There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing. -- G. K. Chesterton

A winding drive led up the hill. Towards the top the trees gave way to a lawn, which in turn gave way to carefully-planned flowerbeds. The house itself was a large rectangular building with two smaller squares on either side.

Yo-han walked up to the main door. A footman in livery waited just inside. He stared at Yo-han with a blank expression that somehow radiated disapproval.

"Ah yes, another of Madam's friends," he said blandly. "This way, sir."

Yo-han quickly corrected him. "No, I was invited by Mr. Lennox." Belatedly he realised his mistake and said, "Lord Kilskeery."

The footman stopped and stared at him in open astonishment. Yo-han took a quick mental survey of his clothes and decided this wasn't because he'd committed a crime against fashion, so it could only be because Lord Kilskeery was not in the habit of inviting guests. He filed that away.

"It's all right, Tompkins," a voice said behind the footman. The speaker was hidden from Yo-han's sight by the open door. "I'll bring him to the study."

Tompkins stepped aside, looking utterly baffled, and the speaker appeared around the door. It was the strange young man from last night. For the first time Yo-han got a good look at him. His first thought was that Király had been mistaken, and the guests from the Ottoman embassy were in fact a half-remembered glimpse of this man.

"This way," said the strange man, and set off across the entrance hall.

Yo-han followed. He took note of everything along the way, including that they were moving in the exact opposite direction to the voices of the other guests. From the furniture and decorating he concluded that Alexander Lennox had plenty of money. But that money had originally been his wife's. It might be an unimportant detail but he noticed it all the same.

His guide stopped abruptly in the middle of the hall. He turned and stared very hard at Yo-han. There was something that wasn't quite hostility and wasn't quite fear in his eyes. Defiance, perhaps.

"You're a detective?" he asked. He had just the faintest trace of an accent. Yo-han noticed it but couldn't identify it, though he thought it had a faint similarity to Russian.

"Yes," Yo-han said. "And who are you?"

The man hesitated. "David Eames," he said, not looking Yo-han in the eye. "I'm Al— a valet."

Now was as good a time as any to start asking questions. "Then perhaps you can tell me, has your employer ever behaved oddly before?"

Eames — though if that was his real name, then Yo-han was Sejong the Great — drew himself up like a snake about to strike. Rage shone in his eyes. "You think he's crazy, you bastard," he snarled. "He's not! I know that bitch is enough to drive anyone crazy, but he's as sane as I am!"

His expression suddenly went blank. He turned and strode away. Yo-han had to almost run to keep up with him. Along the way he reflected that he had learnt two very important facts: Eames was loyal to his employer, and hated his employer's wife.

He also couldn't help thinking, based on the man's extraordinary ability to change from indifference to rage and back again, that claiming Lennox was as sane as him wasn't a great testament to Lennox's sanity.

Eames led him to a door. He knocked sharply, then opened it and gestured for Yo-han to go in.

Yo-han found himself in a cluttered study that was more like a small library. He glanced quickly at the shelves, just long enough to see that most of the books were heavy and in what looked like Greek, before turning his attention to Lennox.

Alexander Lennox looked much better now than he had last night. He was still far too thin, but he no longer looked quite so ill. His hair was neatly combed. He was in an ordinary suit instead of evening wear, Yo-han noticed. A notebook was open on the table behind him. It was covered with untidy scribbles.

"Hello again," Lennox said, sitting down and gesturing for Yo-han to do the same. "I didn't think you'd come."

There was an undercurrent in his words. Yo-han got the distinct impression that Lennox had been let down before.

"I must say I was worried about you, Lord Kilskeery," Yo-han said.

Lennox winced at the sound of his title. "Could you-- Never mind." He fell silent and seemed to be struggling to decide what to say.

Yo-han prompted him. "Perhaps you should explain from the beginning."

Lennox shrugged helplessly. "The beginning... I don't know when it started. I only know that I feel terribly ill after dinner. It's lasted for at least a month. Yesterday was the worst. I was so sick I fainted. When I woke up I couldn't bear it any more. So I ran down to the river..."

After a pause Yo-han said, "Have you considered a more common solution? A stomach problem or even a lingering fever?"

Lennox shook his head. "I summoned the doctor. My wife—" there was an ocean's worth of hatred in those two words "—met him before he saw me. She said I was malingering and sent him away."

"Then call on him," Yo-han suggested.

"I can't. She's dismissed most of my servants and replaced them with ones of her choosing. Eames is the only person I can trust. He realised what she's doing before I did. He noticed the pattern in my illness. Last week he ate half of my food — prepared by a cook hired by my wife, of course — and he became sick exactly as I have.

"I've tried avoiding everything that could have come from her. Dav— Eames buys food for me. My wife refuses to let me go into town. She won't let me see my children. I know she's waiting for me to die. Yesterday I couldn't bear it any more. I wanted it to be over."

Yo-han no longer thought Lennox was insane. But he did think there was something more here, something very important that Lennox refused to mention.

"Why don't you divorce her?" he asked.

Lennox's face changed ever so slightly. The emotion, whatever it was, disappeared in an instant. "I can't."

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"Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely a viscount would have little difficulty getting a divorce. There would be scandal, but scandal is better than murder."

Lennox shook his head. "I can't. I could tell the world everything about her, but she... She knows about my past sins. I have not committed them for years, but she still knows about them. If I try to divorce her she will tell every newspaper in Britain and America."

Yo-han studied him thoughtfully. What sin could be so serious? Keeping a mistress? That was so common that it would ruin no one but the other woman, and even that wasn't certain. Cheating at the races? Espionage? Murder? All sorts of unlikely possibilities presented themselves.

He changed the subject. "Is anything left of your meal yesterday?"

"I threw it in the bin. Why?"

"It would be wise to ask a chemist to examine it. He could find traces of poison." Or lack thereof, because Yo-han was becoming suspicious again. Why would a man continue to eat food that he knew or suspected was poisoned?

"Eames prepared my food today," Lennox said. "Tomorrow I'll send my dinner to you. Where are you staying?"

"In the house next door," Yo-han said, and almost smiled at Lennox's surprise.

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The mysterious Mr. Eames was waiting outside the study. He led Yo-han back through the hallways, then stopped again at the foot of a flight of stairs. Yo-han prepared himself for another question.

It wasn't one he expected.

"Do you want to see how Mrs. Lennox behaves?" There was a cruel twist to Eames' mouth as he spoke the name.

Yo-han didn't bother to hide his surprise.

"This time of night she's always in the drawing room with one of her friends. Tonight it's—" He stopped abruptly, then continued in the toneless voice he'd used the night before, "a foreign politician's son. She met him in London and invited him here specially, you know."

Eames turned and began to climb the stairs. Yo-han considered the chances of his finding his way to the door, thought of what useful information he might learn, and finally followed. Their path led through some narrow halls that were probably the servants' quarters. Eames glided as noiselessly as a ghost. He stopped at a curtain pulled across a narrow balcony. Muffled voices drifted up from below.

Eames pressed a finger to his lips. The warning was unnecessary; Yo-han had no intention of revealing his presence in a strange house, in a place he had no business being. Eames pulled the curtain back ever so slightly. A thin line of light shone up. He peered through it, nodded grimly, and gestured Yo-han to look too.

Yo-han looked down. The balcony — which he suspected had been meant as the opening for a dumb waiter, but for some reason the shaft had been removed or never completed — overlooked a small room. Directly opposite was a woman sitting on a man's lap. There were at least two other people in the room. They were playing some sort of board game. The man was shamelessly kissing the woman's neck.

Yo-han recoiled, disgusted with them and with himself for seeing them. Eames pulled the curtain back into place. He glided off again and waved for Yo-han to follow him.

By now Yo-han was just about sick of this business. As soon as they were safely away he snapped, "You had better be leading me to the front door this time."

Eames stopped and looked at him. "That thing is what Alec is married to."

It took Yo-han a minute to connect Alec with Alexander Lennox, and then he was dumbstruck at a valet using his employer's personal name. And a diminutive at that!

"So I deduced," he said when he regained his voice. "But I must say I'm curious about you. You seem to do an awful lot more than your job. Why?"

All Eames said was, "I owe everything to Al— Lord Kilskeery.

"You saw her there," he continued. "That man wasn't even her current lover. I forgot; the politician's son arrives tomorrow. This is how she has behaved ever since her marriage."

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When Yo-han left the house he had a distinct feeling of having escaped from a snake pit.

As he walked back to Miss Patton's house he saw a flash of light across the river. He stopped and looked. There was nothing there but an empty house on a hill. It was in darkness.

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The next day Eames paid a brief visit. He brought a serving dish with him. Inside was a chicken pie.

"This is what the cooks prepared for Lord Kilskeery today," he said.

Miss Patton was the only other person in the house. She came downstairs to see what was happening. She looked incredulously from the dish to Eames to Yo-han, then shrugged and didn't ask for an explanation.

"I've seen you before," she exclaimed when she got a better look at Eames.

"Probably," he said, not very politely. "I work in Lennox House."

Miss Patton stared at him with a frown. "Weren't you the one who punched that man?"

Eames muttered a denial and a goodbye. He left in a great hurry.

Yo-han turned to Miss Patton. "What man? Who was punched?"

"It was about a month ago," Miss Patton said. "Down at one of the textile mills. If I remember correctly, a foreign girl with a badly-scarred face works there. An inspector visited and made some very rude comments about her scars. Her sweetheart overheard and punched him for it. It was in the papers. I'm sure that's the man who punched the inspector. There can't be two men looking like that in Enniskillen. But what's this about? Why is he bringing you food?"

Yo-han explained about the possible poisoning. "I'm going to send this to a chemist. He'll settle the matter."

As they stood in the doorway they heard a motorcar approaching. It roared past. There was a design on the door. It was gone too quickly for them to see what it was.

The car stopped at the gates to Lennox House. A servant opened them. It continued up the driveway and was soon out of sight.

Yo-han remembered what Eames had said about the politician's son. He frowned.

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As the sun set that evening, some instinct made Yo-han look out his bedroom window. He couldn't see Lennox House, but he could see the empty house on the other side of the river. It was still all in darkness.

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Had it only been two years? It seemed so much longer. David thought about it as he set out Alec's clothes for tomorrow.

First there had been Cambridge, exactly two years ago in May. Several months had passed after that. Alec's father discovered he was terminally ill and forced his son to marry that bitch. David came back into the picture after the wedding, after the disastrous honeymoon. He'd sat Alec down in a train carriage and forced him to listen to everything David knew about his new wife.

Alec had changed since leaving Cambridge. Part was his father's illness, part was the misery of his marriage, most was his newfound religion. There was something else too. Something he refused to tell David. Something connected with an old school friend who had abruptly left the country and vanished off the face of the earth.

David could guess what it was.

He hung up Alec's clothes from this evening and began to brush them. The repetitiveness of the task was relaxing. David had always liked repetitive tasks. He could let his mind wander.

The situation had truly deteriorated when Çelik Bey came back into Mrs. Lennox's life.

David had hoped for at least three years of peace. To recover, to forget, to have something approaching a normal life. He had hoped he would never have to see that man again.

By now he should be used to never getting what he hoped for.

Çelik Bey and Mrs. Lennox had been on-and-off lovers ever since their respective fathers had become business partners. In one of those ironic twists of fate it was entirely through trailing Çelik Bey and his girlfriend that David had met Alec in the first place.

Fate had a sense of humour, and David was sure it was laughing at them all.

He finished brushing the jacket and stepped out of the walk-in wardrobe. Alec was already in bed. He'd wrapped the covers around himself like a cocoon. Perhaps he was asleep. He didn't respond when David said goodnight and turned off the lights.

The hallway lights were off. David could faintly hear voices from downstairs. He thought of the detective. Was he Chinese or Japanese? Either way it was very strange for him to be here. He'd travelled much further than David himself.

Could he help Alec?

No. It was far too late.

As David locked his bedroom door, long-dead voices screamed in his ear. He could have sworn he smelt the bodies on the pyres. Not all of them had been dead.

He unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out the photos. By the light of a candle he went through them again. Once he had screamed and sobbed over them. Not now. Not for years. He had seen and done and endured too much to cry anymore.

Five letters and four numbers were scribbled on the back of each photo. David traced them with his fingers.

He put the photos away and locked the drawer.

It couldn't be avoided any more. He would go to see her again tomorrow.

In his dreams that night his past got mixed up. He saw Alec in that town, the five-letter name written on the photos, as it had been before that April. And he saw blood and fire in Cambridge.