THE CASE OF THE PARR CHILDREN

Antonia Fraser

‘I’ve come about the children.’

The woman who stood outside the door of the flat, her finger poised to ring the bell again, looked desperate. She also looked quite unknown to the owner of the flat, Jemima Shore. It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning; an odd time for anyone to be paying a social call on the celebrated television reporter. Jemima Shore had no children. Outside her work she led a very free and very private existence. As she stood at the door, unusually dishevelled, pulling a dark blue towelling robe round her, she had time to wonder rather dazedly: Whose children? Why here? Before she decided that the stranger had rung the wrong bell of the wrong flat, and very likely the wrong house in Holland Park.

‘I’ve come about the children.’

The woman before her was panting slightly as she repeated the words. But then Jemima Shore’s flat was on the top floor. It was her appearance which on closer inspection was odd: she looked smudged and dirty like a charcoal drawing which had been abandoned. Her beltless mackintosh had presumably once been white; as had perhaps her ancient tennis shoes with their gaping canvas, and her thick woollen socks. The thin dark dress she wore beneath her mackintosh, hem hanging down, gave the impression of being too old for her until Jemima realised that it was the dress itself which was decrepit. Only her hair showed any sign of care: that had at least been brushed. Short and brown, it hung down straight on either side of her face: in this case the style was too young.

The woman before Jemima might have been a tramp. Then there was the clink of a bottle at her feet as she moved uneasily towards Jemima. In a brown paper bag at her feet were the remains of a picnic which had clearly been predominantly alcoholic. The image of the tramp was confirmed.

‘Jemima Shore, Investigator?’ she gasped. ‘You’ve got to help me.’ And she repeated for the third time: ‘You see, I’ve come about the children.’

Jemima recoiled slightly. It was true that she was billed by this title in her programmes of serious social reportage. It was also true that the general public had from time to time mistaken her for a real investigator as a result. Furthermore, lured by the magic spell of know-all television, people had on occasion brought her problems to solve; and she had on occasion solved them. Nevertheless, early Sunday morning, well before the first cup of coffee, seemed an inauspicious moment for such an appeal. In any case, by the sound of it, the woman needed a professional social worker rather than an amateur investigator.

Jemima decided that the lack of coffee could at least be remedied. Pulling her robe still further around her, and feeling more than slightly cross, she led the way into her elegant little kitchen. The effect of the delicate pink formica surfaces was to make the tramp-woman look grubbier than ever. At which point her visitor leant forward on her kitchen stool, covered in pretty rose-coloured denim, and started to sob loudly and uncontrollably into her hands. Tears trickled between her fingers. Jemima noticed with distaste that the fingernails too were dirty. Coffee was by now not so much desirable as essential. Jemima proceeded first to make it, and then to administer it.

Ten minutes later she found herself listening to a very strange story indeed. The woman who was telling it described herself as Mrs Catharine Parr.

‘Yes, just like the wretched Queen who lost her head, and I’m just as wretched, I’m quite lost too.’ Jemima raised her eyebrows briefly at the historical inaccuracy – hadn’t Catharine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, died in her bed? But as Mrs Parr rushed on with her dramatic tale, she reflected that here was a woman who probably embellished everything with unnecessary flourishes. Mrs Parr was certainly wretched enough; that went without question. Scotland. She had come overnight from Scotland. Hence of course both the mackintosh and the thin dress, even the picnic (although the empty wine bottles remained unexplained). Hence the early hour, for Mrs Parr had come straight from Euston Station, off her sleeper. And now it was back to the children again.

At this point, Jemima Shore managed at last to get a word in edgeways: ‘Whose children? Your children?’

Mrs Parr, tears checked, looked at Jemima as though she must already know the answer to that question: ‘Why, the Parr children of course. Don’t you remember the case of the Parr children? There was a lot about it on television,’ she added reproachfully.

“The Parr children: yes, I think I do remember something – your children, I suppose.’

To Jemima’s surprise there was a pause. Then Mrs Parr said with great solemnity:

‘Miss Shore, that’s just what I want you to find out. I just don’t know whether they’re my children or not. I just don’t know.’

‘I think,’ said Jemima Shore, Investigator, resignedly drinking her third cup of coffee, ‘You had better tell me all about it from the beginning.’

Oddly enough Jemima did genuinely remember something about the episode. Not from television, but from the newspapers where it had been much discussed, notably in the Guardian; and Jemima was a Guardian reader. It had been a peculiarly rancorous divorce case. The elderly judge had come down heavily on the side of the father. Not only had he taken the unusual step of awarding Mr Parr care and custody of the two children of the marriage – mere babies – but he had also summed up the case in full for the benefit of the Press.

In particular he had dwelt venomously on the imperfections of Mrs Parr and her ‘trendy amoral Bohemianism unsuitable for contact with any young creature’. This was because Mrs Parr had admitted having an affair with a gypsy or something equally exotic. She now proposed to take her children off with him for the glorious life of the open road; which, she suggested, would enable her children to grow up uninhibited loving human beings. Mr Parr responded with a solid bourgeois proposition, including a highly responsible Nannie, a general atmosphere of nursery tea now, private schools later. Columnists had had a field day for a week or two, discussing the relative merits of bourgeois and Bohemian life-styles for children. On the whole Jemima herself had sympathised with the warm-blooded Mrs Parr.

It transpired that Jemima’s recollection of the case was substantially correct. Except that she had forgotten the crucial role played by the so-called Nannie; in fact no Nannie but a kind of poor relation, a trained nurse named Zillah. It was Zillah who had spoken with calm assurance of the father’s love for his children, reluctantly of the selfish flightiness of the mother. She had known her cousin Catharine all her life, she said, although their material circumstances had been very different. She pronounced with regret that in her opinion Catharine Parr was simply not fitted to have sole responsibility for young children. It was one of the reasons which had prompted her to leave her nursing career in order to look after the Parr babies.

Since Zillah was clearly a detached witness who had the welfare of the children at heart, her evidence was regarded as crucial by the judge. He contrasted Catharine and Zillah: ‘two young women so outwardly alike, so inwardly different’. He made this also a feature of his summing-up. Miss Zillah Roberts, who has had none of the benefits of money and education of the mother in the case, has nevertheless demonstrated the kind of firm moral character most appropriate to the care of infants …etc. etc.’

In vain Mrs Parr had exploded in court:

“Don’t believe her. She’s his mistress! They’re sleeping together. She’s been jealous of me all her life. She always wanted everything I had, my husband, now my children.’

Such wild unsubstantiated talk did Mrs Parr no good at all, especially in view of her own admitted ‘uninhibited and loving’ behaviour. If anything the judge’s summing-up gained in vinegar from the interruption.

Mrs Parr skated over the next part of her story. Deprived of her children, she had set off for the south of Ireland with her lover. Jemima had the impression, listening to her, that drink had played a considerable part in the story – drink and perhaps despair too. Nor did Mrs Parr enlarge on the death of her lover, except to say that he had died as he had lived: ‘violently’. As a result Jemima had no idea whether Mrs Parr regretted her bold leap out of the bourgeois nest. All she discovered was that Mrs Parr had had no contact whatsoever with her children for seven years. Neither sought nor proffered. Not sought because Mr Parr had confirmed Mrs Parr’s suspicions by marrying Zillah the moment his divorce became absolute: ‘and she would never have permitted it. Zillah.’ Not proffered, of course, because Mrs Parr had left no address behind her.

‘I had to make a new life. I wouldn’t take any money from him. They’d taken my children away from me and I had to make a new life.’

It was only after the death of Mrs Parr’s lover that, destitute and friendless, she had returned to England. Contacting perforce her ex-husband’s lawyer for funds of some sort, she had discovered to her astonishment that Mr Parr had died suddenly several months earlier. The lawyers had been trying in their dignified and leisurely fashion to contact his first wife, the mother of his children. In the meantime the second Mrs Parr, Zillah, the children’s ex-Nannie and step-mother had taken them off to a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands. As she put it to the lawyer, she intended ‘to get them and me away from it all’. The lawyer had demurred with the question of the children’s future outstanding. But Zillah, with that same quiet air of authority which had swayed the divorce court judge, convinced him. It might be months before the first Mrs Parr was contacted, she pointed out. In the meantime they had her address. And the children’s.

‘And suddenly there I was!’ exclaimed Mrs Catharine

Parr to Jemima Shore, the vehemence returning to her voice. ‘But it was too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Too late for Zillah. You see, Miss Shore, Zillah was dead. She was drowned in a boating accident in Scotland. It was too late for Zillah.’ Jemima, sensing the depth of Mrs Parr’s bitterness, realised that what she really meant was: too late for vengeance.

Even then, Mrs Parr’s troubles were not over. The encounter with the children had been even more upsetting. Two children, Tamsin nearly nine and Tara nearly eight, who confronted her with scared and hostile eyes. They were being cared for at the lodge which Zillah had so precipitately rented. A local woman from the village, responsible for the caretaking of the lodge, had volunteered. Various suggestions had been made to transfer the children to somewhere less lonely, attended by less tragic memories. However, Tamsin and Tara had shown such extreme distress at the idea of moving away from their belongings and the home they knew that the plan had been abandoned. In the meantime their real mother had also announced her arrival.

So Mrs Parr took the sleeper to Inverness.

‘But when I got to Scotland I didn’t recognise them!’ cried Mrs Parr in a return to her dramatic style. ‘So I want you to come back to Scotland with me and interview them. Find out who they are. You’re an expert interviewer: I’ve seen you on television. That programme about refugee children. You talk to them. I beg you, Miss Shore. You see before you a desperate woman and a fearful mother.’

‘But were you likely to recognise them?’ enquired Jemima rather dryly. ‘I mean, you hadn’t seen either of them for seven years. How old was Tamsin then – eighteen months? Tara – what – six months?’

‘It wasn’t a question of physical recognition, I assure you. In a way, they looked more or less as I expected. Fair. Healthy. She’d looked after them alright, Zillah, whoever they are. She always looked after people, Zillah. That’s how she got him, of course.’

Then why —’ began Jemima hastily.

Mrs Parr leant forward and said in a conspiratorial tone: ‘It was spiritual recognition I meant. Nothing spoke to me and said: These are my children. In fact a voice deep in me cried out: Zillah! These are Zillah’s children. This is Zillah’s revenge. Even from the grave, she won’t let me have my own children.’ She paused for effect.

‘You see, Zillah had this sister Kitty. We were cousins, I think I told you. Quite close cousins even though we had been brought up so differently. That’s how Zillah came to look after the children in the first place: she wanted a proper home, she said, after the impersonality of nursing. But that didn’t satisfy Zillah. She was always on at me to do something about this sister and her family – as though their awful lives were my fault!’

She went on: ‘Kitty had two little girls, almost exactly the same ages as my two. Quite fair then, though not as fair as Zillah and not as fair as my children. But there was a resemblance, everyone said so. People sometimes took them for my children. I suppose our relationship accounted for it. Kitty was a wretched creature but physically we were not unalike. Anyway, Zillah thought the world of these babies and was always having them round. Kitty was unhappily married: I believe the husband ran off before the last baby was born. Suddenly, looking at this pair, I thought: little cuckoos. Zillah has taken her own nieces, and put them into my nest —’

‘— Which you had left of your own accord.’ But Jemima did not say the words aloud. Instead she asked with much greater strength:

‘But why?’

‘The money! That’s why,’ exclaimed Mrs Parr in triumph. "The Parr money in trust for them. Parr Biscuits. Doesn’t that ring a bell? The money only went to the descendants of Ephraim Parr. She wouldn’t have got a penny – except what he left her. Her nieces had no Pan- blood either. But my children, because they were Parrs, would have been, are rich. Maybe my poor little children died, ran away, maybe she put them in an orphanage – I don’t know. Or’ – her voice suddenly changed totally, becoming dreamy, ‘Or perhaps these are my children after all. Perhaps I’m imagining it all, after all I’ve been through. Miss Shore, this is just what I’ve come all the way from Scotland to beg you to find out.’

It was an extraordinary story. Jemima’s original impulse had been to give Mrs Catharine Parr a cup of coffee and send her gently on her way. Now the overriding curiosity which was definitely her strongest attribute would not let her be. The appeals of the public to Jemima Shore Investigator certainly fell on compassionate ears; but they also fell on very inquisitive ones. In this instance she felt she owed it to the forces of common sense to point out first to Mrs Parr that lawyers could investigate such matters far more efficiently than she. To this Mrs Parr answered quite reasonably that lawyers would take an age, as they always did:

‘And in the meantime what would happen to me and the children? We’d be getting to know each other, getting fond of each other. No, Miss Shore, you can settle it. I know you can. Then we can all get on with our lives for better or for worse.’

Then Jemima caved in and acceded to Mrs Parr’s request.

It was in this way, for better or for worse as Mrs Parr had put it, that Jemima Shore Investigator found herself the following night taking the sleeper back to Inverness. The sleeping-car attendant recognised Mrs Parr quite merrily:

Why it’s you again, Mrs Parr. You’ll keep British Rail in business with your travelling.’ Then of course he recognised Jemima Shore with even greater delight. Later, taking her ticket, he was with difficulty restrained from confiding to her his full and rich life story which he was convinced would make an excellent television documentary. Staved off, he contented himself with approving Jemima’s modest order of late-night tea.

‘You’re not like your friend, then, Mrs Parr …’ he made a significant drinking gesture. The trouble I had with her going north the first time. Crying, and crying and disturbing all the passengers. However she was better the second time, and mebbe now you’ll have a good influence on her, Miss Shore. I’ll be seeing her now and asking her if this time she’ll have a late-night cup of tea.’ He bustled off, leaving Jemima faintly disquieted. She hoped that Mrs Parr had no drink aboard. The north of Scotland with an alcoholic, probably a fantasist into the bargain …

Morning found her in a more robust mood. Which was fortunate since Jemima’s first sight of Kildrum Lodge, standing on the edge of a dark, seemingly endless loch, shut in by mountains, was once again disquieting. It was difficult for her to believe that Zillah could have brought the children to such a place out of sheer love for Scottish scenery and country pursuits such as fishing, swimming and walking. The situation of the lodge itself even for Scotland was so extremely isolated. Nor was the glen which led up to the lodge notably beautiful. A general lack of colour except blackness, in the water, reflected from the skies, made it in fact peculiarly depressing. There was a lack of vegetation even on the lower slopes of the mountains, which slid down straight into the loch. The single track road was bumpy and made of stones. It was difficult to imagine that much traffic passed that way. One could imagine a woman with something to hide – two children perhaps? – seeking out such a location, but not a warm comforting body hoping to cheer up her charges after the sudden death of their father.

The notion of Zillah’s sinister purpose, far-fetched in London, suddenly seemed horribly plausible. And this was the loch, the very loch, in which Zillah herself had drowned. No, Kildrum to Jemima Shore did not have the air of a happy uncomplicated place. She looked across at Mrs Parr, in the passenger seat of the hired car. Mrs Parr looked pale. Whether she had passed the night consuming further bottles of wine or was merely dreading the next confrontation with the Parr children, the hands with which she was trying to light a cigarette were shaking. Jemima felt once more extremely sorry for her and glad that she had come to Kildrum.

They approached the lodge. It was surrounded by banks of dark green rhododendrons, growing unrestrained, which did nothing to cheer the surroundings. There was no other garden, only rough grass going down to the loch. The large windows of the lodge looked blank and unwelcoming. As Jemima drove slowly up the stony road, the front door opened and something white was glimpsed within. It was eerily quiet once the car’s engine had stopped. Then the door opened further and the flash of white proved to be a girl wearing jeans and a blue jersey. She had extremely fair, almost lint-white hair, plaited. For a girl of eight she was quite well-built, even stocky.

‘Tamsin,’ said Mrs Parr. She pronounced the name as though for Jemima’s benefit; but it was once again disquieting that she made no move towards the child. The interior of the house, like the glen itself and the mountains, was dark. Most of the paintwork was brown and the chintz curtains were patterned in a depressing brown and green. Nevertheless, some energy had obviously been spent recently in making it cosy. There were cheerful traces of childish occupation, books, a bright red anorak, shiny blue gumboots. Pot plants and an arrangement of leaves bore witness to the presence of a domestic spirit in the house – once upon a time.

In the large kitchen at the back of the house where Jemima insisted on repairing for coffee there was also an unmistakable trace of modem civilisation in the shape of a television set. There was a telephone too – but that was black and ancient-looking. Tamsin went with them, still silent. In the kitchen they were immediately joined by Tara, equally silent, equally blonde.

The two sisters stared warily at the women before them as if they were intruders. Which in a sense, thought Jemima, we are. Her eyes caught and held by the two striking flaxen heads, she recalled Mrs Parr’s words concerning Zillah’s nephew and niece: ‘Quite fair too then, but not as fair as Zillah and not as fair as my children …’ Could children actually become fairer as the years went by? Impossible. No one became fairer with time except out of a bottle. Even these children’s hair was darkening slightly at the roots. Jemima felt that she had a first very positive clue that the Parr children were exactly what they purported to be. She was so relieved that a feeling of bonhomie seized her. She smiled warmly at the children and extended her hand.

Tm Jemima Shore —’

‘Investigator!’ completed Tamsin triumphantly. And from her back she produced a large placard on which the cheering words: ‘Welcome Jemima Shaw Investogater’ were carefully inscribed in a variety of lurid pentel colours.

‘I did it,’ exclaimed Tara.

‘I did the spelling,’ said Tamsin proudly.

Jemima decided it would be tactful to congratulate her on it. At least fame on the box granted you a kind of passport to instant friendship, whatever the circumstances. In the kitchen too was another figure prepared to be an instant friend: Mrs Elspeth Maxwell, caretaker of the lodge and since the death of Zillah, in loco parentis to the Parr children. Elspeth Maxwell, as Jemima quickly appreciated, was a woman of uncertain age but certain garrulity. Instinctively she summed people up as they would make good or bad subjects for an interview. Mrs Parr, madness and melodrama and all, would not in the end make good television. She was perhaps too obsessional at centre. But Elspeth Maxwell, under her flow of anecdote, might give you just that line or vital piece of information you needed to illuminate a whole topic. Jemima decided to cultivate her; whatever the cost in listening to a load of irrelevant gossip.

As a matter of fact Elspeth Maxwell needed about as much cultivation as the rhododendrons growing wild outside the house. During the next few days, Jemima found that her great problem consisted in getting away from Elspeth Maxwell, occupying the kitchen, and into the children’s playroom. Mrs Parr spent most of the time in her bedroom. Her public excuse was that she wanted to let Jemima get on with her task, which had been described to Tamsin and Tara as investigation for a programme about children living in the Highlands. Privately she told Jemima that she wanted to keep clear of emotional involvement with the children ‘until I’m sure. One way or the other.’ Jemima thought there might be a third reason: that Mrs Parr wanted to consume at leisure her daily ration of cheap red wine. The pile of empty bottles on the rubbish dump behind the rhododendrons continued to grow and there was a smell of drink upstairs emanating from Mrs Parr’s bedroom. Whenever Mrs Parr chose to empty an ash-tray it was overflowing. On one occasion Jemima tried the door. It was locked. After a moment Mrs Parr called out in a muffled voice:

‘Go away. I’m resting.’

It was conclusive evidence of Mrs Parr’s addiction that no drink was visible in the rest of the house. Jemima was never offered anything alcoholic, nor was any reference made to the subject. In her experience of alcoholics, that was far more damning than the sight of a rapidly diminishing sherry bottle in the sitting-room.

Elspeth on the subject of the children was interminable: ‘Ach, the poor wee things! Terrible for them, now, wasn’t it? Their mother drowned before their very eyes. What a tragedy. Here in Kildrum.’

‘Step-mother,’ corrected Jemima. Elspeth swept on. But the tale was indeed a tragic one, whichever way you looked at it.

‘A fearful accident indeed. Though there’s other people been drowned in the loch, you know, it’s the weeds, those weeds pull you down, right to the bottom. And it’s one of the deepest lochs in the Highlands, deeper than Loch Ness, nearly as deep as Loch Morar, did you know that, Miss Shore? Then their father not so long dead, I believe, and this lady coming, their real mother, all on top of it. Then you, so famous, from television …’

The trouble was that, for all her verbiage, Elspeth Maxwell could not really tell Jemima anything much about Zillah herself, still less about her relationship with Tamsin and Tara. It was Elspeth who had had the task of sorting out Zillah’s effects and putting them into suitcases, still lying upstairs while some sort of decision was reached as to what to do with them. These Jemima made a mental note to examine as soon as possible. Otherwise Elspeth had seen absolutely nothing of Zillah during her sojourn at Kildrum Lodge.

‘She wanted no help, she told the Estate Office. She could perfectly well take care of the lodge, she said, and the children. She was used to it. And the cooking. She wanted peace and quiet, she said, and to fish and walk and swim and go out in the boat – ’ Elspeth stopped. ‘Ah well, poor lady. But she certainly kept herself very close, herself and the children. No one knew her in Kildrum. Polite, mind you, a very polite lady, they said at the Estate Office, wrote very polite letters and notes. But very close.’

And the children? The verdict was more or less the same. Yes, they had certainly seemed very fond of Zillah whenever glimpsed in Kildrum. But generally shy, reserved. And once again polite. Elspeth could only recall one conversation of any moment before Zillah’s death out of a series of little interchanges and that was when Tamsin, in Kildrum Post Office, referred to the impending arrival of Mrs Parr. Elspeth, out of motherly sympathy for their apparent loneliness, had invited Tamsin and Tara to tea with her in the village. Tamsin had refused:

‘A lady’s coming from London to see us. She says she’s our Mummy. But Tara and me think Zillah is our Mummy.’ It was, remarked Elspeth, an unusual burst of confidence from Tamsin, She had put it down to Tamsin’s distaste at the thought of the arrival of ‘the lady from London’ – while of course becoming madly curious about Tamsin’s family history. As a result of a ‘wee discussion’ of the subject in her own home, she had actually put two and two together and realised that these were the once famous Parr children. Elspeth, even in Kildrum, had naturally had strong views on that subject. How she would now have adored some contact with the household at Kildrum Lodge! But that was politely but steadfastly denied her. Until Zillah’s death, ironically enough, brought to Elspeth exactly that involvement she had so long desired.

‘I did think: mebbe she has something to hide, and my brother-in-law, Johnnie Maxwell, the ghillie, he thought mebbe the same. Keeping herself so much to herself. But all along, I dare say it was just the fear of the other mother, that one,’ Elspeth rolled her eyes to the ceiling where Mrs Parr might be supposed to lie ‘resting’ in her bedroom. ‘Fear of her finding the children. Ah well, it’s difficult to judge her altogether wrong. If you know what I mean. The dreadful case. All that publicity.’

But Elspeth looked as if she would readily re-hash every detail of the case of the Parr children, despite the publicity, for Jemima’s benefit.

None of this was particularly helpful. Nor did inspection of Zillah’s personal belongings, neatly sorted by Elspeth, bring any reward. It was not that Jemima expected to find a signed confession: ‘Tamsin and Tara are imposters. They are the children of my sister …’ Indeed, she was coming more and more to the conclusion that Mrs Parr’s mad suspicions were the product of a mind disordered by alcohol. But Jemima did hope to provide herself with some kind of additional picture of the dead woman, other than the malevolent reports of the first Mrs Parr, and the secondhand gossip of Elspeth Maxwell. All she discovered was that Zillah, like Jemima herself, had an inordinate fondness for the colour beige, presumably for the same reason, to complement her fair colouring; and like a good many other English women, but unlike Jemima, bought her underclothes at Marks & Spencer’s (Jemima patronised Janet Reger). Jemima did not like to speculate where and when Mrs Parr might have last bought her underclothes.

There were various photographs of Tamsin and Tara but none pre-dating Scotland. There were also some photographs of Zillah’s sister Kitty; she did look vaguely like Mrs Parr, Jemima noticed, but no more than that; their features were different; it was a question of physical type rather than strict resemblance. There were no photographs of Kitty’s children. Was that sinister? Conceivably. Or maybe she had merely lost touch with them. Was it also sinister that Zillah had not preserved photographs of Tamsin and Tara in Sussex? Once again: conceivably. On the other hand Zillah might have packed away all her Sussex mementoes (there were no photographs of Mr Parr either). Perhaps she came into that category of grief- stricken person who prefers not to be reminded of the past.

From the Estate Office Jemima drew another blank. Major Maclachlan, who had had the unenviable task of identifying Zillah’s body, was polite enough, particularly at the thought of a television programme popularising his corner of the Highlands. But he added very little to the public portrait of a woman whose chief characteristic was her reserve and determination to guard her privacy – her own and that of the children. Her love of country sports, especially fishing, had however impressed him: Major Maclachlan clearly found it unjust that someone with such admirable tastes should have perished as a result of them.

Only Johnnie Maxwell, Elspeth’s brother-in-law who was in charge of fishing on the loch, contributed anything at all to her enquiries. For it was Johnnie Maxwell who had been the principal witness at the inquest, having watched the whole drowning from the bank of the loch. To the newspaper account of the tragedy, which Jemima had read, he added some ghoulish details of the pathetic cries of the ‘wee girl’, unable to save Zillah. The children had believed themselves alone on the loch. In vain Johnnie had called to them to throw in the oar. Tamsin had merely screamed and screamed, oar in hand, Tara had sat quite still and silent, as though dumbstruck in horror. In their distress they did not seem to understand, or perhaps they could not hear him.

Altogether it was a most unfortunate, if not unparalleled accident. One moment Zillah was casting confidently (‘Aye, she was a grand fisherwoman, the poor lady, more’s the pity’). The next moment she had overbalanced and fallen in the water. There was no one else in the boat except the two children, and no one else to be seen on the shores of the loch except Johnnie. By the time he got his own boat to the children, Zillah had completely vanished and Tamsin was in hysterics, Tara quite mute. Helpers came up from the Estate. They did not find the body till the next morning, when it surfaced in the thick reeds at the shore. There were some bruises on it, but nothing that could not be explained by a fall from the boat and prolonged immersion.

That left the children. Jemima felt she owed it to Mrs Parr to cross-examine them a little on their background. Confident that she would turn up nothing to their disadvantage, she could at least reassure Mrs Parr thoroughly as a result. After that she trusted that her eccentric new contact would settle into normal family life or the nearest approximation to it she could manage. Yes, the gentle, efficient cross-examination of Tamsin and Tara would be her final task and then Jemima Shore, Investigator, would depart for London, having closed the case of the Parr children once and for all.

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?’

Jemima smilingly denied it. I’m lucky.’ She wasn’t sure whether Elspeth believed her. After a bit Elspeth continued: ‘Not like that poor lady.’ She seemed obsessed with the subject. Was she thinking of dyeing her own hair? The late Mrs Parr, I mean, when I cleared out her things, I found plenty of bottles, different colours, dark and fair, as though she’d been making a wee experiment. And she had lovely fair hair herself, or so they said, Johnnie and the men, when they took her out of the water. Just like the children. Look —’ Elspeth suddenly produced two bottles from out of the kitchen cupboard. One was called Goldilocks and the other Brown Leaf. Jemima thought her guess was right. Elspeth was contemplating her own wee experiment.

Tm thinking you’ll not be needing this on your natural fair hair.’ There was a faint ironic emphasis in Elspeth’s tone. ‘And Tamsin and Tara, they’ll have lovely hair too when they grow up. They won’t need Goldilocks or such things. And who would want Brown Leaf anyway with lovely fair hair like theirs? And yours. Brown Leaf would only hide the colour.’ Elspeth put the bottles back in the cupboard as though that settled the matter.

Irritated by her malice – there was nothing wrong with dyeing one’s hair but Jemima just did not happen to do it – Jemima abandoned Elspeth and the kitchen for the nursery. Nevertheless, Elspeth’s words continued to ring in her head. That and another remark she could not forget. Tamsin and Tara were both reading quietly, lying on their tummies on the door. Tamsin looked up and smiled.

‘When will the programme be, Miss Shore?’ she asked brightly. ‘When will you come back and film us? Oh, I’m so sad you’re going away.’

Jemima was standing by the mantelpiece. It had a large mirror over it, which gave some light to the dark room. In the mirror she gazed back into the room, at the striking blonde heads of the two children lying on the floor. It was of course a mirror image, reversed. The sight was symbolical. It was as though for the first time she was seeing the case of the Parr children turned inside out, reversed, black white, dark fair … Lucky children with their mother restored to them. A mother who drank and smoked and was totally undomesticated. But was still their mother. Zillah had done none of these things – but she had done worse: she had tried to keep the children from the mother who bore them. Lucky. Third time lucky.

Jemima stood absolutely still. Behind her back Tamsin smiled again that happy innocent smile. Tara was smiling too.

‘Oh yes, Miss Shore,’ she echoed, Tm so sad you’re going away.’ For once Tara was in total agreement with her sister. And in the mirror Jemima saw both girls dissolve into soundless giggles, hands over the mouth to stifle the noise. She continued to stare at the children’s blonde heads.

With sudden horrible clarity, Jemima knew that she was wrong, had been wrong all along. She would have to tell the woman resting upstairs that the children were not after all her own. A remark that had long haunted her came to the front of her mind. Catharine Parr: ‘Just like the wretched Queen who lost her head, and I’m just as wretched.’ And now she knew why it had haunted her. Catharine Parr had not been executed by Henry VIII, but she had been childless by him. Now she would have to break it to Mrs Parr that she too was childless. Would be childless in the future.

It had to be done. There was such a thing as truth. Truth – and justice. But first, however dreadfully, she had to confront the children with what they had done. She had to make them admit it.

Wheeling round, she said as calmly as possible to the little girls: Tm just going to drive to the telephone box to arrange with my secretary about my return. This telephone is out of order with the storm last night.’ She thought she could trust Tamsin to accept that story. Then Jemima added:

‘And when I come back, we’ll go out in the boat. Will you tell your — ’ she paused in spite of herself — ‘Will you tell your Mummy that?’

The children were not smiling now.

‘The boat!’ exclaimed Tamsin. ‘But our Mummy can’t swim. She told us.’ She sounded tearful. ‘She told us not to go in the boat, and anyway we don’t want to. She told us we’d never ever have to go in the boat again.’

‘Oh don’t make us go in the horrid boat, Miss Shore,’ Tara’s eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘Please don’t. We can’t swim. We never learnt yet.’

‘I can swim,’ replied Jemima, ‘I’m a strong swimmer. Will you give your Mummy my message?’

When Jemima got back, Mrs Parr was standing with Tamsin and Tara by the door of the lodge, holding their hands (the first time Jemima had glimpsed any sign of physical affection in her). She was looking extremely distressed. She was wearing a filthy torn mackintosh in which she had first appeared at Jemima’s flat. Her appearance, which had improved slightly over the last few days, was as unkempt and desperate as it had been on that weird-occasion.

‘Miss Shore, you mustn’t do this,’ she cried, the moment Jemima was out of the car. We can’t go out in the boat. It’s terrible for the children after – after what happened. Besides, I can’t swim —’

‘I’m sorry, Catharine,’ was all Jemima said. She did not relish what she had to do.

Perhaps because she was childless herself Jemima Shore believed passionately that young children were basically innocent whatever they did. After all, had the Parr children ever really had a chance in life since its disturbed beginnings? And now she, the alleged protector of the weak, the compassionate social campaigner, was going to administer the coup de grâce. She wished profoundly that she had not answered the bell to Mrs Parr that fatal Sunday morning.

The rain had stopped. The weather was clearing above the mountains in the west although the sky over the loch remained sullen. In silence the little party entered the rowing boat and Jemima pushed off from the soft ground of the foreshore.

‘Come on, Tamsin, sit by me. Row like you did that afternoon with Zillah.’

Mrs Parr gave one more cry:

‘Miss Shore! No.’ Then she relapsed with a sort of groan into the seat of the stern of the boat. Tara sat beside her, facing Jemima and Tamsin.

After a while Jemima rested on her oar. They were near the middle of the loch. The lodge looked small and far away, the mountains behind less menacing. Following the rain the temperature had risen. Presently the sun came out. It was quite humid. Flies buzzed round Jemima’s head and the children. Soon the midges would come to torture them. The water had a forbidding look: she could see thick green weeds floating just beneath the surface. An occasional fish rose and broke the black surface. No one was visible amongst the reeds. They were, the silent boatload, alone on the loch.

Or perhaps they were not alone. Perhaps Johnnie Maxwell the ghillie was somewhere amid the sedge, at his work. If so he would have seen yet another macabre sight on Loch Drum. He would have seen Jemima Shore, her red-gold hair illuminated by the sunlight, lean forward and grab Tara from her seat. He would have seen her hurl the little girl quite far into the lake, like some human Excalibur. He would have heard the loud splash, seen the spreading circles on the black water. Then he would surely, even at the edge of the loch – for the air was very still after the rain – have heard Tara’s cries. But even if Johnnie Maxwell had been watching, he would have been once again helpless to have saved the drowning person.

Mrs Parr gave a single loud scream and stood up at the stern of the boat. Jemima Shore sat grimly still, like a figure of vengeance. Tamsin got to her feet, wielded her oar and tried in vain to reach out to the child, splashing hopelessly now on, now under the surface of the loch. Jemima Shore continued to sit still.

When a child’s voice was heard, half choking with water:

‘Zillah, save me! Zillah!’

It seemed as though the woman standing at the stern of the boat would never move. Suddenly, uncontrollably, she tore off her white mackintosh. And without further hesitation, she made a perfect racing dive onto the surface of the loch. Minutes later Tara, still sobbing and spluttering, but alive, was safely out of the water. Then for the first time since she had thrown Tara into the loch, Jemima Shore made a move – to pull the woman who had called herself Mrs Catharine Parr back into the boat again.

The police are coming, of course,’ said Jemima. They were back at the house;. You killed her, didn’t you?’

Tamsin and Tara, in dry clothes, had been sent out to play among the rhododendrons which served for a garden. The sun was gaining intensity. The loch had moved from black to grey to slate blue. Tara was bewildered. Tamsin was angry.

‘Goodbye, Mummy’ she said fiercely to Zillah.

‘Don’t make her pretend any longer,’ Jemima too appealed to Zillah. And to Tamsin: ‘I know you see. I’ve known for some time.’

Tamsin then turned to her sister: ‘Baby. You gave it away. You promised never to call her Zillah. Now they’ll come and take Zillah away. I won’t ever speak to you again.’ And Tamsin ran off into the dark shrubberies.

Zillah Parr, wearing some of her own clothes fished out of Elspeth’s packages, was sitting with Jemima by the playroom fire. She looked neat and clean and reassuring, a child’s dream mother, as she must always have looked during the last seven years. Until she deliberately assumed the messy run-down identity of Mrs Parr that is. How this paragon must have hated to dirty her fingernails! Jemima noticed that she had seized the opportunity to scrub them vigorously while she was upstairs in the bathroom changing.

Now the mirror reflected a perfectly composed woman, legs in nice shoes, neatly crossed, sipping the glass of whisky which Jemima had given her.

‘Why not?’ said Zillah coolly. ‘I never drink you know, normally. Unlike her. Nor do I smoke. I find both things quite disgusting. As for pretending to be drunk! I used to pour all those wine bottles down the sink. But I never found a good way of producing cigarette stubs without smoking. Ugh, the smell. I never got used to it. But I feel I may need the whisky this afternoon.’

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 assume: it was largely a matter of externals. After a while the new Mrs Catharine Parr would have discreetly improved her appearance. She would have left Kildrum – who would have blamed her? – and started a new life elsewhere. A new life with the children. Her own children: at last.

As all this was passing through Jemima’s head, suddenly Zillah’s control snapped. She started to cry: ‘My children, my children. Not hers, Mine —’ And she was still crying when the police car came up the rough drive, and tall men with black and white check bands round their hats took her away. First they had read her the warrant: ‘Mrs Zillah Parr, I charge you with the murder of Mrs Catharine Parr, on or about the morning of August 6 … at Kildrum Lodge, Inverness-shire.’

As the police car vanished from sight down the lonely valley, Tara came out of the rhododendrons and put her hand in Jemima’s. There was no sign of Tamsin.

‘She will come back, Miss Shore, won’t she?’ she said anxiously. ‘Zillah, I mean, not that Mummy. I didn’t like that Mummy. She drank bottles all the time and shouted at us. She said rude words, words we’re not allowed to say. I cried when she came and Tamsin hid. That Mummy even tried to hit me. But Zillah told us she would make the horrid Mummy go away. And she did. When will Zillah come back, Miss Shore?’

Holding Tara’s hand, Jemima reflected sadly that the case of the Parr children was probably only just beginning.