A Splash of Red by Antonia Fraser

all the salad the night before. Jemima decided on a local cafe instead, somewhere where she could enjoy a glass of wine and read a book. Fallen Child might be dipped into again, as a tribute to her hostess. She selected a copy from the neat little row of Chloe's novels, stored modestly and inconspicuously at ground level. As usual, she admired the author's photograph which occupied the entire back of the jacket. Chloe really was amazingly photogenic: Valentine was right to take advantage of the fact. All the same, why on earth had a lace parasol seemed an appropriate accessory for this particular picture? No wonder the reviewers sometimes sneered.
    Jemima carefully locked the flat behind her with the second Chubb key.
    But as she returned down the stairs to re-enter the outside world, she found Adam Adamson waiting for her on the landing of the third floor. He was not smiling quite so broadly, a mere curve of his lips saluted her. He was in fact blocking her way.
    'Just one more thing, green-eyed Pallas Athena, oh wisest one. What is the name of the obliging friend who lent you the flat?'
    There seemed no point in keeping it from him. For all she knew, there were letters addressed to Chloe in the hall below.
    'She's called Chloe Fontaine. The writer. You may have heard of her.' She was carrying Fallen Child. 'Look, you might recognize her, even if you don't know the name. She sometimes appears on television.' Chloe's large sloe-like eyes gazed at them, provocative, enigmatic, beneath the white frame of the absurdly pretty parasol.
    Adam Adamson gazed down at the photograph. He looked utterly disconcerted. He still smiled but as she analysed it later it was a smile of genuine surprise, even disbelief. In some way she had astonished him.
    All he said was: 'Chloe: a nymph's name. But for a writer, one of the muses might have been more appropriate, Calliope, perhaps, the muse of tragedy. Still, she's certainly very beautiful.' And on that enigmatic and faintly disquieting note, Adam Adamson went back into the flat and closed its heavy mahogany door.

6
    B for Beware
    The Reading Room of the British Library, lying inside the British Museum, was very hot. Not unlike the summer streets of Bloomsbury through which she had passed, the Reading Room exuded an atmosphere of dust; it was also airless being without air-conditioning or open windows, the sun beating on the great glass dome which surmounted it. As a result, an aroma of faint dampness met Jemima as she presented her pass at the entrance. For a moment she was tempted to abandon this humid temple to literature in favour of the cooler halls of the Museum itself, presided over by huge wide-mouthed slant-eyed Egyptian monarchs and eagle-headed Assyrian deities. Other vast feline figures were guarding temples which had long ago disappeared. Here tourists worshipped with wondering eyes.
    The Reading Room on the other hand was full of up-to-date activity. No one wandered. People strode. Unlike the tourists, the readers, carrying briefcases and rolled copies of the Guardian, gave an unmistakeable air of knowing where they were going. Because the Reading Room constituted its own busy little world in the midst of the great sprawling castle of the Museum, with its staircases and salons and guards, it always seemed to Jemima peculiarly appropriate that it should be built in the shape and design of a spinning-wheel in a fairy story. So one might fancifully imagine its toilers bent over intricate webs.
    There were however a great many toilers already present this Saturday afternoon in August, and that particular idle fancy quickly gave way to irritation as Jemima embarked on the notoriously long-drawn-out process of finding an empty seat. Doggedly, she inspected the rows of seats, which radiated out from the central enclosure, forming the spokes of the wheel. After a while she gazed at those fortunate enough to possess them with the hostility of one searching for an empty taxi. The trouble