She walked to the window, parted curtains and looked out. ‘It is still snowing. Do you believe that? I may have to stay here with you tonight. I have had patients over the years who were almost not of this world, and I did try to disengage from them quickly.

‘That’s the thing with these criminals who become the subject of legend. They go to dentists, psychiatrists, hairstylists. We cannot help but encounter them just like we encounter anyone. In Germany once I treated a man for a year until I realized he had drowned three women in the bathtub.

‘That was his thing. He would pour them wine and wash them. When he would get to their feet, he would suddenly grab their ankles and yank. In those big tubs, you cannot get out if someone is holding your feet up in the air.’ She paused. ‘I am not a forensic psychiatrist.’

‘I know that.’

‘I could have been,’ Dr. Zenner went on. ‘I considered it many times. Did you know?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘So I will tell you why I avoided that specialty. I cannot spend so much time with monsters. It is bad enough for people like you who take care of their victims. But I think to sit in the same room with the Gaults of the world would poison my soul.’ She paused. ‘You see, I have a terrible confession to make.’

She turned around and looked at me.

‘I don’t give a damn why any of them do it,’ she said, eyes flashing. ‘I think they should all be hanged.’

‘I won’t disagree with you,’ I said.

‘But this does not mean I don’t have an instinct about him. I would call it a woman’s instinct, actually.’

‘About Gault?’

‘Yes. You have met my cat, Chester,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. He is the fattest cat I have ever seen.’

She did not smile. ‘He will go out and catch a mouse. And he will play with it to death. It is really quite sadistic. Then he finally kills it and what does he do? He brings it in the house. He carries it up on the bed and leaves it on my pillow. This is his present to me.’

‘What are you suggesting, Anna?’ I was chilled again.

‘I believe this man has a weird significant relationship with you. As if you are mother, and he brings you what he kills.’

‘That is unthinkable,’ I said.

‘It excites him to get your attention, it is my guess. He wants to impress you. When he murders someone, it is his gift to you. And he knows you will study it very carefully and try to discover his every stroke, almost like a mother looking at her little boy’s drawings he brings home from school. You see, his evil work is his art.’

I thought of the charge made at the gallery in Shockhoe Slip. I wondered what art Gault had bought.