The Key to Midnight

reciting something you'd memorized.'
        'Really now, Alex. You make me sound like a zombie. You were imagining it.'
        'My business is observation, not imagination. Tell me more about Woolrich. What does he look like?'
        'Does it really matter?'
        Alex was quick to press the point. 'Don't you remember that either?'
        She sighed. 'He was in his forties when my parents died. A slender man. Five foot ten. Maybe a hundred forty or a hundred fifty pounds. Very nervous. Talked rather fast. Energetic. He had a pinched face. Pale. Thin lips. Brown eyes. Brown, thinning hair. He wore heavy tortoiseshell glasses, and he-'
        Joanna stopped in midsentence, because suddenly she could hear what Alex had heard before. She sounded as if she were standing at attention in front of a class of schoolchildren, reciting an assigned poem. It was eerie, and she shivered.
        'Do you correspond with Woolrich?' Alex asked.
        'Write letters to him? Why should I?'
        'He was your father's friend.'
        'They were casual friends, not best buddies.' 'But he was your friend too.'
        'Yes, well, in a way he was.'
        'And after all he did for you when you were feeling so low-'
        'Maybe I should have kept in touch with him.'
        'That would have been more in character, don't you think? You aren't a thoughtless person.'
        'You know how it is. Friends drift apart.'
        'Not always.'
        'Well, they generally do when you put twelve thousand miles between them.' She frowned. 'You're making me feel guilty.'
        Alex shook his head. 'You're missing my point. Look, if Woolrich was really a friend of your father's and if he actually was extraordinarily helpful to you after the accident in Brighton, you would have maintained contact with him at least for a couple of years. That would be like you. From what I know of you, it's entirely out of character for you to forget a friend so quickly and easily.'
        Joanna smiled ruefully. 'You have an idealized image of me.'
        'No. I'm aware of your faults. But ingratitude isn't one of them. I think this J. Compton Woolrich never existed -which is why you couldn't possibly have kept in touch with him.'
         'But I remember him!' Joanna said exasperatedly.
        'As I said, you may have been made to remember a lot of things that never happened.'
        'Programmed,' she said sarcastically.
        'I'm close to the truth,' he said confidently. 'Do you realize how tense it's made you to have to listen to me?'
        She realized that she was leaning forward, shoulders drawn up, hunched as if in anticipation of a blow to the back of the neck. She was even biting her fingernails. She sat back on the couch and tried to relax.
        'I heard the change in my voice when I was telling you what Woolrich looked like. A monotone. It's spooky. And when I try to expand on those few memories of him… I can't recall anything new. There's no color, no detail. It all seems… flat. Like photographs or a painting. But I did receive those letters from him.'
        'That's another thing that bothers me. You said that after the accident, Woolrich came to visit you frequently.'
        'Yes, that's right.'
        'So why would he write to you at all?'
        'Well, of course, he had to be careful…' Joanna frowned. 'I'll be damned. I don't know. I hadn't thought about that.'
        Alex shook the thin packet of correspondence as if he hoped a secret would drop out of it. 'There isn't anything in these three letters that requires a written notice to you. He could have conducted all this business in person. He didn't even have to deliver the settlement check by mail.' Alex tossed the letters on the coffee table. 'The only reason that these were sent to you was so you'd have superficial proof of your phony background.'
        'If Mr. Woolrich never existed… and if Robert and Elizabeth Rand never existed… then who the hell sent me that three hundred thousand dollars?'
        'Maybe it came from the people who kidnapped you when you were Lisa Chelgrin. For some reason, they wanted to set you up well in your new identity.'
        Amazed, she said, 'You've got it all backward. Kidnappers are out to get money, not to give it away.'
        'These weren't ordinary kidnappers. They never sent a ransom demand to the senator. Their motives apparently were unique.'
        'Yeah? So who were