She had again fixed her gaze on me anxiously, watching my face for the slightest hint of scepticism. I handed back the Bible and removed the gloves.

“Seven for one. But it hasn’t been carried out exactly, has it?” I said. I realised I was beginning to feel truly afraid of her.

“My God, can’t you see? It’s taking place step by step. And if no one realises what’s happening, if no one stops him, he’ll just keep going.”

“But I still don’t understand,” I said, “how it could have been him in the first two cases you’ve told me about.”

“Yes, that was what was driving me most crazy. From the moment I opened the Bible and read that sentence I no longer had any doubt that it was him, but I still couldn’t see how he’d done it on either occasion. It was all I could think about. I even stopped eating during that time. I was in a kind of fever that prevented me from doing anything else. Actually I had an idea how he’d done it in my parents’ case. All he had to have done was follow me to the house that first summer and he’d have seen the little wood where we picked mushrooms. It was the only piece of information he didn’t have. I think he went back to Villa Gesell a couple of days before my parents’ wedding anniversary and scattered the poisonous fungi amongst the edible ones, but with the base missing, so there was no way of distinguishing between them. He removed the bases. And before leaving he made sure he left a few buried in leaf litter, in case there was a forensic examination afterwards.”

I tried to picture Kloster-the Kloster who appeared in the papers-engaged in such horticultural skulduggery.