Hobbes watched her, fascinated.

She was caught in a great struggle to survive, one expression mixed with another, both vying for dominance.

Jeannie Watts, Adeline Graves. She was an actress caught exactly between two states, two roles.

Hobbes asked her a question, hoping to keep Adeline in view. He said, ‘What about Nicholas? Did you kill him as well?’

‘He had to die! He wanted to tell everything. He wanted to show the world what I was, what I’d become. He mentioned you, Inspector. Inspector Hobbes. He wanted to confess, and tell all.’

‘You couldn’t let that happen, could you?’

Her head shook from side to side. The rain painted her face with ever-changing shapes. She looked to be dissolving.

‘I shut him up. I closed his mouth. My father’s bloody mouth.’

‘In the park?’

She nodded eagerly, proud of her achievements. ‘I’d brought one of the dresses with me, just to make him remember everything that he’d done.’

‘There was no one else involved?’

‘Alone, all alone, little Jeannie Watts, all alone.’

There was one more thing he needed to know. ‘What about Camilla? She came to us, and confessed. You didn’t punish her.’

‘It wasn’t a confession. It was an act, a script we made together, that the family made together. For our protection.’

‘I think she went too far, revealing the body in the wall.’

‘Poor woman, she thought she could end the story, once and for all.’

Hobbes forced himself to stand tall, to speak with conviction. ‘I’m going to call my colleagues. They will need to question you further. Will you come with me?’

‘I’m sorry. That’s simply not possible.’

Her voice wavered, from one accent to another.

And then she shifted slightly, and her right hand came up, to reveal a pair of scissors in her grasp. Kitchen scissors: she must have grabbed them from the drawer as she came into the room.

‘I’m not leaving without you,’ Hobbes said. ‘So how do we play this out?’

‘To the end. The closing line.’ And she smiled at the idea.

Hobbes felt both compassion, and rage. The emotions troubled at each other, without hope of either winning out.

He had a sudden vision of his own child, of Martin.

And he said with passion, ‘You killed a poor young woman, in cold blood.’

‘I brought her to life. I gave her a child, Dorothy, and lovers, one, two, three. I gave her a job, and a house, a roof and walls to shelter within. What else could I do?’

And Hobbes knew there were no options left. Only to make an arrest.

He stepped forward.

Adeline cringed. The skin was flaking on her face, her flesh soft and ready for decay to take over. The spell was weakening. Hobbes saw in her eyes the depths of despair, and her madness. It was driven deep, with no other outlet but self-harm, to let the night flesh fall away until only the bones were left, to crumble into dust.