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that?”
    â€œNo. And she didn’t have to, did she?” Again he answered his rhetorical question. “Mummy’s eyes were red, but more from booze than from tears. George was more worried about his own neck than his kid’s death, though of course, he put up a front — but it was all pretense, no pain — and the older sister, the one who got the looks, kept talking about being in shock, as if she’d like to go into it for my sake, but couldn’t get the electrodes in place. In other words, it was all an act. I asked them for a picture of Angela. Mum and Dad kind of looked at one another as if they couldn’t quite place their youngest, and finally Carla — the sister — had to go off and look for a picture. Funny. There were certainly pictures of the bosomy rose Carla all over the mantel. But not even so much as a snapshot of Angela.”
    â€œThen she must have been a lonely little girl. Let’s get back to your theory of what happened.”
    â€œWell, it’s the dog, isn’t it?” Macalvie watched Jury lighting a cigarette as if it were a daemonic act, meant to trap Macalvie into reaching for the packet.
    â€œThe dog? Macalvie, if you say something about the dog in the nighttime, I’ll do just what you want — leave.” Jury smiled.
    Macalvie’s hopeful look vanished when Jury didn’t actually get up. Then he shrugged: stay or leave, it was all one to Macalvie. “The person who killed the kid must have hadsome connection with her or Lyme Regis. How the hell did he or she know where to drop the dog?”
    â€œDogtags, maybe.”
    Macalvie looked pained. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jury. A perfect stranger wandering all over Lyme carrying a terrier looking for Cobble Cottage? No way. So it was either someone who befriended the Kid and the Poor Kid’s dog,” (Jury could just feel the sympathy welling up in Macalvie’s breast) “someone not from Lyme, or someone who’s been living in Lyme and knew the kid’s habits.”
    â€œBut Angela Thorne didn’t habitually go against the rules, you led me to believe.”
    Impatiently, Macalvie stuffed a sourball in his mouth, sucked on it awhile as he hankered after Jury’s cigarette, then tossed the candy in the ashtray. “Wonder how Kojak stood it.  . . .Look at little Angela’s feelings about Mum and Dad and school and so forth. Somebody could have befriended her and then hung around Lyme, waiting for a chance. What do you think?”
    â€œI think no.” Jury would have laughed had Macalvie not looked so serious. Disagree with Macalvie’s theory?
    â€œWhy the hell not?”
    â€œAren’t you overlooking the obvious?”
    Macalvie gave Wiggins a can-you-believe-this-guy? look, got no reassurance from Jury’s sergeant, and turned the sparking blue eyes back to Jury. “I never overlooked the obvious in my entire life, Jury.”
    â€œThat’s swell. You do think Angela was killed by the same person that murdered the other two, don’t you?”
    â€œProbably,” said Macalvie, cautiously, like a man being led into a trap.
    â€œThen you’d have to assume that the murderer was friendly with all of the victims. That’s possible, but not very probable. I don’t think the murders are indiscriminate or arbitrary, but at the same time, I don’t think the killer took thechance of ‘befriending’ these children. Simply because it would have been a hell of a chance to take —”
    â€œTrue. Especially for a man just out of prison.”
    And since Macalvie’s theory left only one candidate for the string of murders, it was perhaps less than fortuitous for her that Molly Singer chose that moment to appear in the doorway of the White Lion’s dining room.
II
    It wasn’t love at first sight when Molly Singer met Divisional Commander Macalvie.
    The sparks between