She had somehow survived the morning. The dreadful row with Lynley followed by the horrors of Roberta’s bedroom had served to wear down her anger and wretchedness, abrading them both into a dull detachment. She knew he was going to sack her anyway. She certainly deserved it. But before he did, she would prove to him that she could be a decent DS. In order to do that, however, there was this one last meeting to get through, this one last opportunity to show her stuff.
She watched Lynley’s eyes roam over the unusual collection of items spread out on one of the tables in the lounge: the album containing the defaced family pictures, a dog-eared and well-thumbed novel, the photograph from Roberta’s chest of drawers, the additional one of the two sisters, and a collection of six yellowed newspaper pages, all folded and shaped to the identical size, seventeen by twenty-two inches.
Lynley absently felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, lit one, and sat down on the couch. “What is this, Sergeant?” he asked.
“I think these are the facts on Gillian,” she responded. Her voice was carefully modulated, but a slight quaver in it caught his attention. She cleared her throat to hide it.
“You’re going to need to enlighten me, I’m afraid,” he said. “Cigarette?”
Her fingers itched to feel the cylinder of tobacco; her body ached for the soothing smoke. But she knew, if she lit one, it would betray her shaking hands. “No, thank you,” she replied. She took a breath, kept her eyes on his noncommittal face, and went on. “How does your man Denton line your chest of drawers?”
“With some sort of paper, I should guess. I’ve never noticed.”
“But it isn’t newspaper, is it?” She sat down opposite him, squeezing her hands into fi sts in her lap, feeling the sharp crescent pain of nails biting palms. “It wouldn’t be, because the newsprint would come off on your clothes.”
“True.”
“So I was intrigued when you mentioned that Roberta’s drawers were lined with newspapers. And I remembered Stepha saying that Roberta used to come every day for the Guardian.”
“Until Paul Odell died. Then she stopped.”
Barbara pushed her hair back behind her ears. It was quite unimportant, she told herself, if he didn’t believe her, if he laughed at the conclusions she had drawn after nearly three hours in that horrible room. “Except that I don’t think the reason she stopped coming for the Guardian had anything to do with Paul Odell. I think it was Gillian.”
His eyes drifted to the newspapers and Barbara saw him take in what she herself had noticed: that Roberta had lined her drawers with the classified section. Moreover, although there were six pieces of newspaper on the table, they were duplicates of only two pages of the Guardian, as if something memorable had appeared in a single issue, and Roberta had collected that day’s edition from the villagers to keep as souvenirs.
“The personal column,” Lynley murmured. “By God, Havers, Gillian sent her a message.”
Barbara pulled one of the sheets towards her and ran her finger down the column. “‘R. Look at the advert. G,’” she read. “I think that’s the message.”
“Look at the advertisement? What advertisement?”
She reached for a representation of the second saved page. “This one, I think.”
He read it. Dated nearly four years previously, it was a small, square announcement of a meeting in Harrogate, a panel discussion involving a group from an organisation called Testament House. The members of the panel were listed, but Gillian Teys was not among them. Lynley looked up, his brown eyes frankly quizzical.
“You’ve lost me, Sergeant.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Aren’t you familiar with Testament House? Never mind, I keep forgetting that you haven’t been in uniform in years. Testament House is run out of Fitzroy Square by an Anglican priest. He used to teach at university but evidently one day one of his students asked him why he wasn’t bothering to practise what he preached-feeding the hungry and clothing the naked-and he decided that was something in his life that he ought to address. So he started Testament
House.”
“Which is?”
“An organisation that collects runaways. Teenaged prostitutes-both male and female-drug abusers of every colour and shape, and everyone else under the age of twenty-one who’s hanging about aimlessly in Trafalgar or Piccadilly or in any of the stations just waiting to be preyed on by a pimp or a whore. He’s been doing it for years. The uniformed police all know him. We always took kids to him.”
“He’s the Reverend George Clarence that’s listed here, I take it?”
She nodded. “He goes out on fund-raising tours for the organisation.”
“Do I understand you to mean that you believe Gillian Teys was picked up by this group in London?”
“I…Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
It had taken her ages to find the advertisement, ages longer to decipher its signifi cance, and now everything-most especially her career, she admitted-depended upon Lynley’s willingness to believe. “Because of this name.” She pointed to the third on the list of panelists.
“Nell Graham?”
“Yes.”
“I’m completely in the dark.”
“I think Nell Graham was the message Roberta was waiting for. She faithfully searched the paper each day for years, waiting to see what had happened to her sister. Nell Graham told her. It meant Gillian had survived.”
“Why Nell Graham? Why not,” he glanced at the other names, “Terence Hanover, Caroline Paulson, or Margaret Crist?”
Havers picked up the battered novel from the table. “Because none of those were born of one of the Brontës.” She tapped the book. “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is about Helen Huntington, a woman who breaks the social code of her time and leaves her alcoholic husband to start a new life. She falls in love with a man who knows nothing about her past, who knows only the name she has chosen for herself: Helen Graham, Nell Graham, Inspector.” She finished and waited in agony for his reponse.
When it came, nothing could have surprised her more, could have disarmed her more quickly. “Bravo, Barbara,” he said softly, his eyes lit and a smile breaking over his face. He leaned forward earnestly. “What’s your theory on how she came to be involved with this group?”
The relief was so tremendous that Barbara found she had begun trembling from head to toe. She took a ragged breath and somehow found her voice. “My…I suspect that Gillian had enough money to get to London but that ran out fairly soon. They may have picked her up off the street somewhere or in one of the stations.”
“But wouldn’t they return her to her father?”
“That’s not how Testament House works. They encourage the kids to go home or at least to phone their parents and let them know they’re all right, but no one is forced to do it. If they choose to stay at Testament, they just have to obey the rules. No questions asked.”
“But Gillian left home at sixteen. If she is this Nell Graham, she would have been twenty-three when she was on this panel in Harrogate. Does it make sense that she would have stayed with Testament House for all those years?”
“If she had no one else, it makes perfect sense. If she wanted a family, they were her best bet. At any rate, there’s only one way we can know for sure-”
“Talk to her,” he finished promptly. He got to his feet. “Get your things together. We’ll leave in ten minutes.” He rooted through the file and took out the photograph of Russell Mowrey and his family. “Give this to Webberly when you get to London,” he said as he scribbled a message on the back.
“When I get to London?” Her heart sank. He was giving her the sack then. He’d as much as promised that after their encounter at the farm. It was, indeed, all she could expect.
Lynley looked up, all business. “You found her, Sergeant. You can bring her back to Keldale. I think Gillian’s the only way we’re going to get through to Roberta. Don’t you agree?”
“I…What about…” She stopped herself, afraid to believe the meaning behind his words. “You don’t want to phone Webberly? Have someone else…? Go there yourself?”
“I’ve too many things to see to here. You can see to Gillian. If Nell Graham is Gillian.
Hurry up. We’ve got to get to York so you can catch the train.”
“But…how should I? What approach should I use? Should I simply-”
He waved her off. “I trust your judgment, Sergeant. Just bring her back as quickly as you can.”
She unclenched her hands, aware of the numbing relief sweeping over her. “Yes, sir,” she heard her voice whisper.
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and regarded the house cresting its smooth slope of lawn. By driving like the devil, he had managed to get Havers on the three o’clock train for London and now he sat in front of the Mowrey home, trying to decide how best to approach the woman inside. Wasn’t the truth, after all, better than the silence? Had he not at least learned that?
She met him at the door. The wary glance that she cast back over her shoulder told him he was far less welcome than when they had previously met. “My children are just home from school,” she said in explanation and stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind her. She drew her cardigan firmly round her slender body. It was like the body of a child. “Have you…Is there word about Russell?”
He reminded himself that he couldn’t have expected her to ask about her daughter. Tessa, of all people, had said goodbye to the past, had made a surgical cut and walked away cleanly. “You need to involve the police, Mrs. Mowrey.”
She paled. “He couldn’t. He didn’t.”
“You must telephone the police.”
“I can’t. I can’t,” she whispered fi ercely.
“He’s not with his relatives in London, is he?” She shook her head briefly, once, and kept her face averted. “Have they heard from him at all?” Again, the same response. “Then isn’t it best to find out where he is?” When she didn’t reply, he took her arm and led her gently towards the drive. “Why did William keep all those keys?”
“What keys?”
“There was a box of them on the shelf in his wardrobe. But there are no keys anywhere in the rest of the house. Do you know why?”
She bent her head, put a hand to her brow. “Those. I’d forgotten,” she murmured. “I…It was because of Gillian’s tantrum.”
“When was this?”
“She must have been seven. No, she was nearly eight. I remember because I was pregnant with Roberta. It was one of those situations that come up out of nowhere and are blown all out of proportion, the kind that families laugh about later when the children are grown. I remember William said at dinner, ‘Gilly, we’ll read from the Bible tonight.’ I was sitting there-daydreaming probably- and expected her to say, ‘Yes, Papa,’ as she always did. But she decided that she wouldn’t read the Bible that night, and William decided just as definitely that she would. She became absolutely hysterical about it, ran to her room and locked the door.”
“And then?”
“Gilly had never disobeyed her father before. Poor William simply sat there, astonished. He didn’t seem to know how to handle it.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing that helped particularly, as I recall. I went to Gilly’s room, but she wouldn’t let me in. She’d only scream that she wouldn’t read the Bible any longer and that no one could make her. Then she threw things at the door. I…I went back down to William.” She looked at Lynley with an expression that combined both perplexity and admiration as she went on. “You know, William never scolded her. That wasn’t his way. But he later took the keys from all the doors. He said if the house had burned down that night and he hadn’t been able to get to Gilly because she’d locked her door, he would never have forgiven himself.”
“Did they go back to reading the Bible after that?”
She shook her head. “He never asked Gilly to read the Bible after that.”
“Did he read it with you?”
“No. Just alone.”
A girl had come to the door as they spoke, a piece of bread in her hand and a thin line of jam traced across her upper lip. She was small like her mother but with her father’s dark hair and intelligent eyes. She watched them curiously.
“Mummy,” she called. Her voice was sweet and clear. “Is anything wrong? Is it Daddy?”
“No, darling,” Tessa called back hastily. “I’ll be in in a moment.” She turned to Lynley.
“How well did you know Richard Gibson?” he asked her.
“William’s nephew? As well as anyone could have known Richard, I suppose. He was a quiet boy but immensely likable, with a wonderful sense of humour, as I recall. Gilly quite adored him. Why do you ask?”
“Because William left the farm to him, not to Roberta.”
Her brow furrowed. “But why not to Gilly?”
“Gillian ran away from home when she was sixteen, Mrs. Mowrey. No one ever heard from her again.”
Tessa drew in a breath. It was sharp and quick, like the reaction to an unexpected blow. Her eyes fixed themselves on Lynley.
“No,” she said. It was not so much denial as disbelief.
He continued. “Richard had been gone for a time as well. To the fens. There’s a chance that Gillian followed him there and then perhaps went on to London.”
“But why? Whatever happened? What could have happened?”
He considered how much to tell her. “I’ve got the impression,” he said, spacing the words delicately, “that she was involved with Richard somehow.”
“And William found out? If that’s the case, he would have torn Richard limb from limb.”
“Suppose he did find out and Richard knew what his reaction would be. Would that be enough for Richard to leave the village?”
“I should think so. But it doesn’t explain why William left the farm to him and not to Roberta, does it?”
“It was apparently a bargain he’d struck with Gibson. Roberta would continue to live there for her lifetime with Richard and his family, but the land would go to the Gibsons.”
“But certainly Roberta would marry someday. It hardly seems fair. Surely William would have wanted the land to remain in the immediate family, to be passed on to his grandchildren, if not to Gilly’s children, then to Roberta’s.”
Even as she spoke, Lynley realised what a vast chasm the nineteen years of her absence had caused. She knew nothing of Roberta, nothing of the girl’s hidden storehouse of food, nothing of her vacant, rocking catatonia. Roberta was just a name to her mother, a name who would marry, have children, grow old. She was not at all real. She did not actually exist.
“Did you never think about them?” he asked her. She looked down at her feet, employing in the act an intensity that suggested all of her concentration was centered on the smooth, rusty suede of her shoes. When she didn’t reply, he persisted. “Did you never wonder how they were, Mrs. Mowrey? Did you never imagine what they looked like or how they’d grown up?”
She shook her head once, sharply. And when she answered him at last, in a voice so controlled that it spoke volumes on the emotion she had spent on the subject, she kept her eyes on the minster in the distance. “I couldn’t let myself do that, Inspector. I knew they were safe. I knew they were well. So I let them die. I had to if I wanted to survive. Can you understand?”
A few days ago he would have said no. And that would have been the truth of the matter. But that was not the case now. “Yes,” he replied. “I do understand.” He nodded to her in farewell and walked back to his car.
“Inspector-” He turned, his hand on the door handle. “You know where Russell is, don’t you?”
She read the answer in his face, but she listened instead to the lie. “No,” he responded.
Ezra Farmington lived directly across from the Dove and Whistle in the council house that abutted against Marsha Fitzalan’s. Like hers, its front garden was planted and cared for, but with less detailed concern, as if the man had started out with the best of intentions, but they, along with the plants, had become the worse for wear. Bushes were thriving but overgrown, weeds were assaulting the flower beds, dead annuals needed to be uprooted and discarded, and a small patch of lawn was looking long enough to be considered a potential source of fodder.
Farmington was not at all pleased to see him. He opened the door to Lynley’s knock and placed his body squarely in the frame. Over his shoulder Lynley saw that the other man had been going through his work, for dozens of watercolours were spread upon the sitting room couch and scattered on the fl oor. Some were torn into shreds, others were crumpled into tight, angry balls, still others were abandoned to meet their fate underfoot. It was a haphazard purging of artistic effort, however, because the artist himself was more than halfway drunk.
“Inspector?” Farmington asked with deliberate politeness.
“May I come in?”
The man shrugged. “Why not?” He opened the door wider and gestured Lynley inside with a lackadaisical sweep. “’Scuse the mess. Just cleaning out the crap.”
Lynley stepped over several paintings. “From four years ago?” he asked blandly.
It was the right choice of time. Farmington’s face told him so in the sudden flare of nostrils and the movement of lips.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” He was just on the edge of slurring his words, and, perhaps noticing this himself, he sought control visibly.
“What time was it when you and William Teys argued?” Lynley asked, ignoring the man’s question.
“Time?” Ezra shrugged. “No idea. Drink, Ins…Inspector?” He smiled glassily and stiffl y crossed the room to pour himself a tumbler of gin. “No? You don’t mind if I…? Thank you.” He gulped back a mouthful, coughed, and laughed, swiping at his mouth so savagely with his wrist that the movement was as good as a blow. “Pulin’ wimp. Can’ even handle a drink.”
“You were coming down from High Kel Moor. That’s not a walk you would make in the dark, is it?”
“Course not.”
“And you heard music from the farmhouse?”
“Ha!” He waved his glass at Lynley. “Whole screamin’ band, In…spector. Thought I was in the middle of a fl ipping parade.”
“Did you see only Teys? No one else?”
“Are we counting sweet Nigel bringing the doggie home?”
“Aside from Nigel.”
“Nope.” He lifted his glass and drained it. “Course, Roberta was proba’ly inside the house changing the records, poor fat slob. She wasn’t much good for anything else. ’Cept,” his bleary eyes twinkled, “swinging an axe and sending Papa into the great beyond.” He laughed at his comment. “Like Lizzie Borden!” he added and laughed louder still.
Lynley wondered why the man was being deliberately repugnant, wondered what was motivating him to go to such great lengths to develop and then display a side of his character so ugly as to be intolerable. Hatred and anger were the foundation here and a contempt so virulent that it was like a third person in the room. Farmington was obviously a talented man and yet a man blindly bent upon destroying the single creative force that gave his life meaning.
As he clutched at himself with callous nonchalance and stumbled in the direction of the lavatory, Lynley looked at the paintings he left behind and saw the source of the man’s despair in the studies the artist could not bring himself to destroy.
They were done from every possible angle, in charcoal, pencil, pastels, and paint. They chronicled movement, passion, and desire, and bore witness to the anguish of the artist’s soul. They were all of Stepha Odell.
When Lynley heard the man’s returning footsteps, he forced his eyes from the work and his mind away from the implication. Instead, he made himself look at Farmington and in doing so he saw the other man clearly for the first time: womaniser and hypocrite, using past pain as an excuse for present behaviour. He saw that Farmington was at best his own mirror image, his second self, the man, indeed, he could choose to become.
From King’s Cross Station, Barbara took the Northern Line to Warren Street. Fitzroy Square was only a few minutes’ walk from there. She spent that time meditating on a plan of attack. It was clear that Gillian Teys was involved in this situation up to her neck, but that was going to be extremely diffi cult to prove. If she was smart enough to disappear from sight for eleven years, certainly she was smart enough to have a cast-iron alibi for the night in question. It seemed to Barbara that the best approach-if indeed Gillian was Nell Graham and if she could be located using the scant information they had-was to give her no choice, arrest her if necessary, in order to get her back to Keldale that night. She thought about everything that had been said about Gillian: about her delinquent behaviour, her sexual licence, and her ability to hide both under an exterior of angelic refi nement. There was only one way to deal with someone that clever. Be tough, be aggressive, be absolutely ruthless.
Fitzroy Square-a tidily renovated patch of Camden Town-was an unusual spot to fi nd a home for stray teenagers. Twenty years before, when the square had still been a postwar rectangle of sagging buildings, grubby pavements, and empty windowboxes, a home for the fl otsam and jetsam of London life would be what one would expect to find. But now, when the entire face of the square was crisp and new, when the lovely green in the centre was carefully fenced off against vagrants, when every building was freshly painted and every burnished door gleamed in the fading light of the day, it was hard to believe that society’s forgotten and unwanted, frightened and pained still lived here.
Number 11 was the home of Testament House, a Georgian building whose front was covered with scaffolding. A rubbish bin overflowing with plaster, empty paint tins, cardboard cartons, and dropcloths gave evidence to the fact that Testament House was joining its neighbours in an architectural renaissance. The front door stood open, and from within came the sound of music, not the rowdy rockand-roll one might have expected from a gathering place for runaway teenagers, but the delicate strains of classical guitar and the kind of quiet that spoke of an audience held spellbound. However, those on this week’s kitchen duty were not taking part in the recital above stairs, Barbara guessed, for even outside the air was rich with the aroma of tomato sauce and spices, sure indication of the evening’s fare.
She walked up the two steps and entered the building. The long hallway was covered with an old red runner, worn so thin in places that the wood of the floor beneath showed through. Walls were bare of decoration save bulletin boards that held employment information, messages received, and announcements posted. A schedule of classes at the university of Gower Street was given the most prominent position, with large cardboard arrows pointing to it encouragingly. Nearby clinics, drug programs, and Planned Parenthood offices were advertised for inhabitants, and the telephone number of a suicide hotline was printed repeatedly on tear-off sheets at the bottom of the board. Most of them, Barbara noted, were gone.
“Hello,” a voice called cheerfully. “Need some help?”
Barbara turned to find a plump middle-aged woman leaning over the reception counter, pushing a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles to the top of her clipped grey hair. Her smile was welcoming, but it faded immediately when her eyes fell upon the warrant card that Barbara produced. Above them, the intricate music continued.
“Is there some sort of trouble?” the woman asked. “I suppose you want Mr. Clarence.”
“No,” Barbara replied. “That may not be necessary. I’m looking for this young woman. Her name is Gillian Teys, but we think she may be using the name Nell Graham.” She handed over the photograph, a gesture she knew would be unnecessary, for the moment she had said the name the other woman’s expression had altered and revealed.
Nonetheless, she looked at the photograph cooperatively. “Yes, this is Nell,” she said.
In spite of having been so certain, Barbara felt a surge of triumph. “Can you tell me how to locate her? It’s quite important that I fi nd her as soon as possible.”
“She’s not in trouble, is she?”
“It’s important that I find her,” Barbara said again.
“Oh yes, of course. I suppose you can’t tell me. It’s only that…” The woman fi ngered her chin nervously. “Let me get Jonah,” she said impulsively. “This is his concern.”
Before Barbara could reply, the woman was running up the stairs. In a moment the guitar music stopped abruptly to a storm of protesting voices and then laughter. That was followed by the sound of footsteps. The hushed voice of the receptionist was met by a man’s response.
When he came into sight on the stairway, Barbara saw that he was the musician, for he carried a fine guitar over his shoulder. He was far too young to be the Reverend George Clarence, but he wore clerical garb and his marked resemblance to the founder of Testament House indicated to Barbara that this must be the man’s son. For here were the same chiselled features, the same broad expanse of forehead, the same quick glance that assimilated and evaluated within an instant. Even his hair was the same, parted on the left, with an unruly tuft that no comb could discipline. He was not a big man, probably no more than fi ve feet eight inches tall, and his build was slight. But there was something about the way he held his body that indicated the presence of an inner core of strength and self-confi dence.
He strode down the hall and extended his hand. “Jonah Clarence,” he said. His grip was firm. “Mother tells me you’re looking for Nell.”
Mrs. Clarence had removed her spectacles from their perch on the top of her head. She chewed on the earpiece unconsciously as she listened to their conversation, her brow creased and her eyes moving back and forth between them as they spoke.
Barbara handed him the photograph. “This is Gillian Teys,” she said. “Her father was murdered three weeks ago in Yorkshire, and she’s going to have to come with me for some questioning.”
Clarence greeted the statement with no strong visible reaction beyond what appeared to be an inability to take his eyes from Barbara’s face. But he made himself do so, made himself look at the picture. Then his eyes met his mother’s. “It’s Nell.”
“Jonah,” she murmured. “My dearest…” Her voice was laced with compassion.
Clarence handed the photograph back to Barbara but spoke to his mother. “It had to happen one day, didn’t it?” he said. His tone was coloured by emotion.
“Darling, shall I…Do you want to…”
He shook his head. “I was just about to leave anyway,” he said, and looked at Barbara. “I’ll take you to Nell. She’s my wife.”
Lynley gazed at the painting of Keldale Abbey and wondered why he had been so blind to its message. The painting’s beauty lay in its utter simplicity, its devotion to detail, its refusal to distort or romanticise the crumbling ruin, to make it anything other than what it was: a vestige of time dead, being devoured by time to come.
Skeletal walls arched against a desolate sky, straining to lift themselves out of the inevitable end that waited for them on the ground below. They fought against flora: ferns that grew stubbornly out of barren crevices; wildflowers that bloomed on the edge of transept walls; grass that grew thickly and mingled with wild parsley on the very stones where monks had once knelt in prayer.
Steps led to nowhere. Curving stairways that once had carried the devoted from cloister to parlour, from day room to court, now sank into moss-covered oblivion, submitting to changes that did not make them ignoble, but merely moulded them into a different shape and a purpose changed.
Windows were gone. Where long ago stained glass had proudly enclosed presbytery and quire, nave and transept, nothing remained but gaping holes, gazing sightlessly out onto a landscape which rightfully proclaimed that it alone had ascendancy in the battle with time.
How did one really define the remains of Keldale Abbey? Was it the plundered ruin of a glorious past or a tumbling promise of what the future could be? Wasn’t it all, Lynley thought, in the defi nition?
He stirred at the sound of a car stopping at the lodge, of doors opening and the murmur of voices, of uneven footsteps approaching. He realised that darkness was falling in the lounge and switched on one of the lamps just as St. James entered the room. He was alone, as Lynley had known he would be.
They faced each other across a short expanse of inoffensive carpeting, across a virtual chasm created and maintained by one man’s guilt and another man’s pain. They both knew and recognised these components of their history, and, as if to escape them, Lynley went behind the bar and poured each of them a whisky. He crossed the room and handed it to his friend.
“Is she outside?” he asked.
“She’s gone to the church. Knowing Deborah, to have one last look at the graveyard, I expect. We’re off tomorrow.”
Lynley smiled. “You’ve been braver than I. Hank would have driven me off within the first five minutes. Are you fleeing to the lakes?”
“No. To York for a day, then back to London. I’m to be in court to testify on Monday morning. I need a bit of time to complete a fibre analysis before then.”
“Rotten luck to have had so few days.”
“We’ve the rest of our lives. Deborah understands.”
Lynley nodded and looked from St. James to the windows in which they saw themselves reflected, two men so entirely different from each other, who shared an afflicted past and who could, if he chose, share a full, rich future. It was all, he decided, in the defi nition. He tossed back the rest of his drink.
“Thank you for your help today, St. James,” he said finally, extending his hand. “You and Deborah are wonderful friends.”
Jonah Clarence drove them to Islington in his dilapidated Morris. It wasn’t a very long drive, and he was quiet for every moment of it, his hands on the wheel showing white knuckles that betrayed his distress.
They lived on a peculiar little street called Keystone Crescent, directly off Caledonian Road. Blessed with two take-away food stores at its head-exuding the multicultural odours of frying egg rolls, falafel, and fi sh and chips- and a butcher shop at its foot on Pentonville Road, it was located in an area of town that was arguing between industrial and residential. Dressmaking factories, car hire firms, and tool companies gave way to streets which were trying very hard to become fashionable.
Keystone Crescent was just that, a crescent lined on one side with concave and on the other with a convex terrace of houses. All were fenced by identical wrought iron, and where once diminutive gardens had bloomed, concrete paving provided additional parking for cars.
The buildings were sooty brick, two storeys tall, topped by dormer windows and a thin scalloping of ornamentation at the roofl ine. Each building had its own basement fl at, and while some of the houses had recently been refurbished in keeping with the neighbourhood effort towards chic, the one in front of which Jonah Clarence parked his car was defi nitely shabby, whitewashed and decorated with green woodwork at one time, but grimy now, with two unlidded dustbins standing in front of it.
“It’s this way,” he said tonelessly.
He opened the gate and led her down a set of narrow, steep steps to the door of a fl at. Unlike the building itself, which was in sad disrepair, the door was sturdy, freshly painted, with a brass knob gleaming in its centre. He unlocked and opened it, gesturing Barbara inside.
She saw at once that a great deal of care had gone into the decorating of the little home, as if the occupants wanted to drive a very fi rm wedge between the exterior grubbiness of the building and the crisp, clean loveliness of what existed within it. Walls were freshly painted; floors were covered with colourful rugs; white curtains hung in windows which housed a splendour of plants; books, photograph albums, a humble stereo system, a collection of phonograph records, and three pieces of antique pewter occupied a low shelving unit that ran along one wall. There were few pieces of furniture, but each one had been clearly selected for its workmanship and beauty.
Jonah Clarence set his guitar carefully down on a stand and went to the bedroom door. “Nell?” he called.
“I was just changing, darling. Out in a moment,” a woman’s voice replied cheerfully.
He looked at Barbara. She saw that his face had become grey and ill. “I’d like to go in-”
“No,” Barbara said. “Wait here. Please, Mr. Clarence,” she added when she read his determination to go to his wife.
He sat down on a chair, moving painfully, as if he had aged years in their brief twenty-minute acquaintance. He fixed his eyes on the door. Behind it, brisk movement accompanied light-hearted humming, a lilting rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Drawers opened and closed. A wardrobe door creaked. There was a pause in the humming as footsteps approached. The song finished, the door opened, and Gillian Teys returned from the dead.
She looked exactly like her mother, but her blonde hair was quite short, almost like a boy’s, and gave her the appearance of being ten years old, something that carried over to her manner of dress. She wore a plaid, pleated skirt, a dark blue pullover, and black shoes and knee socks. She might have been on her way home from school.
“Darling, I-” She froze when she saw Barbara. “Jonah? Is something…?” Her breathing seemed to stop. She groped for the doorknob behind her.
Barbara took a step forward. “Scotland Yard, Mrs. Clarence,” she said crisply. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Questions?” Her hand went to her throat. Her blue eyes darkened. “What about?”
“About Gillian Teys,” her husband replied. He hadn’t moved from his chair.
“Who?” she asked in a low voice.
“Gillian Teys,” he repeated evenly. “Whose father was murdered in Yorkshire three weeks ago, Nell.”
She backed into the door stiffl y. “No.”
“Nell-”
“No!” Her voice grew louder. Barbara took another step forward. “Stay away from me! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know any Gillian Teys!”
“Give me the picture,” Jonah said to Barbara, rising. She handed it to him. He walked to his wife, put his hand on her arm. “This is Gillian Teys,” he said, but she turned her face from the photograph he held.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her voice was high with terror.
“Look at it, darling.” Gently, he turned her face towards it.
“No!” She screamed, tore herself from his grasp and fled into the other room. Another door slammed. A bolt was shot home.
Wonderful, Barbara thought. She pushed past the young man and went to the bathroom door. There was silence within. She rattled the handle. Be tough, be aggressive. “Mrs. Clarence, come out of there.” No reply. “Mrs. Clarence, you need to listen to me. Your sister Roberta is charged with this murder. She’s in Barnstingham Mental Asylum. She hasn’t said a word in three weeks other than to claim to having murdered your father. Decapitated your father, Mrs. Clarence.” Barbara rattled the handle again. “Decapitated, Mrs. Clarence. Did you hear me?”
There was a choked whimper from behind the door, the sound of a terrifi ed, wounded animal. An anguished cry followed. “I left it for you, Bobby! Oh God, did you lose it?”
Then every tap in the bathroom was turned on full force.