‘Well . . . there’s young Frank and Jennie.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Mr and Mrs Howard’s children.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘There’s Mr Adams and William . . . William Metcalfe. And Miss Fearn.’

‘Who is Miss Fearn?’

‘The governess.’

‘Do you like her?’

The young woman on the couch laughed shortly. ‘Her? Too la-di-da for my liking. She may fool some but she doesn’t fool me. She’s penny plain but thinks she’s tuppence-coloured.’

Meredith held up a hand, palm vertical to Bourne.

‘Let’s take a short break there for a moment. No doubt Mr and Mrs Wilson have questions they’d like to ask.’

Paul hesitated, his eyes on the couch. Meredith smiled.

‘I do assure you, Ann cannot hear you. Nor can Mary. They are only aware of Dr Bourne. Indeed when Ann is brought back and wakened she will remember nothing of what has transpired. I may say that this is by no means the first time we have done this with her, though it is, of course, the first time in Ardvreck House. We are very grateful to Ann for her co-operation. She has agreed to be kept in ignorance of everything as long as we see fit.’

‘I see.’ Paul felt doubt. ‘Who is . . . what is . . . this person Mary?’

‘Ah, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. When Mary first appeared it was as a result of a deliberate search on Dr Bourne’s part. He is not the first to investigate the field of regression techniques nor the first to carry a subject back before birth.’

‘Back before birth?’ Pollard frowned. ‘Are you saying that Miss Parish had some kind of existence before birth?’

‘No. I am only using the jargon that has arisen in this field. Let me explain. What a number of researchers have found is that if some of their subjects were asked to regress to a date a considerable way before their birth they took on – for want of a better phrase – personalities who claimed to have lived at such a date. Such a personality would provide all sorts of data, name, address, relations, profession, describe events that happened to it. What’s more, the personality is consistent. It can be revisited at subsequent hypnotic sessions and re-tested, almost always providing the same traits and life-events. You can take the personality through its life from birth to death just as you can take any good subject under hypnosis from birth pangs to the current date.’

‘But what does it mean?’ Carol asked.