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thanks only to the flood, a detail Umber decided not to mention. 'Besides, I thought you accepted that I didn't put it together.'
    'I do.' Sharp sounded as if he almost resented his own exclusion of Umber as a suspect.
    'How was it addressed to you?'
    'See for yourself.' Sharp slid the envelope across the table.
    It was white A5, bearing a first-class stamp with a smudged postmark and what looked like a computer-generated address label. George Sharp, 12 Bilston Court, Nunswood Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AQ. The word-processed characters held no clue. The clues, such as they were, had all been in the letter.
    'London postmark,' said Sharp. 'Date barely legible. But probably the twenty-first of January. I received it on the twenty-second.'
    'I was here at the time,' said Umber.
    'That wouldn't clear you in my eyes.'
    'Derbyshire, Mr Sharp. What took you there?'
    'A return to my roots. And you can call me George, since we're in this together.'
    Umber could not decide which was more ominous: the invitation to use Sharp's Christian name -- or the hint of an alliance between them. He tried to ignore the point. 'My guess would be that whoever sent this chose Junius as the source in order to throw suspicion onto me.'
    'If you're right, that means they know everything there is to know about the Avebury case. Your reason for being there didn't exactly make the newspaper front pages.'
    'The implication is that they know the whole truth of it, surely.'
    'Maybe. But the other implication is that I can find out what the truth is. If I set my mind to it. "It is not too late to correct the error." Notice he says "the Marlborough murderers".'
    'I can't imagine Junius ever mentioned Avebury. But he would have mentioned the Duke of Marlborough. The town's only a few miles from Avebury, so--'
    'That's not what I mean. Murderers plural. It rams the point home, doesn't it? It rules out Radd's confession.'
    'We've already ruled that out, haven't we?'
    Sharp sipped his whisky and offered no reply. But the deep furrows in his brow gave a kind of answer. The letter was a reproach as well as a challenge. And he was vulnerable to both.
    'What do you mean to do about this?'
    Still Sharp said nothing.
    'George?'
    Now, at last, there was a response. Sharp set down his tumbler with a clunk on the table. 'Exactly what it dares me to do.'
    '"Correct the error"?'
    'Dig out the truth. If it's there to be dug.'
    'What can you hope to learn now that you failed to learn twenty-three years ago?'
    'I'm not a policeman any more. I don't have to go by the book.'
    'Have you reported receiving this letter?'
    'Of course not. Wiltshire CID wouldn't want to know. And they'd try to spike my guns. The only advantage I have is that nobody will be expecting me to go down this road again.'
    'Other than... what shall we call your correspondent? ... Junius?'
    'It's what he calls himself.'
    'Or what she calls herself .'
    'I suppose it could be a woman.' Sharp ground his teeth. "'I am unable to correct the error." "It is time for men to interpose." I see what you mean.'
    'You're jumping to conclusions, George. The mid-eighteenth century's a tad early for gender equality. Junius -- the real Junius -- wouldn't have envisaged women interposing in anything. All I'm saying is that you don't know who you're dealing with.'
    'Except that he or she is an expert on the Junius letters.'
    'Not so very expert, actually.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'Well, I said Junius's first letter was dated the twenty-first of January 1769, and that's true -- as far as the collected edition is concerned. But his first letter to the Public Advertiser appeared in November 1768. For some reason, he decided not to include it in the collected edition. Of course, that makes an original copy hard to come by, but the correct date could be concocted by...' Umber broke off and grabbed the letter. A door had opened in his mind. The writer could reasonably have hoped that Sharp would bring this letter to him. It could