"Gwyneth Humphries made it clear that every one of them had clashed with Martin Rogers at one time or another. Maybe that was to throw us off the scent and not have us focus on one of them."

"Could be. Rhys Thomas said pretty much the same thing to me."

"And Brock seemed to think it wasn't even surprising that Professor Rogers had been murdered," Evan went on. "But then he was the one who had a perfect alibi for yesterday. He was out at his dig with a bunch of students."

"I'll tell you one thing," Evan added, watching the steady stream of students making their way down the hill like a column of ants. "Gwyneth Humphries was sweet on Professor Rogers."

"No kidding? Do you think something was going on there? A liaison on the side?"

"I don't think so. She took pains to tell me how morally correct Rogers was."

"So it was unrequited love on her part-pining from afar. Maybe her theory was, if I can't have him then nobody else can. Hell has no fury, and all that."

"I can't see her shooting somebody," Evan said. "She's a dramatic woman, I grant you, but shooting is too cold and calculated for her. I can picture her stabbing him with a Celtic dagger, perhaps."

"So what do we tell Bragg?" Wingate asked.

"Let's wait and hear what he's come up with this morning. And we haven't spoken to any students yet."

"I'd imagine there are several hundred students who attend history lectures. Rather a tall order to interview them all. Where do you suggest we start?"

"I think we're like Mohammed," Evan said, looking down the hill. "I think the mountain is coming to us." And indeed students were suddenly streaming out of buildings all over the campus, some of them now heading in the direction of the History Department building. At the same moment there were noises in the hallway behind them, and another group of students was coming down the stairs.

Jeremy Wingate stepped out to meet them as they came through the doors.

"Excuse me a minute," he said. "Are any of you students of Professor Rogers?"

The young man who was leading the group looked around uneasily. "We all are," he said. "Everybody gets the head of department at one time or another."

"I know what this is about," a girl said. She had that startlingly red hair found in the true Celt and bright green eyes. "He's been killed, hasn't he? I saw it on the telly last night."

"That's right, I'm afraid," Wingate said. "We're police officers; and if you've got a moment, we'd like to ask you some questions."

"Fire away," the first boy said. "I'd love a good excuse to be fifteen minutes late for Humphries."

"The 'Black Death'?" Wingate asked with a grin. "I thought that class was supposed to be fascinating."

"The subject is, but she's boring as hell. She drones on and on and on. Half the people who signed up for that class have already dropped it. So what did you want to know about Professor Rogers?"

Wingate glanced at Evan.

"We wondered whether any of you knew if he might have had a recent run-in with any of his students," Evan said.

"He was a miserable old sod," another boy commented, putting on his anorak hood against the wind. "He was one of the faculty members on the site council, and he was always vetoing anything he didn't approve of. You know, the gay/lesbian dance, that kind of thing. Very old-fashioned and prejudiced."

"He was really stodgy," a girl agreed. "Totally behind the times. If you showed up at one of his lectures in a skimpy top, he'd make you put your jacket on."

"But you don't kill your teacher because he makes you put your jacket on, do you?" Wingate asked.

They looked at him with wide-eyed horror. "Who said anything about killing?" the first girl asked. "He was annoying. My dad's annoying sometimes, but I don't think about killing him."

"Exactly," Evan said. "It has to be a life-or-death situation to make you want to kill someone in my experience. So I wondered, has there been a case where Professor Rogers might have pushed a student to the edge. Maybe he had failed somebody or was going to fail somebody?"

They looked at each other, considering this.

"There was Simon last year," the red-haired girl said at last, checking with her friends for confirmation in voicing this opinion.

"Simon?" Evan asked quietly.

"Simon Pennington. He graduated in June. He was very bright, probably one of the best students in his year. He thought he should have got a first, but he only got an upper two. He was really angry, and he thought it was all Professor Rogers's fault. Apparently Professor Rogers had assessed his special project as competent but not original. His family went to the dean and demanded a reassessment, but the dean wouldn't do it."

"He came back here to see old Rogers a couple of weeks ago, after term had started," a boy said. "He was yelling that Rogers had ruined his life, and he was never going to get into the Diplomatic Corps now."

"And where would we find this Simon Pennington?"

They looked at each other and shrugged.

"The registrar would have a contact address. He lived near London, didn't he?"

"I think so. He was definitely not Welsh anyway."

This got a laugh from the Welsh members of the group.

Evan left the university with an address in Surrey for Simon Pennington, but a phone call to that address indicated that Simon was currently traveling abroad and wouldn't be back for another month.

"Great alibi, don't you think?" Wingate asked Evan, as they headed back to the station. "There's nothing to stop him from popping back into the country, shooting the professor, and then going back to the Continent again. They never really check EU passports these days, do they?"

"We should definitely keep him in mind," Evan agreed. "Should we find more students to interview or get back to Bragg?"

"Much as I hate to face him this early in the day, I think he'll probably be expecting to see our keen and eager young faces sometime soon."

They made their way down the path to the waiting car.

"At least the university meter maids didn't have the nerve to ticket us," Wingate said.

"I bet they don't even set foot outside in this weather." Evan smiled.

A call to Bragg revealed that he was still at the Rogers's house.

"I want you two over here right away," he said. "We're giving the place a thorough search."

"Looking for what in particular, sir?" Evan asked.

"That missing weapon, among other things. I've got nothing new out of Mrs. Rogers. According to her, Martin Roger had no family nearby. He didn't belong to a golf club. He didn't attend a church, unlike her. No close ties at all or interests outside of the university. Doesn't she realize if she can't come up with a likely suspect, the suspicion is all going to fall on her?"

"I think Bragg operates rather like the medieval ducking stool," Wingate said dryly, as they sped through deserted wet streets toward the Rogers's house. "If he holds her underwater long enough, she's going to confess."

Missy Rogers, still accompanied by the same woman police constable, was sitting on the sofa in the drawing room working on a tapestry. The dog, Lucky, lay at her feet. It rose with a deep growl as they came in.

"It's all right, Lucky." She put a comforting hand on his head. "He knows something isn't right," she said, by way of apology for his behavior. "He's such a sensitive animal."

"Is Inspector Bragg here?" Wingate asked.

"I think you'll find your inspector in Martin's study," she said. "I can't think what they hope to find. Martin received no threatening letters, no blackmail, nothing that might be filed away in a study."

"What about a student called Simon Pennington?" Evan asked. "Did your husband mention him to you?"

She frowned, then shook her head. "I can't say that he did. He dealt with hundreds of students, and he rarely discussed his work at home. His research yes, but not the petty problems of the university. He liked his home to be his haven."

"Evans? Is that you?" boomed the voice down the stairs. "I want you up here right now. And Wingate."

The two men gave Missy Rogers a commiserating smile as they heeded the call from above.

"I don't remember giving you permission to question Mrs. Rogers," Bragg said.

"We were just following up on a lead we'd got at the university," Wingate said quickly. "A student who believed Professor Rogers was responsible for his failing to get a first-class degree."

"Then he'd already have left the university last summer, wouldn't he?"

"But he came back a couple of weeks ago and had a shouting match with Professor Rogers," Evan said.

"Have you tried to contact him?"

"I called his home in Surrey," Evan said. "Apparently he's gone abroad."

"How convenient."

"That's what we thought."

"Well, I suppose it's the only credible lead we've got so far, apart from the widow," Bragg said. "Right, let's get on with the job in hand and see what turns up, and Wingate, you can retrace the steps of Mrs. Rogers's dog walk yesterday and see if anyone can vouch for seeing her. Of course, that proves nothing. It would only take a minute or so to shoot her husband and then walk the dog as if nothing had happened."

He was speaking in his usual loud, strident voice, and Evan looked at the open study door.

"I don't think you should give her any idea that you suspect her," he said.

"Of course I should. Make her good and nervous. When you've been in the force as long as I have, Evans, then you can start giving suggestions. Until then you sort through that filing cabinet and keep quiet."

Evan bit back the anger and went over to the filing cabinet. Everything was in meticulous order, ranging from household accounts to historical papers published. Years and years of receipts, bank statements, letters written to the water board to complain about water pressure. Martin Rogers's whole life was documented here, neatly filed to be resurrected if needed. Evan flicked through the household accounts. For every month there was a handwritten sheet stapled to a typewritten sheet. Evan realized that the writing on the first sheet was not Martin Rogers's. It must therefore be Missy's. Account for the week ending September 21. Then beside some of the items, in Martin's small, neat script, some comments: 'Wasteful. Why not buy larger size?' And even against one item: 'Not necessary. Amount not allowed.' On the typewritten sheet was a reconciliation-the amount of money paid into the housekeeping account that year, compared to the previous year. Evan wondered if Martin gave his wife any money for herself. He certainly vetted what she spent on keeping the house running and queried her over trivialities.

He put the accounts back and went on looking. Under letters he found copies of every letter Martin had written. Evan read through the last year or two but came up with nothing inflammatory. Then he pulled out a bundle of envelopes, tied with a string. Old love letters? He wondered and hesitated to open the bundle. Then he noticed that some of the postmarks were quite recent. He pulled out the first letter and was surprised to see it was addressed to Missy Rogers, not Martin. It was from her sister in France. "I haven't heard from you in a while so I hope you are well," she wrote. Just a chatty, ordinary letter. There were more letters from her sister, letters from what appeared to be an old school friend, even from her parents, dated five or more years ago. Had Missy asked Martin to keep them in the filing cabinet for her? Evan retied the string uneasily. Now was not the right time to confront her with them. He'd wait and see how things developed.

In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, he came upon a folder marked WEAPONS. In it was a detailed list of all the antique weapons Martin Rogers owned, date purchased, from whom, history, when used as a visual aid in a class. Evan read through the list slowly, then double-checked.

"Have you got something there, Evans?" Inspector Bragg called.

"I think I have." Evan looked up. "This is a list of the weapons in that drawer. There never was a second dueling pistol."

"What exactly are you saying?" Bragg asked.

"That there doesn't appear to be a missing weapon. The ones in the tray downstairs are all accounted for."

"So someone laid the same gun down on the velvet to give the impression of a missing weapon?" Bragg nodded. "Now who would have had the opportunity to do that?"

"Only the widow, I suppose," Evan had to admit.

"It's looking more and more likely, Evans. And yet she's sitting down there doing her embroidery, not blinking an eyelid, knowing that we're up here. Pritchard?"

Pritchard jumped up from where he was squatting at the bottom drawer of the desk. "Yes sir?"

"Leave that and start looking for another weapon," he said. "We know that none of those antique pistols has been fired recently. So the real weapon has to have been hidden or disposed of."

"Maybe Mrs. Rogers dropped it into the shrubbery on her dog walk," Pritchard suggested, "Or threw it into the Menai Strait."

"Both possible. Evans, call HQ and have a team of men sent out to search. We may also need frogmen."

"Shouldn't we wait for the ballistics report?" Evan said cautiously. "It would make more sense if the men knew what they were looking for."

"I suppose so," Bragg reluctantly agreed. "Let's have the WPC take Mrs. Rogers out for a walk or a cup of coffee, and then we'll give this whole place a proper going over. Maybe she's stashed it under our noses."

But a thorough search of the house failed to turn up the weapon. Evan felt most uncomfortable rummaging through neat drawers of underwear and nightclothes. On Missy's bedside table there was a faded photograph of a couple taken in wartime, the man handsome in his army uniform, the woman looking coy in one of those 1940s suits with the big shoulders. Beside it another photo of the same couple, their faces now wrinkled but still handsome. Beside it a photograph of Missy, her arm around another woman in what looked like the south of France. Her parents and sister, Evan surmised. They were the only photographs in the house.

His search was interrupted by the arrival of DS Wingate. He had retraced the route of the dog walk and had spoken to the old man Missy had mentioned, the one with the little white dog of whom Lucky was so fond. The old man remembered seeing Mrs. Rogers go past at her usual time the previous morning, but she had seemed more hurried and preoccupied. She'd just given him a perfunctory "Good morning" and dragged Lucky past without giving the dogs time to greet each other in their usual way.

"She was stressed," Bragg said delightedly. "What did I tell you? She was in a hurry to get back on schedule after she'd taken the time to shoot her husband and then put the lawn mower away."

"Did anyone else see her?" Evan asked.

"The woman at the corner shop was just putting out the trays of apples and saw her walk by, but that was about it. At least we know she stuck to the route she had described to us."

"Right, lads, back to searching for that weapon," Bragg said. "Given the amount of time she'd have needed to complete that walk, she wouldn't have had much chance to hide a weapon before she called us."

"Unless she'd dropped it in the bushes along the way," Evan reminded him.

He didn't look pleased to be reminded. "Right. Yes. We know that," he said.

But another hour's searching revealed nothing. Mrs. Rogers had returned from her outing with the policewoman and was now out in her garden, pulling the dead heads off chrysanthemums while the policewoman threw a ball for Lucky. It was a peaceful, everyday scene. Someone had lit a bonfire in a neighboring back garden, and the pleasant smell of burning wood and leaves floated toward them as they piled back into their vehicles.

"I get the feeling she's a smart cookie, and she thinks we're rather slow and stupid," Bragg said. "She probably thinks it's really easy to outwit us."

"Well, she has, so far," Wingate said. "We've got nothing on her that would stand up in court."

"We'll get it," Bragg said. "I have a good feeling about this one."

As soon as they arrived back at headquarters in Colwyn Bay, they went first to the forensics lab.

"I was just about to call you lot," they were greeted by Owen Jones, one of the members of yesterday's team. "I think we've wrapped up all the preliminary findings on your crime scene yesterday."

"And?" Bragg demanded.

"What do you want first? Ballistics report?"

"Fire away," Bragg said. Pritchard smirked. Evan couldn't decide whether Bragg was intending to be witty or not.

"Right." Jones picked up a piece of paper from the table beside him. "Interesting size bullet-eight millimeter. You don't come across that often in modern weapons. Nine is more common. Our ballistics chap suggests it might have come from a Nambu Type 14, a Japanese handgun used by their officers in World War II. I take it nobody's been able to come up with the casing yet? That would confirm it."

"No casing," Bragg said. "We've given the house and grounds a pretty thorough search, and we've come up with nothing."

"There was a photo of a bloke in a WWII uniform on the bedside table," Pritchard said. "Her dad, do you think? Left her the weapon?"

"I bet he did," Bragg said excitedly. "Tell me, do you think it was a weapon that a woman could have fired easily?"

"Absolutely,' the technician said. "If it's a Nambu, it's a light little thing. In fact it was always a source of amusement that Japanese officers were issued something so flimsy. Most of them chose to carry swords instead, so I understand. More chance of killing somebody with those."

"And yet it seems to have done an efficient job this time," Bragg said.

"Five feet away-you can't very well miss, can you?"

"True. So what else have you got for us, Jones?"

"Fingerprints-no obvious fingerprints that we can't identify. Especially significant from your point of view, the only prints on the lawn mower were Mrs. Rogers's and the gardener's. Mrs. Rogers's were the clearest. And on the window latch, only Mrs. Rogers's fingerprints show up, apart from a few indistinct ones."

"And if the killer had worn gloves?" Bragg asked.

"If he'd worn gloves, he'd likely have smudged the nice clear set of prints we got. As it was, we didn't see any evidence of smudging or attempts to wipe anything clean."

"If Mrs. Rogers really is the killer, surely she'd have thought of that," Evan blurted out. "The first thing she'd have done is to wipe away her fingerprints."

Bragg smirked. "As I've said before, it's lucky for us that most perpetrators aren't too bright. And they're in panic mode. They don't always stop to think." He clapped his hands together. "Right, lads. I think we're finally getting somewhere. Let's have the uniform boys bring her in."

"Are you charging her, sir?" Wingate asked. "Isn't that a little premature?"

"I'm not charging her officially, Wingate. As of now she's helping us with our inquiries. However, I think we're going to be too busy to get to her before tomorrow morning. Let's just see whether a night in a cell will make her more willing to tell us what she knows."