“I quietly demanded that a chair be placed beside me for Goblin to sit, and I laid my hand on his knee and felt him relax. I glanced at his profile and found his eyes chilly as he looked at the panel. I told the panel that, though they couldn’t see him, Goblin was sitting to my left and that he was looking at them and hearing everything being said by us.

“As for the panel, I was soon certain that it was impossible to expect anything exceptional from any member of it, and the examination was largely an uneventful half hour.

“Two of the doctors were young, sterile and heartless men, interns, I figure, and the one woman on the panel seemed tentative and overeager to please, and the chairman of the board was a big heavyset doctor who seemed himself to be suffering from terminal depression.

“Winn Mayfair was there and he studied me in dignified silence. His was by far the most interesting face.

“I told them quickly, and dryly, my whole story. I kept back nothing except the most recent and private details of my erotic relationship with Goblin. Of his heroics I made much. Of our sexual contact, I said nothing. When I described my love affair with Rebecca and the burial of her remains, the visits of the Mayfair Medical lab to the Hermitage and the attendance of the FBI, they looked to Aunt Queen, who confirmed what she could readily.

“ ‘You do realize,’ said the heavyset head doctor, ‘that no fingerprints whatsoever were found in the bathroom where you were supposedly attacked. Nothing on the walls, the lavatory or on the pieces of glass that could be examined.’

“I hadn’t known, and I was bitterly disappointed that I had to be told such a thing in these circumstances.

“ ‘The trespasser didn’t touch anything but me,’ I said quietly, my face burning with restraint. ‘The glass was in fragments.’

“ ‘You also know,’ said the chairman of the panel, ‘that your housekeeper Ramona didn’t see this intruder, and none of the guards on your property saw him either.’

“Again, I was hurt that Aunt Queen had not told me these things before, but I swallowed hard on my anger and simply shrugged.

“ ‘Dr. Winn Mayfair can tell you,’ I said. ‘My injuries weren’t self-inflicted.’

“We had come to an impasse.

“Then the doctors put the same routine questions to me that child psychiatrists had used years ago, with a few new wrinkles, such as, Did I hear voices? Did Goblin ever tell me what to do? Did I ever suffer blackouts? Did I know my own IQ? Had I no interest in attending college? I gave simple answers. I wanted it to be over.