Problem with \partial

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

I have a problem with \partial, which doesn't seem to be
covered in the docs or examples I've found.

I have a piece in 4/4 with the first measure having one beat,
while the last has 3.  There are 4 voices, and in each of them
I begin with something like this

     \partial 4 f4 | f g f g |

and end with something like this:

     d4 c c bes | \partial 4*3 c c8 ( bes ) a4 \bar "|." |

The first \partial is strictly according to the documentation,
and works fine.  The second one causes no error messages in
the first voice, but in each of the later voices I get an
error message like this:

     warning: barcheck failed at: -3/4
     f g8 ( f ) e4 e | d c c bes 
                                 |


So, my questions are: Can you use \partial for bars which are
not at the beginning of the piece?  And if so how, since the
above doesn't seem to work.  I saw this problem first with
version 2.8.5, then upgraded to 2.9.9 in hopes that it would
disappear.  It didn't.

Thanks for your advice.

     -- Owen