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the meeting finished at lunch time — well, the formal part of it — and then I had some er some rather delicate business to see to. That Swedish contract — you remember me telling you about it?'
    Celia nodded vaguely over her gin and said nothing. Her momentary euphoria was already dissipated, and with a blank look of resignation she sank back into her armchair, an attractive, smartly-dressed, and wealthy woman on whom the walls were slowly closing in. She knew, with virtual certainty, that Charles had been unfaithful to her in the past: it was an instinctive feeling — utterly inexplicable — but she felt she almost always knew. Had he been with another woman today? Dear God, could she be wrong about it all? Suddenly she felt almost physically sick with worry again: so many worries, and none greater than her awareness that she herself was quite certainly the cause of some of Charles's orgiastic escapades. Sex meant virtually nothing to her — never had — and for various reasons the pair of them had never seriously considered having children. Probably too late now, anyway, with her thirty-eighth birthday shortly coming up...
    Charles had finished his whisky and she went out to the kitchen to serve the evening meal. But before she took the casserole out of the oven she saw the gentleman's black umbrella, opened and resting tentatively on two fragile points, in the broad passage-way that led to the rear door. The place for that (Charles could be so very fussy about some things!) was in the back of the Rolls — just as the place for her own little red one was in the back of the Mini. She furled the umbrella, walked quietly through into the double garage, flicked on the lights, opened a rear door of the Rolls, and placed the umbrella along the top of the back seats. Then she looked around quickly in the front of the car, sliding her hands down the sides of the beige leather upholstery, and looking into the two glove-compartments — both unlocked. Nothing. Not even the slightest trace of any scented lady lingering there.
    It was almost half-past eight when they finished their meal — a meal during which Celia had spoken not a single word. Yet so many, many thoughts were racing madly round and round her mind. Thoughts that gradually centred specifically around one person: around Conrad Richards, her brother-in-law.
     
    It was three quarters of an hour later that someone had rung the Police in St Aldates and told them to go to Jericho.

Chapter Four
I lay me down and slumber
    And every morn revive.
    Whose is the night-long breathing
    That keeps a man alive?
A. E. Housman , More Poems
     
    At exactly the same time that Bell and Walters were climbing the stairs in Canal Reach, Edward Murdoch, the younger of the two Murdoch brothers, was leaning back against his pillow with the light from his bedside table-lamp focused on the book he held in his hand: The Short Stories of Franz Kafka. Edward's prowess in German was not as yet distinguished and his interest in the language (until so recently) was only minimal; but during the previous summer term a spark of belated enthusiasm had been kindled — kindled by Ms Anne Scott. Earlier in the evening he had been planning the essay he had to write on Das Urteil, but he needed (he knew) to look more closely at the text itself before committing himself to print; and now he had just finished re-reading the fifteen pages which comprised that short story. His eyes lingered on the last brief paragraph — so extraordinarily vivid and memorable as now he saw it: In diesem Augenblick ging uber die Brucke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr. In his mind the familiar words slipped fairly easily from German into English: 'In this moment there went across the bridge a' (he had difficulty over that geradezu in its context and omitted it) 'a continuous flow of traffic'. Phew! That was while the hero (hero?) of the story was hanging by his faltering fingertips from the parapet, determined upon and