"Elizabeth Delmont is dead."

Stunned, she merely stared at him for a few seconds. "I beg your pardon?"

"Murdered sometime after the séance ended last night," he added, much too calmly.

"Murdered." She swallowed hard. "Are you quite certain?"

"I found the body myself shortly after two this morning"

"You found the body?" It took her an instant to recover from that unnerving announcement. "I don't understand"

"Someone used a poker to crush her skull"

Ice formed in her stomach. It occurred to her that the decision to entertain a mysterious gentleman who claimed to have discovered a murdered woman might not prove to be one of her sounder notions. She glanced at the bellpull that hung beside the desk. Perhaps she should summon Mrs. Plummer.

But even as she started to reach surreptitiously for the rope to alert the housekeeper, she found herself succumbing to her greatest vice, curiosity.

"May I ask why you went to Mrs. Delmont's house at such a late hour?" she said.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that she had blundered badly. Heat rose in her cheeks. There was only one reason why a wealthy, obviously virile man such as Adam Grove might have called upon Elizabeth Delmont at two in the morning.

Mrs. Delmont had been a very beautiful woman possessed of an alluring figure and a sensual manner that had certainly captivated Mr. McDaniel, the elderly widower who had been one of the sitters at last night's séance. The medium had no doubt had a similar effect on a number of gentlemen.

"No, Mrs. Fordyce, Elizabeth Delmont was not my mistress," Adam said, as though he had read her mind. "In point of fact, I had never encountered her until last night. When I did find her it was much too late for an introduction."

"I see." She fought back the hot blush and tried to project a worldly air. She was supposed to be a widow, after all; a lady possessed of some experience of the world. `"Forgive me, Mr. Grove. This entire conversation has taken an extremely odd turn. I had no idea that Mrs. Delmont had died."

"Murdered was the word I used." Adam studied her thoughtfully. "You said this conversation was not proceeding along the lines that you had anticipated. Tell, me, why did you believe that I had come here today?"

"To be quite truthful, I assumed that you had mistaken the address," she admitted.

"If that was the case, why did you not instruct your housekeeper to verify that I had the correct number?" he asked with a depressing sort of logic.

"I confess, I was curious to know the nature of your news." She spread her hands wide. "We rarely receive callers who come upon business of grave importance here, you see. In fact, I cannot recall any such visitors in the whole of the three years we have lived here."

"We?"

"My two aunts live with me. They are out at the moment, taking their morning exercise. Aunt Emma and Aunt Milly are great believers in the importance of brisk daily walks"

He frowned. "I did not see their names on the list of sitters. You say they accompanied you to the séance last night?"

She did not like the way this was going. It was beginning to feel as though he was interrogating her.

"Yes," she said, treading carefully now. "They did not want me to go out alone at night. Mrs. Delmont had no objection to their presence."

"Why did you attend the séance? Did you really believe that Elizabeth Delmont could communicate with spirits?" He did not bother to conceal his scathing opinion of such a notion.

His sarcasm annoyed her. She felt obliged to defend her actions.

"I would remind you, sir," she said very crisply, "that a great many eminent, educated, well-respected individuals take spiritualism and other psychical matters seriously."

"Fools, the lot of them."

"A number of societies and clubs have been formed to conduct research into psychical events and to investigate the claims of mediums. Several learned journals in the field are published regularly." She reached across her desk and snatched up the copy of New Dawn that had arrived yesterday. "This one, for instance. It is published by the Society for Psychical Investigations, and I assure you the articles are well documented."

"Documented nonsense." He moved one hand in a dismissive manner. "It is obvious to any logical person that those who claim to possess psychical powers are all charlatans and frauds"

"I daresay you are entitled to your opinion," she retorted. "But forgive me for pointing out that it does not imply an open, inquiring mind."

He smiled humorlessly. "How open is your mind, Mrs. Fordyce? Do you really take the business of manifestations and spirit voices and table rappings seriously?"

She sat a little straighter in her chair. "As it happens, I have recently conducted some research of my own."

"And have you discovered any mediums you consider to be genuine? Mrs. Delmont, for instance?"

"No," she admitted, reluctant to concede him the ground. "As a matter of fact, I do not believe that it is possible to communicate with spirits"

"I am relieved to hear that. It renews my initial impression of your intelligence."

She glared at him. "May I remind you, sir, that the field of psychical research is expanding rapidly. Lately it has be-gun to encompass a wide variety of phenomena, not just the summoning of spirits. While I do not believe that mediums can communicate with ghosts and phantoms, I am not at all prepared to dismiss other types of psychical powers out of hand."

His green eyes tightened ever so slightly at the corners, sharpening his gaze in a dangerous manner. "If you do not believe that mediums can contact the spirit world, why did you attend the séance at Elizabeth Delmont's house last night?"

No doubt about it, he was most definitely conducting an interrogation. She glanced again at the bellpull.

"There is no need to call your housekeeper to rescue you," he said dryly. "I mean you no harm. But I do mean to get some answers"

She frowned. "You sound like a policeman, Mr. Grove." "Calm yourself, Mrs. Fordyce. I promise you that I have no connection to the police."

"Then why in heaven's name are you here, sir? What do you want?"

"Information," he said simply. "Why did you attend the séance?"

He was quite relentless, she thought.

"I told you, I have been conducting research into psychical phenomena," she said. "Your opinions to the contrary, it is considered a legitimate field of inquiry."

He shook his head in disgust. "Parlor tricks and games. Nothing more"

It was past time to ask a few questions of her own, she decided. She clasped her hands together on top of her desk and assumed what she hoped was a firm, authoritative manner.

"I am very sorry to learn that Mrs. Delmont was murdered," she said evenly. "But I'm afraid that I fail to comprehend why you are interested in the circumstances of her death. Indeed, if you and Mrs. Delmont were not, ah, intimately acquainted, why did you go to her house at two o'clock in the morning?"

"Suffice it to say that I had my reasons for calling on Elizabeth Delmont at that hour and that those reasons were extremely urgent. Now that she is dead, I am left with no choice but to discover the identity of her killer."

She was stunned. "You intend to hunt him down your-self?"

"Yes"

"Surely that is a job for the police, sir."

He shrugged. "They will make their inquiries, naturally, but I very much doubt that they will find the villain."

She unlocked her hands and seized her pen again. "This is very interesting, Mr. Grove. Indeed, it is riveting." She wrote Determined and relentless on the sheet of paper. "Let me see if I have got the facts in the correct order. You are conducting an inquiry into Mrs. Delmont's death, and you came here to ask me if I had any information concerning her murder."

He watched her swiftly moving pen. "That certainly sums up the situation."

Talk about a Startling Incident, she thought. Incidents did not come much more startling than this one.

"I shall be delighted to tell you everything I can remember, sir, if you will first explain your interest in the affair."

He studied her as though she were an unusual biological specimen that had turned up unexpectedly and was proving difficult to identify. The tall clock ticked in the silence.

After a long moment, he appeared to come to a conclusion.

"Very well," he said, "I will answer some of your questions. But in return I must insist that you keep what I am about to tell you in strictest confidence."

"Yes, of course" She jotted the word Secretive down on the paper.

He was out of the chair before she realized he had even moved.

"What on earth?" Startled by the suddenness of his actions, she gasped and dropped her pen.

He crossed the space between them in two strides, reached out and plucked the sheet of paper off the desk.

So much for his apparent weariness, she thought. And to think she had been feeling rather sorry for him.

"Sir." She tried to snatch the paper out of his hand. "Kindly give me that at once. What do you think you are doing?"

"I am curious about your list of errands, madam." He scanned the page quickly, his expression turning colder by the second. "Dark gray jacket and trousers? Fierce features? What the devil is going on here?"

"I do not see that my notes are of any importance to you, sir."