Charlotte was the first of the family to surface. She came down to the kitchen yawning, wrapped in a deep blue woolen dressing gown, complaining she had been awakened by sirens.

Gini averted her face from the swell of her stomach; Charlotte, fussing over the dogs, did not notice her reddened eyes.

“I don’t understand.” She waved a scrap of paper. “Max left me a note—he didn’t want to wake me, and I was dead to the world. But there’s been some kind of accident. He and Rowland had the police out last night, after we went to bed. But why aren’t they back? Where can they be? Why haven’t they called?”

“I’ll make some tea.” Gini rose. “Don’t worry, Charlotte. There’s probably some simple explanation. It can’t be too serious. Max would have awakened you if it were.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He’s protective. Of me—and this daughter of ours here.” She patted her stomach. “She’s kicking away now. Here…” She held out her hand. “Feel, Gini. Isn’t it extraordinary? So small, and all that power?”

Gini allowed her hand to be taken. She rested her palm on the curve of Charlotte’s belly. Its hardness astonished her. At first she felt nothing, then she sensed a tremor, then movement. There was a bumping beneath her hand, as if tiny hands or feet resented this confinement and pushed against the womb’s walls. Then there was stillness, then movement again, rippling out beneath her fingertips in one long, fluent curve.

“She’s turned over.” Charlotte smiled. “Now she’ll sleep. That’s the usual routine.”

“She?” Gini withdrew her hand. Envy, and a longing so intense it stifled her, gripped her heart. She turned quickly away to the stove.

“I believe Rowland.” Charlotte gave a low laugh. “I know he was teasing me, but I still trust him. Rowland’s so odd—he might well have magic powers.”

She stopped speaking abruptly and swung around.

Gini, turning, heard the sound of pounding footsteps, a voice calling frantically. A woman was running across the terrace outside. Without knocking, she flung open the kitchen door. It was only when she began speaking, and Gini heard her accent, that she realized this white-faced, disheveled woman was the smart, overdressed Susan Landis, whom she had met and disliked the night before.

“Please,” she said. “Oh, God, Charlotte—please, you’ve got to help me. I’ve been calling and calling—I just went up to the manor. There’s police everywhere…”

She swayed, grasped a chair back, and made a choking sound.

“Please help me. Something terrible has happened. Cassandra’s dead—and Mina’s disappeared. She’s such a good girl—she’s only fifteen. Charlotte—please. I can’t make the police understand. Mina’s gone!”

At nine-thirty Rowland was sitting in a small interview room in the main Cheltenham police station. The room was tiny and smelled of stale nicotine. He had been sitting there since six-thirty that morning. He had not eaten, washed, shaved, or slept. Max, who had driven him there, was in the interview room next door. It was he who had made the preliminary identification of Cassandra Morley’s body. Now, presumably, he was doing what Rowland had been doing for the past three hours, going over the events of the night before.