Mary Jackson had stated that she had always lived in the basement and had no memory of anywhere else. It was logical, therefore, to assume that she was the daughter of one of the captive women, sired by one of the men. There had been other children, but evidently none had survived. One of the inquiry judges asked if Mary had been violated similarly to the adult women; the doctor on the stand stated that he did not know and had felt a physical examination to determine such would be unnecessarily cruel and invasive without being conclusive.

Sara turned to a photograph of the girl and recalled the grocer’s words: like a doll. And she was. Small next to the nurse she was pictured with, her face dark with fear and mistrust. Sara wondered, what did she see? What did she know that could never ever be said aloud?

Mary had appeared at the grocer’s door at around 6:30 a.m. on the morning of the 17th May. As far as the inquiry could determine, at some point on the evening of the 16th May, an altercation had broken out in the kitchen. Joy Turkington had been severely beaten, her nose, left orbital socket, and jaw all broken, along with two ribs. Her left lung had collapsed, and she would eventually have died without medical treatment. Before that could happen, she was shot once, the bullet passing through her skull. The weapon was a Lee-Enfield rifle, presumed to belong to Thomas Jackson; he had served in World War Two and had most likely brought the weapon home as a souvenir.

The exact sequence of events was never ascertained, only that Thomas Jackson had been shot a total of four times, and Ivan Jackson had been bludgeoned to death with the butt of the rifle, its magazine having been emptied of its five-round capacity.

Noreen Weaver died from a single bullet that entered her back and exited through her chest. The coroner believed that she had been fleeing the kitchen when her murderer, believed to be George Jackson, fired on her with a Webley revolver, killing her almost instantly. George Jackson then went upstairs, where he sat on his bed, pressed the Webley’s muzzle to his forehead, and pulled the trigger.

Sara pictured the bed she shared with her husband, upstairs. She pictured the depression of a man’s weight on the mattress. The lurch as his body fell.

“Stop it,” she said aloud, and resumed reading.