I reached Sheena Ryders' house at quarter-to-eight in the morning. It was an old-fashioned, flat-roofed, stone-built affair with long, narrow windows. A flight of stone steps led to the front door over a small moat. This ran right round the house and gave light to the basement.
High trees, sighing in the chilly night wind, surrounded the house on four sides. It was pouring. A place and a morning in keeping with my mood.
Sheena saw me arrive at her CCTV cameras. Greeting me at the top of the steps. She looked pale and strained.
"Hello," she said. She didn't offer her hand but opened the door wide and stood sideways. "This is a surprise. I thought Sergeant Fitzgerald had asked me enough questions as it was."
"This is an unofficial visit," I assured her.
"I'm flattered."
I followed her into an old-fashioned sitting-room.
I filled it with heavy Edwardian furniture and velvet drapes that fell from ceiling to floor.
A fire burned in a huge open fireplace. On a table near the fireplace was a bowl of expensive looking artificial flowers.
There were two people sitting in high-backed arm-chairs by the fire. One was a good-looking young girl in her mid-twenties, slender and appealing as Sheena herself. Her sister. The other was her mother. Older than I expected her mother to be.
A closer inspection showed that she wasn't so old, she just looked old.
Her hair is white. Her eyes with a curious glaze of curiosity.
The hands were thin and criss-crossed with blue veins. Not an old woman. A sick woman. Prematurely aged.
She sat erect, and there was a welcoming smile on her thin, aristocratic features.
Sheena introduced her mother and her sister, Jenna.
"How do you do?" Mrs Ryder's direct, no-nonsense voice assured. Suitable for a Victorian drawing-room and a houseful of servants. She peered at me.
"My eyes are bad, I'm afraid. You are a handsome man. The handsome man my Sheena could marry."
"Mother!" her eldest daughter snapped.
"I never give up hope," Mrs Ryder said precisely. For their ages, her eyes could still twinkle. This is a terrible business that happened. Dreadful. I have been hearing." A pause, again the half-smile. "I hope you're not taking my Sheena away yet. She hasn't even had her breakfast yet."
"I won't keep her long, Mrs Ryder. I just need to ask her a few questions."
"Of course." She turned and smiled at Jenna. "Help me negotiate those dreadful stairs, will you, Jenna?"
When we were alone, Sheena said: "Sorry. Mother. She tends…"
"I think she's wonderful. No need to apologise." Her face lightened at that. Where were you when the murders happened?
"I was here, at home. With Mum and Jenna. They'll vouch for me whether I was at home."
I nodded. "Your mother could say what she liked, and I believe her. Not your sister. She's young, and any competent policemen could break her inside for five minutes. If you were involved. You see that. Your story has to be true. Can they vouch for the entire night?"
"No." She frowned. "Jenna went to bed at ten-thirty. After that, I spent a couple of hours stargazing on the roof."
"Stargazing?"
"Yes, my ex-husband was obsessed with astronomy. I spent more time using the telescope than he did. How different were we?"
"I'm sorry."
She waved away my sympathy.
"I'm not."
"Tell me, Miss Ryder, how easy is it be to steal Pendimethalin from the complex?"
"Impossible."
"I'm afraid to tell you that a member of your staff sold Pendimethalin to the Russians?"
"Jesus Christ!" Genuinely startled, she stared moodily into the fire.
"It will be, when I find out who sold it," I said. "Whoever did, paid Justin Hoyte to transport the Pendimethalin on his trawler. Sadly, the trawler sunk."
"Then it's at the bottom of the North Sea." She sounded relieved.
"It was," I replied. "But Russian divers have transferred the chemical from the trawler to a nuclear submarine."
"Why do the Russians want it?"
"I intend to find that out."
"It wasn't me, and I can prove it."
We went up the stairs. We passed a door on the floor. I could hear the subdued murmur of voices. Mrs Ryder and Jenna talking. A Slingsby ladder led us into a square hut affair built in the centre of the flat roof. At one end of the hut was plywood, an entrance covered by a hanging curtain. At the other end was a large reflector telescope set in a Perspex cupola.
"What do you think?"
"I'm impressed."
The strain left her face, replaced by the eager enthusiast.
"I'm a member of the British Astronomical Association, Jupiter Section," she said with pride.
"Are you?"
"I write for the scientific journal." She explained.
"Suppose they depend on the work of amateurs." I suggested.
"Nothing less amateurish than an amateur astronomer who's been well and truly bitten by the bug." She replied. "Didn't get to bed till two o'clock in the morning."
"Why is that?"
"I was making a series of photographs for The Astronomical Monthly of the Red Spot in Jupiter, and the satellite occulting."
She smiled broadly in her relief now.
"Here's the letter commissioning me to do them. They're pleased with the other stuff I've sent."
I glanced at the letter.
Genuine, of course.
"Got a set of six photographs. Beauties, too, although I say it myself. Here, I'll let you see them."
She disappeared behind the curtain. A few seconds later, reappeared with more pictures. I took them. They looked terrible to me, just a bunch of greyish dots and streaks against a fuzzily dark scenery.
"Can I tell from these pictures when you took them?"
"That's why I brought you up here. Take those to the Greenwich observatory. They can work out the precise latitude and longitude of this house. They could tell you within thirty seconds. Go on, take them with you."
"No, thanks." I handed back the photographs and smiled at her. "I've wasted enough time. Send them to The Astronomical Monthly with my best wishes."
We found Mrs Ryder and Jenna talking by the fireside. A few civilities. A polite refusal of a drink. I was on my way.
Noticing in the bowl of artificial flowers on the table by the fire, a fine meshed microphone hidden in the centre.
Someone had been listening.