It appeared, however, that a plan of attack would be unnecessary, for at that moment the back door was jerked open angrily. Olivia Odell took one look at her daughter-her second only that day-and burst into tears.

“I can’t believe you would do it! I just can’t believe it! Get in the house and wash your hair!” Her voice rose higher with each word, climbing the peak to hysteria.

“But Dougal-”

“Take Dougal with you,” the woman said, weeping. “But do as I say!” The duck was scooped into nine-year-old arms and the two offenders disappeared. Olivia tugged a tissue from the pocket of her cardigan, blew her nose, and smiled shakily at the two adults. “What a dreadful scene,” she said. But as she spoke she began to cry again and walked into the kitchen, leaving them standing at the open back door. She stumbled to the table and buried her face in her hands.

Lynley and Havers looked at each other and, decision made, entered the house.

Unlike Gembler Farm, there was not the slightest doubt that this house was lived in. The kitchen was in total disarray: the stove top cluttered with pots and pans, appliances gaping open to be cleaned, flowers waiting to be put into water, dishes piled in the sink. The floor was sticky under their feet, the walls badly needed paint, and the entire room reeked with the charcoal bouquet of burnt toast. The offending source of this odour was lying on a plate, a sodden black lump that looked as if it has been hastily extinguished by a cup of tea.

Beyond the kitchen, what little they could see of the sitting room indicated that its condition was much the same. Housekeeping was certainly not Olivia Odell’s strong point. Neither was child rearing, if the morning’s confrontation were any indication.

“She’s out of my control!” Olivia wept. “Nine years old and she’s out of my control!” She tore the tissue to shreds, looked dazedly about for another, and, seeing none, cried harder still.

Lynley removed a handkerchief from his pocket. “Take this,” he offered.

“Ta,” she responded. “Oh my God, what a morning!” She blew her nose, dried her eyes, ran her fingers through her brown hair, and looked at her reflection in the toaster. She moaned when she saw herself, and her bloodshot brown eyes filled again but didn’t spill over. “I look fifty years old. Wouldn’t Paul have laughed!” And then disjointedly, “She wants to look like the Princess of Wales.”

“So she showed us,” Lynley responded impassively. He drew a chair out from the table, picked the newspapers off of it, and sat down. After a pause, Havers did likewise.

“Why?” Olivia asked, directing the question more to the ceiling than to her companions. “What have I done that my daughter believes the key to happiness is to look exactly like the Princess of Wales?” She squeezed her fingers into her forehead. “William would have known what to do. What a mess I am without him.”

Wishing to avoid a fresh onslaught of tears, Lynley spoke quickly to divert her. “Little girls always have someone they admire, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Olivia said. “Oh yes, how true that is.” She’d begun twisting his handkerchief into an appalling little rope. Lynley winced as he saw it mangled. “But I never seem to have the right thing to say to the child. Everything I try seems to end in hysterics. William always knew what to say and do. Whenever he was here, everything went smoothly. But the moment he was gone, we’d begin to fi ght like cats and dogs! And now he’s really gone! What’s to become of us?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s her hair. She hates having red hair. She’s hated it ever since she learned to speak. I can’t understand it. Why is a nineyear-old girl so damned passionate about her hair!”

“Redheads,” Lynley noted, “are generally passionate about everything.”

“Oh, that’s it! That’s it! Stepha’s quite the same. You’d think Bridie was her clone, not her niece.” She drew in a breath and sat up in her chair. Footsteps came running down the hall. “Lord, give me strength,” Olivia murmured.

Bridie entered the room, a towel wrapped precariously round her head, her pullover- which she hadn’t bothered to remove in her haste to obey her mother’s instructions-thoroughly soaked round her shoulders and down most of her back. She was followed by her duck, who walked like a seaman, with a peculiar rolling gait.

“He’s crippled,” Bridie announced, noticing Lynley’s inspection of the fowl. “When he swims, he jus’ goes round in a big circle, so I don’t let him swim unless I’m there. We took him swimming lots last summer, though. In the river. We made a dam just outside and he had ever so much fun. He’d plunk himself in the water and go round and round. Huh, Dougal?” The mallard blinked his agreement and searched on the floor for something to eat.

“Here, let me see you, MacBride,” her mother said. The daughter came forward, the towel was removed, the damage was surveyed. Olivia’s eyes welled with tears again above her daughter’s head. She bit her lip.

“Looks like it just needs a bit of a trim,” Lynley interposed hastily. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

“A trim ought to do it,” Havers agreed.

“I think the thing to do, Bridie, is to give up on the Princess of Wales idea. Now,” Lynley added as the child’s bottom lip trembled, “you’ve got to remember that your hair is curly. Hers is quite straight. And when Sinji told you that she couldn’t make it go in that style, she was telling you the truth.”

“But she’s so pretty,” Bridie protested. Tears threatened once again.

“She is. Absolutely. But it would be a fairly strange world if every woman were exactly like her, wouldn’t it? Believe me, there are many women who are very pretty and look nothing like her.”

“There are?” Bridie gave a longing glance to the crumpled photograph again. A large smear of grease was sitting on the Princess’s nose.

“You can believe the inspector when he says that, Bridie,” Havers added, and her tone implied the rest: He’s a bit of an expert on the subject.

Bridie looked from woman to man, sensing undercurrents that she didn’t understand. “Well,” she announced, “I s’pose I got to feed Dougal.”

The duck, at least, looked as if he approved.

The Odell sitting room was only a slight improvement over the kitchen. It was hard to believe that one woman and one child could produce such disarray. Clothes lay piled over chairs as if mother and daughter were in the process of moving; knickknacks perched in unlikely positions on the edges of tables and window sills; an ironing board was set up in what looked like permanent residence; an upright piano spat sheet music onto the fl oor. It was havoc, with dust so thick that it gave the air fl avour.

Olivia appeared to be unaware of the mess as she absently gestured them towards seats, but she looked about as she took her own and sighed in unembarrassed resignation. “It’s usually not this bad. I’ve been…it’s been…” She cleared her throat and shook her head as if to get her thoughts in order. Once again the fingers went through the wispy, windblown-looking hair. It was a girlish gesture, oddly incongruous in a woman who so plainly was no longer a girl. She had paper-fi ne skin and delicate features, but the ageing process was not dealing with her kindly. She was lined and, although thin, her flesh lacked resiliency, as if she had lost too much weight too quickly. Bones jutted from her cheeks and wrists.

“You know,” she said suddenly, “when Paul died, it wasn’t this bad. I can’t come to grips with what’s happened to me over William.”

“The suddenness,” Lynley offered. “The shock.”

She nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. My husband Paul was ill for several years. I had time to prepare myself. And Bridie, of course, was too young to understand. But William…” She made an effort at control, fixing her eyes on the wall, sitting up tall. “William was such a presence in our lives, such a strength. I think we both started to depend on him and then he was gone. But it’s selfish of me to be reacting like this. How can I be so awful when there’s Bobba to consider?”