Dalgliesh turned over the cutting. Beneath it, clipped to a plain sheet of paper, was a photograph. The same uniform, the same white blouse, only this time with a school tie, the face turned to the camera with a look Kate remembered from her own school photographs, resentful, a little nervous, participating in a small annual rite of passage, unwilling but resigned. It was an oddly adult face, and it was one they knew.

Dalgliesh took up his magnifying glass again, studied the picture, then handed the glass to Kate. The distinctive features were there—the high forehead, the slightly protuberant eyes, the small, precise mouth with the full upper lip—an unremarkable face which it was now impossible to see as innocent or childish. The eyes stared into the camera, as inexpressive as the dots which formed the image, the lower lip seeming fuller now in adulthood but with the same suggestion of a petulant obstinacy. As Kate stared, her mind superimposed a very different picture: a child’s face smashed into blood and broken bone, fair hair caked in blood. It hadn’t been a case for the Met, and with a guilty plea there had been no trial, but the murder stirred old memories for her and, she thought, for Dalgliesh.

Dalgliesh said, “Sharon Bateman. I wonder how Gradwyn managed to get hold of this. It’s odd they were able to publish it. Restrictions must have been lifted.”

It wasn’t the only thing Rhoda had managed to get hold of. Her research had obviously started since her first visit to the Manor, and it had been thorough. The first cutting was followed by others. Former neighbours had been voluble, both in expressing horror and in spilling out information about the family. There were pictures of the small terraced house in which the children had lived with their mother and grandmother. At the time of the murder the parents were divorced, their father having walked out two years previously. Neighbours still living in the street reported that the marriage had been turbulent but there had been no trouble with the children, no police or social workers round or anything like that. Lucy was the pretty one, no doubt about it, but the girls had seemed to get on all right. Shirley was the quiet one, a bit surly, not exactly a friendly child. Their memories, obviously influenced by the horror of what had happened, suggested the child had always been the odd one out. They reported sounds of quarrels, shouting and occasional blows before the parents parted, but the children had always seemed properly cared for. The grandmother saw to that. There had been a succession of lodgers after the father left—some clearly boyfriends of the mother, although this was reported with tact—and one or two students looking for cheap accommodation, none of whom stayed long.