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  But it did not work out quite like that.

  The children, in their different ways, were friendly enough. Tamsin was even quite talkative once her initial shyness wore off. She had a way of tossing her head so that the blonde pigtails shook, like a show pony shaking its mane. Tara was more silent and physically frailer. But she sprang into life whenever Tamsin felt the need to contradict her, as being her elder and better. Arguing with Tamsin made even Tara quite animated. You could imagine both settling down quite easily once the double shock of Zillah’s death and their real mother’s arrival had been assimilated.

  Nevertheless, something was odd. It was instinct not reason that guided her. Reason told her that Mrs Parr’s accusations were absurd. But then nagging instinct would not leave her in peace. She had interviewed too many subjects, she told herself, to be wrong now … Then reason reasserted itself once more, with the aid of the children’s perfectly straightforward account of their past. They referred quite naturally to their life in Sussex.

  ‘We went to a horrid school with nasty rough boys —’ began Tara.

  ‘It was a lovely school,’ interrupted Tamsin. ‘I played football with the boys in my break. Silly little girls like Tara couldn’t do that.’ All of this accorded with the facts given by the lawyer: how the girls had attended the local primary school which was fine for the tomboy Tamsin, not so good for the shrinking Tara. They would have gone to the reputedly excellent school in Kildrum when the Scottish term started had it not been for the death of Zillah.

  Nevertheless, something was odd, strange, not quite right.

  Was it perhaps the fact that the girls never seemed to talk amongst themselves which disconcerted her? After considerable pondering on the subject, Jemima decided that the silence of Tamsin and Tara when alone – no happy or unhappy sounds coming out of their playroom or bedroom – was the most upsetting thing about them. Even the sporadic quarrelling brought on by Tamsin’s bossiness ceased. Yet Jemima’s experience of children was that sporadic quarrels in front of grown-ups turned to outright war in private. But she was here as an investigator not as a child analyst (who might or might not have to follow later). Who was she to estimate the shock effect of Zillah’s death, in front of their own eyes? Perhaps their confidence had been so rocked by the boating accident that they literally could not speak when alone. It was, when all was said and done, a minor matter compared to the evident correlation of the girls’ stories with their proper background.

  And yet … There was after all the whole question of Zillah’s absent nieces. Now, was that satisfactorily dealt with or not? Torn between reason and instinct Jemima found it impossible to make up her mind. She naturally raised the subject, in what she hoped to be a discreet manner. For once it was Tara who answered first:

  ‘Oh, no, we never see them. You see they went to America for Christmas and they didn’t come back.’ She sounded quite blithe.

  ‘Canada, silly,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘It’s not, silly.’

  ‘It is—’

  ‘Christmas?’ pressed Jemima.

  ‘They went for a Christmas holiday to America. Aunt Kitty took them and they never came back.’

  ‘They went forever’ interrupted Tamsin fiercely. They went to Canada and they went forever. That’s what Zillah said. Aunt Kitty doesn’t even send us Christmas cards.’ Were the answers, as corrected by Tamsin, a little too pat?

  A thought struck Jemima. Later that night she consulted Mrs Parr. If Zillah’s sister had been her next of kin, had not the lawyers tried to contact her on Zillah’s death? Slightly reluctantly Mrs Parr admitted that the lawyers had tried and so far failed to do so. ‘Oddly enough it seemed I was Zillah’s next of kin after Kitty,’ she added. But Kitty had emigrated to Canada (yes, Canada, Tamsin as usual was right) several years earlier and was at present address unknown. And she was supposed to have taken her two daughters with her.

  It was at this point Jemima decided to throw in her hand. In her opinion the investigation was over, the Parr children had emerged with flying colours, and as for their slight oddity, well, that was really only to be expected, wasn’t it? Under the circumstances. It was time to get back to Megalith Television and the autumn series. She communicated her decision to Mrs Pan, before nagging instinct could resurrect its tiresome head again.

  ‘You don’t feel it then, Jemima?’ Mrs Parr sounded for the first time neither vehement nor dreamy but dimly hopeful. ‘You don’t sense something about them? That they’re hiding something? Something strange, unnatural …’

  ‘No, I do not,’ answered Jemima Shore firmly.

  ‘And if I were you, Catharine’ – they had evolved a spurious but convenient intimacy during their days in the lonely lodge – ‘I would put all such thoughts behind you. See them as part of the ordeal you have suffered, a kind of long illness. Now you must convalesce and recover. And help your children, your own children, to recover too.’ It was Jemima Shore at her most bracing. She hoped passionately not so much that she was correct about the children – with every minute she was more convinced of the rightness of reason, the falseness of instinct – but that Mrs Parr would now feel able to welcome them to her somewhat neurotic bosom. She might even give up drink.

  Afterwards Jemima would always wonder whether these were the fatal words which turned the case of the Parr children from a mystery into a tragedy. Could she even then have realised or guessed the truth? The silence of the little girls together: did she gloss too easily over that? But by that time it was too late.

  As it was, immediately Jemima had spoken, Mrs Parr seemed to justify her decision in the most warming way. She positively glowed with delight. For a moment Jemima had a glimpse of the dashing young woman who had thrown up her comfortable home to go off with the raggle-taggle-gypsies seven years before. This ardent and presumably attractive creature had been singularly lacking in the Mrs Parr she knew. She referred to herself now as ‘lucky Catharine Parr’, no longer the wretched Queen who lost her head. Jemima was reminded for an instant of one of the few subjects who had bested her in argument on television, a mother opposing organised schooling, like Catharine Parr a Bohemian. There was the same air of elation. The quick change was rather worrying. Lucky Catharine Parr: Jemima only hoped that she would be third time lucky as the sleeping car attendant had suggested. It rather depended on what stability she could show as a mother.

  ‘I promise you,’ cried Mrs Parr, interrupting a new train of thought, ‘I give you my word. I’ll never ever think about the past again. I’ll look after them to my dying day. I’ll give them all the love in the world, all the love they’ve missed all these years. Miss Shore, Jemima, I told you I trusted you. You’ve done all I asked you to do. Thank you, thank you,’

  The next morning dawned horribly wet. It was an added reason for Jemima to be glad to be leaving Kildrum Lodge. A damp Scottish August did not commend itself to her. With nothing further to do, the dripping rhododendrons surrounding the lodge were beginning to depress her spirits. Rain sheeted down on the loch, making even a brisk walk seem impractical. With the children still silent in their playroom and Mrs Parr still lurking upstairs for the kind of late morning rise she favoured, Jemima decided to make her farewell to Elspeth Maxwell in the kitchen.

  She was quickly trapped in the flood of Elspeth’s reflections, compared to which the rain outside seemed suddenly mild in contrast. Television intrigued Elspeth Maxwell in general, and Jemima, its incarnation, intrigued her in particular. She was avid for every detail of Jemima’s appearances on the box, how many new clothes she needed, television make-up and so forth. On the subject of hair, she first admired the colour of Jemima’s corn-coloured locks, then asked how often she had to have a shampoo, and finally enquired with a touch of acerbity:

  ‘You’ll not be putting anything on, then? I’m meaning the colour, what a beautiful bright colour your hair is, Miss Shore. You’ll not be using one of those little bottles?’

&nbs