“Never?”

“Well…not after he was twelve years old. If Mummy’d married William I wouldn’t’ve had to go to school. Bobba didn’t go.”

“Ever?”

Bridie adjusted her information. “William never made her go after she was sixteen. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have t’ wait till I’m sixteen. Mummy’ll make me go. She wants me to go to university, but I don’t want to.”

“What would you rather do?”

“Take care of Dougal.”

“Ah. Not that he doesn’t look like the picture of complete health, Bridie, but ducks don’t live forever. It’s always nice to have something to fall back on.”

“I can always help Aunt Stepha.”

“At the lodge?”

She nodded. Dougal had finished his breakfast and was now beak deep into the water pan. “I tell Mummy that, but it’s no use. ‘I don’t want you spending your life at that lodge.’” She did a disconcertingly fair imitation of Olivia Odell’s distracted voice. She shook her head darkly. “If William and Mummy had married, it would all be different. I could leave school and do all my learning at home. William was awfully clever. He could have taught me. He would have. I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

“’Cause he always would read to me and Dougal.” The duck, hearing his name, waddled contentedly back to them in his peculiar, lopsided fashion. “Mostly Bible stuff, though.” Bridie polished one shoe on the back of her sock. “I don’t much like the Bible. Old Testament especially. William said it was because I didn’t understand it, and he told Mummy I ought to have religious ’structions. He was real nice and explained stories to me, but I didn’t understand ’em very well. It’s mostly ’cause no one ever got in trouble for their lies.”

“How’s that?” Lynley sought fruitlessly through his own limited religious instruction for successful biblical liars.

“Everybody was always lying with other people. Least, that’s what the stories said. And no one ever got told it was wrong.”

“Ah. Yes. Lying.” Lynley studied the mallard, who was examining his shoelaces with a knowing beak. “Well, things are a bit symbolic in the Bible,” he said breezily. “What else did you read?”

“Nothing. Just the Bible. I think that’s all William and Bobba ever read. I tried to like it, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell William that ’cause he was trying to be nice, and I didn’t want to be rude. I think he was trying to get to know me,” she added wisely. “’Cause if he married Mummy, I’d be round all the time.”

“Did you want him to marry your mummy?”

She scooped the bird up and placed it on the step between them. With a level, dispassionate look at Lynley, Dougal began grooming his shining feathers.

“Daddy read to me,” Bridie said in answer. Her voice was a shade lower and her concentration on her shoe tops was total. “And then he went away.”

“Went away?” Lynley wondered if this was a euphemism for his death.

“He went away one day.” Bridie rested her cheek on her knee, pulled the bird to her side, and stared at the river. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” She turned and kissed the duck’s smooth head. He pecked at her cheek in return. “I would’ve said goodbye,” she whispered.

“Would you use the word angel or sunshine to describe someone who drank, swore, and ran around like mad?” Lynley asked.

Sergeant Havers looked up from her morning eggs, stirred sugar into her coffee, and thought about it. “I suppose it depends on your definition of rain, doesn’t it?”

He smiled. “I suppose so.” He pushed his plate away from him and regarded Havers thoughtfully. She wasn’t looking half bad this morning: there was a hint of colour on her eyelids, cheeks, and lips, and her hair had a noticeable curl to it. Even her clothes had distinctly improved, for she wore a brown tweed skirt and matching pullover which, even if they weren’t exactly the best colour for her skin tone, at least were a marked improvement over yesterday’s ghastly blue suit.

“Why the question?” she asked.

“Stepha described Gillian as wild. A drinker.”

“Who ran around like mad.”

“Yes. But Father Hart said she was sunshine.”

“That is peculiar.”

“He said Teys was devastated when she ran away.”

Havers knotted her thick eyebrows and, without thinking about how the action redefined their relationship, poured Lynley a second cup of coffee. “Well, that does explain why her photos are gone, doesn’t it? He’d devoted his life to his children and look at his reward for the effort. One of the two vanishes into the night.”

The last four words struck a chord in Lynley. He rummaged through the file on the table between them and brought out the picture of Russell Mowrey that Tessa had given them.

“I’d like you to take this round the village today,” he said.

Havers took the photograph, but her expression was quizzical. “But you said he was in London.”

“Now, yes. Not necessarily three weeks ago. If Mowrey was here then, he would have had to ask someone for directions to the farm. Someone would have had to see him. Concentrate on the high and the patrons of the pubs. You might go to the hall as well. If no one’s seen him-”

“We’re back to Tessa, then,” she fi nished.

“Or someone else with a motive. There seem to be several.”

Madeline Gibson answered the door to Lynley’s knock. He’d climbed his way over two quarrelling children in the war-torn front garden, manoeuvred past a broken tricycle and a dismembered doll, and avoided a plate of congealing fried eggs on the front steps. She surveyed all this with a bored glance and adjusted an emerald green peignoir over high, pointed breasts. She wore nothing under it and made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t have arrived at a more inconvenient time.

“Dick,” she called, her sultry eyes on Lynley, “put it back in your trousers. It’s Scotland Yard.” She gave him a lazy smile and held the door open wider. “Do come in, Inspector.” She left him in the tiny entryway among the toys and the dirty clothes and strolled to the stairwell. “Dick!” she called again. She turned, folded her arms across her breasts, and kept her eyes on Lynley. A smile played over her features. A well-formed knee and thigh showed themselves between the folds of thin satin.

There was movement above them, a man’s mumbling, and Richard Gibson appeared. He clattered noisily to the bottom of the stairs and caught sight of his wife. “Jesus Christ, put on some clothes, Mad,” he said.

“You didn’t want them on five minutes ago,” she replied, looked him over with a knowing smile, and made her way deliberately-revealing as much of her slim body as possible-up the stairs.

Gibson watched her with wry amusement. “You should see what she’s like when she really wants it,” he confided. “She’s just teasing now.”

“Ah. Yes. I see.”

The farmer laughed through his nose. “At least it keeps her happy, Inspector. For a while.” He scrutinised the chaos of the cottage and added, “Let’s go out in front.”

Lynley thought the front garden was even less appealing a place for their encounter than the malodorous cottage, but he held his tongue and followed the other man.

“Go in to your mother,” Gibson ordered his two wrangling children. With his foot, he pushed the plate to the edge of the front step. In a moment, the family’s mangy cat appeared from the tangle of dry and dying bushes and began to devour the remains of the eggs and toast. It was the greedy, surreptitious eating of a scavenger, and it reminded Lynley of the woman upstairs.

“I saw Roberta yesterday,” he said to Gibson. The other man had sat down on the step and was lacing his work shoes tightly.

“How was she? Any improvement?”

“No. When we first met, you didn’t mention the fact that you’d signed Roberta into the asylum, Mr. Gibson.”

“You didn’t ask, Inspector.” He finished with the boots and got to his feet. “Did you expect me to leave her with the police in Richmond?”