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HE WAS BACK in twentieth-century clothing again, though a vestige of the past still clung to him with his ramrod posture and wind-coavehis tone of voice "Last night I wasfor the city"

"We did" I quietly shut the door behind me "And then we came back"

"Obviously Why?"

"We had a littleto do"

"Yes, you&039;ve the dirty job of sifting through someone else&039;s laundry

This is yet a dull village with gossip as the chief source of entertain for the story of your friend&039;s pub crawling to filter back to our own servants&039; hall" He looked ready to belt ain and shoved down the i to leave?"

"We&039;re checking out now"

"For good?"

"Why are you so anxious about it?"

"I&039; the two of you intruding into her private business is entirely abhorrent--"

"You mean about the fire?"

"Of course I do What has it to do with your trying to find Maureen?"

"I thought maybe you could tellto tell The fire was over and done with long before Maureen ever caure there&039;s no connection?"

"How can there be?" He raised a hand "No, don&039;t bother answering that with another damned question I can see you haven&039;t the heart to care about the kind of dae?"

He started to shake his head in exasperation at ht on that I&039;d been trying to goad hie, Barrett?" I pursued

He said nothing and only glared

"What are you afraid of?"

His face was hard now, nearly ugly fro under the surface He looked taller and I could al from him

"If you were into find her?"

That one struck a chord He paced the length of the s into hihout Are you going for good?"

"I don&039;t know"

"Why is that?"

"I can&039;t really say"

"Because you lack knowledge or because you don&039;t trust me?"

"You&039;re sharp, Barrett"

"Yes, and I&039;ve had as much of you as I can stomach Do what you must to find Maureen, but leave the Franchers out of it Leave them alone and stay out of my way"

Or what? I asked him as much with my expression

There was murder in his return look, and he took a step toward ht The color abruptly faded from his dark clothes and his pale skin drained to the lifeless white of the truly dead His outline wavered and swaray,in midair, it twisted like a slow cyclone and tore by e pierced ray h theh they weren&039;t really there, and whirled away into the night wind I rushed forward just in time to see it hurtle across the yard below to vanish into the cover of so trees A few unning to life Its tires spun and screaainst the paveer

Escott often co act unnerved hih He didn&039;t know about this, about what it looked like to me I&039;d witnessed it once before hted roo when he cae

Sixty miles of bucolic country broken up by quaint towns and picturesque villages chock-full of historical significance can get to you after a while An hour of it left hts, and traffic signs Barrett&039;s visit had left a bad taste in my mind

I&039;d told Escott all about it, of course He listened but was inclined to shrug it off for the moment

"The man has a point--" he started to say

"But only if he&039;s telling the truth about protecting the Franchers It&039;sto protect hi to hide?"

"Any nuth: his job, his regard for Miss Francherand very possibly his condition"

"Condition? You mean--"

"Yes, the one you both share That&039;s a detail about yourself that you are wisely reluctant to reveal to people I should iation such as ours could quickly place him in an untenable position Would you not also be a bit nervous if so into your past and present?"

"Jeez, yes But you said Violet Francher already tried to do that and it didn&039;t faze him So what&039;s the difference now?"

"You, oldme to mind my own business Perhaps he did do just that with Mrs Francher&039;s own agent This ti froht, but I was still uneasy and promised myself to keep both eyes wide open if ent back to Glenbriar I was safe enough, but if Barrett lost his te--body or mind, take your pick

Escort helped toon his day and the other details he&039;d discovered about the Francher household

"The ardener are all e with Miss E with a groom to care for them Barrett is the only employee to actually sleep in the house now When the e, the natural conclusion was that they were not ossip"

"Which has soht," I put in

He acknowledged with a nod "Yes, though I eneral sympathy for their employer be-cause of the way her mother died

Few people see man on the payroll"

"What do these people think of Barrett?"

"I can only report that hardly anyone outside the iarnered the general approval of the locals If there is soood manners to confine hi to spread his wicked ways ahbors"

"Does that include any society people?"

"Miss Francher has willfully cut herself off from her social and financial peers, so they are relieved of the unpleasant duty of ment of her private life That Miss Francher is excluded from their tea parties and other events of import matters not one whit to the lady"

"And her fa I plan to check into--but discreetly," he added, catching my look "I have no wish to call the wrath of Mr Barrett down upon my head"

"Amen"

"As for the inhabitants of Glenbriar, E as it stays that way If she were anyone else, she&039;d find life a bit more hostile"

"The old Hester Prynne bit?"

Not having the benefit of an American education, he didn&039;t understand the reference I gave him a brief sumreed with the general idea, but added one of his own "Perhaps it is closer to the point to say that her money makes the difference here

If a poorout of the nores in kind, he is affectionately tolerated as an eccentric Thus we have it that no one thinks anything strange about the very late hours kept by the principals of the household"

"They&039;re a pretty understanding bunch around here"

"The Francher bills are always paid on tioodwill these days"

"These days ed for a quarter hour and I watched the woods on either side blur past

"Sixtythe silence by doing a perfect ueness into a certainty

"It&039;s too much"

"What is?"

"The tip Banks said he got a five-dollar tip from Maureen It&039;s too ht it to be a necessary co trip"

"No, think about her past, about the tirew up in In those days you tipped in pennies"

"Soether"

"She wasn&039;t one of theht for herself, but she was never one to throw her ht have tipped hi bill out by mistake"

"That could well have been the case"

"Yeah" But I still had so my gest?" he asked

"Like o Barrett called Banks out to the house and put it into his head he was taking Maureen to Port Jefferson He gave him the fare and a five-dollar tip to help him remember it all the way he&039;s supposed to"

"Complicated Why should he do that?"

"So it looks on the level with Mayfair or anyone else who ht have seen her arrive at the estate"

"Such as Eure it Barrett&039;s got a soft spot for himself with her, and then Maureen shows up She doesn&039;t like what he&039;s doing and could queer it for hi word in Emily&039;s ear"

"Would she have done so?"

"That doesn&039;t ht she would"

"And you think Barrett--"

"Might have done soht have killed Maureen?"

After a long ti it

Port Jefferson had a shipyard, soravel pits, and the ferry, all dark now Coht Escott and I split up I took the hotels and he went to inflict e on his liver at the taverns I advised hiest, greasiest butter-fried haer he could handle He didn&039;t look thrilled at the prospect, but nodded agreerim set to his jaw

Maureen&039;s stopover--if she had stopped--had taken place at the height of the tourist season No one reht five years ago I talked istration books and learned a lot about kindness fro what help they could

After running out of hotels, I checked out all the boardinghouses I could find, even knowing that Maureen would have avoided them as a matter of course Like me, she would have preferred the relative privacy and anonyht ti

Hours later, options exhausted, I climbed back into the car to wait for Escott We had no set tier started up I went in search of a meal

No stockyards and no stables; it looked like the locals only ate fish, and duck--at least in the business district I widened ht the unmistakable scent of cow manure on a random puff of wind

There wereit, but my nose eventually led me to an open field populated by several bovines clustered under a tree I cli, and strolled up

They see As a cow, they allone out, I optiile for her size and energetic after spending the whole day eating her head off Though country bred otten how fast cattle can ot away

I picked out another, waited until it stopped, and calculated the distance It bawled unhappily as though reading , I rushed forward, felt its bulk loo out to wrap around its neck

The cow had other ideas and bawled again, tossing herself (and ed ent pleas for quiet and oblivious to that special influence I usually have over animals It only belatedly occurred to me that all the other anio, alloped off to be with the rest of the girls

It was ridiculous I had an easier job finding cooperative livestock in the heart of the city After a few feet of weary trudging, I noticed the disgusting state of o transparent the rest of the way The as in the right direction; I let it take s at the far end of the field

By now I had trouble telling the difference between the yard manure and the supply I had with ht, not smell Unfortunately, it is also al farround clutter and mud, but the local tenants as well Never un, it&039;s his anierous

Chickens are fairly brainless and confined to coops, but ducks are usually allowed to roae and play in their pond It was just ht into a flock and sent theht to safety Mixed in with theeese who ether In turn, they alerted a s in full voice

Their owner coun with a double load of buckshot was a ht I didn&039;t stick around to see how the show caeneral direction of the main baainst the vertical wall of wood, nearly sending ainst the wind and frantically felt around for an opening into the hayloft It was just above e to re-forht off h and was hanging onto the roof, and oh, God, I hate heights

Far, far below, Old MacDonald was circling the yard stirring up the geese and giving a lot of unexpected fun to his pack of se all over the place, heads down and tails happily fanning, eager to show ood they were at their job So what if they never found a thing and only ended up anointing every likely projection turn in turn? It was a great break in the routine

Shutting ain and seeped through the ba down until I came in contact with a horizontal surface A second later I ascertained that it was the straw-littered floor of the loft and fairly safe I lay flat and rested body and mind until the circus outside finally died away

The bam wasn&039;t much different from the one I&039;d played in as a kid I are of chickens and er animal somewhere below I could have used a ladder, but didn&039;t want to risk ain Far better to disappear and float down to the safe, sane ground

It was closed up against the night, but seeing in the dark was no problem for me Over in one partitioned-off corner was a drab white draft horse only a little sed answer to a hungry vareeting a long-lost friend

And stopped

Hethe skull His near-hind hoof was raised a little, all set to kick e If his vocal cords had been designed for it, he&039;d have been growling

It just wasn&039;ta short snooze He ith a slight start when I crawled into the passenger side and flopped wearily back in the seat My fatigue was mental, not physical

"Good heavens, where have you been?" he asked, his long nose wrinkling

"E-i-e-i-o," I ht and restrained hile, but I finally persuaded Dobbin to part with some of what he obviously had too much of He was a reluctant bastard and considered e trespasser and thief

When finished, I made a fast and invisible exit froe hooves There was no point giving him a pat of thanks, he&039;d have only tried to take my ar, but was showing less wear and tear As before, he had only a slight glaze to his eyes to indicate he was in no pain

"You learn anything?" I asked

He shook his head "Did you?"

I shook eport?" he asked

During his alcoholic rambles, Escott encountered a man with a boat as ready to take us across the sound no matter what the hour He&039;d had no sio from a lone lady and didn&039;t know of anyone else who had For a fee, the low, fast launch left over from his days as a ruri Island Sound It was silver and calht from the land I hadn&039;t always been afraid of water and could still slosh around in a bathtub with the best, but sincekind sent me into the sick miseries

"I think I&039;d like to sit this one out," I finally answered

"Really?" he asked, in a tone that wanted to knohy

Maybe it had to do with my basic need to be in contact with the earth, or maybe it&039;s because I&039;d been murdered over water I&039;d had so in or near water Driving over it on a bridge was one thing, but crossing all of that bleak expanse in a tiny boat was quite another I was hard put to suppress an involuntary shudder at the thought of only a thin shell of wood holding back such endless, sive him an explanation thatwords

"That&039;s all right," he said "I understand"