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.

As if under water, Gillian turned slowly from the door at the sound of her sister’s husky voice. “Tell me,” she whispered. She walked back to her chair, moved it closer to the other, and sat down.

Roberta’s eyes, heavy-lidded under their protective folds of fat, were fi xed but unfocused on her sister. Her lips worked convulsively. The fingers of one hand flexed. “It was music. Loud. He would take off my clothes.” And then the girl’s voice altered. It became honey-toned, insinuatingly persuasive, chillingly male. “Pretty baby. Pretty baby and Time to march, pretty baby. Time to march for Papa. And he would…it was in his hand…Watch what Papa does while you march, pretty baby.”

“I left the key for you, Bobby,” Gillian said brokenly. “When he fell asleep that night in my bed, I went to his room and I found the key. What happened to it? I left it for you.”

Roberta struggled with information buried so long beneath the weight of her childhood terrors. “I didn’t…didn’t know. I locked the door. But you never said why. You never said to keep the key.”

“Oh God.” Gillian’s voice was anguished. “Are you saying that you locked the door at night but in the day you left the key in the keyhole? Bobby, is that what you mean?”

Roberta drew her arm across her damp face. It was like a shield, and behind its protection she nodded. Her body heaved with a repressed cry. “I didn’t know.”

“So he found it and took it away.”

“He put it in his wardrobe. All the keys were there. It was locked. I couldn’t get it. Don’t need keys, pretty baby. Pretty baby, march for Papa.”

“When did you march?”

“Daytime, nighttime. Come here, pretty baby, Papa wants to help you march.”

“How?”

Roberta’s arm dropped. Her face was quickly shuttered. Her fingers picked and pulled at her lower lip.

“Bobby, tell me how,” Gillian insisted. “Tell me what he did.”

“I love Papa. I love Papa.”

“Don’t say that!” She reached out, grabbed her sister’s arm. “Tell me what he did to you!”

“Love, Love Papa.”

“Don’t say that! He was evil!”

Roberta shrank from the word. “No. I was evil.”

“How?”

“What I made him…he couldn’t help…he prayed and prayed and couldn’t help…you weren’t there…Gilly knew what I wanted. Gilly knew how to do me. You’re no good, pretty baby. March for Papa. March on Papa.”

“‘March on Papa’?” Gillian gasped. “Up and down in one place. Up and down.

That’s nice, pretty baby. Papa big between your legs.”

“Bobby. Bobby.” Gillian averted her face. “How old were you?”

“Eight. Mmmmm, Papa likes to feel all over. Likes to feel and feel and feel.”