A Great Deliverance

15

Lady Helen saw him as they made their way over the crowded pedestrian walkway from the arrivals platform. It had been a harrowing enough two hours on the train, one moment afraid that Gillian might go all to pieces in any one of a dozen appalling ways; the next moment desperately trying to rouse Sergeant Havers from whatever black pit of humour she had decided to inhabit. The entire experience had filled Lady Helen with such anxiety that the very sight of Lynley, brushing his blond hair back off his forehead against the breeze of a departing train, made her nearly weak with relief. People in the crowded station bustled and pushed round him. But still he looked as if he were quite alone. He raised his head.

Their eyes met and her steps slowed momentarily.

Even at this distance, she could see the difference in him. The smoky darkness under his eyes. The tension in the set of his head and shoulders, the deepening lines round nose and mouth. He was Tommy still, but somehow not quite Tommy at all. There could be only one reason for it: Deborah.

He’d seen her in Keldale. His face told Lady Helen as much. And for some reason-in spite of the year that had passed since he’d broken his engagement to Deborah, in spite of the hours that she’d spent with him since then- Lady Helen found that she couldn’t bear the thought of him talking about seeing her. She desperately wanted to avoid giving him an opportunity to do so. It was craven. She despised herself for it. And she didn’t at that moment care to reflect upon why it had suddenly become so crucial that Tommy never speak to her of Deborah again.

He appeared to have been reading her thoughts-how typical of him, really-for he gave her that brief, quirky smile of his and walked to meet them at the foot of the stairs.

“How absolutely wonderful to see you, Tommy,” she said. “I spent half the journey- when I wasn’t frantically eating every pastry that wandered by-terrified that you’d be stuck in Keldale and we’d have to hire a car and drive wildly about the moors in best Earnshaw fashion, trying to find you. Well, it’s all ended for the best, hasn’t it, and I needn’t have given in to my craving for week-old pain au chocolat in order to dull my anxiety. The food is absolutely appalling on the train, isn’t it?” She tightened her arm round Gillian protectively. It was an instinctive gesture, for, although she knew the young woman had nothing to fear from Lynley, the last twelve hours had bonded Gillian to her and now she found herself reluctant to hand the young woman over. “Gillian, this is Inspector Lynley,” she murmured.

A tentative smile touched Gillian’s lips. Then she dropped her eyes. Lynley began to extend his hand to her, but Lady Helen shook her head in warning. At that, his glance slid to the young woman’s hands. The angry red scoring that covered them was ugly but not as deep or serious as the abrasions that covered her neck, breasts, and thighs, hidden by the dress that Lady Helen had carefully selected for her to wear.

“I’ve the car just outside,” he said.

“Thank God,” Lady Helen declared. “Lead me to it this moment before my feet suffer irreparable damage from these ghastly shoes. They are fetching, aren’t they? But the agony I endure hobbling about in them simply beggars belief. I keep asking myself why I’m such a slave to fashion.” She airily dismissed the question as unanswerable. “I’m even willing to put up with five minutes of the most melancholy Tchaikovsky in your collection just to get off my feet.”

He smiled. “I’ll remember that, old duck.”

“Darling, I haven’t the slightest doubt of it.” She turned to Sergeant Havers, who had plodded wordlessly behind them since they had disembarked. “Sergeant, I need to pop into the ladies’ and undo the damage I did to my makeup by burying my face in that last pastry just before that dreadful tunnel. Will you take Gillian out to the car?”

Havers looked from Lady Helen to Lynley. “Of course,” she replied impassively.

Lady Helen watched the pair walk off before she spoke again. “I’m really not sure which one of them is the worse for wear, Tommy.”

“Thank you for last night,” he said in answer. “Was it awful for you?”

She took her eyes off the departing women. “Awful?” The terrible desolation in Jonah Clarence’s face; the sight of Gillian lying vacant-eyed, scarcely covered by a bloodied sheet, her wounds still seeping slow crimson where the self-inflicted damage was most severe; the blood on the floor and the walls of the bathroom and deep in the grout where it would never come clean; the smashed door and the brushes with bits of flesh still adhering to their horrifying metal bristles.

“I’m sorry for putting you through it,” Lynley said. “But you were the only one I could trust to manage it. I don’t know what I would have done had you not been at home when I phoned.”

“I’d only just got in. I have to admit that Jeffrey wasn’t at all pleased at the manner in which our evening ended.”

Lynley’s reaction played at the corners of his mouth and eyes, equal parts amusement and surprise. “Jeffrey Cusick? I thought you threw him over.”

She laughed lightly and took his arm. “I tried, darling Tommy. I did try. But Jeffrey is quite determined to prove that, whether I realise it or not, he and I are on the path to true love. So he was working on advancing us a bit further towards the journey’s end last night. It was romantic. Dinner in Windsor on the bank of the Thames. Champagne cocktails in the garden of the Old House. You would have been proud of me. I even remembered that Wren built it, so all these years of your seeing to my education haven’t been in vain.”

“But I hardly thought you’d be throwing it away on Jeffrey Cusick.”

“Not throwing it away at all. He’s a lovely man. Really. Besides, he was only too helpful in assisting me with my dressing.”

“I’ve no doubt of that,” Lynley remarked drily.

She laughed at his grim expression. “Not that way. Jeffrey would never take advantage. He’s far too…too…”

“Fish-like?”

“Spoken like the most petulant Oxonian, Tommy,” she declared. “But to be dreadfully honest, he is the teeniest bit like a cod. Well, what can one expect? I’ve never in my life known a Cambridge man to get caught in the throes of passion.”

“Was he wearing his Harrovian tie when I phoned?” Lynley asked. “For that matter, was he wearing anything?”

“Tommy, how vicious! But, let me think.” She tapped her cheek thoughtfully. Her eyes twinkled up at him as she pretended to consider his question at some length. “No, I’m afraid we were both fully clothed when you phoned. And after that, well, there simply wasn’t time. We rushed desperately to my wardrobe and began looking for something that would do. What do you think? Is it a success?”

Lynley eyed the beautifully tailored black suit and matching accessories. “You look like a Quaker on the path to hell,” he said soberly. “Good Lord, Helen, is that really a Bible?”

She laughed. “Doesn’t it just do?” She examined the leather volume in her hand. “Actually, it’s a collection of John Donne, given to me by darling Grandfather on my seventeenth birthday. I may actually open it someday.”

“What would you have done if she had asked you to read a few verses to her to get her through the night?”

“I can sound positively biblical when I want to, Tommy. A few thees and thous, a few lays and begets and…What is it?” He had stiffened at her words. She felt the sudden rigidity in his arm.

Lynley was looking at his car parked outside the station doors. “Where’s her husband?”

She regarded him curiously. “I don’t know. He’s vanished. I went directly in to see Gillian, and later, when I came out of the bedroom, he’d gone. I spent the night there, of course, and he never returned.”

“How did Gillian react to that?”

“I’m…” Lady Helen considered how best to answer the question. “Tommy, I’m not even certain that she’s aware that he’s gone. This sounds a little strange, I’m sure, but I think he’s ceased to exist for her. She hasn’t mentioned his name to me.”

“Has she said anything?”

“Only that she left something for Bobby.”

“The message in the newspaper, no doubt.”

Lady Helen shook her head. “No. I have the distinct impression that it was something at the house.”

Lynley nodded pensively and asked a fi nal question. “How did you talk her into coming, Helen?”

“I didn’t. She’d already made up her mind, and I credit that to Sergeant Havers, Tommy, although from the way she’s been acting, I think she believes that I performed some sort of loaves and fishes in the Clarence fl at. Do speak to her, won’t you? She’s been positively monosyllabic since I rang her this morning, and I think she’s blaming herself for everything that’s happened.”

He sighed. “That sounds just like Havers. Christ, what I don’t need is one more thing to have to deal with in this bloody case.”

Lady Helen’s eyes widened fractionally. Rarely, if ever, did he give vent to anger. “Tommy,” she said hesitantly, “while you were in Keldale, did you happen to…Is it…” She didn’t want to speak of it. She wouldn’t speak of it.

He flashed her his crooked smile. “Sorry, old duck.” He dropped his arm round her shoulders and squeezed affectionately. “Did I mention how damnably good it is to have you here?”

He hadn’t said anything to her. He hadn’t so much as acknowledged her beyond a cursory nod. But then, why should he? Now that her little ladyship was there to save the day- just as she’d managed to do last night-there was no reason for them to communicate at all.

She might have known that Lynley would use one of his mistresses rather than someone from the Yard. Wasn’t that typical of him? An ego so enormous that he had to make certain his London women would jump to his bidding in spite of his catting about in the country. Wonder if her ladyship will still jump through hoops when she finds out about Stepha, Barbara thought. And just look at her with her perfect skin, perfect posture, perfect breed-ing-as if her ancestors spent the last two hundred years throwing out the rejects, leaving them on hillsides like unacceptable Spartan babies in order to arrive at the eugenic masterpiece that was Lady Helen Clyde. But not quite good enough to keep his lordship faithful, are we, sweetheart? Barbara smiled inwardly.

She observed Lynley from the rear seat. Had another big night with little Stepha, I’ll bet. Of course he had. Since he hadn’t had to worry about how much the woman howled, he probably banged happily away at her for hours on end. And now here was her precious ladyship to be serviced tonight. Well, he could handle it. He could rise to the challenge. Then he could move right on to give Gillian a treat. No doubt that anaemic little husband of hers would be only too happy to give the reins over to a real man.

And weren’t they both handling the little bitch with kid gloves! One couldn’t really blame her ladyship for that approach. She didn’t have all the facts on Gillian Teys. But what was Lynley’s excuse? Since when did an accessory to murder get the red carpet treatment from CID?

“You’re going to find Roberta very much changed, Gillian,” he was saying.

Barbara listened to the words with incredulity. What was he doing? What was he talking about? Was he actually preparing her to see her sister when both of them knew damn well she’d seen her only three weeks ago when they’d killed William Teys?

“I understand,” Gillian responded in a very small, nearly inaudible voice.

“She’s been placed in the asylum as a temporary measure,” Lynley continued gently. “It’s a question of mental competence arising out of her admission to the crime and her unwillingness to speak.”

“How did she…Who…?” Gillian hesitated, then gave up the effort. She seemed to shrink into her seat.

“Your cousin Richard Gibson had her committed.”

“Richard?” Her voice grew even smaller.

“Yes.”

“I see.”

No one spoke. Barbara waited impatiently for Lynley to begin questioning the woman, and she couldn’t understand his obvious reluctance to do so. What was he doing? He was making the kind of solicitous conversation that one generally made with the victim of a crime, not with its perpetrator!

Furtively, Barbara examined Gillian. Good God, she was manipulative, right to the bitter end. A few minutes in the bathroom last night and she had the whole lot of them right where she wanted. How long had she been trotting out that little routine?

Her eyes moved back to Lynley. Why had he brought her back on the case today? There could be only one reason, really: to put her in her place once and for all, to humiliate her with the knowledge that even an amateur like her sweet ladyship had more expertise than Havers the pig. And then to condemn her, forever, to the street.

Well, the message was received, Inspector. Now all she longed for was a return to London and to uniform, leaving Lynley and his lady to sweep up the shards of the mess she had made.

She’d worn her hair in two long, blonde braids. That’s why she looked so young that first night in Testament House. She spoke to no one, instead taking a quiet measure of the group, deciding whether they were worthy of her trust. The decision once made, she said only her name: Helen Graham, Nell Graham.

But hadn’t he known from the fi rst that it wasn’t really her name? Perhaps the slight hesitation before her response when someone addressed her had betrayed her. Perhaps it was the wistful look in her eyes when she said it herself. Perhaps it was her tears when he fi rst entered her body and whispered Nell in the darkness. At any rate, hadn’t he always known-somewhere in his heart-that it wasn’t her name?

What had drawn him to her? At first, it was the childlike innocence with which she embraced the life at Testament House. She was so eager to learn, and then so passionately involved in the purpose of the community. After that it was her purity he so admired, the purity which allowed her to lead a new life, unaffected by personal animosities in a world where she had simply decided that such ugliness would never exist. Then it was her devotion to God-not the breast-beating, ostentatious piety of the religious reborn but a calm acceptance of a power greater than her own-that touched him. And last, it was her steadfast faith in his ability to do anything, her words of encouragement when he felt despair, her abiding love when he needed it most.

As I do now, Jonah Clarence thought.

In the last twelve hours he had looked deeply, unforgivingly, at his own behaviour and had come to see it for what it was: unremitting cowardice. He had left wife and home, running to an unknown destination, fl eeing so that he wouldn’t have to face what he was afraid to know. Yet what was there to fear when Nell-whoever she was-could be nothing more nor less than the lovely creature who stood by his side, who listened, rapt, to his words, who held him in her arms at night? There could be no dark monster in her past for him to dread. There could be only what she was and always had been.

This was the truth. He knew it. He could feel it. He believed it. And when the door to the mental hospital opened, he stood up quickly and strode across the central hall to meet his wife.

Lynley felt, rather than saw, the hesitation in Gillian’s footsteps as they entered the hospital. At first he attributed it to her understandable trepidation about seeing her sister after so many years. But then he saw that her gaze was fixed on a young man who came across the lobby in their direction. Curious, Lynley turned to Gillian to speak, only to see on her face an expression of unmitigated dread.

“Jonah,” she gasped, taking a step backwards.

“I’m sorry.” Jonah Clarence reached out as if to touch her but stopped. “Forgive me. I’m sorry, Nell.” His eyes were burnt out, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“You mustn’t call me that. Not any longer.”

He ignored her words. “I spent the night sitting on a bench in King’s Cross, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide if you could love a man who was too much of a coward to stay with his wife when she needed him most.”

She reached out, touched his arm. “Oh, Jonah,” she said. “Please. Go back to London.”

“Don’t ask that of me. It would be too easy.”

“Please. I beg you. For me.”

“Not without you. I won’t do that. Whatever you feel you must do here, I’ll be here as well.” He looked at Lynley. “May I stay with my wife?”

“It’s up to Gillian,” Lynley replied and noticed the manner in which the young man involuntarily recoiled at the name.

“If you want to stay, Jonah,” she whispered.

He smiled at her, touched her cheek lightly, and looked up from her face only when the sound of voices from the transverse passage signalled Dr. Samuels’s approach. The man carried a stack of file folders which he handed to a female colleague before swiftly crossing towards them.

He eyed the entire group, unsmiling. If he was grateful for the appearance of Roberta Teys’s sister and the possibility of progress that her presence implied, he gave no indication.

“Inspector,” he said by way of greeting. “Is a group this large absolutely necessary?”

“It is,” Lynley responded evenly and hoped the man had the good sense to take a close look at Gillian’s condition before he raised a storm of protest and threw them all out.

A pulse beat in the psychiatrist’s temple. It was obvious that he was unused to anything short of fawning courtesy and that he was caught between a desire to put Lynley summarily in his place and a wish to carry on with the planned meeting between the two sisters. His concern for Roberta won out.

“This is the sister?” Without waiting for an answer, he took Gillian’s arm and devoted his attention to her as they started down the passageway towards the locked ward. “I’ve told Roberta that you’re coming to see her,” he said quietly, his head bent to hers, “but you must prepare yourself for the fact that she may not respond to you. She probably won’t, in fact.”

“Has she…” Gillian hesitated, seemed unsure how to proceed. “Has she still said nothing?”

“Nothing at all. But these are the very early stages of therapy, Miss Teys, and-”

“Mrs. Clarence,” Jonah interjected fi rmly.

The psychiatrist stopped, swept his eyes over Jonah Clarence. A spark shot between them, suspicion and dislike.

“Mrs. Clarence,” Samuels corrected himself, his eyes steadily on her husband. “As I was saying, Mrs. Clarence, these are the earliest stages of therapy. We’ve no reason to doubt that your sister will someday make a full recovery.”

The use of the modifier was not lost on Gillian. “Someday?” Her arm encircled her waist in a gesture very like her mother’s.

The psychiatrist appeared to be evaluating her reaction. He answered in a way that indicated that her single-word response had communicated far more than she realised.

“Yes, Roberta is very ill.” He put his hand on her elbow and guided her through the door in the panelling.

They walked through the locked ward, the only noise among them the muffled sounds of their footsteps on the carpeting and the occasional cry of a patient from behind the closed doors. Near the end of the corridor, a narrow door was recessed into the wall, and Samuels stopped before it, opening it and switching on the light to reveal a small, cramped room. He motioned them inside.

“You’re going to find yourselves crowded in here,” he warned, his tone of voice indicating how little he regretted the fact.

It was a narrow rectangle, no larger than a good-sized broom closet, which in fact it once had been. One wall was completely covered by a large mirror, two speakers hung at either end, and a table and chairs were set up in the middle. It was claustrophobic and pungent with the smell of floor wax and disinfectant.

“This is fine,” Lynley said.

Samuels nodded. “When I fetch Roberta, I shall switch these lights out, and you’ll be able to see through the two-way mirror into the next room. The speakers will allow you to hear what’s being said. Roberta will see only the mirror, but I’ve told her that you will be present behind it. We couldn’t have her in the room otherwise, you understand.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Fine.” He smiled at them grimly as if he sensed their apprehension and was glad to see that they-like himself-were not anticipating that the upcoming interview would be a diverting lark. “I’ll be in the next room with Gillian and Roberta.”

“Is that necessary?” Gillian asked hesitantly.

“Considering the circumstances, yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“The circumstances?”

“The murder, Mrs. Clarence.” Samuels surveyed them all one last time and then buried his hands deeply in the pockets of his trousers. His eyes were on Lynley. “Shall we deal in legalities?” he asked brusquely.

“That isn’t necessary,” Lynley said. “I’m well aware of them.”

“You know that nothing she says-”

“I know,” Lynley repeated.

He nodded sharply. “Then I’ll fetch her.” He spun smartly on one heel, switched out the lights, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

The lights from the room beyond the mirror gave them some illumination, but their close little cell was alive with shadows. They seated themselves on the unforgiving wooden chairs and waited: Gillian with her legs straight out in front of her, staring passionately down at the scarred tips of her fingers; Jonah with his chair next to hers, cradling its wooden back protectively; Sergeant Havers slumped down, brooding on the darkest corner of the room; Lady Helen next to Lynley, observing the unspoken communication between husband and wife; and Lynley himself, lost in deep contemplation from which he was roused by the touch of Lady Helen’s hand squeezing his own.

Bless her, he thought, returning the pressure. She knew. She always knew. He smiled at her, so glad that she was with him with her clear-eyed sanity in a world that would shortly go mad.

Roberta was very much as she had been. She entered the room between two white-clad nurses, dressed as she had been dressed before: in the too-short skirt, the ill-fitting blouse, the flipflopping slippers that barely sufficed to give her feet protection. She had, however, been bathed in anticipation of the interview, and her thick hair was clean and damp, pulled back and fastened at her neck with a piece of scarlet yarn, an incongruous note of colour in the otherwise monochromatic room. The room itself was inoffensive and barren, devoid of decoration save for a trio of chairs and a waist-high metal cabinet. Nothing hung on the walls. There was no distraction, no escape.

“Oh, Bobby,” Gillian murmured when she saw her sister through the glass.

“There are three chairs here in the room, as you can see, Roberta.” Samuels’s voice came to them without distortion over the speakers. “In a moment I’m going to ask your sister to join us. Do you remember your sister Gillian, Roberta?”

The girl, seated, began to rock. She gave no reply. The two nurses left the room.

“Gillian’s come up from London. Before I fetch her, however, I’d like you to look round the room and accustom yourself to it. We’ve never met in here before, have we?”

The girl’s dull eyes remained where they had been, fixed on a point on the opposite wall. Her arms hung, inanimate, at her sides, lifeless, pulpy masses of fat and skin. Samuels, undisturbed by her silence, let it continue while he placidly watched the girl. Two interminable minutes dragged by in this way before he got to his feet.

“I shall fetch Gillian now, Roberta. I’m going to be in the room while you meet with her. You’re quite safe.”

The last declaration seemed entirely unnecessary, for if the hulking girl felt fear-felt anything at all-she gave no sign.

In the observation room, Gillian got to her feet. It was a hesitant movement, unnatural, as if she were being propelled upward and forward by a force other than her own free will.

“Darling, you know you don’t have to go in there if you’re afraid,” her husband said.

She did not reply but rather, with the back of her hand upon which the heavy scoring from the metal brushes stood out like cutaneous veins, she stroked his cheek. She might have been saying goodbye to him.

“Ready?” Samuels asked when he opened the door. His sharp glance made a rapid assessment of Gillian, cataloguing her potential weaknesses and strengths. When she nodded, he went on crisply. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be in there and several orderlies are within calling distance should she need to be quickly subdued.”

“You act as if you believe that Bobby could really hurt someone,” Gillian said and preceded him to the next room without waiting for a response.

The others watched, waiting for a reaction from Roberta when the door opened and her sister entered. There was none. The big square body continued to rock.

Gillian hesitated, her hand on the door. “Bobby,” she said clearly. Her tone was quiet, but matter-of-fact, the way a parent might speak to a recalcitrant child. Receiving no response, the young woman took one of the three chairs and placed it in front of her sister, directly in her line of vision. She sat down. Roberta gazed through her to the spot on the wall. Gillian looked towards the psychiatrist, who had pulled his chair to one side, out of Roberta’s vision. “What should I-”

“Talk about yourself. She can hear you.”

Gillian fingered the material of her dress. She dragged her eyes up to her sister’s face. “I’ve come up from London to see you, Bobby,” she began. Her voice quavered, but as she proceeded, it gathered strength. “That’s where I live now. With my husband. I was married last November.” She looked at Samuels, who nodded encouragingly. “You’re going to think it’s so funny, but I married a minister. It’s hard to believe that a girl with such a strong Catholic background would marry a minister, isn’t it? What would Papa ever say if he knew?”

The plain face offered neither acknowledgment nor interest. Gillian might have been speaking to the wall. She licked her dry lips and stumbled on. “We have a flat in Islington. It’s not a very large flat, but you’d like it. Remember how I loved plants? Well, I’ve lots in the flat because the kitchen window gets just the right kind of sun. Remember how I could never get plants to grow in the farmhouse? It was too dark.”

The rocking continued. The chair on which Roberta sat groaned with her weight.

“I have a job, as well. I work at a place called Testament House. You know that place, don’t you? It’s where runaways go to live sometimes. I do all sorts of work there, but I like counselling the kids the best. They say I’m easy to talk to.” She paused. “Bobby, won’t you talk to me?”

The girl’s breathing sounded drugged, her heavy head hung to one side. She might have been asleep.

“I like London. I never thought I would, but I do. I expect it’s because that’s where my dreams are. I…I’d like to have a baby. That’s one of my dreams. And I’d…I think I’d like to write a book. There are all sorts of stories inside me, and I want to write them down. Like the Brontës. Remember how we read the Brontës? They had dreams as well, didn’t they? I think it’s important to have dreams.”

“It’s not going to work,” Jonah Clarence said brusquely. The moment his wife had left the room, he had seen the trap, had understood that her entry into her sister’s presence was a return to a past in which he had played no part, from which he could not save her. “How long does she have to stay in there?”

“As long as she wants.” Lynley’s voice was cool. “It’s in Gillian’s hands.”

“But anything can happen. Doesn’t she understand that?” Jonah wanted to jump up, fling open the door, and drag his wife away. It was as if her mere presence in the room- trapped with the horrible, whale-like creature that was her sister-were enough to contaminate and destroy her forever. “Nell!” he said fi ercely.

“I want to talk to you about the night I left, Bobby,” Gillian went on, her eyes on her sister’s face, waiting for the slightest fl icker that would indicate comprehension and recognition, that would allow her words to stop. “I don’t know if you remember it. It was the night after my sixteenth birthday. I…” It was too much. She couldn’t. She fought onward. “I stole money from Papa. Did he tell you that? I knew where he kept it, the extra money for the house, so I took it. It was wrong, I know that, but I…I needed to leave. I needed to go away for a while. You know that, don’t you?” And then again, seeking reassurance, “Don’t you?”

Was the rocking faster now, or was it so only in the imagination of the watchers?

“I went to York. It took me all night. I walked and hitchhiked. I just had that rucksack, you know the one I used to carry my school books in, so I only had one change of clothes with me. I don’t know what I was thinking about, running away like that. It seems crazy now, doesn’t it?” Gillian smiled briefly at her sister. She could feel her heart hammering. It was becoming quite diffi cult to breathe. “I got to York at dawn. I’ll never forget the sight of the morning light hitting the Minster. It was beautiful. I wanted to stay there forever.” She stopped, put her hands firmly into her lap. The deep scratches showed. It couldn’t be helped. “I stayed in York that entire day. I was so frightened, Bobby. I’d never even been away from home for a night by myself, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on to London. I thought it might be easier if I went back to the farm. But I…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“What’s the point of this?” Jonah Clarence demanded. “How is all this supposed to help Roberta?”

Wary, Lynley glanced at him, but the man settled himself again. His face was rigid, every muscle tight.

“So I caught the train that night. There were so many stops, and at every one of them, I thought that I would be questioned. I thought that Papa might have sent the police after me, or come after me himself. But nothing happened. Until I got to King’s Cross.”

“You don’t need to tell her about the pimp,” Jonah whispered. “What’s the point?”

“There was a nice man at King’s Cross who bought me something to eat. I was so grateful to him. He was such a gentleman, I thought. But while I was eating and he was telling me about a house he had where I could live, another man came into the cafeteria. He saw us. He came up and said, ‘She’s coming with me.’ I thought he was a policeman, that he would make me go home again. I started to cry. I hung on to my friend. But he shook me off and ran out of the station.” She paused, caught in the memory of that night. “This new man was very different. His clothes were old, a bit shabby. But his voice was kind. He said his name was George Clarence, that he was a minister, and that the other man had wanted to take me to Soho to…to take me to Soho,” she repeated firmly. “He said he had a house in Camden Town where I could stay.”

Jonah remembered it all so vividly: the ancient rucksack, the frightened girl, the scuffed shoes and tattered jeans she wore. He remembered his father’s arrival and the conversation between his parents. The words “pimp from Soho…didn’t even understand… looks like she hasn’t slept at all…” echoed in his mind. He remembered watching her from the breakfast table where he’d been dividing his time between scrambled eggs and cramming for a literature test. She wouldn’t look at anyone. Not then.

“Mr. Clarence was very good to me, Bobby. I was like part of his family. I…I married his son Jonah. You’d love Jonah. He’s so gentle. So good. When I’m with him, I feel as if nothing could ever…nothing ever again,” she concluded.

It was enough. It was what she had come to do. Gillian looked at the psychiatrist beseechingly, waiting for direction from him, for his nod of dismissal. He merely watched her from behind the protection of his spectacles. They winked in the light. His face told her nothing, but his eyes were very kind.

“There. That’s it. It’s done nothing,” Jonah concluded decisively. “You’ve brought her up here to this all for nothing. I’m taking her home.” He began to get to his feet.

“Sit down,” Lynley said, his voice making it clear that the other man had no choice in the matter.

“Bobby, talk to me,” Gillian begged. “They say you killed Papa. But I know that you couldn’t have. You didn’t look like…There was no reason. I know it. Tell me there was no reason. He took us to church, he read to us, he made up games we could play. Bobby, you didn’t kill him, did you?”

“It’s important to you that I didn’t kill him, isn’t it?” Dr. Samuels said quietly. His voice was like a feather floating gently in the air between them.

“Yes,” Gillian responded immediately, although her eyes were on her sister. “I put the key under your pillow, Bobby. You were awake! I talked to you! I said ‘Use it tomorrow’ and you understood. Don’t tell me you didn’t understand. I know you did.”

“I was too young. I didn’t understand,” the doctor said.

“You had to understand! I told you I’d put a message in the Guardian, that it would say Nell Graham, remember? We loved that book, didn’t we? She was so brave and strong. It was the way we both wanted to be.”

“But I wasn’t strong, was I?” the doctor queried.

“You were! You didn’t look like…You were supposed to come to Harrogate! The message told you to come to Harrogate, Bobby! You were sixteen. You could have come!”

“I wasn’t like you at sixteen, Gillian. How could I have been?” The psychiatrist hadn’t moved in his chair. His eyes travelled between the two sisters, waiting for a sign, reading the underlying messages in body movements, posture, and tone of voice.

“You didn’t have to be! You weren’t supposed to be! All you had to do was come to Harrogate. Not to London, just to Harrogate. I would have taken you from there. But when you didn’t come, I thought-I believed-that you were all right. That nothing…that you were fine. You weren’t like Mummy. You were fi ne.”

“Like Mummy?”

“Yes, like Mummy. I was like her. Just exactly like. I could see it in the pictures. But you weren’t. So that made you fi ne.”

“What did it mean, to be like Mummy?” the doctor asked.

Gillian stiffened. Her mouth formed the single word no three times in rapid succession. It was too much to bear. She couldn’t go on.

“Was Bobby like Mummy in spite of what you believed?”

No!

“Don’t answer him, Nell,” Jonah Clarence muttered. “You don’t have to answer him. You’re not the patient here.”

Gillian looked at her hands. She felt the burden of guilt heavy upon her shoulders. The sound of her sister’s ceaseless rocking fi lled the air, the sound of tortured breathing, the beating of her own heart. She felt that she couldn’t go on. She knew she couldn’t turn back.

“You know why I left, don’t you?” she said hollowly. “It was because of the present on my birthday, the special present, the one…” Her hand went to her eyes. It shook. She controlled herself. “You must tell them the truth! You must tell them what happened! You can’t let them lock you away for the rest of your life!”

Silence. She couldn’t. It was in the past. It had all happened to someone else. Besides, the little eight-year-old who had followed her round the farm, who had watched her every movement with eyes shining with adoration, was dead. This gross, obscene creature before her was not Roberta. There was no need to go further. Roberta was gone.

Gillian lifted her head. Roberta’s eyes has shifted. They had moved to her, and in that movement Gillian saw that she had indeed broken through where the psychiatrist had failed these last three weeks. But there was no triumph in that knowledge. There was only condemnation. There was only facing, one last time, the immutable past.

“I didn’t understand,” Gillian said brokenly. “I was only four or five years old. You weren’t even born then. He said it was special. A kind of friendship fathers always had with their daughters. Like Lot.”

“Oh no,” Jonah whispered.

“Did he read the Bible to you, Bobby? He read it to me. He came in at night and sat on my bed and read the Bible to me. And as he read it-”

“No, no, no!”

“-his hand would fi nd me underneath the covers. ‘Do you like that, Gilly?’ he would ask me. ‘Does it make you happy? It makes Papa very happy. It’s so nice. So soft. Do you like it, Gilly?’”

Jonah pounded his right fist against his forehead. With his left arm he hugged himself tightly across his chest up to his shoulder. “Please,” he moaned.

“I didn’t know, Bobby. I didn’t understand. I was only five years old and then it was dark in the room. ‘Turn over,’ he would say, ‘Papa will rub your back. Do you like that? Where do you like it best? Here, Gilly? Is it special here?’ And then he’d take my hand. ‘Papa likes it there, Gilly. Rub Papa there.’”

“Where was Mummy?” the doctor asked.

“Mummy was asleep. Or in her room. Or reading. But it really didn’t matter because this was special. This was something fathers share with daughters. Mummy mustn’t know. Mummy wouldn’t understand. She didn’t read the Bible with us so she wouldn’t understand. And then she left. I was eight years old.”

“And then you were alone.”

Gillian shook her head numbly. Her eyes were wide, tearless. “Oh no,” she said in a small, torn voice. “I was Mummy then.”

At her words, a cry escaped Jonah Clarence’s lips. Lady Helen looked at Lynley immediately and covered his hand with her own. It turned, grasping her fi ngers tightly.

“Papa set up all her pictures in the sitting room so I could see her every day. ‘Mummy’s gone,’ he said and made me look at them all so I could see how pretty she was and how much I had sinned in being born in the first place to drive her away. ‘Mummy knew how much Papa loved you, Gilly, so she left. You must be Mummy to me now.’ I didn’t know what he meant. So he showed me. He read the Bible. He prayed. And he showed me. But I was too little to be a proper Mummy to him. So he…I did other things. He taught me. And I…was a very good student.”

“You wanted to please him. He was your father. He was all you had.”

“I wanted him to love me. He said he loved me when I…when we…‘Papa loves it in your mouth, Gilly.’ And afterwards we prayed. We always prayed. I thought God would forgive me for making Mummy run away if I became a good enough Mummy to Papa. But God never forgave me. He didn’t exist.”

Jonah’s head sank to the table, cradled in his arms, and he began to weep.

Gillian finally looked at her sister again. Roberta’s eyes were on her, although her face remained without expression. The rocking had stopped.

“So I did things, Bobby, things I didn’t understand because Mummy was gone and I needed…I wanted my Mummy again. And I thought the only way to get Mummy back was to be her myself.”

“Is that what you did when you were sixteen?” Dr. Samuels asked softly.

“He came to my room. It was late. He said it was time to become Lot’s daughter, the real way, the way the Bible said, and he took off his clothes.”

“He’d never done that before?”

“Never all his clothes. Not like that. I thought he wanted…what I usually…But he didn’t. He…spread my legs and…‘You’re…I can’t breathe, Papa. You’re too heavy. Please, don’t. I’m afraid. Oh it hurts, it hurts!’”

Her husband swayed on his feet, scraping his chair back viciously on the linoleum fl oor. He staggered to the window. “It never happened!” he cried against it. “It couldn’t! It didn’t! You’re my wife!”

“But he put his hand over my mouth. He said, ‘We can’t wake Bobby, darling. Papa loves you best. Let Papa show you, Gilly. Let Papa inside. Like Mummy. Like a real Mummy. Let Papa inside.’ And it hurt. And it hurt. And I hated him.”

“No!” Jonah screamed. He threw open the door. It crashed against the wall. He ran from the room.

Then Gillian began to cry. “I was just a shell. I wasn’t a person. What did it matter what he did to me? I became what he wanted, what anyone wanted. That’s how I lived. Jonah, that’s how I lived!”

“Pleasing everyone?” the doctor asked.

“People love looking into mirrors. So that’s what I was. That’s what he made me. Oh God, I hated him. I hated him!” She buried her face in her hands and wept as the grief overcame her, tortured tears held in check for eleven long years. The others sat motionless, listening to her weeping. After long, painful minutes she raised her ravaged face to her sister’s. “Don’t let him kill you, Bobby. Don’t let him do it. For God’s sake, tell them the truth!”

There was no response. There was absolutely nothing. Only the unbearable sound of Gillian’s personal torment. Roberta was motionless. She might have been deaf.

“Tommy,” Lady Helen whispered. “I can’t bear this. She’s done it for nothing.”

Lynley stared into the next room. His head was pounding, his throat ached, his eyes burned. He wanted to find William Teys, fi nd him alive, and tear the man savagely limb from limb. He had never known such rage, such sickness. He felt Gillian’s anguish overcome him like a disease.

But her weeping had lessened. She was getting to her feet. She was walking unevenly, numbly, to the door. Her hand reached for the knob. She turned it, pulled it open. Her presence had been useless after all. It was over.

“Did he make you have the naked parade, Gilly?” Roberta asked.