Out of the Sun by Robert Goddard

had just the sort of leaden headache and incipient liverishness he might have expected as a result of a heavy night at the Stonemasons', a bolted breakfast and a rush-hour tube journey to Liverpool Street. He was troubled by the memory of Crowther's sarcasm when agreeing to let him take the day off "Working here isn't making too many demands on your time, is it, Harry?" And he was not at all sure that flogging out to the marshy margins of Suffolk was actually going to achieve anything he could not have accomplished in a telephone conversation.
    He had phoned Dr. Tilson, of course, but had spoken only to a housekeeper, through whom he had managed to fix an appointment without having to say more than that he was a friend of David Venning's mother. Reticence had seemed only prudent till he could meet David's old tutor and weigh her expression along with her words. Now, trudging out to the se afront and reeling before the brain-scouring force of the wind, he could not help doubting whether he had played his hand wisely.
    Avocet House was a high-gabled Victorian villa set behind gale-carved hedges at the southern end of the town. It looked more like some whiskery admiral's final mooring than an academic's hideaway. Why Dr. Tilson should prefer this patch of salt-sprayed obscurity to the wood-panelled college rooms Harry found it easy to imagine she had left behind in Cambridge was at first sight a mystery.
    The mystery did not evaporate when Harry was greeted at the door by the housekeeper he had spoken to on the telephone. Younger than he would have predicted, she was short and plump, with a startlingly clear-skinned face and a mass of marmalade-coloured hair. The plain dress and headband were consistent enough with the position Harry had assumed she held, but the quivering air of insecurity was not.
    "You must be Harry Barnett," she said in a breathless voice. "Come in." Harry stepped into the cavernous hallway. "Athene's in the conservatory." Athene, Harry noted. Not Dr. Tilson. "Come on through."
    He followed her along the hall and into a dowdily furnished drawing room which gave onto the conservatory. She left him at the doorway with an offer of coffee. He accepted, failing to specify the strong black brew that he badly needed, and went on alone.
    The conservatory was clearly contemporary with the house; terra cotta lozenge tiles underfoot, grimy glass and cast iron overhead. Cacti and assorted frond-leafed exotics occupied most of the floor space, their thick green stems planted firmly in fat red pots. There were no statuettes or figurines, no grinning gnomes or frolicking cherubs. The place would, in fact, have seemed more like a working greenhouse than a domestic conservatory but for the wicker chairs and table set in a kind of arbour at the far end.
    Seated on one of the chairs was a thin grey-haired woman who looked up as he approached. She was wearing stout shoes, corduroy trousers and a guernsey, with what looked like a tennis shirt underneath. Her hair was short, her face lined and free of make-up. She made no effort to rise, which Harry assumed the pair of walking-sticks propped against the table explained, but her dark piercing eyes engaged him more directly than any word or gesture.
    "Mr. Barnett?"
    "Yes. Dr. Tilson?"
    "Indeed. Come and sit down." There was a hint of sharpness in her voice that made the invitation sound more like an instruction. "Has Mace offered you anything?"
    "Er .. . yes. Coffee."
    "Coffee? How unexciting." She watched him closely as he sat down. "Well, it can't be helped. We have no beer in the house. And cigarette smoke would disturb the plants." Catching his frown, she added: The waistline is a giveaway, Mr. Barnett. And I have a keen enough nose to detect the aroma of a cigarette recently smoked. Not English, I think. Italian?"
    "Greek, actually."
    "Really? How disappointing. For me, I mean. For you, I imagine, it was a considerable pleasure." She smiled with surprising warmth. "A touch of