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  Silence fell between them. Then Zillah said quite conversationally: ‘By the way, how did you know?’

  ‘A historical inaccuracy was your first mistake,’ replied Jemima. They might have been analysing a game of bridge. ‘It always struck me as odd that a woman called Catharine Parr, and an educated woman to boot, would not have known the simple facts of her namesake’s life. It was Catharine Howard by the way who lost her head, not Catharine Parr.’

  ‘Oh really.’ Zillah sounded quite uninterested. ‘Well, I never had any education. I saw no use for it in my work, either.’

  ‘But you made other mistakes. The sleeping-car attendant: that was a risk to take. He recognised you because of all the drinking. He spoke of you being third time lucky, and at first I thought he meant your quick journey up and down from London to Inverness and back. But then I realised that he meant that this was your third journey northwards. He spoke of you “going north” the second time and how you weren’t so drunk as the first time. She went up first, didn’t she? You killed her. Then faked your own death, and somehow got down to London secretly, perhaps from another station. Then up and down again under the name of Catharine Parr.’

  That was unlucky.’ Zillah agreed. ‘Of course I didn’t know that he’d met the real Catharine Parr when I travelled up under her name the first time. I might have been more careful.’

  ‘In the end it was a remark of Elspeth Maxwell’s which gave me the clue. That, and your expression.’

  ‘That woman! She talks far too much,’ said Zillah with a frown.

  ‘The dyes: she showed me the various dyes you had used, I suppose to dye Mrs Parr’s hair blonde and darken your own.’

  ‘She dyed her own hair,’ Zillah sounded positively complacent. ‘I’ve always been good at getting people to do things. I baited her. Pointed out how well I’d taken care of myself, my hair still blonde and thick, and what a mess she looked. Why, I looked more like the children’s mother than she did. I knew that would get her. We’d once been awfully alike, you see, at least to look at. You never guessed that, did you? Kitty never really looked much like her, different nose, different-shaped face. But as girls, Catharine and I were often mistaken for each other. It even happened once or twice when I was working for her. And how patronising she was about it. “Oh no, that was just Zillah,” she used to say with that awful laugh of hers when she’s been drinking. “Local saint and poor relation.” I think that’s why he – the children’s father – first fell in love with me. I was like her but not like.’ Zillah hesitated and then went on more briskly.

  ‘I showed her the bottle of Goldilocks, pretended I used it myself and she grabbed it. “Now we’ll see who the children’s real mother is,” she said, when she’d finished.’

  The bottle did fool me at first,’ admitted Jemima. ‘I thought it must be connected somehow with the children’s hair. Then Elspeth gave me the key when she wondered aloud who would ever use Brown Leaf if they had fair hair: “It would only hide the colour.” ’ She paused. ‘So you killed her, blonde hair and all,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I killed her,’ Zillah was still absolutely composed. She seemed to have no shame or even fear. ‘I drowned her. She was going to take the children away. I found out that she couldn’t swim, took her out in the boat in the morning when I knew Johnnie Maxwell wasn’t around. Then I let her drown. I would have done anything to keep the children,’ she added.

  ‘I told the children that she’d gone away,’ she went on. That horrid drunken old tramp. Naturally I didn’t tell them I’d killed her. I just said that we would play a game. A game in which I would pretend to fall into the lake and be drowned. Then I would dress up in her old clothes and pretend to be her. And they must treat me just as if I was her, all cold and distant. They must never hug me as if I was Zillah. And if they played it properly, if they never talked about it to anyone, not even each other when they were alone, the horrid mother would never come back. And then I could be their proper mother. Just as they had always wanted. Zillah, they used to say with their arms round me, we love you so much, won’t you be our Mummy forever?’ Her voice became dreamy and for a moment Jemima was reminded of the person she had known as Catharine Parr. ‘I couldn’t have any children of my own, you see; I had to have an operation when I was quite young. Wasn’t it unfair? That she could have them, who was such a terrible mother, and I couldn’t. All my life I’ve always loved other people’s children. My sister’s. Then his children.’

  ‘It was the children all along, wasn’t it? Not the money. The Parr Trust: that was a red herring.’

  ‘The money!’ exclaimed Zillah. Her voice was full of contempt. The Parr Trust meant nothing to me. It was an encumbrance if anything. Little children don’t need money: they need love and that’s exactly what I gave to them. And she would have taken them away, the selfish good-for-nothing tramp that she was, that’s what she threatened to do, take them away, and never let me see them again. She said in her drunken way, laughing and drinking together: “This time, my fine cousin Zillah, the law will be on my side.” So I killed her. And so I defeated her. Just as I defeated her the last time when she tried to take the children away from me in court.’

  ‘And from their father,’ interposed Jemima.

  The judge knew a real motherly woman when he saw one,’ Zillah went on as though she had not heard. ‘He said so in court for all the world to hear. And he was right, wasn’t he? Seven years she left them. Not a card. Not a present. And then thinking she could come back, just like that, because their father was dead, and claim them. All for an accident of birth. She was nothing to them, nothing, and I was everything,’’

  And Jemima herself? Her mission?

  ‘Oh yes, I got you here deliberately. To test the children, I was quite confident, you see. I knew they would fool you. But I wanted them to know the sort of questions they would be asked – by lawyers, even perhaps the Press. I used to watch you on television,’ she added with a trace of contempt. ‘I fooled that judge. He never knew about their father and me. I enjoy fooling people when it’s necessary. I knew I could fool you.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ said Jemima Shore coldly. She did not like the idea of being fooled. ‘There was one more clue. An expression. The expression of triumph on your face when I told you I was satisfied about the children and was going back to London. You dropped your guard for a moment. It reminded me of a woman who had once scored over me on television. I didn’t forget that.’ She added, ‘Besides, you would never have got away with it.’

  But privately she thought that if Zillah Parr had not displayed her arrogance by sending for Jemima Shore, Investigator, as a guinea pig she might well have done so. After all, no one had seen Catharine Parr for seven years; bitterly she had cut herself off completely from all her old friends when she went to Ireland. Zillah had also led a deliberately isolated life after her husband’s death; in her case she had hoped to elude the children’s mother should she ever reappear. Zillah’s sister had vanished to Canada. Elspeth Maxwell had been held at arm’s length, as had the inhabitants of Kildrum. Johnnie Maxwell had met Zillah once but there was no need for him to meet the false Mrs Parr, who so much disliked fishing.

  The two women were much of an age and their physical resemblance in youth, striking: that resemblance which Zillah suggested had first attracted Mr Parr towards her. Only the hair had to be remedied, since Catharine’s untended hair had darkened so much with the passing of the years. As for the corpse, the Parr family lawyer, whom Zillah had met face to face at the time of her husband’s death, was, she knew, on holiday in Greece. It was not difficult to fake a resemblance sufficient to make Major Maclachlan at the Estate Office identify the body as that of Zillah Parr. The truth was so very bizarre: he was hardly likely to suspect it. He would be expecting to see the corpse of Zillah Parr, following Johnnie’s account, and the corpse of Zillah Parr, bedraggled by the loch, he would duly see.

  The unkempt air of a tramp was remarkably easy to ass