“William?”

“You can imagine how I felt when Russell wanted to call him William. It’s his father’s name. What could I do but agree?”

“And you’ve been here, then, for nineteen years?”

“Yes,” she replied. “First in a small fl at in the city centre, then a row house near Bishopthorpe Road, and last year we bought this house. We’d…saved for so long. Russell worked two jobs and I’ve my job at the museum as well. We’ve been,” she blinked back her fi rst tears, “so happy. God, so happy. Until now. You’ve come for me, haven’t you? Or have you brought me word?”

“No one’s told you? You haven’t read about it?”

“Read about it? Has something…He isn’t…” Tessa looked from Lynley to Havers. It was obvious that she saw something in their faces, for her own face flashed fear before she went on. “The night Russell left, he was terribly angry. I thought that if only I said nothing, did nothing, it would work itself out. He’d come home and-”

Lynley suddenly understood that they were talking about two entirely different things. “Mrs. Mowrey,” he said, “do you not know about your husband?”

Her eyes widened, growing dark with apprehension. “Russell,” she whispered. “He left that Saturday the investigator found me. Three weeks ago. He’s not been home since.”

“Mrs. Mowrey,” Lynley said carefully, “William Teys was murdered three weeks ago. On Saturday night between ten and midnight. Your daughter Roberta was charged with the crime.”

If they had thought she might faint, they were wrong. She stared at them without speaking for nearly a minute, then turned back to the window. “Rebecca will be home soon,” she said tonelessly. “She comes home for lunch. She’ll ask about her father. She does every day. She knows something’s wrong, but I’ve managed to keep most of it from her.” A trembling hand touched her cheek. “I know Russell’s gone to London. I haven’t phoned his family because, of course, I didn’t want them to know anything was wrong. But I know he’s gone to them in London. I know.”

“Do you have a photograph of your husband?” Lynley asked. “His family’s London address?”

She swung on him. “He wouldn’t!” she cried passionately. “This is a man who has never lifted his hand to strike one of his own children! He was angry-yes, I’ve said that- but his anger was with me, not with William! He wouldn’t have gone, he couldn’t have-” She began to cry, horribly, shedding what were probably her first tears in three agonising weeks. Pressing her forehead against the window glass, she wept bitterly, as if she would never be consoled.

Havers got to her feet and left the room. Good God, where is she going? Lynley wondered, half-expecting a repeat of her disappearing act in the pub last night. But she returned moments later with a pitcher of orange juice and a glass.

“Thank you, Barbara,” he said.

She nodded, shot him a diffi dent smile, and poured the woman a glass of the liquid.

Tessa Mowrey took it but rather than drink, she clutched it as if it were a talisman. “Rebecca mustn’t see me like this. I’ve got to pull myself together. Must be stronger than this.” She saw the glass in her hand, took a sip, and grimaced. “I can’t abide tinned orange juice. Why do I have it in the house? Oh, Russell says that it’s not that bad. I suppose it isn’t, really.” When she turned back to Lynley, she looked, he saw, every single day of her forty-three years. “He did not kill William.”

“That’s what everyone in Keldale says of Roberta.”

She flinched. “I don’t think of her as my daughter. I’m sorry. I never knew her.”

“She’s been placed in a mental asylum, Mrs. Mowrey. When William was found, she claimed to have killed him.”

“Then if she’s admitted to the crime, why have you come to see me? If she says she killed William then certainly Russell…” Her voice drifted off. It was as if she had suddenly heard her own words and realised how eager she was to trade daughter for husband.

He could hardly blame her. Lynley thought of the barn stall, the ornate Bible, the photograph albums, the cool silence of the melancholy house. “Did you never see Gillian again?” he asked abruptly, waiting for a sign, the smallest indication that Tessa knew of Gillian’s disappearance. There was none.

“Never.”

“She never contacted you in any way?”

“Of course not. Even if she’d wanted to, William wouldn’t have allowed it, I’m sure.”

Probably not, thought Lynley. But once she ran off, once she cut the ties with her father, why had she not sought her mother then?

“Religious fanatic,” Havers declared decisively. She shoved her hair back behind her ears and gave her attention to the photograph she held. “But this one’s not half bad. She did okay on her second time round. Too bad she didn’t bother with a divorce.” Russell Mowrey smiled up at her from the photograph Tessa had given them. He was a nice-looking man in a three-piece suit, wife on his arm. Easter Sunday. Havers put it in the manila folder and gave herself back to the passing scenery. “At least we know why Gillian left.”

“Because of the father’s religion?”

“That’s the way I see it,” Havers replied. “Obviously, a combination of that and the second baby. There she’d been, for eight years the centre of her father’s life-Mum doesn’t appear to have counted for much-when all of a sudden a new baby arrives. It’s supposed to be Mummy’s, but Dad doesn’t trust Mummy to do right by her children, so he takes this one over as well. Mummy leaves and Gillian follows.”

“Not exactly, Havers. She waited eight years to go wherever she went.”

“Well, you can’t expect her to have run off when she was eight years old! She bided her time, probably hating little Roberta every second for stealing her dad.”

“That doesn’t make sense. First you say that Gillian left because she couldn’t abide her father’s religious fanaticism. Then you say she left because she’d lost his love to Roberta. Now what is it? She either loves him and wants to be his favourite again, or she can’t abide his religious devotion and feels she has to escape. You can’t have it both ways.”

“It’s not black and white!” Havers protested loudly. “These things never are!”

Lynley glanced at her, amazed by the affront in her voice. Her stubby features looked like paste. “Barbara-”

“I’m sorry! Dammit! I’m doing it all over again! Why do I bother? I’m no good at this. I always do it. I never-”

“Barbara,” he interrupted fi rmly.

She stared straight ahead. “Yes, sir?”

“We’re discussing the case, not arguing before a bar of justice. It’s fine to have an opinion. I want you to, in fact. I’ve always found it extremely helpful to talk a case over with someone.” But it was more than that, really. It was arguing, laughing, hearing the sweet voice say Oh, you think you’re right, Tommy, but I shall prove you wrong! He felt loneliness settle on him like a cold, wet shroud.

Havers moved restlessly in her seat. With no music playing, the tension was screaming to be heard.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said at last. “I get into the fray and forget what I’m doing.”

“I understand.” He let the matter drop, his eyes following the meandering pattern that the stone walls made on the hillside across the dale from the road on which they travelled.

He thought about Tessa. He knew that he was trying to understand her and that he was ill-equipped to do so. Nothing in his life of Cornwall and Howenstow, of Oxford and Belgravia, even of Scotland Yard, explained the paucity of experience of life on a remote farm that would drive a girl of sixteen to believe that her only future lay in immediate marriage. And yet surely that was the foundation of what had happened. No romantic interpretation of the facts at hand-no reflections upon Heathcliff, no matter how apt-could hide the real explanation. The drudgery and sheer ennui of those weeks when she had been forced to stay home and help out had made an otherwise simple Yorkshire farmer look arresting by comparison. Thus, she merely moved from one trap into another. Married at sixteen, a mother before her seventeenth birthday. Wouldn’t any woman have wanted to escape such a life? Yet, if that was the case, why marry again in such a hurry?