who always threw him over and why, why, why? Just what was wrong with Mr. di Fazio? What did he do to them? What did he want from them? Or better yet, what did they come to know about him?
He took a step closer, saying, "Mrs. McHaggis, at least let's - "
"Don't!" She backed away. "You stay right there! Don't come an inch closer or I'll scream my head off. I know your sort."
"My „sort'? What sort is that?"
"Don't you play the innocent with me."
He sighed. "Then we have a problem."
"How? Why? Oh, don't you try to be clever."
"I need to get into the house," he said. "This I cannot do if you won't let me approach you and pass you." He returned his handkerchief to his pocket. He'd been holding it all along - and she knew he'd meant to use it to wipe fingerprints from the bag because one thing he wasn't was a bloody fool and neither was she - but obviously he could see that she knew what he intended and he'd given it up. "I have left in my room a postal order that I wish to send to Sicily.
I must fetch this, Mrs. McHaggis."
"I don't believe you. You could have sent it straightaway, directly you bought it."
"Yes. I could have. But I wished to write a card as well. Would you like to see it? Mrs.
McHaggis, you're being silly."
"Don't use that ruse on me, young man."
"Please think things through because what you've concluded makes no sense. If Jemima's killer lives in this house, as you seem to think, there are far, far better places to have put her bag than in the front garden. Don't you agree?"
Bella said nothing. He was trying to confuse her. That was what killers always did when they were backed into a corner.
He said, "To be honest, I'd thought Frazer was probably responsible for what's happened, but this bag tells me - "
"Don't you dare blame Frazer!" Because that was what they did as well. They tried to blame others, they tried to divert suspicion. Oh, he was bloody clever, indeed.
" - that it makes no sense to think he's guilty either. For why would Frazer kill her, bring her bag here, and put it in the rubbish in front of the house where he lives?"
"It's not rubbish," she said inanely. "It's for recycling. I won't have you call the recycling rubbish. It's because people think that that they won't recycle goods in the first place. And if people would simply begin recycling, we might save the planet. Don't you understand?"
He raised his eyes skyward. It came to Bella that he looked, for a moment, exactly like one of those pictures of martyred saints. This was due to the fact that he was darkish skinned because he was Italian and most of the martyred saints were Italian. Weren't they? If it came to it, was he really Italian? Perhaps he was merely pretending to be. Lord, what was happening to her brain? Was this what abject terror did to people? Except, she realised, perhaps she wasn't as terrified as she'd earlier been or as she was supposed to be.
"Mrs. McHaggis," Paolo said quietly, "please consider that someone else might have put Jemima's bag in that bin."
"Ridiculous. Why would anyone else - ?"
"And if someone else put the bag there, who might that person be? Is there someone who might want to make one of us look guilty?"
"There's only one person looking guilty, my lad, and that person is you."
"It isn't. Don't you see? That bag's presence makes you look bad as well, doesn't it? Just as it makes me look bad - at least in your eyes - and it makes Frazer look bad."
"You're shifting blame! I told you not to. I told you ..." And suddenly the penny dropped: the vague mutterings about black, night, sun, and ooze; the prayers and the smoking green cigar. "Oh dear Lord," Bella murmured.
She turned from Paolo and fumbled for the door to get into the house. If he followed her inside at this point, she knew it did not matter.
Chapter Twenty
"I THINK YOUR BEST COURSE IS GOING TO BE TO GET SOMEONE from Christie's to look at it," St. James said. "Or, failing that, someone at the BM. You can check it out from the evidence officer, can't you?"
"I'm not exactly in a position to take that decision," Lynley said.