“I’m open to other theories,” said Strike. His sandwich finished, he brushed off his hands and took out his cigarettes. “The notes ask whether Aquarius confronted Pisces, don’t they? Which I assumed meant Margot confronted Douthwaite.”

In spite of his neutral tone, Strike resented remembering these star signs. The laborious and ultimately unrewarding task of working out which suspects and witnesses were represented by each astrological glyph had been far from his favorite bit of research.

“Well,” said Robin, taking out two folded photocopies, which she’d been keeping in the notebook, “I’ve been wondering… look at these.”

She passed the two documents to Strike, who opened them and saw copies of two birth certificates, one for Olive Satchwell, the other for Blanche Satchwell.

“Olive was Satchwell’s mother,” said Robin, as Strike, smoking, examined the documents. “And Blanche was his sister, who died aged ten—possibly with a pillow over her face.”

“If you’re expecting me to deduce their star signs from these birthdays,” said Strike, “I haven’t memorized the whole zodiac.”

“Blanche was born on the twenty-fifth of October, which makes her a Scorpio,” said Robin. “Olive was born on the twenty-ninth of March. Under the traditional system, she’d be Aries, like Satchwell…”

To Strike’s surprise, Robin now took out a copy of Astrology 14 by Steven Schmidt.

“It was quite hard to track this down. It’s been out of print for ages.”

“A masterwork like that? You amaze me,” said Strike, watching Robin turn to a page listing the dates of revised signs according to Schmidt. Robin smiled, but refusing to be deflected said,

“Look here. By Schmidt’s system, Satchwell’s mother was a Pisces.”

“We’re mixing up the two systems now, are we?” asked Strike.

“Well, Talbot did,” Robin pointed out. “He decided Irene and Roy should be given their Schmidt signs, but other people were allowed to keep the traditional ones.”

“But,” said Strike, well aware that he was trying to impose logic on what was essentially illogical, “Talbot made massive, sweeping assumptions on the basis of people’s original signs. Brenner was ruled out as a suspect solely because he was—”

“—Libra, yes,” said Robin.

“Well, what happens to Janice being psychic and the Essex Butcher being a Capricorn if all the dates start sliding around?”

“Wherever there was a discrepancy between the traditional sign and Schmidt sign, he seems to have gone with the sign he thought suited the person best.”

“Which makes a mockery of the whole business. And also,” said Strike, “calls all my identifications of signs and suspects into question.”

“I know,” said Robin. “Even Talbot seems to have got very stressed trying to work across both systems, which is when he began concentrating mainly on asteroids and the tarot.”

“OK,” said Strike, blowing smoke away from her, “go on with what you were saying—if Satchwell’s sister was a Scorpio, and her mother was Pisces… remind me,” said Strike, “exactly what that passage about Scorpio says?”

Robin flicked backward through Talbot’s notebook until she found the passage decorated with doodles of the crab, the fish, the scorpion, the fish-tailed goat and the water-bearer’s urn.

“‘Aquarius worried about how Scorpio died, question mark,’” she read aloud. “And—written in capitals—‘SCHMIDT AGREES WITH ADAMS.’ Then, ‘Did Aquarius challenge Pisces about Scorpio? Was Cancer there, did Cancer witness? Cancer is kind, instinct is to protect,’ then, in capitals, ‘INTERVIEW AGAIN. Scorpio and Aquarius connected, water, water, also Cancer, and Capricorn,’ in capitals, ‘HAS A FISH’S TAIL.’”

Brow furrowed, Strike said:

“We’re assuming Cancer still means Janice, right?”

“Well, Janice and Cynthia are the only two Cancerians connected with the case, and Janice seems to fit this better,” said Robin. “Let’s say Margot decided she was going to act on her suspicion that Satchwell’s mother killed his sister. If she phoned Olive from the surgery, Janice might have overheard a phone call, mightn’t she? And if Janice knew the Satchwell family, or was involved with them in some way we don’t know about, she mightn’t have wanted to tell the police what she’d overheard, for fear of incriminating Olive.”

“Why would Margot have waited years to check out her suspicions about the pillow dream?” asked Strike, but before Robin could supply an answer, he did it himself. “Of course, people do sometimes take years to decide what action to take on something like that. Or to muster up the courage to do it.”

He handed Robin back the two photocopies.

“Well, if that’s the story behind the Scorpio business, Satchwell’s still a prime suspect.”

“I never got his address in Greece,” said Robin guiltily.

“We’ll get at him through his surviving sister if we have to.”

Strike took a swig of coffee then, slightly against his better judgment, asked,

“What did you say about asteroids?”

Robin flicked further on through the notebook, to show Strike the page she’d pored over in Leamington Spa, which she thought of as the “horns page.”

“As the case went on, he seemed to give up on normal astrology. I think Schmidt had confused him so much he couldn’t work it any more, so he starts inventing his own system. He’s calculated the asteroids’ positions for the evening Margot disappeared. See here—”

Robin was pointing to the symbol …

“That symbol stands for the asteroid Pallas Athena—remember that ugly clock at the Phippses’ house?—and he’s using it to mean Margot. The asteroid Pallas Athena was in the tenth house of the zodiac on the night Margot disappeared, and the tenth house is ruled by Capricorn. It’s also supposed to govern businesses, upper classes and upper floors.”

“You think Margot’s still in someone’s attic?”

Robin smiled, but refused to be deflected.

“And see here…” She angled the notebook toward him, “assuming the other asteroids also refer to living people, we’ve got Ceres, Juno and Vesta.

“I think he’s using Vesta, ‘keeper of the hearth,’ to represent Cynthia. Vesta was in the seventh house, which is the house of marriage. Talbot’s written ‘FITS’—so I think he’s saying Cynthia was in Margot’s marital home, Broom House.

“I think ‘nurturing, protective Ceres’ sounds like Janice again. She’s in the twelfth house, and so’s Juno, who’s associated with ‘wives and infidelity,’ which might take us back to Joanna Hammond, Douthwaite’s married girlfriend…”

“What’s the twelfth house represent?”

“Enemies, secrets, sorrows and undoing.”

Strike looked at her, eyebrows raised. He’d indulged Robin because it was sunny, and he was enjoying her company, but his tolerance for astrology was now wearing very thin.

“It’s also Pisces’ house,” said Robin, “which is Douthwaite’s sign, so maybe—”