverness was in realizing she couldn’t gain her ends by crude political argument. Jane had been away from her world too long.’
    Again I hoped to steer the conversation away from this unprofitable area. I said:
    â€˜Would Jane inherit the Dalzell fortune if she were alive and came forward to claim it?’
    â€˜That I don’t know.’ Stephen rose. I saw that his patience had come to an end. ‘Don’t they wait seven years before you’re declared officially dead? Then it’ll go to a cousin, I suppose.’
    I had the feeling Stephen was a little annoyed that I hadn’t taken his descriptions of Meg more seriously. He made his way to the door, and I made a point of showing him out of the house and thanking him warmly. I promised I would read Jane’s journal and would let him know my impressions. On the doorstep he paused. ‘Meg was a kind of embezzlement,’ he said. I was surprised at his use of the word, and couldn’t repress a smile. ‘An enravishment,’ he went on. ‘You must bear that in mind.’
    Then he went down the street. Because he was plump he had rather a waddling walk. I glanced at the