Dagger Magic

"Noel," he murmured, "have you noticed that in all of these pictures, this woman appears to be wearing the same sweater?''

The sweater in question was a light-colored cardigan, open down the front.

"Aye," McLeod muttered back. "It's pretty much what you might expect, this time of year."

"Yet she never seems to change it, regardless of either the season or the weather," Adam observed. "Take this photo from the batch labelled February fifth. Everyone else

in the picture is heavily bundled up against the cold. But here's our phantom standing in the midst of them in only a sweater. No hat, no scarf, no gloves…"

He broke off as Lennox returned from the kitchen with a trio of mugs balanced on a tray. Overstepping one or two photos that had escaped onto the floor, the lanky photographer plumped his tray down on the coffee table before quirking an eyebrow at his visitors in mute inquiry.

"I can well understand why this case has fascinated you so," Adam said. "Your phantom lady constitutes almost as big a mystery as these recurrent accidents."

"In other words," said Lennox, with a rueful twist of his lips, "you don't have any answers about her either."

"Not yet," Adam admitted. "However," he added with complete candor, "you've furnished us with something new to think about. Perhaps, if we're lucky, this angle on the case may lead us to the solution we've been looking for."

"An obvious next step," said McLeod, "is for us to try and put a name to this phantom lady of yours. Do you think we might borrow some of these prints?"

"Take any ones you want," Lennox said. "I've got all the negatives." He added with a grimace, "You know, if either of you had asked me six months ago if I believed in ghosts, I'd've told you no. Lately, though, I'm not so sure." Adam and McLeod stayed long enough to drink a cup of coffee. Shortly thereafter, they took their leave, armed with a collection of prints culled at random from Lennox's personal archives.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Adam remarked, as he and McLeod made their way out to the car. "Two hours ago I was prepared to shelve the notion that we might be dealing with some kind of apparition. Now I'm not so sure."

McLeod clucked his tongue in mild frustration. "Ghost or no ghost, this woman has to have a history," he said. "Somewhere, there's got to be a record of her existence. All we have to do is look in the right place."

Chapter Six

ADAM pondered the problem all the way home. Back at Strathmourne, he took time out for a shower and a change of clothes before retiring to the privacy of his library to scribble down some of his ideas. He had been at his desk for scarcely a quarter hour, however, when the in-house telephone emitted a buzz.

Adam lifted the receiver. "Yes, Humphrey, what is it?"

"Pardon the disturbance, sir, but you've a call from Mr. Lovat. Shall I put him through?"

"By all means."

He had a brief instant in which to wonder why Peregrine should be phoning, before the young artist's voice came on the line.

"Hullo, Adam. Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Not at all," Adam assured his young protege, "though I fancy you must be interrupting something. I seem to recall that you acquired a new bride only a few days ago. Is everything all right?"

"Oh, it's swell, where that's concerned," Peregrine said, though there was an edge of strain to his voice. "I'd have called earlier, but I wanted to wait until Julia was out of earshot. She's off having a bath just now, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to have a word with you."

"A word about what?"

"Well, we ran into a spot of unpleasantness earlier this afternoon," came the reluctant response. "We were having a picnic down on the beach at Mull of Kintyre, when a dead body washed ashore."

"A body?"

Briefly, Peregrine went on to relate the events as they had occurred earlier that afternoon. After completing his narrative, he came back to the subject of the ghostly image he had seen hovering over the body.

"It was only there for an instant - too short a time for me to catch more than a fleeting impression. But the fact that it was there at all made me curious at the time. When Julia and I got back to the guesthouse, I decided to try a sketch or two, to see if I could recapture the image and bring it into focus. I couldn't - but I can't seem to shake the conviction that the image I'm missing is not only real, but important."

"What do you think it means?" Adam asked.

"I don't know. I can't explain it logically, but I have this gut feeling that there's much more to this man's death than meets the eye. If I'm right about that, perhaps I ought to offer my services, such as they are, to the local police. On the other hand, all of this could just be my imagination working overtime. I didn't want to discuss it with Julia - it's been beastly enough for her as it is, to find a dead body on our honeymoon - but I thought it was probably worth phoning you up to ask for your advice."

Adam considered the situation before speaking.