“Didn’t you tell anyone? Wasn’t there anyone?”

“Miss Fitzalan. I told. But she didn’t…she couldn’t…”

“She didn’t do anything? She didn’t help?”

“She didn’t understand. I said whiskers… his face when he rubbed me. Didn’t understand. Did you tell, pretty baby? Did you try to tell on Papa?”

“Oh God, she told him?”

“Gilly never told. Gilly never told on Papa. Very bad, pretty baby. Papa needs to punish you.”

“How?”

Roberta gave no answer. Instead, she began to rock, began to return to the place she had inhabited so long.

“You were only eight years old!” Gillian began to cry. “Bobby, I’m sorry! I didn’t know! I didn’t think he would. You didn’t look like me. You didn’t look like Mummy.”

“Hurt Bobby in the bad place. Not like Gilly. Not like Gilly.”

“Not like Gilly?”

“Turn over, pretty baby. Papa has to punish you.”

“Oh my God!” Gillian fell to her knees, took her sister into her arms. She sobbed against her breast, but the girl did not respond. Instead, her arms hung limply at her sides and her body tensed as if the proximity of her sister was frightening or distasteful. “Why didn’t you come to Harrogate? Didn’t you see the message? Why didn’t you come? I thought you were all right! I thought he left you alone! Why didn’t you come?”

“Bobby died. Bobby died.”

“Don’t say that! You’re alive. Don’t let him kill you now!”

Roberta shrank back, freeing herself fi ercely. “Papa never kill, Papa never kill, Papa never kill!” Her voice grew high with panic.

The psychiatrist leaned forward in his chair. “Kill what, Roberta?” he asked quickly, and pressed the advantage. “What did Papa never kill?”

“Baby. Papa didn’t kill the baby.”

“What did he do?”

“Found me in the barn. Cried and prayed and cried.”

“Is that where you had the baby? In the barn?”

“No one knew. Fat and ugly. No one knew.”

Gillian’s eyes were transfixed in horror, not on her sister’s face, but on the psychiatrist. She rocked on her heels, a hand at her mouth, biting down on her fingers as if to keep from screaming. “You were pregnant? Bobby! He didn’t know you were pregnant?”

“No one knew. Not like Gilly. Fat and ugly. No one knew.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Bobby died.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Bobby died.”

“What happened to the baby!” Gillian’s voice rose to a scream.

“Did you kill the baby, Roberta?” Dr. Samuels asked.

Nothing. She began to rock. It was a rapid movement, as if she were hurtling back into madness.

Gillian watched her, watched the panic that drove her and the unassailable armour of psychosis that protected her. And she knew. “Papa killed the baby,” she asserted numbly. “He found you in the barn, he cried and prayed, read the Bible for guidance, and then he killed the baby.” She touched her sister’s hair. “What did he do with it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did you ever see it?”

“Never saw the baby. Boy or girl. Don’t know.”

“Is that why you didn’t come to Harrogate? Were you pregnant then?”

The rocking slowed to a stop. It was affi rmation.

“Baby died. Bobby died. It didn’t matter. Papa sorry, pretty baby. Papa never hurt again. Pretty baby march for Papa. Papa never hurt again.”

“He didn’t have intercourse with you again, Roberta?” Dr. Samuels asked. “But everything else stayed the same?”

“Pretty baby march for Papa.”

“Did you march for Papa, Roberta?” the doctor continued. “After the baby, did you march for him?”

“Marched for Papa. Had to march.”

“Why? Why did you have to?”

She looked about furtively, an odd smile of twisted satisfaction dancing on her face. And then began to rock. “Papa happy.”

“It was important that Papa be happy,” Dr. Samuels said refl ectively.

“Yes, yes. Very happy. Happy Papa won’t touch…” She cut the words off. The rocking increased in intensity.

“No, Bobby,” Gillian said. “Don’t you leave. You mustn’t leave now. You marched for Papa to keep him happy so that he wouldn’t touch someone. Who?”

In the darkened observation room, the terrible realisation cut like a sword’s swath down Lynley’s spine. The knowledge had been there before him all along. A nine-year-old girl being schooled in the Bible, being read the Old Testament, learning the lessons of Lot’s daughters.

“Bridie!” he said savagely and understood everything at last. He could have told the rest of the story himself, but he listened instead to the purgation of a tortured soul.

“Papa wanted Gilly not a cow like Roberta.”

“Your father wanted a child, didn’t he?” Dr. Samuels asked. “He needed a child’s body to arouse him. Like Gillian’s. Like your mother’s.”

“Found a child.”

“And what happened?”

Roberta pressed her cracked lips together as if to stop herself from speaking. The corners of her mouth were spotted with blood. She gave a ragged cry and a flurry of words escaped as if of their own volition. “The Pharaoh put a chain on his neck and dressed him in fine linen and he ruled over Egypt and Joseph’s brothers came to see him and Joseph said I am supposed to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

Gillian spoke through her tears. “The Bible told you what to do, just as it always told Papa.”

“Dress in linens. Wear a chain.”

“What happened?”

“Got him in the barn.”

“How did you do that?” Dr. Samuels’s voice was low.

Roberta’s face quivered. Her eyes fi lled with tears. They began to spill down her acne-covered cheeks. “Tried twice. Didn’t work. Then…Whiskers,” she replied.

“You killed Whiskers to get your father to the barn?” the doctor asked.

“Whiskers didn’t know. Gave him pills. Papa’s pills. He was asleep. Cut…cut his throat. Called for Papa. Papa ran. Knelt by Whiskers.” She began to rock furiously, cradling her bloated body, accompanying the movement with low, tuneless humming. She was in retreat.

“And then, Roberta?” the psychiatrist asked. “You can take the last step, can’t you? With Gillian here?”

Rocking. Rocking. Savage and furious. Blindly determined. Her eyes on the wall. “Love Papa. Love Papa. Don’t remember. Don’t remember.”

“Of course you remember.” The psychiatrist’s voice was gentle but relentless. “The Bible told you what to do. If you hadn’t done it, your father would have done to that little girl all the things he had done to you and Gillian through the years. He would have molested her. He would have sodomised her. He would have raped her. But you stopped him, Roberta. You saved that child. You dressed in fine linens. You put on the gold chain. You killed the dog. You called your father to the barn. He ran in, didn’t he? He knelt down and-”

Roberta jumped off her chair. It fl ew across the room, striking the cabinet, and she went after it, moving like the wind. She picked it up, hurled it against the wall, dumped over the cabinet, and began to scream.

“I chopped off his head! He knelt down. He bent to pick up Whiskers. And I chopped off his head! I don’t care that I did it! I wanted him to die! I wouldn’t let him touch Bridie! He wanted to. He read to her just like he’d done to me. He talked to her just like he’d done to me. He was going to do it! I knew the signs! I killed him! I killed him and I don’t care! I’m not sorry! He deserved to die!” Slumping to the floor, she wept into her hands, large grey doughlike hands that covered her face, but pinched and brutalised it even as they protected. “I saw his head on the fl oor. And I didn’t care. And the rat came out of nowhere. And he sniffed at the blood. And he ate at the brains and I didn’t care!”

With a strangled cry, Sergeant Havers leapt to her feet and staggered from the room.

Barbara crashed into the lavatory, fell blindly into a stall, and began to vomit. The room swam round her. She was so ragingly hot that she was sure she would faint, but she continued, instead, to vomit. And as she retched- painfully, spasmodically-she knew that what was spewing forth from her body was the turbid mass of her own despair.