How could someone be wiped so completely out of the life of the family in which she had lived for sixteen years? It was inconceivable. Yet it had been done. Or had it?

He walked to Roberta’s room. Gillian couldn’t have faded from her sister’s life so completely. The love was there. The bond was strong. Everyone, at least, no matter what they had said about Gillian, agreed upon that. His gaze roamed from window to wardrobe to bed. He considered this last: it was her hiding place for food, why not for Gillian as well?

Steeling himself to the sight and the smell of the putrefaction, Lynley pulled back the mattress. The stench rose like an undulating wave.

He glanced about, looking for a way to make the job at hand easier but finding nothing that would do. The light in the room was poor, and, unpleasant as it would be, there was nothing for it but to drag the entire mattress off and rip the box spring apart. Grunting with the effort, he jerked mattress and bedding onto the floor and then went to the window. He threw it open and stood for a moment sucking in the fresh air before turning back to the bed. He climbed onto the box spring and planned his attack, ignoring his queasiness. Come on, old boy. Isn’t this why you got into police work? Buck up, now. Give it one big pull.

He did so, and the rotting material-that thin layer of sanity-came apart in his hands, exposing the madness beneath it. Mice scattered in all directions, leaving diminutive tracks through the decaying fruit. One sowlike rodent nursed her litter of clutching, blind offspring in a bed of women’s dirty underclothes. And an angry cloud of moths, disturbed from their slumber, burst out into the light, flinging themselves upwards into Lynley’s face.

Startled, he reeled back, managed to keep from crying out, and quickly made his way to the bathroom, where he took a moment to splash water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror and laughed soundlessly. Good thing you skipped lunch. After that, you may well skip eating for the rest of your life.

He sought a towel on which to dry his face. There was none on the rack, but he caught a glimpse of a dressing gown hanging on the back of the bathroom door. He swung it shut. Its broken hasp lock grated against the frame like a shriek. He dried his face on the hem of the garment, fingered the lock meditatively, and after a moment, a new thought triggered, he left the room.

The box of keys was where he had seen it before, far in the back on the top shelf of Teys’s wardrobe. He took it out and dumped it onto the bed. Teys would have put Gillian’s things in a trunk somewhere. In the attic, perhaps.

And the keys would be here. He searched through them fruitlessly. They were all door keys, the old-fashioned keyhole variety, a strange collection of rusting, metallic mementoes. He threw them back into their box in disgust and cursed the blind determination of the man who had wiped one daughter’s existence off the face of the earth.

Why? he wondered. What kind of anguish was it that had driven William Teys to deny the existence of the child he so loved? What could she possibly have done to bring him to such an act of destruction? And at the same time provoke her sister to such an impotent yet desperate act of preservation as the simple hiding of a photograph.

He knew what came next. The attic’s a blind, old boy. Back to her bedroom. You know it’s there. Maybe not in the mattress, but you know it’s there. He shuddered at the thought of what other surprises waited like spectres in that sepulchral room.

As he was gathering his shattered defences for another assault, the sound of whistling, joyful and unrestrained, came to him from outside. He went to the window.

A young man was walking down the trail from High Kel Moor, an easel over his shoulder and a wooden case in his hand. It was time, Lynley decided, to meet Ezra.

His first thought was that the other man was not as young as he looked from a distance. It must have been the hair, Lynley thought, which was a rich, deep blond and worn much longer than was the current fashion. Up close, Ezra looked very much what he was: a man somewhere in his thirties, wary about this meeting with the detective from Scotland Yard. The wariness came through in the careful stance; it also came through in the swiftly veiled eyes, the kind of eyes that changed colour with the clothing he wore. They were deep blue now, as was the man’s shirt, which was streaked with paint. He had stopped whistling the moment he saw Lynley come out of the house and climb nimbly over the pasture wall.

“Ezra Farmington?” he said pleasantly.

Farmington halted. His features put Lynley in mind of the Delacroix painting of Frederic Chopin. Here were the same sculpted lips; the shadow of a cleft in the chin; the dark brows- much darker than the hair; the nose that was dominant but not detractive.

“That’s right,” he said, noncommittally.

“Doing some painting on the moor today?”

“Yes.”

“Nigel Parrish tells me you do light studies.”

The name got a reaction. The eyes became guarded. “What else does Nigel tell you?”

“That he saw William Teys run you off his property. You seem to be making free use of it now.”

“With Gibson’s permission.” The words were terse.

“Indeed? He didn’t mention it.” Lynley gazed serenely in the direction of the trail. It was steep and rocky, ill-maintained, not the place for a country hike. An artist would have to be most sincere about his endeavours to bother climbing up to the high moor at all. He turned back to the other man. The afternoon breeze that rustled through the pasture ruffl ed Farmington’s blond hair appealingly so that the sun struck its highlights. Lynley began to understand why he wore it long. “Mr. Parrish tells me that Teys destroyed some of your work.”

“Does he also tell you what the hell he was doing out here that night?” Farmington demanded. “No, blast his eyes, I’ll be damned if he does.”

“According to him, he was bringing Teys’s dog back to the farm.”

The artist’s face mirrored his disbelief. “Bringing the dog back to the farm? What a laugh!” He savagely drove the pointed legs of his easel into the soft earth. “Nigel really knows how to manipulate the facts, doesn’t he? Let me guess what he told you. That Teys and I were having a bloody fine row in the middle of the road when up he popped, innocently walking the poor, blind dog home.” Farmington ran one hand through his hair in agitation. His body was so tense that Lynley wondered if he would start swinging his fi sts. “Christ, that man will drive me to do something mad.”

Lynley lifted an eyebrow in interest. The other man read the expression.

“And I suppose that is a confession of guilt, Inspector? Well, I suggest you trot back to Nigel and ask him what he was doing wandering down Gembler Road last night. Believe me, that dog could have found his way back from Timbuktu if he’d wanted to.” He laughed. “That dog was a damn sight smarter than Nigel. Not that that means much.”

Lynley wondered at the source of Farmington’s anger. The passion was real, without doubt. Yet it was out of all proportion to the subject at hand. The man was like a taut bowstring upon which undue pressure was being exerted. An ounce more, and he would snap.

“I saw your work at Keldale Lodge. The way you painted the abbey put me in mind of Wyeth. Was that deliberate?”

Ezra relaxed a tightly balled fist. “That was done years ago. I was floundering for style. I didn’t trust my instincts so I copied everyone else’s. I’m surprised Stepha still has it hanging.”

“She said you did it to pay for your board one autumn.”

“That’s right. I paid for most everything like that in those days. If you look hard enough, you’ll see my crap hanging in every shop in town. I even bought toothpaste that way.” It was a derisive statement, an indication of contempt, but directed at himself, not at Lynley.