It was just after two o�clock in the morning when the little girl sat upright in bed, eyes wide and staring, and began to scream.

Ellie Groves, the child�s baby-sitter, scrambled from the big chair where she had been dozing in front of the flickering, sign-off pattern of the television set.

As the sharp screams from the bedroom subsided into a series of desperate sobs, Ellie stumbled across the shadowed living room, calling the child�s name in a voice that revealed her own fear and confusion.

Jessica Mallory, four years and five months old, sat erect on her narrow bed in a tangle of sheets and blankets, an expression of tension and dread on her pale face. A thin, whimpering sound came from her throat and tears filled her staring eyes.

�Jessica! Jessica, what is it?� Ellie said, sitting beside the child and pulling her into her arms.

�They are dead! They�re both dead! My mommy and daddy are dead!�

It was then that Ellie Groves noticed the time, ten minutes past two, the illuminated hands of the bedside clock glowing through the darkness of the room.

In the light spilling from the hallway, Ellie could see Jessica�s clothes on a chair, laid out for the morning � red corduroy overalls, a white T-shirt, socks and a small pair of red tennis shoes. She was comforted by the friendly look of the room � red-and-white checked curtains with fringed tie-backs, a small brass replica of the Liberty Bell, a Snoopy poster thumb-tacked to the wall and curling at the edges, and a row of picture books on the window sill.

Ellie Groves felt her own heartbeat slowing down. With a sigh of relief, she said, �Jessica, it�s all right. You just had a bad dream. I�ll do what my mother used to do when I was little. She�d blow in one ear and that bad old dream would go out the other, and I wouldn�t even remember it when I woke up the next morning.�

�It wasn�t a dream � I saw it happen,� Jessica said. She had begun crying- again, hopelessly and helplessly, and Ellie could feel the child�s heart pounding like a tiny hammer against her body.

�Mommy was so frightened that she woke me up,� Jessica said, the words muffled by her sobs. �Hold me, please hold me, please!�

�Of course, I will, Jessica. Of course I will!� Ellie said, feeling the shudders coursing in spasms through the little girl�s body. �It was just a bad dream��

�No, they�re dead. My mommy was calling me. My mommy was afraid,� she said, her hysteria rising to an ominous intensity.

Ellie Groves was seventeen years old, a junior in high school, and intelligent enough to know she was facing a situation she couldn�t handle alone. The Mallorys had lived in this suburb of Philadelphia for only a few months and had left no phone numbers for her to call in case of an emergency. No friends, no doctor, no minister. Just a note on their flight plans. Because they needed a baby-sitter for this one weekend, the couple had called the student placement bureau at Ellie Groves� high school. Daniel Mallory had business in Detroit, and he and his wife Monica had flown there yesterday and were returning early this morning.

The baby-sitter thought of phoning her own father, but she guessed he would say something such as, �Just hang on, honey. I�ll be right there.� It would take him at least a half hour to reach the Mallory apartment, and Ellie knew she shouldn�t wait that long because Jessica was fighting her now, struggling and shaking her small head frantically, dangerously close to shock or convulsions.

Gathering the child in her arms, Ellie hurried to the phone in the front room and asked the operator to connect her with the police. Within seconds, she was speaking to a dispatcher and within minutes after that a squad car with its dome-light flashing pulled into the dark, quiet street and parked near the three-story apartment building.

The two men seemed to fill the small living room with their cheerful, reassuring bulk � a gray-haired sergeant with a gentle voice and a young patrolman who made notes and who, it seemed to Ellie, would prefer to face an armed mugger in a dark alley than this strangely distraught child.

Sergeant Kelly talked as seriously to Jessica Mallory as he might have to a deputy chief at City Hall.

�Just let me ask you a question or two, if I may,� he said. �First of all, if I�ve got it right, you went to bed about the usual time. Around nine o�clock?�

The child�s agitation had subsided. Now she lay across Ellie�s lap, limp and slack in her arms. Her face seemed empty of emotion. Even her enormous, dark eyes, polished with tears, were absent and withdrawn, as if she were staring at something other than the familiar objects around her � commonplace furnishings given a lightness and gaiety by a scattering of tasseled pillows, brightly framed travel posters and a window of green, hanging plants.

After hesitating, the little girl nodded.

The sergeant then asked her what time she�d had her supper, whether or not she�d taken a doll to bed with her and other gentle, amusing questions, which Ellie realized had no special significance but were the big sergeant�s way of gaining the child�s confidence.

�All right, I�ll tell you what I�m going to do,� the sergeant said. He glanced at Ellie. �Now what time was it you said Jessie woke up?�

�It was just a little after two o�clock, about ten minutes after,� she said.

�Then the best thing we can do is call the airport and make sure this little lady�s mother and father are having a nice, quiet trip.�

He asked if the Mallorys had left their flight plans, and when Ellie Groves gave him the information � Central Airlines, Flight 61, leaving Detroit at twelve-fifteen � the sergeant went to the phone and asked the operator for Central�s information counter at the Philadelphia airport.

�I don�t blame you for feeling frightened,� he said, after dialing the number. �I�ve had some pretty bad dreams myself and I can tell you I was plenty scared.�

Then he spoke into the phone, a harder edge to his voice. �This is Sergeant Kelly, Philadelphia police, Sixteenth District. Who�m I talking to?�

�Jim Taylor, Central Airlines, Sergeant. What can I do for you?�

�Well, Mr. Taylor, this is no emergency, you understand. But I�d appreciate it if you could give me the present status and whereabouts of your Flight 61 out of Detroit.�

�I�ll check on that, sir. Just hold on a minute.� After a brief delay, the airlines clerk came back on the line. �That flight is on schedule, Sergeant. Should be landing in Philadelphia in about one hour and fifteen minutes. The aircraft has just been handed over to the radar control facilities at Pittsburgh.�

�So everything�s going smooth and easy,� the sergeant said and smiled at Jessica Mallory, who watched him intently with tear-bright eyes.

�Everything is routine, Sergeant,� the clerk said. �Weather and visibility excellent, there�s no turbulence, no electrical storms in the area. You got someone coming in on Flight 61, Sergeant?�

�Well, not exactly. I was checking for a friend...�

�Tell your friend that everyone on 61 will be in Philadelphia right on schedule.�

�Thank you, Mr. Taylor.� Sergeant Kelly replaced the phone and smiled again at Jessica. �You heard that, I guess. Your mother and father are just fine, so�s everybody else on that plane. Now you�d better hop back to bed so you�ll be...�

The sergeant�s smile suddenly felt stiff on his lips. There was something in the girl�s eyes, a concentration that made his casual words of reassurance sound like pointless echoes in the now silent room. ��You�ll see, dearie,� he went on, making a clumsy gesture with his hands. �You�ll be having breakfast with them in the morning.�

When it was subsequently confirmed that Daniel and Monica Mallory had died in the crash of Philadelphia-bound Flight 61 � along with crew members and sixty-seven other passengers including a senior United States congressman and a team of Japanese trade experts � the judicial and welfare systems of Pennsylvania moved into action, speedily and humanely, to provide for the Mallorys� only child, four-year-old Jessica.

She was taken that same morning by a juvenile court departmental car to a living facility, where she was given breakfast and a brief medical examination. Then she was mildly sedated and put to bed in a ward with a dozen other youngsters waiting to be processed and assigned to foster homes throughout the city.

A social worker by the name of Elizabeth Scobey was assigned to prepare a case history on Jessica Mallory and her parents. Miss Scobey was a practical, no-nonsense person in her early forties, with short, shiny brown hair, a stocky figure that was nonetheless firm and quick and active. As a rule she wore pants suits of durable double-knit in subdued colors, and her bustling, nervous energy complimented her customary expression, which was one of amiable severity. Miss Scobey�s eyes were by far her best feature, warm and dark and lively, glinting on occasion with humor. She had never married. The one young man who had shown attention to her some years ago (he had been a clerk in the city amusement tax office) was drafted in the early days of the Vietnam War and married a Southern girl he�d met during his basic training in Georgia.

Perhaps because of this lack of a family outlet for her warm-hearted emotions (her black cat, Morticia, could only absorb a fraction of it), Miss Scobey had a limitless reservoir of love and sympathy for the orphans and the neglected children assigned to her custodial files.

Elizabeth Scobey worked in an office in the center of the city. From her desk she looked out on Philadelphia�s ornate and gingerbread City Hall with the figure of Benjamin Franklin perched on top. Past that gray and intricately structured edifice, she could see � on good days � the green expanse of Fairmount Park, and on superb days, with the wind coming off the river like sparkling wine, the black drives twisting through the park all the way to the great white and columned art museum.

On this crisp, late fall day, Miss Scobey sat at her desk studying the information she had obtained by a routine court order on Jessica Mallory and her parents. The couple had had a joint checking account at the Penn Central Bank, with a current balance of four hundred and sixty-seven dollars. In the Mallory apartment there were modest wardrobes of clothing, as well as toilet articles, toys, and children�s books, and a neat stack of unpaid bills which Miss Scobey found in a kitchen drawer � the usual dry cleaning, market and drugstore bills, and last month�s phone bill for fifty-odd dollars.

Miss Scobey had been impressed and touched by the bright travel posters. It seemed such a brave attempt to provide a sense of color and space in the modest apartment.

In the child�s room, a plank of unpainted wood had been placed across two filing cabinets to form a desk. On this makeshift desk were sheets of ruled notepaper covered with what she assumed to be the late Daniel Mallory�s handwriting, some sort of scientific work apparently, symbols and equations which meant nothing to Miss Scobey.

In one of the filing cabinets were two framed diplomas. Daniel Mallory had earned a degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Monica, n�e Griffith, a bachelor�s in classics studies from Bryn Mawr. Daniel had been twenty-eight at the time of his death, and Monica, twenty-six.

In the same drawer she found Jessica Mallory�s birth certificate. Clipped to it was a handwritten promissory note, dated five years earlier. It was an IOU made out to Monica Griffith in the amount of two thousand dollars and signed in a bold, flourishing script: Boniface.

The IOU was not notarized, so Boniface, whoever she or he might be, Miss Scobey reasoned, was someone Monica Griffith must have known and trusted � possibly a relative.

Once she was beyond the iron and stone growth of the city, the countryside was lovely � low, rolling meadows, rugged Quaker meeting houses, church steeples white against the gray skies, and horses and big-horned Santa Gertrudis cattle standing like woolly cut-outs on distant hills. This was horse country � pony clubs, point-to-point races, horse shows, and fox hunting with well-schooled hunters and hounds coursing over a challenging terrain of stone hedges and split-rail fences.

The estate homes in the country dated back to the Revolutionary War, with double chimneys, immaculately tuck-pointed fieldstone walls, kennel runs, and schooling rings.

Eric B. Griffith�s name was on a mailbox in front of a two-story red brick rowhouse, which stood, inside a white picket fence, at the intersection of an unpaved country road and Black Velvet Lane.

Aware that she was being watched from the upper window of the house, Miss Scobey went up a rough flagstone walk and rapped loudly with a brass knocker shaped like a grinning fox-head. The door was opened by a tall man whom Miss Scobey judged to be in his early or middle thirties.

�Yes? May I help you?� the man said.

�Are you Mr. Eric B. Griffith?�

�Now look, if you�re selling something��

�My name is Elizabeth Scobey. I�m a Social Service worker assigned to juvenile court in Philadelphia. May I come in, Mr. Griffith?�

�Yes, I believe we did receive some correspondence from you, Miss Scobey,� Eric Griffith said. �Actually, my wife Maud takes care of the mail. I find it a bloody bore. Also, we travel a great deal, Miss � Scobey, was it?�

As she nodded, Griffith flexed his hands in front of him and went on talking, a tension in his voice that struck Miss Scobey as being at variance with his casual smile.

�My wife and I are in the stock business, you see. Not bonds and shares but horse-flesh, which requires that we visit tracks, attend the yearling sales, send reports back to our clients, and so forth. Since we�ve been on the move, we didn�t get to your letters until just a few days ago.�

They sat in the living room of the Griffiths� small home, Miss Scobey on a settee covered with stained rose damask, her hat and gloves beside her. Griffith had not asked her to remove her coat.

The case worker was curious about Eric Griffith � about his nervousness, his quick smiles, his seemingly careless but, in fact, erratic gestures.

He stood by the fireplace, an elbow resting on the mantlepiece in a practiced manner, fingering a black briar pipe he had taken from his tweed jacket. Under the jacket he wore a yellow vest. The collar of his tattersall shirt was spread by the bulky knot of a red wool-knit tie. He was tall and strongly built with large powerful hands, which he kept twisting in front of him in what seemed to Miss Scobey an oddly defensive gesture, considering his muscular bulk and his easy, patronizing manner. He seemed to have taken out the pipe to control his restless hands. His head was narrow, with high cheekbones reddened by weather. The eyes were blue, pale and arresting, but he was losing his fine, blond hair. A widow�s peak was pronounced and sharp, defined by expanses of pink scalp on either side of it. He was not wearing riding boots or even stout walking shoes, she noticed, but laced brown street shoes that were wrong, she thought, with the bulky tweed coat and yellow vest.

Miss Scobey also noticed that she had lost Eric Griffith�s full attention. He continued to smile at her, but every now and then his eyes went past her to a row of bottles on a table in the corner of the room.

�I called your home several times, Mr. Griffith. The first two times I was cut off. The third time I talked to someone at this number, but I�m afraid I didn�t understand him. And he certainly didn�t understand me.�

Griffith smiled and said, �That was probably Jimmy. He cleans up after parties here, puts a good shine on boots, but I�m afraid he�s not at his best with twentieth-century gadgets like the telephone. How-ever, for what he does, he�s a good old boy.�

Griffith put his pipe on the mantle, went to the table that served as a bar and poured himself a splash of whiskey in a squat glass decorated with daisies.

�Would you like a touch of something? I think there�s sherry...�

�No, thank you. Nothing at all.�

�Perhaps we�d better get down to the point.� Mr. Griffith was still smiling, and nothing in his manner or tone indicated a transition in subject. �I didn�t get in touch with you, Miss Scobey, because there was no point in it. I was shocked by my sister�s death, but my wife and I have nothing to offer the child, nothing at all. We�ve never seen Jessica and she probably doesn�t even know who we are. So I thought it best to just leave it that way.�

Although her professional and personal opinions were not important here, a surge of loyalty to Jessica Mallory compelled Miss Scobey to say, �I think that�s unfortunate, Mr. Griffith. Jessica is a most affectionate and intelligent little girl.�

�That�s quite irrelevant,� Griffith said. �The fact of the matter is, if my sister and Daniel Mallory were so keen to bring a child into this world, then they should have made provisions to take care of it.�

Question, Miss Scobey thought: How did he know they hadn�t?

�I advised them to make sure they could handle things before they�� Griffith shook his head and took a sip of whiskey. �Well, that�s beside the point, too. What is important, Miss Scobey, is that Maud and I refuse to be saddled with responsibilities not of our choosing. Is that clear enough for you?�

�Yes, of course, Mr. Griffith.� Opening her handbag, Miss Scobey took out a leather-bound notebook and unscrewed the top of an old-fashioned fountain pen. Griffith watched warily as she dated and initialed a page of her notebook.

�Mr. Griffith, juvenile court has no authority to suggest who may be responsible for Jessica Mallory�s welfare. The court�s only function is to find a suitable home for children such as Jessica, where they will have a chance to grow up in an atmosphere that is loving and stable and permanent.�

Griffith raised his eyebrows skeptically and said, �Well, if that�s true, Miss Scobey, why did you get in touch with me in the first place?�

�Because there is a way you can help, Mr. Griffith.�

�Oh? What�s that?�

�Well, simply by telling us about your own family background, your sister�s education, for instance, medical history, where you grew up, your hobbies, just general historical background that will help us to establish and evaluate a profile of Jessica.�

Griffith, she suspected, was making an effort to control his relief. �Well, along those lines, I�d be glad to help.�

He smoothed his fine, carefully combed hair, the pressure of his hands sharpening for an instant the widow�s peak that furled like a blond flag above his forehead. �I�ll ask Mrs. Griffith to join us,� he said.

As he went to the stairs to call up, Miss Scobey decided he was like a child released from school on a fine spring day. The sullenness was gone from his lips, the defensive anger from his gestures. And there was a buoyant expression on his face as he repeated his wife�s name saying, �Maud? Maudie, would you care to join us?�

At the same instant, Miss Scobey heard the click of high heels on the uncarpeted stairs that led down to the small entrance hall. Griffith poured himself another whiskey and raised the glass to the tall, blond woman who joined them, her eyes narrowing in a near-sighted inspection of Miss Scobey.

�Darling, this nice lady is helping to find a suitable home for Jessica. Miss Scobey, my wife � Mrs. Griffith.�

�How nice of her.� Maud Griffith sat gracefully on a spool-backed chair beside the few glowing coals in the fireplace. �Would you bring me something to drink, Eric? And wouldn�t Mrs. Scopey like something?�

�It�s Miss Scobey, Mrs. Griffith. And thank you, no.�

�Probably all for the best, not drinking on duty. Might drop some of the little dearies on the wrong doorstep,� Maud Griffith said.

�We don�t deliver them like newspapers, Mrs. Griffith. We�re very careful that��

�Thank you, Eric.� Maud Griffith accepted a drink from her husband and ignored Miss Scobey�s statement.

A fine pair, Miss Scobey thought. Maud Griffith, in her early thirties probably, but dressed a good bit younger than that in a tight red turtleneck sweater and swirling black skirt that revealed her slim but muscular legs. Her hair was blond, her cheeks round and shiny and her lips full but tight over a row of fine, white teeth. Her blue eyes were quite lovely � clear, healthy whites dramatizing the darker pupils � but there was nothing innocent about them. They were so watchful and unemotional that they looked like shiny globes of colored glass.

And Eric Griffith. For all the carefully tucked-in stomach and the shoulders held back like a cadet and the fastidiously arranged hair, the country tweeds and plummy weskit, Griffith�s knees gave him away, Miss Scobey decided, indulging herself in an uncharacteristic but nonetheless gratifying prejudice. They weren�t the knees of a young gentleman or horseman. They were an unsteady base for his tall, large frame; essential joints unstrengthened by exercise, walking or hard work; the knees � in fact � of a spectator striving always to wear the colors of a participant, a man more accustomed to the bleachers than the arena.

Miss Scobey raised her pen as a cue, and cleared her throat.

Eric Griffith seemed to savor the role he was playing, pacing slowly in front of the fireplace, pausing occasionally to deliberate over his choice of expression. He spoke with practiced skill, the words and sentences flowing as easily as if he were reading from a script. But while some of his comments were droll and caustically amusing, Miss Scobey had the impression that a corrosive anger may have been simmering just below the surface of his statements.

The facts that emerged from his rambling and discursive account became more and more rambling as he made a third trip to the bar.

His sister Monica, he explained, was ten years younger than he. They had been raised in a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland. After high school, Eric had attended the University of Virginia. He dropped out after two years because, as he put it, �I couldn�t stand the boredom of classrooms, professors drilling facts into us.�

Miss Scobey noticed an animation in Griffith�s voice and features when he digressed from linear biographical details and veered to a discussion of theatre classes he�d taken at the university and his work with local drama clubs. He had played Marchbanks in The Doctor�s Dilemma and Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, and read the weather reports on the campus radio station.

Yes, Miss Scobey thought, appraising his obvious but rueful pleasure at these reminiscences. He was an actor all right, using practiced dramatic pauses, and his hands and body to compliment them. It was all a performance, except for the anger, and that emotion seemed like a ground swell supporting everything else, powerful currents independent of external circumstances.

�Actually, a Broadway director � his name was Ira Washburn, you may have heard of him � he also worked with Guthrie in Minneapolis � he was kind enough to say that what I lacked in dedication I might make up for with the odd trick or two, or, who knows, with a bit of natural talent.�

Maud Griffith yawned lightly, then frowned as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to her. She began to massage her knee with the tips of her fingers.

�I think I�m in a draft, Eric.�

�A fat lot Washburn knew�� Griffith went to the bar and refreshed his drink. Then he stared at his wife, and it seemed to Miss Scobey he was returning with some reluctance to present pressures and irritations. �Well, it�s always something, isn�t it, luv?�

With an edge to her voice, his wife said, �I haven�t felt well all morning.�

�Oh, good God!� Eric said. Obviously exasperated, he stared about the room, focused on a small knit afghan on the sofa, scooped it up and dropped it without ceremony across his wife�s slender legs. �I trust that will do until we can helicopter in a team of specialists from Johns Hopkins.�

The narrative continued. Griffith and his sister, Monica, hadn�t been close. After marrying Maud Mercer Saxe, Griffith had moved to Chester County while his sister was in her last year at Bryn Mawr.

�Saxe was, is the name of my first husband,� Maud said with a small smile. �Don�t you think Miss Scobey should know all about that, dear?�

�No, I don�t think that�s necessary,� Griffith said with a curious intensity.

�But shouldn�t an adoption agency want all those gossipy details?�

Without glancing up from her notebook, Miss Scobey said, �Please go on, Mr. Griffith.�

�Of course, Mallory knew a good thing when he saw it. My sister had an adequate job, took care of everything, finances, the house, the child, which left Mallory, the boy genius, free to invent God-knows-what-kind-of mouse-trap to bring the world to his door. Monica came into a few thousand dollars on her twenty-first birthday and that went down the drain, too. Mallory was one of your wild Irish dreamers, head in the clouds, hitching his fortune to any star or crystal ball that came down the pike.�

Maud tucked the afghan about her knees and said, �So naturally, they left nothing for little Jessica.�

Miss Scobey made a question mark in her notebook. How had Maud Griffith known that?

�The least they could have done is take out flight insurance,� Griffith said, and to that comment Miss Scobey added another question mark.

Something occurred to Miss Scobey then � the unpaid loan Monica Griffith had made to someone around her twenty-first birthday.

Miss Scobey had a shrewd idea what particular drain that money had gone down. �It�s not important, but I�m curious, Mr. Griffith. What does your middle initial stand for?�

�Boniface. B for Boniface. I was christened Eric Boniface Griffith.�

�It was his father�s notion,� Maud said with a little laugh. �The original Boniface was the first of the big spenders.�

Miss Scobey closed her notebook. �Thank you, Mr. Griffith. I won�t bother you any further.�

�Tell me, Miss Scobey. Why were you interested in my middle initial?�

�I was just curious,� Miss Scobey said, rising and turning toward the door.

�I don�t believe you,� Eric Griffith said, and his anger was closer to the surface now, raw and ugly in his eyes. �I know why you�re here. You can�t fool me with your talk of Jessica�s welfare.� He mimicked Miss Scobey�s words in a hard, unpleasant voice. � �We just want something loving and stable and permanent�� �

�That happens to be the truth, Mr. Griffith.�

�You�re snooping around here for money,� Eric pointed a long, bony finger at Miss Scobey. �Trying to put the squeeze on good old Boniface. Sure, I borrowed two thousand dollars from my sister but only to cut them in on a Daily Double at Belmont Park that would have made us all tens of thousands.�

�Mr. Griffith, believe me. The juvenile court isn�t interested in these details.�

�I did everything I could to help them. She was my sister, practically my baby sister.� There was a sudden glint of tears in his eyes, something lost and forlorn in the sag of his shoulders. Turning, he braced himself with a hand against the mantle, a gesture so mannered that Miss Scobey couldn�t guess whether the tears and emotions were genuine. �I taught her to dance when she went to her first cotillion... she wore little white gloves. But I won�t be pressured this way, I won�t be made responsible for things that don�t concern me!�

Maud Griffith followed Miss Scobey out the front door and down the flagstone walk to her car.

When Miss Scobey was behind the wheel, Maud � Griffith said, �Let�s make sure this doesn�t happen again.� Her hands held the car door open and her bright eyes stared coldly down into Miss Scobey�s. �If I wanted a child, I�d make one of my own. Just remember that. So don�t you ever try again to unload Jessica Mallory on this doorstep. Find another warm, stable home for the little dear.�

Miss Scobey hardened her jaw and looked at Maud Griffith with sharp disapproval. �That will be my pleasure, Mrs. Griffith.�

�Good,� Maud said and slammed the door shut.

Miss Scobey put her car in gear and drove with unaccustomed speed down the narrow dirt road that would take her out to the Philadelphia Pike. She was thinking with angry anticipation of Monday morning when she would have the satisfaction of typing out her notes and appraisal of these strange creatures who lived on Black Velvet Lane.

Maud Griffith stood watching the Volkswagen with its �I Found Jesus!� sticker centered on the rear bumper below the license plate. When the car disappeared at the first intersection, she turned and walked briskly up the path to the house.

Her husband stood smiling in the open door looking to where the small blue car had turned out of sight behind a screen of bare poplar trees.

Jessica Mallory collected her belongings from the bedroom in Mrs. Farr�s home and began to pack them neatly in a red vinyl suitcase. Sweaters and socks and nightgowns, a pair of patent leather shoes with straps, a Raggedy Ann from her bed, a gray flannel coat with a black felt collar � she carried these to the table where the suitcase rested and stacked them beside it, wondering how she could fit them all into one small piece of luggage. Perhaps he could carry the doll and the box with the tea set.

Jessica was humming as she went back and forth from suitcase to closet and chest of drawers, content and secure because the colors she had learned to trust were comforting now � a gentle blue suffused with yellows that spread warmly in the area located directly behind her smooth forehead and bright eyes.

The colors had long been companions to the little girl, many of them bright and cheering, some that made her somber and thoughtful, while others frightened her � the brilliantly radiant ones with edges like flashing diamonds, searing illuminations that warned her of coming dangers � the colors she had seen the night of the crash that took her parents� lives.

The packing finished, she went to the window and pulled back the curtain, looking up and down the street, watching. The Farrs lived in an old section of Philadelphia, a suburb called Jenkintown, an area of red brick houses with white wooden porches and sidewalks lined with dogwood trees, whose branches arched so close to second-floor windows that young Jessica often watched for minutes at a time while the birds hopped within arm-reach from twig to twig and pecked at black, wintered bark.

The child still thought sometimes of her father and mother, but in a fond, almost dream-like fashion. They were like pictures in her story-books, familiar faces she could now recognize and study for as long as she wanted to without feeling any hurt at all.

She could remember the white coconut cakes her mother had baked and one of her father�s dress-up ties, the one with red hearts. She remembered being quiet and patient in the afternoon when her mother was at work and her father was at his big desk in the corner of the bedroom. These were the times when she played writing games at the windowsill, using the graph paper and big felt-tipped pens he gave her, drawing moons and suns and faraway stars she had just begun to know.

He had never minded if she�d interrupted him with questions. In fact, she couldn�t remember that he had ever been cross with her, even on that dreadful afternoon that she had begun to cry, sad and helpless, as faint patterns had begun to form in her colors.

Standing at the window now in Mrs. Farr�s home, she thought back to that time (another winter when she had been smaller) when her mother came home with snowflakes on her coat collar, a shine of cold winds in her hair. They had played together that afternoon a favorite game called �Guess what I saw today.�

�You saw ladies,� Jessica might say, vague pictures of her mother�s experiences forming in her mind. �You saw taxis, you saw a kitten, children and a little red wagon with a wheel off.�

But she had brought a terrible stillness to her mother�s face that day when she said, �You saw the old man hit by the big car and the policeman running. You saw all that!�

Just then Mrs. Farr stopped in the open doorway of Jessica�s room and looked with a mild frown at the open suitcase on Jessica�s bedside table.

�Now what�s all this?� she said.

�I thought I�d get ready,� Jessica said.

As a foster parent, Mrs. Farr was accustomed to the frequently moody and confused behavior of lonely, disoriented children, and so she nodded and said matter-of-factly, �Well, that makes sense, I guess, Jessica. In the meantime, I just took gingerbread out of the oven. Would you like a piece and a glass of milk in the kitchen with me?�

�Could I have them up here, Mrs. Farr?�

�All right.�

Later, Jessica placed the tray on the table beside her suitcase, closed the bedroom door and lifted tea things from their grooved box � tiny cups and saucers and spoons which she set out in a service for two, carefully breaking the gingerbread into halves, placing the sections neatly on the gilt-flecked saucers. Then the girl went to the window again to look down into the street where the thin sunlight slanted through the trees to brighten the old sidewalks.

Judge Emory Williams� clerk, Adam Greene, a portly, middle-aged black man with gray curls circling his bald head, picked up the ringing phone.

�Courtroom J-11. Judge Williams.� Court was in recess until the following morning, and the empty benches and faded brown-wood jury box gleamed softly in the thin afternoon light. �Yes, sir. But she�s in a meeting now in Judge Williams� chambers. I can take a message and��

Adam Greene heard a door opening and glanced past the judge�s bench to the chambers. Miss Scobey waved a goodbye to the judge and strode in her energetic fashion down the center aisle toward Adam Greene�s desk.

He smiled at her and held out the phone. �Call for you, Miss Elizabeth.�

�Thank you, Adam.� Placing her bulging briefcase on the desk, she took the phone and said, �Yes, this is Miss Scobey,�

After listening for a moment, she frowned and said, �Well, I don�t see any reason why not. But I�ll have to check with the foster home first. They usually have a schedule, you know. Nap time, play in the park, that sort of thing... Where can I reach you?�

Miss Scobey wrote down the telephone number of the Barclay Hotel on a notepad that Adam Green pushed toward her. Nodding her thanks, she said into the phone, �All right, I�ll call you back, Mr. Holcomb.�

Several weeks after her first meeting with Andrew Dalworth � in the late winter of the year � Elizabeth Scobey sat at her desk to type out the final forms which defined the custodial arrangements Judge Harlan Williams had approved the week before in relation to Jessica Mallory and the adopter, industrialist-financier Andrew Dalworth.

Miss Scobey was sustained by a sense of euphoria as she removed the completed papers from her typewriter and affixed to them the proper stamps and seals. This was always a victorious moment, she thought, pausing for an instant to admire the view of Philadelphia�s ornate City Hall and the expanses of Fairmount Park, sparkling now in sunlight. A victory and a personal reward to find a good home for what Miss Scobey thought of as �her� children. It almost made up for the heartache she felt when she failed to find a place for the others, usually those not favored with winsome beauty or the proper skin color or eye-shape, or the twelve to fifteen-year-olds who had already developed a resentment against the world for the way it had treated and cheated them. Yet they were always �her� children, and it was difficult to find ways to assuage her disappointment at their rejection.

But it helped when things worked out well, when the smiles of the new parents were as radiant as the smile of the child�s.

It had been a close thing with Jessica Mallory, Andrew Dalworth being a single widower and nearing sixty, but Judge Williams had decided for him � not only because of the character references which included clergymen, educators and United States senators, or because of his impressive financial background but because, as the judge had confided to Miss Scobey, in his chambers, �It was the little girl who tipped the scales, to be quite honest about it. She couldn�t have been more at home or at ease with Mr. Dalworth. She just seemed to belong with him...�

Once Judge Williams had made his decision, the other details of the adoption fell smoothly into place. Even a primary residence in Ireland had been satisfactory to Judge Williams after he had examined the photographs of Easter Hill and made inquiries into the quality of education available at schools in nearby towns.

Finishing up the last details of the clerical work, Miss Scobey tucked the thick file into her briefcase. She walked a short block up Market Street and took one of the birdcage elevators in City Hall up to Judge Williams� Courtroom J-11, where she gave the Jessica Mallory folder, which included Miss Scobey�s personal notes, observations, and recommendations, to the judge�s aide, Adam Greene.

J-11 was in recess now and with dust motes in the air and with the long, vacant benches empty, it had something of the look of a deserted village church on a Sunday afternoon.

Miss Scobey sat down in the chair beside Adam Green�s desk and popped a mint lozenge into her mouth. She smiled with a sense of shared accomplishment at Adam as he placed the Jessica Mallory folder in a drawer of his desk.

�Well, chalk up another one for our side,� he said. �Yes, Miss Scobey, you found another safe pasture for one of God�s stray lambs.� Smiling at her, he said, �That little Miss Mallory, she�s certainly a beautiful child.�

Then his smile faded and he said thoughtfully, �To tell you the truth, I�m relieved she�s off in Ireland now.�

�Why do you say a thing like that?�

�It�s just a feeling I�ve got, something deep in my bones...�

Miss Scobey said patiently, �Adam, I happen to know you graduated cum laude from Villanova. So spare me the rabbit�s foot and voodoo drums routine. What is it?�

He grinned and said, �White mama tell it like it is.� Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed a hand over his jaw, a frown shadowing his eyes. After a moment he shook his head and said, �It�s nothing overt or actionable, Miss Scobey. Just a few bad vibes, say. Going back a few months, I had a telephone call here the day after Jessica Mallory�s parents were killed in that plane crash. From a man who claimed the Mallorys owed him money � thirty-five hundred dollars � and he demanded to know how and where to file a claim for it. I got suspicious because he was trying to sound like a colored man, but overdoing it, bad grammar and a bit too mush-mouth to be convincing.�

Miss Scobey felt an unpleasant chill as she remembered the �colored� houseman who had answered the phone once when she had called the Eric Griffiths at their place in Chester County.

�Go on, Adam,� she said quietly.

�Well, the next thing the man asked me about was flight insurance.� Adam Greene frowned and drummed his fingers on the desk. �And right there, Miss Scobey, is where I may have messed up. You see, the first thing Judge Williams asked me to do was to check the Mallory family�s assets and insurance. I shouldn�t have said anything but I was irritated with that darkie act � so I came out and told him that the Mallorys hadn�t signed up for flight insurance.�

So that�s how the Griffiths had known, Miss Scobey thought.

�If that�s all there was to it, I wouldn�t have worried,� Adam Greene said. �But that same man called me again, Miss Scobey, although the next time he wasn�t hiding behind a darkie�s drawl.�

�When was this second call?� Miss Scobey said, a sudden sharpness in her tone.

�I�ll bet you could guess,� Adam Greene said with a small, unamused smile. �It was the day after the newspapers ran that first story about Andrew Dalworth�s petition to adopt Jessica Mallory.�

�Yes, I could have guessed,� Miss Scobey said.

�He told me he was Jessica�s uncle, and he wanted to know where she was and where Mr. Dalworth was. When I told him I couldn�t give out that information, he started hollering about his rights, about blood being stronger than money�� Greene shook his head. �He really went ape when I told him to write a letter to Judge Williams, that it was the court�s authority � that�s when he hung up. But the next day his wife called, all sweetness, and said that it was a matter of grave family importance that she get in touch with the child.�

Miss Scobey remembered then the look of Maud Griffith�s eyes, cold and unrevealing as globes of glass, as cooly removed from the pain and drama of Jessica Mallory as those of a sleek and selfish cat.

�Why didn�t you tell me this before?� she asked Adam.

�I didn�t want to worry you, Miss Scobey. And besides, I didn�t think you could do anything about the calls anyway.�

�But it�s always good to know these things anyway.�

Adam Greene said somberly, �I�m gonna give you another rumble on the tom-toms, Miss Scobey. Something in their voices made me very glad to shade the truth, tell them that Miss Mallory�s whereabouts were no longer the business of this office.�

�Alright, Adam,� Miss Scobey said. Her voice was more concerned as she added, �If the Griffiths ever call again, tell them the same thing. That as far as this court is concerned, the Jessica Mallory case is closed.�

�That would be a pleasure,� Adam Greene said and locked the drawer containing the Mallory folder. Then he tucked the key carefully into his vest pocket.

Easter Hill was a slate-gray mansion on high ground that dominated a coastline of rough, wild beauty, steep cliffs and rolling meadows spiked with shale and fieldstone. The gray waters of the north Atlantic fused in these southern seas with the Gulf Stream, producing, in season, warm winds and a climate that nurtured the incongruous palm trees swaying above the Connemara shores from Ballycastle down to Galway Bay.

At eight years of age, Jessica Mallory had become securely adjusted to the rhythms of a convent school and to the surface tranquility of Irish country life. She thought of Andrew Dalworth, whom she called Andrew, not as a second father but simply as an �older� father. She still remembered her own father and mother, like images from a dream, as a tall, patient man with books and pencils, and a smiling lady who hugged her and played games with her on the floor in a room filled with bright posters.

Sometimes, when her school schedule permitted, she went on trips with Andrew, to Paris and London and on occasion back to the United States. When she couldn�t go with him, her life at Easter Hill revolved around the people who looked after them there; Flynn, the butler; Mrs. Kiernan, the cook; Rose and Lily, the housemaids. Taking care of the grounds and stables were Kevin O�Dell, a young groom, and the gardener, Capability Brown, who had explained to Jessica that he had been named after an English landscape artist � the famed Capability Brown who had designed the gardens and lakes at Blenheim, country seat of the Marlboroughs and Churchills.

And, of course, she had friends at school, and in the nearby village of Ballytone there were Father Malachy and his housekeeper, and Charity Bostwick who gave her riding lessons.

On this late spring afternoon, Jessica rode her brown hunter, Windkin, up the promontory known as Skyhead, a broad point of rocky shoreline directly above the northern pastures of Easter Hill. Holding Windkin�s strength easily but surely in one hand, she leaned her slender body into the salty winds coming in off the sea, her knees guiding the horse up to the highest peaks from where she could see the stretches of beach where Holly liked to chase and frighten the seagulls.

Jessica reined in the big hunter and turned in the saddle to study the rocky shoreline and narrow beaches far below her. There was no sign of her brown and white fox terrier scampering and barking after the strutting gulls and the crying terns, and Jessica suddenly felt a sting of tears in her eyes as she realized that she would never see Holly again...

In her years of growing up in Ireland, Jessica had had only occasional promptings from the strange mental phenomena which she thought of as her �colors.� There had been no recurrence of the diamond-bright whiteness that had glowed so terrifyingly in her mind the night her parents had crashed to their deaths. There had been other colors from time to time, warm and comfortable, moments of excitement in the schoolyard when she had �guessed� the winners of foot races and the time when she had �guessed� what grades several of her classmates would get on certain written exams. (She�d been right, too, and what a scene that had caused!)

Some of the things that Jessica seemed to know in advance, she had learned to keep to herself, like the time she had known that Andrew was having Windkin sent over from Kentucky as a Christmas present for her.

Staring along the distant, frothing beaches, Jessica said a silent goodbye to Holly in her mind, remembering with an ache the joyous barking and fierce loyalties that were gone forever. Then she swung Windkin around and spurred him into a full gallop down the broad slopes leading to Easter Hill.

It was after this experience that Andrew Dalworth decided to get professional advice to define and evaluate Jessica�s psychic capacities. Prior to this, and seemingly independent of her prophetic gifts, Jessica had begun to write poetry, simple poems printed in round, babyish letters which she brought proudly to Dalworth for his consideration and approval. Many of these expressed the wonder and surprise of any small child beginning to examine the world of her feelings, although some were informed with an oblique gravity.

One read:

And later in the same month:

Using contacts at the universities of Duke and Stanford, Dalworth had been put in touch with Julian Homewood, a young Dubliner who conducted advanced seminars in psychic research and experimentation at Trinity College. Dr. Home-wood � or Dr. Julian, as Jessica and Dalworth soon came to call him � had taken a degree in medicine at the age of twenty-two at Cambridge in England, doing graduate work later at Trinity in parapsychology and extrasensory perception.

Dr. Julian was the son and grandson of medical doctors who had been interested in what Julian had once described to Dalworth as �the facilities and powers of the mind that you can�t measure with stethoscopes, calipers, or least of all, with what passes for common sense.�

A bachelor, Dr. Julian Homewood lived in the Ballsbridge section of Dublin in a Georgian townhouse with a fan of windows over the door. In the last two years he had interviewed and tested Jessica Mallory on a dozen or more occasions. It had been his intention from the start (a point of view which Dalworth shared wholeheartedly) to assist her to accept her psychic abilities with serenity and confidence. Never to let them become a burden � the baggage of a laboratory guinea pig or a drawing room freak...

Dalworth, Jessica and Dr. Julian had become good friends, a close knit unit, over the years, and they had enjoyed each other�s company, not only during professional sessions, but at the theatre and often at race meets and on long weekends at Easter Hill.

But it was after one of her very first meetings with Dr. Julian that Jessica had written a poem which had startled Dalworth with its bitter-sweet mystery and maturity.

Andrew Dalworth glanced at the grandfather clock that stood in a niche between the bookshelves and decided that Jessica wasn�t planning to join him, unusual because as a rule she seemed to enjoy spending this time of day with him.

Putting aside his sherry glass, Dalworth walked through the great hall that gave on the shadowed dining room and through other rooms in to a salon used only when guests gathered for a hunt tea or when Charity Bostwick or Father Malachy stopped by for Sunday supper.

The light from the chandeliers and the fading sun was soft now, gilding the old furniture he had bought in France and England and Belfast, sideboards and highboys and antique fruitwood chests. Jessica had accompanied him on several of his trips to the continent and had shown a precocious and healthy interest in his choice of tapestries and jades. She had been equally fascinated by the silver vaults in London and the narrow streets twisting crookedly from the Seine near the Quai D�Orsay, where they had discovered unique collections of candelabra and clouded mirrors with hand-crafted frames.

Dalworth crossed the dark dining room with its panelled walls and medieval concert loft and went into one of the kitchens where Mrs. Kiernan was stirring soup at the stove and Flynn was decanting the dinner wines.

Flynn turned to him with a smile and said, �May I get you something, Mr. Dalworth?�

�No, thank s. I was looking for Jessica. I heard her come in the front door a few minutes ago...�

But no, Jessica hadn�t gone to the kitchens.

In the second-floor corridors which ran the width of the huge home, Dalworth met Rose and Lily coming out of a suite which, because of its view, was called the Orchard Rooms. Rose and Lily looked enough alike to be sisters; fair, sturdy village girls with chapped red cheeks and hair tied with dark ribbon at the napes of their necks. The maids had changed into their dinner uniforms � black silk skirts and white blouses with flat, round collars.

They had not seen Jessica either, so Mr. Dalworth walked along the corridor to her room. It was empty, the bed neatly made, her books and playthings in orderly rows on the table before the fireplace.

Then a worried thought occurred to him. There was a cushioned seat under the bay window on the third floor, the highest view from Easter Hill across the meadows and past Skyhead to the sea, which Jessica called her private tower. And what was worrying Dalworth as he started up the stairs was that Jessica retreated to the tower only when she was in a lonely, withdrawn mood, when she felt a need to wrote poetry, when her normally exuberant spirits were weighed down by a gravity which Dalworth could not completely understand and was helpless to relieve.

The wide, deep embrasure of the bay window formed the shadowed refuge of Jessica�s �tower.� Its leaded windows gave her a world view, an exclusive solitude that complemented and reflected the insights and probings of her own powerful mental visions. It was here that she could see everything, as she could sometimes �see everything� in her mind. Here she watched the lightning, knowing where it would strike. Here she could see the trains enter the valley and wind their way into Ballytone... see unborn foals in her mind-span, foals that would one day charge up Skyhead... see eagles� nests that would fill the skies with wings in the coming spring. This was her place of strength, as familiar as a chapel to a priest, as beads to a nun. She felt comfortable here with the muted tapestries, the beige cushions, the deep carpetings. They were as familiar as old friends. Jessica�s tower was a place where she felt both the pain and the strength of her gifts most keenly.

Now Jessica was seated there, staring out to the distant sea. Dalworth joined her, put a hand on her shoulder. When she turned, he saw the stain of tears on her cheeks.

�What�s the matter, Jess?�

�It�s Holly, Andrew.�

�What�s the little rascal been up to now?�

�Nothing, Andrew.� He heard the catch in her breath. �She�s dead.�

�Let�s hope you�re wrong this time. You know, that�s a possibility.�

�I�ve been praying I�m wrong, but it�s something more than Holly...�

Dalworth patted her shoulder gently and said, �What do you mean, Jessica?�

�I don�t know,� she said, and shook her head helplessly.

�Holly will cheer you up,� Dalworth said. �I�ll take Flynn and young O�Dell.�

�I�ll wait here for you,� Jessica said.

Two days later, Dr. Homewood parked his two-seater sports car in the area reserved for staff near the quad at Trinity College. It was a brisk, spring morning. Sunlight brightened the immense cobblestone quadrangle surrounded by gray buildings and crowded now with students in duffle coats and boots hurrying toward classes, bookbags looped over their shoulders.

Mingling easily with these undergraduates in his jeans and loose tweed jacket, Dr. Julian went to his office on the fourth floor of the science building. He dropped his briefcase on a chair stacked with books and pulled up the window shades which gave him a view of college halls and the bulk of a steepled church, its dark stone walls scored with scaffoldings.

Then he opened Jessica�s files. He started in chronological order with their first meeting on the tenth of April, several years ago. Her blood pressure had been normal, her height forty-two inches, her weight fifty-one pounds. She had started a poem for him that first day, handing it to him without embarrassment after Andrew Dalworth had left them alone in the doctor�s office.

�I can�t finish it till I know you better,� she had said, seated in the chair opposite him, her shoes swinging free above the floor.

There was a copy of the poem in her files.

Dr. Julian sorted through the results of examinations he had given Jessica over the years, noting again her records and reactions to the Berenreuther Personality Inventory, Rorschach and Thematic Aperception Tests, the Stanford-Binet and the Pinter-Patterson Performance Scales.

During this period, Jessica had participated in most of the laboratory and field tests available to modern psychic researchers. Identification of numbers written on concealed blackboards, blindfolded guessing of playing cards, identification of persons and objects in sealed rooms, with therapeutic breaks to eliminate the decline effect (or plain boredom) associated with repetitious lab experiments.

Other tests included a reading of Jessica�s attempts to physically affect a supersensitive magnetic compass needle, which registered to one-millionth of the earth�s field. Jessica�s performance had been inconclusive; the change in the output recording was insignificant, the frequency of the oscillation increasing only 1.2 percent for perhaps fifteen seconds.

Dr. Julian studied the results of a test which had particularly interested him at the time, a Global Targeting Examination on a run of ten. Jessica had scored six H�s (Hits), three N�s(Neutrals) and one M (Miss), identifying salient characteristics of areas known only to her through their grid coordinates, latitude and longitude, in degrees, minutes and seconds. Her degree of success had been gratifying. She had, in fact, looked at numbers written on a notepad in an office in Trinity College, Dublin, and had related them � six times out of ten � to the geographical areas they represented, places in the world she had never been � the Ripon Falls, Africa, Lopez Bay, the Philippines, an island in the Celebes Sea near Borneo, stretches of ocean off the Cornish coast. Her one Miss and three Neutrals (too ambiguous to fit into an equation) scarcely detracted from her performance, particularly since it had been conducted under strict laboratory control of defense against unconscious iedetic assistance (after all, Jessica might have at some time seen and memorized maps of those areas). Also, Dr. Julian understood that the object under scrutiny (Jessica) could be affected by the analysis of the witness (himself) � in some cases by his mere physical presence.

At first, Dalworth, the executive accustomed to computerized, corporate decisions at the highest level, had demanded answers, decisions, results � God, how he had demanded them, Dr. Julian thought.

�I want to know why, Dr. Homewood, why Jessica sees these things we don�t, sees things beyond our senses and perceptions. My experience tells me there are always explanations if you dig deep enough and hard enough.�

They had been sitting in a pub on the Liffey at the time and Julian remembered his exasperation with the older man. �Then dig deep and hard into this, Mr. Dalworth,� he had said, giving him a poem that Jessica had presented to him that same day, four stanzas of free verse which she called Pussywillows.

Dalworth read the poem twice, massaging the bridge of his broken nose with a thumb and forefinger.

�Well, you�re the expert, Homewood. What do you think it means?�

�I don�t know,� Dr. Julian said and sipped his ale. �I mean that in the most literal sense we can conceive. I simply do not know. There is a breadth and depth to Jessica�s perceptions and precognitions � call them what you will � that brush against the parameters we�ve established so far. Her intimacy with the strange side of nature, the warnings she sees from colors, the oblique alarms running through her poetry � much of that is beyond my experience with run-of-the-mill psychics and clairvoyants, Andrew. And beyond that of my colleagues for that matter.�

Dalworth had looked at him thoughtfully. �All right, I can accept that. Jessica is different. She�s unpredictable. Is there a danger in that for her? Or � for others?�

�I�ve already given you my answer to that, Andrew. I simply don�t know...�

Eric Griffith�s eye and interest were caught by a magnificent thoroughbred whose name he fancied: Yankee Drummer. It was a scene handsome enough to dispel his gloomy thoughts � the turf in Ireland, splendid crowds in tweeds and bright silk scarves, ladies carrying walking sticks, gentlemen with binoculars, placards showing the current odds above the betting stalls, and horses parading toward the race course at the Curragh.

Eric sat in a doctor�s waiting room � a depressing annex with wicker furniture, artificial green plants and botannical prints on the walls � reading Town and Country magazine. It was winter-dark outside, the streets noisy with traffic. A black woman with two small children sagging against her knees looked stolidly at the details of a large red kidney, which faced her at eye level from a medical layout on the opposite wall.

Eric and Maud had been driving to the country from Philadelphia when the pain had struck, starting at the base of her skull and fanning out into her shoulders. He had tried to persuade her to stick it out until they got home where a brisk rub and a whiskey might put things right, but oh, no, she wouldn�t have that, she thought she was dying as usual (naturally, since she�d had that damned foolish dream again last night), and so here they were in a strange doctor�s office, Maud closeted with some old black medicine man, while he sat with kids staring at him like zombies, his nerves twitching for a drink.

Thank God for small favors. In a dusty heap of Ebony magazines and old comic books, with a couple of Popular Mechanics and Modern Screens tucked among them, Eric had found a recent copy of Town and Country with pictures of good-looking people and horses to distract him from his simmering resentments.

In grim defiance of a �no smoking� sign on the wall, he lit a cigarette and made a point of dropping the match on the floor. Feeling that he had evened some unspecified score, Eric inhaled the acrid smoke and casually turned the page.

Almost immediately he gasped, the smoke choking him as he fought for breath. A name leaped out at him from the caption under a picture: Jessica Mallory. The girl stood with a group of men holding the halter of the same horse he had admired on the preceding page, Yankee Drummer, international industrialist Andrew Dalworth�s entry in a spring race at the Curragh.

Eric Griffith felt the irregular stroke of his heart as he stared at his niece�s face, his eye switching from the men around her down to the copy to identify them: the grinning young fop with a beard was a Dr. Julian Somebody, and there was Andrew Dalworth himself � tall, reeking of privilege, the wind in his rusted white hair, a big hand on Jessica�s shoulder � and then a beefy country boob in a tweed cape and derby hat, a lawyer named Ryan. All of them were up for the weekend from Easter Hill...

Eric experienced a spasm of anger so intense and acute that it was like physical pain. He clamped his teeth against an impulse to spit at their pictures. Instead, perversely, he forced himself to stare at the photographs, absorbing like gall the look of complacent privilege, the strength and power of the men grouped around his niece, his dear sister�s only child, his very own flesh and blood...

She was tall and slim, the top of her head nearly level with Dalworth�s shoulder, casually at home with the trappings of the race meet, with stewards in boots and tall hats, jockeys saluting with their bats, owners with the colors of their stables pinned to handbags and scarves. Yes, little Jessica was right at home there, he thought, using in his mind a word he despised and resented: she �belonged� to that exclusive world. His own blood niece. A pretty child, blooming into young girlhood. How old was she? When had the social worker come to see him and Maud? At least six years ago. And what the hell was her name? All Eric remembered was that she was stocky, disagreeable, and making damned little effort to conceal her disapproval of them. A Miss Scoffey, Scorbey, something like that. Silly woman, holier than thou, getting her jollies with moral superiority, an arrogant �I�ve Found Jesus!� sticker on the back bumper of her cheap blue car. Well, now that you�ve found Him, he thought, tuck it in a side pocket, and he blew a plume of smoke into the face of the little black boy who had come closer to him smiling tentatively. If that visit had been six years ago, that would make Jessica � what? The little boy backed away, his head again on his mother�s knee.

Eric looked at the caption of the pictures and saw a phrase that answered his question: �Eleven-year-old Jessica�� And never a word from her in all that time...

And it was while these roiling thoughts of disloyalty and unwarranted loss simmered in his consciousness, that he heard the doctor�s mushy voice saying, �Ma�am, I can�t find a thing wrong that some aspirin and hot tea won�t set right...�

�You don�t understand. The pain isn�t constant, it comes and��

�But to be on the safe side...� The voice was bland and dismissing. �I�ve written this prescription for a muscle relaxer.�

The doctor�s receptionist, a black lady with a spray of artificial flowers pinned to the shoulder of her white uniform, smiled and said to Eric Griffith, �Eighteen dollars, sir.�

And when he drew out his checkbook, she smiled even more pleasantly and pointed to a sign that said, �No checks.�

In the next years, Jessica lived and grew at Easter Hill in tune with the wheel of the seasons � long, green summers with white caps rolling like lace across the rocks of Connemara�s shores, and gulls wheeling against blue-gray skies; and winters that gripped the land in icy hands, with seas dark and heavy and Windkin�s hooves like hammers on the frozen meadows. The wave of spring and autumn marked these extremes of weather, bridging them with greening colors and carpets of turning leaves.

Glossy ivy covered the cross Capability Brown had made for the spirited terrier Holly. Another dog had taken her place, a sable collie named Fluter who raced with Windkin and Jessica through the hills above Easter Hill and over the measured runs at Charity Bostwick�s small farm.

When it rained in the bitter weather, lightning storms brilliant above the cliffs, Jessica played chess inside with Andrew, Scrabble alone for practice in her private tower, or games of hide-and-seek with Fluter and the Irish maids � giddy times when they�d take turns hiding in attics or down in the secret priest-hole, which had been cleverly constructed a century ago in a camouflaged alcove off the main dining room. Brocade and panels concealed its entrance. Andrew had explained to her the history of these hiding places for the hunted Catholic clergy, in times when the priests and their vestments and Eucharists had to be spirited quickly to safety when the soldiers of the British Crown were seen in the neighborhood or on the highways. These concealed places were designed so skillfully there were hardly any master builders or architects with tappings and measuring rods who could detect their existence behind seemingly innocent walls of brick and plaster.

Easter Hill�s old priest-hole was snug and dark, the air dry with age. Rush matting covered the floor and beneath this a trap door led to cellars. Air filtered in through six small circles which penetrated the walls into corded vines that covered this wing of Easter Hill.

This was a time of growth for Jessica. She was tall and slim and wiry, her eyes a deeper blue, her dark hair hanging to her shoulders. She would be thirteen on her next birthday, and Andrew Dalworth had resigned himself to the fact that she would be going away in the next year or so to a school in England or perhaps Switzerland.

This spring, as a birthday treat since he would be in New York, Andrew Dalworth had agreed to let Charity Bostwick take Jessica on a vacation tour up the coast and into the upper counties of Ireland. At first he had not been sanguine about the idea, which had been Charity�s suggestion, but she had eased his misgivings in her frank, direct way one evening over brandy in the library.

At forty-three, Charity Bostwick was still a handsome woman with prematurely white hair, a deeply tanned complexion and startlingly lively gray eyes.

�We don�t understand her gifts, perhaps, Andrew, but we know such things are almost normal in this part of the world. So does Jessica. She doesn�t live in London or in a block of flats in New York. She�s part of the old countryside of Ireland where the people pay as much attention to stones and earth, to the legends and headstones in the cemeteries as they do to the blathering idiots making time-and-motion studies in factories in the rest of this modern, sterile world. It�s still a land of myths and dreams, Andrew, and I think you�d be wrong to try to shield Jessica from it.�

�That�s certainly not my intention.�

�Then let her come with me. Her own father came from up north. There might be some of his people there yet...�

�I rather doubt that, Charity. We�ve made extensive checks. The only family of Jessica�s we�ve ever pinned down are an aunt and uncle somewhere in Pennsylvania, and they made it quite clear they wanted nothing to do with the child.�

On a fine clear morning a week later, Charity Bostwick and Jessica left Easter Hill for Donegal, the northernmost county of Ireland, traveling in Miss Charity�s open roadster with their suitcases on the luggage rack and bundled up against the coastal winds in tweeds and scarves and leather-palmed driving gloves.

Fluter followed them to the end of the long beech-lined lane, the breeze stirring his heavy gray ruff, but stopped obediently and raised his head for a last look at the bright green car winding into the hills. Then the big collie barked at the gulls riding in on thermals from the sea, and trotted back to the house and the figures that stood on the terrace of Easter Hill � Lily and Rose, Mrs. Kiernan, old Flynn, Capability Brown, and Kevin O�Dell, who still had a hand raised in the air.

They traveled up the coast to Galway and Connach and Mayo, stopping at inns along the way, and dining in lounges with handsome plates displayed on wall racks and swords crossed above big fireplaces. They reached Sligo when fogs covered the old town and the darkness was sprinkled with city lights.

In a cemetery there, Jessica brushed a film of gray moss from the letters carved on William Butler Yeats� headstone. And when she read the words, she felt a stir of nostalgic affection for the poet and for all the other souls stretching away from her in the reaches of the old graveyard.

They visited famous views and landmarks and ancient monastaries, great grey dolmens and crumbling shrines. And in the little town of Glendrum, they learned through an innkeeper of an elderly couple named Mallory � no kin of Jessica, but the old man, Liam Mallory, was well known for his strangeness, his stories and the deep poetry of his speech.

They spent an evening with the couple in their cottage high in the wooded hills above Glendrum, a dwelling of one huge room with an earth-packed floor and a tall stone fireplace where Corinne Mallory, wrinkled and shy in her black shawl and bonnet, sat knitting while her husband talked and an immense silky wolfhound lay at her feet.

During their long swing up and down the western coast, Jessica managed to write postcards at every stop to the staff at Easter Hill and to Andrew and Dr. Julian in the United States. And between gathering rock specimens, having roadside picnics, and taking the wild-bird count for Miss Charity�s records, Jessica also absorbed a fair share of Irish history, partly from her own observation of the land and its landmarks and in part from Miss Charity�s rambling, disconnected anecdotes, which ranged from the time of the British Tans to the present troubles with intervening accounts of the activities of her own family and of Capability Brown and the other residents of Ballytone.

Yet among all the crowded, vivid memories of the trip, the one that stood out most clearly and distinctly from all the others in her mind was the one of old Liam Mallory and the strange and marvelous things he had told her, the way he had looked at her when he�d said goodbye � a huge figure of a man with a staff in one hand and tendrils of sea mist curling around his white beard and streaming hair.

�You were sent back to this soil to replenish your gifts,� the old man told her. �We need all the wild geese, the second sights, now as never before, not just for this poor, tortured country but for the whole world.

�Once we lived with our gods and were close to them. But man with his bricks and buildings and motor cars and science is always building Towers of Babel that are doomed to drown out the true language of the human spirit.�

�And if the gods aren�t close to us anymore,� she asked, �are they lonely for us?�

�Ah, you�re a wise child,� Mallory said. �They�re lonely for us, dearie, like fathers and mothers for lost, crying bairns. But it�s the nature of things. We must go and seek them. You see that, don�t you? And for those like you and me, with the gift, that search and its need gives us the power of the elements, the strength of archangels.�

�How do we know that that strength is wise?� Jessica asked him.

�You�ll know, child. You�ll know when the time comes...� and he thrust his staff against the roaring winds and held it there as a shield for the two of them.

This was the way Jessica would remember him in all the years to come, a patriarchal figure struck from the myth and rock of Ireland, as dauntless in the face of time as the elements themselves.

The point-to-point race over four miles of rough country was underway, and when the powerful field of hunters came into view from the low meadows, an excited cheer rose from the crowd, but Eric Griffith thought bitterly, �I should have bet Plover�s Egg... dammit, dammit, dammit!�

The big roan mare, notably a strong finisher, had a length on the favorite, High Pockets, as they swept past the tawny row of maples that marked the start of the last quarter-mile to the finish line. Instead of Plover�s Egg, Eric had committed a reckless share of his dwindling funds on Harlequin, because he had overheard Colonel Innis making a sizeable bet on that entry, and now the pig was running dead last, its tail swishing about like an electric fan.

The crowds watching the point-to-point had gathered on the sprawling Cadwalader estate in eastern Maryland for a day of spring racing. In tweeds and cashmeres and burnished boots, they lined the homestretch, cheering on the tightening contest between High Pockets and Plover�s Egg. Others watched from cars on the high ground above the race course, tailgates loaded with wicker baskets and sparkling cocktail shakers.

�Plover�s Egg,� Eric thought again. Then he repeated the name aloud and a group of grooms standing near him laughed and one of them, without glancing at Eric, said, �He could be right, of course, which would make it an even once...�

The groom, a stocky man in his forties, was employed at the Cadwalader stables. His name, Eric knew, was Hank Dunker.

�That�s pretty good, Hank,� another groom said and laughed again. �Plover�s Egg... just to make it an even once.�

When Griffith realized they were referring to him, he felt a sudden warm and prickling heat in his cheeks. Sly, boorish louts, he thought, a sustaining anger growing inside him.

So far, it had been a disastrous day. He had lost the last four races and there was no hope for this one now, with Harlequin forty lengths behind the leaders. This was his last chance...

�Hank!� he said suddenly.

The groom turned and regarded him with masked eyes. �You call me, Mr. Griffith?�

�That�s right. I gather you don�t agree with my estimate of Plover�s Egg.�

�Well, you�re entitled to whatever you think.� His friends grinned and looked away. �But I don�t see this here Plover�s Egg holdin� off High Pockets.�

�How would you like to back your judgment for, say, fifty dollars, Hank?�

�I expect you know the books are all closed on a race that�s runnin�...�

�Yes, I�m aware of that and I know from the fumes drifting my way that you and your friends have been drinking rot-gut. But isn�t that all beside the point? I have fifty dollars that says Plover�s Egg wins it.�

Hank glanced down the home stretch at the horses, only two hundred yards from the finish line now. His eyes narrowed alertly, and he rubbed his stubbled beard with the back of his hand. �Thing is, Mr. Griffith, I know where them horses will be after the race, they�ll be back in their stables. And I know where I�ll be after the race. Thing I�m not sure about is where you�ll be...�

�I see they�re teaching impudence on welfare now,� Eric Griffith said angrily, and pulled a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. �Here�s my money. I suggest you put up or shut up now, Hank.�

Obviously resenting Griffith�s tone, the groom said in a surly voice, �All right, you got yourself a bet.� Climbing onto a fence that kept spectators off the course, Dunker cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the charging horses.

�Move it, High Pockets! Stir those damned stumps of yours!�

The groom�s friends fanned out behind him, pounding each other on the shoulders and yelling encouragement at the favorite.

And to Eric�s dismay, he saw that the tide of the race was turning inexorably to High Pockets, who was now running like a smooth and effortless engine, while the roan mare was fighting the reins, her ears twitching � a sure sign she�d lost interest in the race.

He couldn�t even win here in a country meet, he thought in rage, with the purses provided by local charities and the proceeds from the refreshment booths marked for a pumping engine for a volunteer fire company. No, not here, and never mind the dream that had become a tiresome exercise in futility over the years � the thoughts of vindication in singing, winning weather at Hialeah or Del Mar or the fabled courses at the Curragh or the fence and brush at Aintree where they ran the Grand National.

Christ, Eric thought bitterly, feeling the familiar but always dreadful loser�s knot of anxiety tightening in his stomach. Dunker and his friends were still looking in the opposite direction, shouting boisterously now as High Pockets lengthened his lead over the field. Griffith took that opportunity to put his money away and slip off into the crowd.

After crossing the meadow on the opposite side of the finish line, he hurried off between rows of cars parked on the hill. He soon became aware that Hank Dunker and his cronies were pursuing him relentlessly through the crowd, leaping up and down to keep track of him, spreading out through the paddocks and behind the refreshment booth where the ladies from the local fire-company auxiliary were serving hot dogs and coffee.

Eric found sanctuary for several hopeful minutes in the narrow confines of a yellow metal portable privy. Then someone hammered on the door and a voice thick with laughter said, �Come on, pal, or there�s gonna be a damned Johnstown flood out here...�

Griffith took cover after that near the judges� tent where Colonel (Lord Douglas) Innes, Mrs. Cadwalader�s houseguest for the weekend, stood talking to his hostess. He joined them, smiling, and pulled off his tweed hat in a deferential gesture to the old lady.

Secure for the moment, he relaxed and listened to Colonel Innes, a stocky, graying Highlander who was complimenting Mrs. Cadwalader on the organization of the day�s events. Then the colonel stared at Eric, his bushy eyebrows coming together in a straight line above his clear, cold eyes.

�Where did you get that tie, Griffith?�

�We dressed at the crack of dawn and there was barely any light�� To his chagrin, Griffith heard a stammer of nervous conciliation in his voice. He was caught; there was no way of conning this shrewd old colonel. Still, Eric made a weak effort saying, �I shared a room with a chap and we must have switched ties.�

�Probably didn�t belong to him, either. It�s the Scots Grays, of course.�

�Well, I wouldn�t know, sir,� Griffith said, glancing nervously at the red and orange stripes which had looked so festive and stirring in the Olde London Shoppe in Philadelphia.

�I can assure you I know it.� The colonel laughed without humor. �It�s my own regiment and we fly two hundred years� of battle flags.�

�I wonder what Hank wants,� said Mrs. Cadwalader, a stout graying woman in mauve tweeds and low walking boots. �I believe he�s beckoning to you, Mr. Griffith. Did you have a bet with him? He�s making that rather timeless gesture with his thumb and forefinger.�

�As a matter of fact, I believe I did. It was such a small amount, it slipped my mind.�

�Then you�d better pay him what you owe him,� Mrs. Cadwalader said, and Griffith was stung by the fact that she hadn�t for an instant assumed that it might have been the other way around, that he�d won a bet from her boorish little groom, that the impudent bastard owed him money. But on second thought, he wouldn�t take it so personally. What churl, of Dunker�s caliber, he mused, goes in hot pursuit of a creditor? Griffith fished the fifty from his pocket and made his way, only slightly begrudgingly, to the gesturing groom.

Several days later, Miss Elizabeth Scobey sat at her desk facing the view of Philadelphia�s center city. It was a brilliant spring morning, and on such a day, superb with clean, cold winds off the rivers, she could see beyond Ben Franklin�s statue to the green expanses of Fairmount Park and from there all the way to the stone steps of the art museum.

Her phone rang suddenly.

�There�s a man to see you, Miss Scobey.� It was Emily at the front reception desk. �He doesn�t have an appointment but he says it�s personal and urgent.�

�What�s his name, dear?�

�Griffith, Mr. Eric Griffith.�

The name rang a vague bell. Miss Scobey glanced at the clutter of files and forms on her desk and said with mild exasperation, �I honestly don�t have a moment to spare. What does he want to see me about?�

After a minute, Emily was back on the phone saying, �It�s about an adoption you processed through this office about eight years ago. A little girl named Jessica Mallory. Mr. Griffith is her uncle. He wants to talk to you about something that happened back then. He insists it�s terribly important.�

Staring out at the gray-stone, gingerbread mass of City Hall, a vague, uneasy memory of a wintry countryside and Eric Griffith stirred in her. �Well, all right, send him in...�

A clean, hard wind was blowing down Skyhead and through the trees at Ballytone the morning of Andrew Dalworth�s funeral. There had been a formal memorial service the previous evening at Easter Hill. The names of mourners from Ireland and the United States and other countries were now listed in the registry book which Flynn had set out on a rosewood table in the great hall.

The final ceremony at the cemetery with its weathered headstones beside Father Malachy�s church was reserved for members of the household staff and close personal friends.

In a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar, Jessica stood close to Charity Bostwick. Fluter lay at the girl�s feet, his head resting on white forepaws, his liquid eyes fixed on the casket with its coverlet of lilies and white carnations. The wind stirred Jessica�s long black hair and brought a pinkness to her cheeks. She stood with her head held high, determined not to cry, because she believed that holding back the tears she wanted to shed was a way of saying (childishly and helplessly) that Andrew wasn�t really gone from her yet, not yet...

Holding a long silver aspergillum, Father Malachy sprinkled holy water on the casket and began to recite the funeral prayers.

�Into Thy hands, Oh, Lord, we commend the spirit of Thy humble servant��

The old priest wore the vestments of a Requiem High Mass � black chasuble figured with silver threads, and a stole in a matching pattern. On his white head rested a dark, four-cornered biretta with a silver tassle.

�As a stranger, he entered our land; as a friend, he entered our hearts...�

Standing in the crisp winds, fragrant with flowers, Jessica did not feel lonely. How could she with her friends gathered at his grave... Miss Charity, Capability Brown, Kevin O�Dell, and Rose and Lily, who wore simple white dresses in the Irish tradition, which held that such pristine apparel symbolized the joyous welcome of the dear departed�s soul into the Kingdom of Heaven. No, Jessica didn�t feel alone at this hour, but she had never felt so shattered and forlorn in all her life � not even after the death of her parents � because she couldn�t conceive that anyone, anywhere could ever replace Andrew Dalworth.

�There was never a time I asked this good man�� Father Malachy stopped and shook his head vigorously. �No, I�m telling a lie, for I never had to ask this good man for help of any kind. He always offered it before I could ask.�

Mrs. Kiernan wept openly into a lace handkerchief. In the open fields surrounding the burial site were groups of people from Ballytone; Tige Wicks, publican of the Hannibal Arms; classmates of Jessica�s and their parents � the men with heads bared, and the women with rosary beads; lips moving in prayer.

Angus Ryan, Dalworth�s solicitor from Dublin, stood directly behind Jessica and Charity Bostwick, the breezes stirring his white hair. They had talked of the inevitable future, seated at the fire in the library, while Rose and Lily went quietly about their work, eyes red from weeping, fetching and caring for the doctors and nurses who tended to Andrew Dalworth in the last unconscious days of his life, his lined face liked old ivory against the pillow in his darkened bedroom.

�We aren�t giving up hope, little lady. Not for one minute,� he had said to Jessica. �God willing, Andrew will be sitting hale and hearty at the head of his own table in a fortnight. But in the meantime, I�m sure he�d like you and me to have a practical chat.�

That afternoon, with the first signs of spring heartbreakingly evident in the trees and shrubs outside the library�s great leaded windows, Angus Ryan had explained the nature and function of Andrew Dalworth�s principal trusts and foundations. The first represented his business interests, and the second, his experimental farms and breeding ranches. Both were administered by a board of directors in New York with monthly resumes sent directly to Easter Hill by Dalworth�s personal aide, Stanley Holcomb. The third trust, administered by Angus Ryan from his Dublin offices, provided for the maintenance of Easter Hill and all such personal expenses as might be incurred by Jessica Mallory, including education and allowance until she reached the age of twenty-one, at which time she would, as Andrew Dalworth�s sole heir, become the legatee of his entire fortune.

�When he enters into the Kingdom of Almighty God, the blessed immortal soul of our friend, Andrew�� The old priest�s voice trembled on the cold air, fragrant with the faint sweetness of floral wreaths.

To distract her during these past sorrowful days, Capability Brown had allowed Jessica to help him with the gardens, and they made a good pair � the wiry old man in tweeds and a bog hat, the slim youngster beside him. Together they had lined the borders of the flagstone paths with primula and marguerite daisies, circling the bird fountain with alyssum seedlings. In the sally garden, Mr. Brown had showed her how to disc the ground and to grind the bone-meal and manure from the stables into the fertile, black earth.

And during those dreadful final days, Dr. Julian had called frequently from California. The connections were excellent, and his voice had sounded so warm and clear and close that it brought tears to her eyes. She hadn�t told him that she was frightened, but he had sensed it.

�What is it, Jessica? I know how you feel about Andrew, we all do. But something else is bothering you.�

�I�m not sure, Julian. I can�t quite see it...�

The last guests and mourners departed Easter Hill later that afternoon, with only Eric and Maud Griffith and Angus Ryan staying on in the library with Jessica, a quiet group seated at the glowing fireplace.

The household staff had found a therapy for their grief during the long day by caring for friends and visitors who stopped by to pay respects, setting out sliced cold meats, preserves, and custards on the sideboard of the dining room and passing drinks and sherries on silver trays to those in the great hall and drawing room.

The tones of the library were soft in the fading spring sunshine, the carved arms of chairs and sofas and the leather bindings of books catching golden reflections from the shining bay windows.

Eric found himself comfortably at home here, relaxed in a huge leather chair with a glass of whiskey in his hand and a view of meadows and trees stretching off to the sea. He liked the look of the books reaching to the dark timbered ceilings and savored the perfection of his Waterford goblet, the smokey taste of the Irish wiskey.

What a blissful, relaxing change from the haste and confusion of the last few days. After the first televised reports of Andrew Dalworth�s death, they had scrambled frantically to get their tickets and pack for the trip to Ireland, with Tony Saxe haggling over money and Maud being her usual pain-in-the-derriere, matching silk scarves to tweed suits, and pearls to black silks � a petulant, time-wasting process � all of that plus the last detour on the way to the crowded airport, the cab ride to the dingy shop off Front Street to bargain with the bald old man about the silly trinket till they almost missed the plane.

With the taste of sour copper in his mouth, the nerve-frazzling Customs at Shannon, the disorientation of jet lag, the expensive rented car and driving on the wrong side of the curving country roads � well, it was good to stretch out his legs and sip a whiskey and feel at home.

Maud was making herself agreeable to Jessica and Angus Ryan, something she was proficient at when such efforts coincided with her own interests. Jessica told her about Windkin, her studies at school, and her stamp and coin collections, while Eric allowed Angus Ryan to ramble on in his boring brogue about the industrial expansion in southern Ireland and the present offerings at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Eric�s mood was ambivalent. He relished these graceful surroundings, so subtly speaking of privilege and class, yet the knowledge that they belonged, not to him, but to his solemn and haughty little niece was stirring resentments in him.

Mrs. Kiernan, the stout old biddy from the kitchen, had sniffed in disapproval when he had gone to the sideboard for this last whiskey. He knew from experience how long a nose house-staff had for money: they peeked at labels in jackets, they heard the gossip behind your back when you were gone, and if you happened to be out of a job or overdrawn, it was like wearing a leper�s bell around the neck. Even the lumbering brute of a collie (Fluter, was it?) had taken a dislike to Eric, growling and baring his teeth when he only so much as poked his head into Dalworth�s private study, a teak-pannelled room connected to the library and fitted with files and phones, a desk, and a display of antique hand-guns.

Angus Ryan pulled an old-fashioned gold watch from his vest pocket. �Well, I�d best be thinking about my train.� With a smile at Jessica, he said, �Lass, shouldn�t you be wanting a little rest?�

�I�m all right, sir. I think I�d prefer to go down to the stables to talk with Windkin for a few minutes. But I�ll wait till you�re off to the station.�

I�d prefer this, I�d prefer that, Eric thought moodily. Such a high-toned little miss with her fine manners and Dalworth�s millions, and not toddling off obediently with a swift smack on her behind if there were any complaints about it. That was very likely what she needed, spoiled rotten by an indulgent old sugar daddy, the same as the staff in the kitchen, who could also use a reminder about who were the servants and who were the masters here.

Maud said, �Eric, we�ve got to be leaving, too, but first I want to show you this view from the bay windows...� Taking the glass from his hand, she put it on a table and led him to the far end of the library where she pointed out over the fields and spoke to him in a low, angry voice, �Goddamn it, get your mind onto why we�re here. Stop swilling whiskey and playing the lord of the manor.�

�I�ve got as much right here as anybody,� Eric said sullenly.

�Talk to the old fool, talk to him now.� Smiling and raising her voice, she said, �The sun on the hills is just breathtaking.�

�Simply marvelous,� Eric turned and joined Angus Ryan who had stood to examine a fine woodcut in a hand-carved frame.

�Mr. Ryan, could I have a word with you?�

�Why, indeed you may, Mr. Griffith.� Angus Ryan looked steadily at Eric, a faint smile brightening his shrewd blue eyes. �And what word is it you want with me, sir?�

Eric heard (or believed he heard) a dry, pointed tone in the solicitor�s voice. And he didn�t like the way Ryan was regarding him, sharp eyes glittering beneath tangled eyebrows. Of course, this wouldn�t be a country yokel of a lawyer, not with Dalworth�s fortune to look after.

Eric glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Jessica was out of earshot. She was indeed, seated at the fire with Maud, leafing through an album of photographs.

�It�s just this, Mr. Ryan. Since you are the executor of the Dalworth estate and Jessica�s legal docent or advisor, and since Mrs. Griffith and I are the child�s only relatives, I thought it might be useful if we had a talk to discuss our mutual responsibilities.�

�If you see the need for such a meeting, of course, I am at your service. But I think you should know in advance that my responsibilities are neither flexible nor negotiable. They are spelled out precisely by the terms of Mr. Dalworth�s will.�

�Naturally, I assumed they would be,� Eric said. �However, as Jessica�s blood kin, I also have responsibilities.�

�Ah, yes.� Again the tone was honed and dry. �I�m sure you do, Mr. Griffith. I take it you and Mrs. Griffith aren�t on a rigid schedule?�

�That�s right, Mr. Ryan. We�re at the Hannibal Arms.�

�It is indeed fortunate that you have this free time coincident with Mr. Dalworth�s demise. May I suggest we meet in my offices in Dublin, say, a week from today?�

Eric smiled. �Perhaps I could give you lunch, Mr. Ryan.�

�The office will do nicely, Mr. Griffith. Shall we say eleven o�clock?�

As they turned back toward the fireplace, Maud opened her handbag and removed a heart-shaped golden locket on a fine, slim chain. �I�d like you to have this, dear,� she said to Jessica.

�It�s very lovely,� Jessica said. �But I think I�m too young to wear jewelry...�

�What a sensible attitude,� Maud said with a quick smile. �But this is special, my dear, and I think you�ll enjoy having it. You see, Jessica, this locket belonged to your mother.�

For the first time in that long and painful day, there was a glint of tears in Jessica�s eyes. She took the small gold heart from Maud and impulsively threw her arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.

�Couldn�t you and Uncle Eric stay here a while with me at Easter Hill?�

�What a very sweet child you are.� Maud smiled mistily at Eric and Angus Ryan and touched a handkerchief to the corner of her eye.

Christ, it would soon be slopping over at this rate, Eric thought. Trust Maud for the maudlin... At least she hadn�t forgot to remove the price tag from the locket, which they�d bought in a Philadelphia pawn shop on their way to the airport.

Angus Ryan�s offices were on the second floor of a Georgian building, whose narrow windows faced the Liffey and the central streets of Dublin.

The reception rooms were done in brown leather and honest oak, pictures of race meets and the Dublin dog show brightening the panelled walls. The offices of the senior partners, Angus Ryan and the late Dermod Maloney, had been done less somberly and more functionally � refectory tables in place of desks, built-in filing cabinets, and silver tea sets. This had been the original scheme, but since his death some years before, the quarters of Dermod Maloney had been converted into book-lined rooms to house the firm�s legal library.

On a week to the day after Andrew Dalworth�s funeral, Eric Griffith, in tweeds and a tattersall vest, sat in Mr. Ryan�s office facing the gray-haired solicitor across the clean expanse of the shining refectory table.

��and as I mentioned at our first meeting at Easter Hill, Mr. Ryan, Maud and I both feel we have some degree of responsibility to our niece.�

Angus Ryan said gently, �Would you enlighten me, sir, as to the nature of those responsibilities?�

Eric shrugged and, with a practiced and seemingly helpless smile, said, �Well, that�s where I was hoping you might help, Mr. Ryan. You see, Maud and I are comfortably off but we�re hardly what you�d call rich.�

�Ah, is that so, Mr. Griffith?�

�Yes, but we still feel an obligation to Jessica. If there�s any way we can help, we�d be pleased to. I know that in the long run Jessica will be provided for, but sometimes in emergencies like this, there�s a problem of cash flow and if that�s the case, we�d be happy to send our niece a reasonable monthly allowance...�

�Now that�s quite generous of you,� Mr. Ryan said, wondering if he had possibly misjudged these American relatives. �However, that won�t be necessary, Mr. Griffith.�

Briefly, Mr. Ryan explained the purpose and functions of the Dalworth trusts administered by a board of directors in New York. After which he explained his position as the executor of Andrew Dalworth�s provisions in relation to Easter Hill and to Jessica, and his fiscal responsibility for Jessica�s allowance, schooling, travel, and so forth.

�I�m pleased to know everything is so tidy,� Eric said, smiling steadily at the old lawyer. He was also pleased (and suddenly grateful) that he had made solid plans of his own and was therefore not dependent on a nuisance settlement from this tight-fisted old coot, or on a bone thrown to him with whimsical generosity by his niece.

Yet Eric couldn�t help but feel diminished by the role he was required to play, cast as the scoundrel in a bogus necktie, forced to cheat and lie because no other avenue was open to him. He didn�t want to spend his life waiting for a hand on his shoulder, a hard, official voice saying, �A question or two, if you don�t mind.�

Cantering one morning across a meadow above Easter Hill on one of Dalworth�s hunters, a pair of Irish lads on a dusty road had greeted him with smiles, and when he had saluted them with his crop they had pulled off their caps in a gesture of deference that had touched him... That was the life he wanted, not hiding his face from privileged Scots lairds and the likes of Mrs. Cadwalader.

Angus Ryan made a steeple of his fingers and looked across them at Eric, trying to take a reading on the man. Since he was basically tolerant and charitable, Ryan was thinking his first appraisal might have been hasty.

�Perhaps you could satisfy my curiosity on one point, Mr. Griffith. Handling the business of the estate as I do, forwarding mail and such, how is it I�ve never come across a postcard or letter from you or your wife in all these long years?�

Eric had rehearsed an answer to this question, and as he met the old man�s narrowing eyes, he was glad that he had practiced his responses with Maud and in front of his bedroom mirror � rueful smiles, the sigh of futility at the pain of the past, shrugs of dismissal and helplessness.

�The child had started a fresh new life and didn�t need us. But quite frankly, my sister Monica and my wife never hit it off. Whose fault was it?� One of the rueful smiles. �Who can say? My sister didn�t like the fact that Maud had been married before. But perhaps she wouldn�t have been happy with whomever I married.� A shrug of fond helplessness. �I was quite a bit older than Monica, and she may have thought my function in life was to be the eternal big brother, available forever for riding lessons, a partner to practice the latest dance craze with.� A sigh at the pain of the past. �Yet, as I�m sure you understand, my loyalty had to be with my wife...�

�Of course,� Angus Ryan said.

�But now, at a time when our niece is truly alone, naturally we�re standing by.�

�I think... I understand your position, Mr. Griffith.�

�Now there�s something I�d like to ask you, if I may, Mr. Ryan. About a picture along the second floor corridor of Easter Hill � an oil painting. A Hereford steer on a winter day with an old barn and some outbuildings at the edge of a field.�

There was no such painting, but this was a gamble Eric Griffith had decided he must take. This was the crux of the matter, the reason for this meeting.

�It looks like the countryside where I have my home in the States, Chester County in Pennsylvania. We have a museum there on the Brandywine with dozens of such oils, in the style of the Wyeths and Howard Pyle � a whole school of painters...�

�A Hereford against outbuildings?� Ryan frowned and shook his head, and Eric breathed more easily. �I�m afraid I don�t know the picture, Mr. Griffith.�

�Well, it�s not important. But it reminded me of home.�

�I�d been after Andrew Dalworth for a good while to have a curator in to catalogue the collections. He and Jessica were great shoppers, you know.�

He smiled at a memory. �It was hard to tell who was the younger when they were out on their expeditions. Still, Andrew felt strongly that a man�s home had no business with librarians and accountants and sightseers and the like.�

Concealing his relief at this information, Eric glanced at his wristwatch and managed a neatly executed start of surprise.

�I really shouldn�t take up any more of your time, Mr. Ryan, but I�m pleased that we had this talk.�

They stood and shook hands. Then Eric pretended to remember something. �By the way, Mr. Ryan, at dinner the other night, Jessica suggested that she and her Aunt Maud take a little vacation in London. Naturally, that�s a decision we wouldn�t make without your approval.�

Ryan looked at him keenly. �It was her idea, you say?�

�Yes, she thought it might be a nice change of scene. It will be my treat, of course...�

Angus Ryan rubbed his jaw and then said, �Well, I can�t see the harm in a little holiday just now.�

�In that case, I�ll tell her �bon voyage� for you.�

Mr. Ryan showed him to the doors of the reception area. Eric smiled boyishly at the pair of middle-aged secretaries and took the lift down to the street.

After staring out at the River Liffey for a moment or so, Mr. Ryan turned and picked up his phone and placed a call to Easter Hill.

Maud was not a good traveller. She liked restaurants and cocktail lounges, snacks from room service and television. London, with its parks and churches and the boldly delicate tracery of the architect Wren had no appeal for her, and the museums with their solemn, dusty silences turned her almost faint with boredom.

She usually napped after lunch, the coverlet of her bed sprinkled with gossip and fashion magazines, and it was at this time that Jessica explored London on her own, using the underground subway, which Andrew had taught her to do, window-shopping in Knightsbridge, visiting the Tate and National galleries, and feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.

One day Jessica became restless during lunch in the dining room of the Dorchester. The sensation was perplexing � not significant enough to make her apprehensive, just the vaguest of premonitions, the most fragile of tremors across her warning systems.

Maud was having an iced Calvados with her coffee and exchanging smiles and pleasantries with the gentleman at the adjoining table, an Arab from Morocco who wore a red fez with his dark gray suit. Jessica asked to be excused and Maud dismissed her with a quick smile.

In their suite facing the park, Jessica sat at the curved-legged escritoire and began a letter to Dr. Julian, hoping this would dissipate her strange, rootless anxiety.

But after she had written his name and started the letter with �We are in London for a week or so, Aunt Maud and I��, she stopped there, mildly irritated and self-conscious at the banality of the sentence.

When she began again on a fresh sheet of paper, Jessica wrote down several unrelated words and then the pen began to move almost by itself, swiftly and reflexively, and she was writing a poem to Julian instead of the simple letter she had planned, putting down her truest and most candid feelings without guilt or reservation. Jessica was plumbing depths of sensitivity she had barely been conscious of, tapping well-springs of emotion at the very core of her being. In a way, she didn�t quite understand, Jessica realized that these new feelings were connected with the topsy-turvy change of events in her life � the death of her beloved Andrew, the loneliness for Julian, and the newness of Uncle Eric and Aunt Maud, who were so surprisingly and so constantly at home in what had once been her dearest sanctuary, the lands and mansion of Easter Hill.

With a faint smile, she wrote down the words �sudden� and �sharp� and �silver,� savoring their provocative sibilance. And then she looked out the windows at the greenness of the park and thought sadly and somewhat wistfully of the inevitable words that must complete her thoughts: �gemstone� and �childhood.�

Jessica and Maud arrived at Easter Hill in an airport limousine shortly after midnight, a damp, spring wind buffeting the car and scattering the last of the winter leaves across the gravel driveway and dark lawns.

Jessica went directly down to the stables. As she pulled open the heavy doors, a man she had never seen before came out of the tack room, a cigarette slanting up from his mouth, the moonlight shining on his flattened nose and on the shock of black hair that stood up like a curry brush.

�Hey, what�re you doing here this time of night?�

�I live here,� Jessica said. �I want to make sure that my house is all right. May I ask why you�re in our stables?�

Benny Stiff grinned and said, �Sure, you can. I work here, kid. You�re the little princess. Right?�

�Where is Kevin O�Dell?�

�You mean the young Irisher? He quit. I�m the new groom. Benny Stiff�s the name.�

Another figure emerged from the shadows and Jessica was relieved when she recognized Capability Brown, but her apprehension quickened when she saw that her old friend�s face was set in hard, grim lines.

�Windkin is fine, Miss Jessica,� Mr. Brown said. �I�ve kept an eye on him. But you should know, Miss, there�s been some changes at Easter Hill.�

�Mr. Brown, please tell me.�

�I think that�s a task for Mr. Griffith. You�d best go up to the house now and let him explain how it was.�

A surging wind broke against the Connemara coast that night, pounding the sea side of Skyhead and stirring eddies of sand on the flat beaches running north. The wind rode hard through the streets of Ballytone and over the ridge of hills that rose from the village toward forbidding skies.

It raced along the cragged coasts of Connaught and Mayo, past towns named Castlebar, Innisscrone and Screen, churning up sprays of white water in Donegal Bay before finding its match in the high escarpment that stood above the town of Ballydrum and served as a storm-break for the Mallory cottage where, at this moment, old Liam Mallory had paused with a hand on the tea kettle to say to his wife, Corinne, �I fear something, woman...�

�What are you fearing?�

�I cannot tell. But I have the feel of it.�

Placing the kettle on the iron arm hinged to the fireplace, the old man looked through the windows at the mists coming up above the cliffs.

�All week they�ve been telling me,� he said. �The eggs with triple yolks, then the birds � quiet in the trees � stopping their cries, and your mother�s wedding plate, for forty years on that shelf wall, falling and shattering itself.�

�It�s only the winds, Liam.�

�Was it just the wind that opened the Bible to the death pages? Showing the names gone before us?�

Staring at the white mists, he shook his head. �No, they�re telling me about the girl who was here. Warning us...�

The old man tried to remember the name of the lady who had brought Jessica to their cottage but the name remained elusive at the edge of his thoughts. Then Liam recalled that the woman with Jessica Mallory had talked of their village in the south and mentioned the name of the priest there. �Was it not Father Malachy, Father Malachy from the town of Ballytone?� And when his wife nodded, old Liam made his decision...

�There�s no way we can keep the wheels on this goddamn deal now.� Saxe�s voice was tight with frustration. �What the hell�s your plan? Keep her locked up till she�s twenty-one?�

Eric said, �We�re in no danger, Tony, providing we keep our heads and resist your temptation to panic.�

�I wish to Christ you�d spell it out,� Benny Stiff said. �I came into this deal for some quick, safe loot. Now I got a murder staring me in the face. I didn�t mean to kill that old bastard, I just wanted to��

Eric interrupted him. �Of course you meant to kill him, Benny. As my mentor, Ira Washburn, often said, there are surprisingly few true accidents in life.�

The three men were in the library, early sunshine splashing the glowing carpets, and gleaming on the burnished brass that framed the fireplace.

�That�s worth remembering,� Eric went on, �particularly when trying to portray Hamlet. There you have a man who sets out to kill one person and winds up �accidentally� killing five. Still, if the player understands the dreadful compulsion behind these seemingly accidental��

�Oh, for God�s sakes!� Tony Saxe said. �What the hell�s that got to do with anything? We�re sitting here with a feisty kid locked up upstairs, ready to blow the whistle the minute she gets a chance, a whistle that could put ropes around our necks. And how long is that hayseed cop from Ballytone going to live with our story about the old gardener?�

Eric buffed his nails on his lapels. �Not to worry, Tony...�

He had called Constable Patrick Riley earlier, advising him in mournful tones of the heart attack that had stricken Capability Brown. The constable had arrived shortly with what passed for the village ambulance, a panel truck with a stretcher, an oxygen tank, blankets, and a pair of local lads in white jackets.

Eric had been at his theatrically most convincing, as the old man�s body was carried to the hospital truck.

�He complained of a pain in his left arm only yesterday,� he had said.

The young constable had nodded sagely, his face fresh and red in the brisk dawn winds. �Aye, there�s your coronary.�

�I told him I didn�t want him to do any more work until he saw Dr. Cook.�

With a sigh, Benny Stiff had added, �He came into my room just to chat. We�d got pretty friendly. Without no warning at all, he just toppled over. Hit his head on that stone floor.�

Constable Riley had written down these details in a black notebook. �The little lass, Miss Jessica, she�ll be heartbroken. They were close, you know, old Brown and the girl.�

�Yes,� Eric had touched a handkerchief to his eye. �She�s in her room now, not up to seeing anyone...�

�Well, Mr. Brown�s heart never failed him when the country called,� Constable Riley said. �He�ll be missed in Ballytone and beyond.�

Eric smiled at Tony Saxe and Benny now and sipped coffee from his Lenox cup, admiring the gold rim afire with sunlight. Then he said crisply, �We�re not home free, of course, but we have nothing to fear if we keep our heads. Constable Riley will never doubt our story because he�s been programmed for centuries to respect the gentry. We�re in the big house on the hill, in a nation of fools and peasants. We can intimidate them with our fine cars and starched shirts as easily as if we had guns at their heads.�

�You�re going shut-eye,� Benny Stiff said. �I don�t want to bet this neck, which is the only one I�ve got, on that kind of bull. I killed that nosey old geek. I say I didn�t mean to, you say I did. Which don�t make no difference. That kid upstairs saw me hit him and knows what happened.�

Eric shrugged, a gesture dismissing Benny�s concerns. �Back in Camden, you and Tony were quick to suggest that I didn�t want this deal badly enough. That I wouldn�t, in effect, �go all out.� Well, let me remind you, I paid my dues. We�re in this together now. Up to our necks, to use the figure that seems to haunt you. But take old Eric�s word for it. If you do exactly what I tell you, we�ll be on a flight back to the States in a few days, with Swiss bank accounts and wads of money in our pockets.�

Tony Saxe seemed reassured by Eric�s confidence. �Okay, you�re calling the shots,� he said. �So, what do we do now?�

�Good. You and Benny go down to the Hannibal and explain the new schedule to Ethelroyd. Tell him I want him here about noon, bank notes in hand. That should give me plenty of time to convince little Miss Crystal Head that...�

A ghastly scream from the rear of the house fell across his words, splintering his sentence with the force of a falling cleaver.

�Christ! That�s Maud!� Eric said.

The three men ran from the library through the great hall and down a long corridor into the kitchen, where they found Maud hurrying up from the wine cellar, two bottles clutched to her breast and an expression of mindless terror straining her pale features.

�Good God, Maud, what is it?�

�There was something down there. It brushed against my arms and face. I�d bent over to pick up a bottle. You would have wine with lunch, damn you, Eric. And I almost fainted when it touched me. It was dreadful. I knew I was awake, I knew I wasn�t dreaming�� She shuddered, an involuntary spasm that shook her body, and the next words came so intensely and rapidly that they were barely audible.

�It was like the time in that closet and that bitch Coralee lying about it and the smell of dust and perfume choking me, those silk ballgowns and nobody heard me.�

�Now, Maud...�

�Don�t �now Maud� me, Eric. I could have died down there. It started growling. Then I realized it was that damned dog Fluter you ruined everything trying to poison. I screamed and screamed and he ran up these stairs and out the back door. I was down there in the darkness because I couldn�t find the light switch. My heart nearly burst and you had to have your damned proper lunch, the fine gentleman of Easter Hill. Of course, nothing�s too good for��

�That�s enough, Maud.�

��old Eric with his phony club ties and��

�Shut up now,� Eric said, staring over his shoulder at the corridor leading up to the great hall. �Just stuff it! We�ve got callers.�

They all heard the chimes and their eyes turned to the directory panel in the service pantry.

One arrow in a row of indicators had lighted, swinging upright to point to the words: Main Entrance.

�Now everybody, relax,� Eric said. �It�s business as usual here. Remember, we�re naturally sad about the gardener but my niece can�t see anyone, anyone at all, understand?�

Composing himself, Eric walked to the hall and swung open the double doors which gave on views of terraced gardens and a circular driveway, views broken now by the purposeful figure of Miss Charity Bostwick.

�I stopped by to see Jessica, Mr. Griffith.�

�Oh, yes. You are�? I�m sorry.�

�I�m Charity Bostwick, a friend of the family.�

�Of course. You�ve given the child riding lessons, I believe. But I�m afraid Jessica can�t see anyone now. I presume you�ve heard the unhappy news about our gardener.�

�Yes, that�s why I came by. I thought it might help Jessica.�

�That�s good of you. It�s the sort of neighborly gesture one doesn�t find too often in this busy, modern world. However, this isn�t the best time for it. My niece cried herself to sleep, waked with a touch of fever. Her aunt�s with her now.�

�Have you sent for Dr. Cook?�

Eric smiled and said untruthfully, �But, of course. He�ll be here any minute.�

�Mr. Griffith, I don�t see the harm in letting me talk to Jessica.�

�She�s mentioned how fond she is of you, but I think just now quiet and rest are the best therapy.�

�Supposing we let Jessica decide that. Would you just tell her I�m here?�

�Of course, Miss Bostwick. I�ll leave it to her...�

Eric went up the broad curving stairway and walked along the corridor to the Clock Suite where he inspected himself in a clouded mirror set in the upper panels of a Winchester highboy. Smoothing down his thin blond hair, he bared his lips and inspected his teeth with a critical eye, after which he adjusted the knot of his wool knit tie, whistled softly for a moment or so, and then returned to the hall, his expression suggesting kindly concern.

�I�m terribly sorry, Miss Bostwick. Jessica asked me to tell you she�s pleased you came by. But she�d rather not see anyone but family just yet.�

Charity Bostwick would have loved to be incisive and candid with this foppish Yank, telling him exactly what she thought of his bogus suede elbow patches, carefully waved blond hair, and supercilious smiles. But if something was wrong here, and Miss Charity�s suspicions were sharpening quickly, it wouldn�t do to let this improbable gentleman know she was on to him.

With an effort, she smiled. �If there�s any way at all I can help, Mr. Griffith, I�d be grateful if you rang me up.�

�How generous of you.�

�Thank you.�

Eric stood watching Miss Bostwick�s trim, athletic figure descending the garden steps to her sports car. Rocking on his heels, he hooked a thumb in his vest pocket and waved to her with his other hand, complacently aware of the picture he must present to this village matron, every inch the benevolent squire standing tall and virile in the high arched doorways of Easter Hill.

The lights and shadows in her mind had grown so insistent and demanding, so frightening in their implications, that Jessica�s awareness of the actual world around her had become tentative and fragile. An evanescent view of the future, details blurred and inexact but implicit in horror, so commanded her energy and attention that she was hardly conscious of the bolts being drawn in the locked door of her bedroom. When her consciousness surfaced to reality, she saw her Uncle Eric looming above her, tucking a key into his vest pocket.

Holding up a packet of letters and a folder, he smiled at her and said, �Time to talk. To let you know we�re aware of your strange gifts, Jessica. Courtesy of this explicit correspondence between Dr. Homewood and the late Andrew Dalworth.�

The sound of those cherished names, plus the abrasive exploitation of her privacy, altered the fabric of the images obscuring her awareness of physical surroundings.

She got off the bed and stood and faced her uncle, vivid contempt in her eyes.

�Those letters don�t belong to you,� she said. �But I�m not surprised you�ve read them.�

Eric sighed. �You�re being unfair, Jessica. Maud and I have only your best interests at heart. Our one thought has been to help. We aren�t rich, Jessica. You probably can�t understand what that means. Since you were a mere child, you�ve been surrounded and protected by luxury. But had you trusted us, had you been responsive to your family ties, we would have been your friends. We would have helped you. Even as Maud and I��

Eric�s voice had become quiet and thoughtful, touched with resignation. Raising his eyes to the ceiling as if for approval, he went on, ��even as Maud and I helped your dear mother and father when they were in need of��

�I don�t believe any of this,� Jessica said sharply, and now there was a deeper tone in her voice.

�It�s sad to find such cynicism in one so young.�

�Please stop it! You must think I�m a thorough fool. There was not even a postcard from you when Andrew was alive. You�ve lied to me from the start. I treasured the locket Aunt Maud gave to me until the morning that Mr. Flynn and I cleaned it with silver polish and found the tiny initials on the inside. They weren�t my mother�s at all.�

�Your father probably bought it second-hand which explains why��

�Stop wasting your breath, Uncle Eric. I know you poisoned Fluter. And I saw with my own eyes what happened to Mr. Brown. You�re a pack of thieves and murderers and if it�s the last thing I do��

Eric grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her with ruthless strength. �Don�t ever threaten me, young lady, or it will be the last thing you do. Have you thought how ridiculous your accusations will sound? As far as that old fool, Brown, is concerned, would a jury take your word against mine and Constable Riley�s?� Eric released her and looked appraisingly at her slim, budding body.

�Jessica, you�re at the age where your hormones and emotions are in a state of riot. The line between fantasy and reality is blurred, which explains your erratic behavior. Fleeing from the house without rhyme or reason, running to a beach where you could have caught your death of cold � fearsome things�� He sighed. �Faithful retainers, the victims of foul play? Beloved pet mysteriously poisoned? No.� He shook his head. �It simply won�t wash, Jessica. Maud and I brought you back here to protect you, and we�ve shut you up to prevent you from harming yourself...�

�That�s not the truth and you know it!�

�And in return�� Eric went on as smoothly, ��and in return, Jessica, all we want is a small favor.�

Jessica stared directly into his eyes. �I will do nothing for you.�

�I urge you to reconsider,� Eric said. �I might not ask so nicely a second time.�

With apparent amiability, Eric said, �I like your spirit, because it suggests an emotional tension that suits my purpose.�

As he saw her sharpening awareness, Eric nodded in gratification. �Let me refresh you with a paragraph from one of the doctor�s letters.�

Opening the leather file, he removed a page and unfolded it, a faint but sensual smile touching his lips.

� �Jessica�s skills�,� he said, reading aloud, � �that is, her processes of precognition, would escalate at a powerful rate in proportion to the profundity of her emotional states.� �

Eric glanced at Jessica and said, �This was written by Dr. Homewood when you were nine. To translate his medical gibberish into plain English, it simply means that the more terrified you are, the better qualified you�ll be to help us.�

Eric walked to the large bay window and looked down at the stables. With his back to Jessica, he said thoughtfully, �For some reason, our new groom, Benny Stiff�� He turned and smiled at Jessica. �For some odd reason, he�s taken a fancy to you�� He jingled the key to her room.

Noting the repugnance in her expression, Eric shrugged. �It�s just something to keep in mind.�

In a level voice, Jessica said, �I don�t even know the words to describe you.�

Eric removed a cigarette lighter from his vest pocket, snapped the wheel and stared at the spurting flame.

�Another thought � so many unfortunate accidents occur around these lovely, isolated country homes. Wouldn�t it be a shame, Jessica, if some careless person � a tramp or gypsy perhaps � accidentally started a fire in the stables?�

Jessica drew a quick breath, the sound sharp in the straining silence.

�Wouldn�t that be dreadful, Jessica?�

Jessica shook her head slowly, eyes narrowing to pinpoints of light.

�You know how horses panic in fire,� Eric said. �If the stalls are locked, they often break their legs trying to kick their way out. The screams of horses trapped that way sound almost human. And even if they are lucky enough to have someone around to lead them out, they�re likely to bolt right back to the false security of the blazing stables. It�s happened time after time.�

Eric snapped his lighter shut, dropped it into his vest pocket. �I trust you�ll be sensible, Jessica.�

�That�s only a word, Uncle Eric. It doesn�t mean the same to everybody.�

�Don�t play games with me, Jessica. I�ll tell you what I want and there�ll be no damned discussion about it.�

He dropped the folder on her bed and pointed to it. �There�s the information you need, the names of the entries in the Grand National. You tell me the win, place, and show horses, understand? Use tea leaves, Ouija boards, or those precognitions your bloody Dr. Homewood is so awed by, I don�t give a damn. Just tell me the winners, how they�ll come in.�

�I can do that, Uncle Eric,� she said quietly, and he was too agitated by the implications of that simple statement to hear a different tone in her voice, see a look in her eye, older than her years, close to ancient mockeries. �But people don�t always know what they want, Uncle Eric,� the girl went on. �They choose without light and make mistakes.�

�I don�t need any talk of your bloody lights and colors, Jessica. I�ve told you what I want. So what is it you want? Think hard, girl. Do you want me to give the key to your room to Benny Stiff? Do you want to see a fire in the stable and hear your horse scream? If that�s what you want, I�ll sure as hell give it to you!�

�I know what I want,� Jessica said, shrugging and turning from him, a perverse smile touching her lips. In her mind there was a shimmer of radiance and through it the child saw the hill and river, Julian�s metaphor of time and fate, with currents taking away the headstrong and unwary while she watched... �Leave me now, please, and I will do your work.�

�You can, Jessica?� His voice was trembling. �You will?�

�Yes, I�ll give you what you say you want, what you�re asking for...�

Eric locked the door behind him when he left the room, holding the key tight like a talisman in his fist as he hurried down the stairs. He needed a drink now, a moment alone to savor his triumph.

In her bedroom, Jessica stood perfectly still as the figures of unrealized time began forming in her consciousness, streaking like quicksilver along the neurons of her mind.

After a moment, she picked up the manila envelope which Eric had dropped on the coverlet of her bed.

A concerned and thoughtful Charity Bostwick sat with a cup of tea in Father Malachy�s parlor.

�I�m worried sick about Jessie,� she said to the old priest.

�But it�s her own aunt and uncle you�re speaking of, Charity. Don�t be rash in your judgments.�

�Father Malachy, if you�d been there, you wouldn�t be taking this so calmly. Mr. Griffith pretended to ask Jessica if she�d care to see me. I watched him. He turned right at the top of the stairs. The child�s bedroom is left, in the opposite direction. He lied to me.�

�We�d best go easy with such reckonings...�

�Oh, my foot, Father! Do you believe that story they told Constable Riley about Mr. Brown? Before I came here, I went to see Kevin O�Dell. The poor lad told me that Brown never had a moment�s heart trouble in his life.�

�Death can come like a thief in the night, Charity.�

Yet, despite the old man�s disclaimers and attempts to remain calm and judicious, Charity Bostwick saw that he was just as troubled as she was.

The unsettling phone call had come in early that morning, prodding him from sleep, the strident male voice speaking of signs and portents, of lights in the sky that matched those in the caller�s mind, and a wild sea eagle that had settled at midnight on the roof of the cottage...

�You�re not as serene as you�re pretending, Father. I�ve called Mr. Ryan in Dublin, but the poor man�s been taken to the hospital with influenza. And why do you think they whisked the child off to London in such a rush?�

The caller that morning had said his name was Mallory, Liam Mallory. Obviously unused to telephones, he had shouted and roared into the mouthpiece, numbing the priest�s eardrums. Mallory and his wife were traveling by bus down to Athlone where they could borrow a pony and trap to cover the final miles to Ballytone.

What had chilled Father Malachy were old Liam Mallory�s words foretelling the evil, shimmering and darkling, that menaced the child Jessica.

�There are forces gathering around her and she has need of our help, Father, need of the power of the elements, the strength of archangels. She is young in her gifts, she has yet to believe in the wisdom of her powers. She needs us and we are too far away. Her enemies are crowding around her...�

At that moment, a static drummed along the wires, splintering the old man�s words and the line went dead.

As the priest thought of these things and prayed for guidance, Charity Bostwick lit a cigarette with an impatient gesture, �You can�t sit there and tell me you believe that Andrew�s loyal servants were, in fact, no more than common thieves. And if Jessica could stand straight at Andrew�s grave, do you suppose she�d take to her bed at poor Mr. Brown�s death? I don�t believe that child is sick. I think they�re lying to all of us.�

Remembering the fervor in old Mallory�s voice � the words charged with the savage beliefs of Ireland, and truth and history and superstition so impenetrably twined together in them that no human mind or fingers could unsort or unravel it � preferring a fool who believed, to a scholar blinded by arrogance, Father Malachy put his pipe aside and said, �Charity, what do you think we should do in this matter?�

�The first thing I intend to do is make a call, Father. May I use the rectory phone? It�s an overseas call to Dr. Julian in California. I�ll check with the operator for time and charges.�

�Never mind the charges, my dear. Surely we�re doing the Lord�s work now.�

Seated on the curved cushions in her bay window, Jessica tried to isolate the emphemeral conviction that Dr. Julian was aware of her problems. But the effort was frustrated by stronger impressions, concepts of childhood, and the verbal metaphor of gemstone.

And her concentration was further splintered by the noises that she had been hearing that afternoon � heavy footsteps in the hallways and the sounds of furniture being lifted and carried down the stairs.

Standing close to her bedroom windows, she had seen the shining hood of a moving van parked at a side entrance.

She was distracted then by refractions from the curved panes, and when she stared down at the lawns and stables, Jessica saw yellow flecks glowing like fireflies in the velvet shadows. Jessica�s heartbeat quickened. She realized, as the lights spurted again from a boxwood hedge, that it was Kevin O�Dell in the shrubbery signalling to her with matches. Four flashes, the same code they had used as children.

Taking her flashlight from the closet, she swept the beam of her torch across the windows � four rapid slashes � but just as she flicked off the switch, a lock clicked, the door of her room swung open and Uncle Eric snapped on the overhead lights. �What the hell�s going on here?�

He was in a foul mood. The business arrangements with Ethelroyd had been abrasive, difficult and eventually a source of rancor and humiliation. Ethelroyd was gone now, on his way north to the border, objects of art from Easter Hill crated or wrapped snugly in thick quiltings in his vans. But the fat man had enraged Eric by referring to the things he had bought as �poor darling bastards � no baptismal certificates, no pedigrees, sent off into the world without bills of sale, proof of provenance, not even customs� attestations.� And Ethelroyd had concluded this needling harangue with, �Ah, but the precious foundlings will find proper homes in England...�

�What�s that you�re hiding behind your back?� Eric demanded.

�A flashlight,� answered Jessica promptly. �The lamps were flickering.�

�Well, there�s nothing wrong with them now.� Eric hiccuped and felt an abrasive rasp of whiskey in his throat. �Did you do the work I told you to? Have you forgot what I said about that damned horse of yours?�

Jessica looked at him steadily and picked up the slim manila envelope from the bay window seat.

�I�ve done what you asked. I�ve seen the finish line.� She extended the envelope to him, still staring impassively into his eyes.

�We�ll just take a look.� Eric�s hands trembled as he opened the envelope and studied the entry sheets. If she were right, this was too bloody good to be true, he thought, hearing his quickening breathing as he studied her picks. The odds-on favorites, the newspaper picks, weren�t in it at all; Etoile Rouge, Daedalus and Kerry Dancer, the Muirhead entry, all out of the money.

The girl had picked Sterling Choice, currently at fifty-five to one, to win it, Overlord at fifty-to-one to place, and Primrose to show, at twenty-five- to thirty-to-one. Not one of these entries had been touted to so much as show by the handicappers Eric had studied in newspapers from Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin and London.

�How do you know this?� he demanded, staring across the form sheets at Jessica. His voice had become noticeably hoarse. �What exactly did you see, girl? And don�t lie to me. Everything I�ve got in the world depends on this. Are you sure, Jessica? Are you sure!?�

�I saw as much as I needed to know,� Jessica said evenly. �When the field takes the canal jump on the second lap of the course, Sterling Choice will be leading by three lengths under a hand ride. Overlord�s rider has gone to the bat but isn�t gaining. Primrose, the only mare who�ll finish the race, is the show horse. She�ll be trailing Overlord by seven lengths.�

Eric sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, feeling suddenly drained of strength. Yet he thought, with a touch of wonder, it was an exhilarating feeling, the sweet exhaustion of victory.

�There can�t be any mistake, Jessica,� he said softly. �This means so much to your Uncle Eric.�

�I saw them finish. There�s no mistake.�

And Eric Griffith believed her. But that very confidence and faith in the girl � in some sad fashion � curdled and dissolved his optimism, his anticipation of winning, replacing them with the familiar bewildering and angering self-pity. It didn�t have to be just one good afternoon at a track, he thought. It could be hundreds. And to think beyond tracks and horses, toward other contests even more profitable and fateful. It could be the start of something so heady he could feel it spurring the exultant stroke of his heart. If all of life, of knowledge, was so easy for her, why not ever for Boniface?

But again came the defeating realization that there were only starts for him, never finishes. College had been a time of mystery and initiation but where had it led? What had Ira Washburn�s false promises amounted to? The times of challenge always withered and dried away for him...

Eric felt a painful dryness in his throat. He needed a whiskey to exorcise this draining self-pity, this invasion of weakening memories that stemmed in equal parts from the fat man�s contempt and the conviction of being homeless and unwanted in a home that should have been his...

Stirred by resentment, he reminded himself that self-pity was the crutch, anger the club.

�By God, Jessica, you�ll regret it if you�ve lied to me!� he said, and walked from her room, closing the door and locking it with a click of finality.

When the sound of his footsteps faded, Jessica snapped out the overhead lights, switched on her torch and swung its beams in four quick slashes across the gleaming night-dark window panes.

When the pain struck her shoulder, Maud Griffith was walking along the corridor to Jessica�s bedroom. The ornate gold candelabrum she carried sent leaping lights and shadows in front of her, the reflections glowing on the chinoiserie wallpapers and rich carpets.

The electrical storm had knocked out the power at Easter Hill only minutes before. Benny had tried to activate a generator in the cellar but reported that the auxiliary power source had also been shorted by the lightning marching brilliantly from Skyhead down to Easter Hill and on toward Ballytone.

As the needlepoint of pain pierced the flesh below her collarbone, Maud gasped involuntarily. Her straining nerves were dangerously close to the breaking point. Her high heel caught on a fringe of carpet and she lost her balance, stumbling against the wall. The impact caused a spray of hot, beaded candlewax to fall across the backs of her hands. She cursed softly but violently, a mindless fear in her voice.

Placing the candelabrum on a hall table, Maud brushed the hardening wax from her hands, trying to fight back a rising panic. She felt close to tears, frightened by the surrounding darkness and the feeling that came with pain � a terror brought on by her body�s weakness. The smothering blackness in the old house caused the memory of her dreadful dreams to resurface, the cage of musty garments, the sound of her pleading screams, the suffocating fear of impending death.

That presence seemed closer to her now than ever before, persistent and attendant, a spectral finger touching her shoulder with a streak of pain.

There would be no sympathy from Eric. He was furious enough without the burden of her concerns.

Picking up the candles, she walked on to Jessica�s room and unlocked the door. �Come with me, dear,� she said, raising the candles to illuminate the room.

Jessica turned from the windows and looked steadily at her aunt, her eyes gleaming with opaque fire. �Do you think it�s wise to give me orders?�

�Please, Jessica.� Maud was suddenly alarmed by the intensity in the girl�s expression. But this was nonsense, she thought. She was just a child. How could she harm them?... Maud forced herself to meet Jessica�s stare directly. �It�s your Uncle Eric. He wants to talk to you. Do come along.�

�Yes, and I want to talk to him,� Jessica said.

They walked to the head of the stairs, Maud holding the candelabrum in one hand, the other firmly on Jessica�s arm.

Lighted candles stood in holders in the great hall. The yellow flickering illumination fell in shadowed beams into the open doors of the dining room and library.

Maud ushered Jessica into the library. Eric stood at the fireplace, a strange and disturbing smile on his lips.

Jessica�s heart lurched when she saw the crumpled figure on the hearthstone, Kevin O�Dell, his face battered and swollen, a trickle of blood running from his parted lips. Kevin�s eyes were closed and she could hear his labored breathing above the crackle of the logs.

Eric said pleasantly, �Your conspirator doesn�t look quite so formidable now, does he, my dear?�

With easy strength, Jessica pulled herself from Maud and ran to Kevin�s side, kneeling and taking his bruised head in her lap.

�It seems he had a little accident, Jessica,� Eric�s voice sounded strangely muted and distant to her, as if he were speaking from the far end of a tunnel. �Took a nasty fall climbing down from the roof.�

�You are lying! He�s been struck and beaten, just like Mr. Brown was!�

Eric shrugged and said, �You may be right at that. But we need a simpler story for your yokel Constable.�

Footsteps sounded in the great hall. Tony Saxe and Benny came into the library, dressed for travel, Saxe in a top coat and hat, Benny wearing a leather jacket and driving gloves.

�Get-away day,� Saxe said to Eric. �But we still got a loose end.� With a nod at Kevin�s unconscious figure, he said, �We better find out just what the little bitch told him.�

Jessica�s eyes swept across all of them, an arc of flashing contempt. �You are all brutes and murderers and thieves!�

Eric said, �That may be true but it�s beside the point, which is: Did you spill all that to your playmate here?�

�Get out of my home!� Jessica suddenly shouted the words at him.

Eric glanced at Tony Saxe. �Maybe that�s all we�ll get for an answer.�

�Now hold it,� Benny said. �I ain�t collecting any more scalps unless there�s a damn good reason to. Maybe lover boy climbed up to her room for the usual reasons. He sure as hell knew the way.�

�We can�t take a chance on it,� Saxe said. �If that was his only game, he wouldn�t have put up the fight he did. So no more talk. Come on, Benny. O�Dell rides with us part of the way...�

�No, you can�t move him! I won�t let you!� Jessica said, in a deep, quiet voice.

�Be sensible, dear,� Maud said, and pulled Jessica to her feet, locking her arms behind her in a grip that forced a cry of pain past the girl�s lips.

As she struggled, helpless for an instant, Saxe and Benny Stiff picked up Kevin O�Dell and carried him from the library.

Familiar, brilliant lights began exploding with painful clarity inside Jessica�s head. Without being aware of it, she had undergone a radical revision of temperament in only a few brief and bitter days, a subtle metamorphosis of character since the ugly reality of Eric and Maud Griffith had poisoned her life. But even as she felt the sadistic strength in her aunt�s hands, Jessica was aware of another shift in her own being, a physical change as significant as the alterations in her mental attitudes. A power was flowing through her slender arms and legs, a transcendant energy that seemed to take its own source from the elements of sea and wind and fields beyond Easter Hill.

In a strange fury, in a rage that was in league with the storms outside and inside her, Jessica cried out, �You will all die for the evil you have done! You are doomed and terrible! You won�t profit a farthing from your schemes!�

�Shut up, you little fool,� Maud said, tightening her grip so that Jessica flinched and arched her back against the pain.

�Those men will die��

�Shut up, I tell you!� Maud cried. �Shut up, Jessica!�

��in pain and fire,� Jessica said, the pictures blazingly clear in her mind, terrible and final � a kaleidoscope of leaping flames, patterns glowing like neon, and other colors that were smooth and pale, a curve of white-hot ivory arching above the picture like a poised scimitar.

Jessica heard the front door slam and felt a stinging pain as Eric slapped her across the face. The lights in her mind splintered and receded and Jessica stared with growing anger at her uncle.

�Frankly, I don�t believe you,� Eric said. �You�re just trying to frighten your Aunt Maud...�

From the driveway, they heard the sound of an engine starting up, then a staccato noise as the car headed out the curving driveway.

Eric regarded Jessica with narrowing eyes. �But since you�re so free with your malicious information, supposing you tell us how they�re going to die.�

�Benny Stiff dies in a cage of steel and fire��

The change in Jessica�s voice had become so pronounced by now, low and rolling and defiant, that Eric felt a stir of fear.

�I don�t want to hear any more of this,� Maud said shrilly, a tic pulling rhythmically at the corner of her mouth. She tightened her grip on Jessica�s wrist, determined to silence her. But the girl wheeled, breaking the grip with a burst of numbing strength, hurling her aside with an almost effortless swing of her arm. The older woman staggered back, her face drained of color, collapsing into a couch as her knees struck the edge of a coffee table.

Jessica drew a deep breath, her presence filling the room, the luminous glow in her eyes matching the pictures in her mind.

�And Mr. Saxe can�t escape,� she said, and her voice was so vibrant that Eric could feel it shaking the floors of the old library. �None of you can escape... after Mr. Saxe breathes his last on the tusks of an elephant!�

This sudden, improbable announcement galvanized Eric to action. He always looked for the coward�s advantage, to attack from behind or from shadows, striking then without mercy, for something in him quailed at the thought of an adversary striking back at him.

And when Maud gasped in terror and the child turned swiftly to her, Eric whipped off his ascot scarf and slipped it powerfully about her throat, tightening it until Jessica�s face flushed and she sagged against him, inert and unconscious after a helpless struggle...

Eric said to Maud, �She was obviously bluffing, the business about the elephant�s tusk. If she�d come up with something reasonable, I might have gone after them and warned them.�

He looked down at Jessica�s slack body, face and hands white against the floor.

�We�ll just make bloody sure she doesn�t hurt anybody with these temper fits.� Caution stirred in him as he remembered his first sudden fear of the child. There was something here he didn�t understand, but he was cunning enough to respect it. �And get one other thing into your silly head,� he said to Maud. �Don�t listen to her anymore. Don�t even talk to her. For some damned reason, she seems to get to you...�

Eric Griffith descended to the great hall and walked into the library. Maud sat on the arm of a chair, massaging the worrisome pain in her shoulder.

Eric surveyed with satisfaction his flickering image in the brass facings that framed the fireplace. Another loose end neatly tied up, he thought, and smiled at the play on words. Two pairs of Maud�s nylons and a swatch of adhesive tape had done the trick, and there would be no more threats or dangerous behavior from milady, Jessica, who now lay trussed up in her bedroom behind a securely locked door.

�I�m worried, Eric.�

�What about? I can�t see a cloud on the horizon.� He glanced at his watch. �Saxe and Benny are just about airborne by now. One last detail and we�ll be on our way, Maud�� His voice sharpened. ��with an honest-to-god shot at the jackpot.�

�That�s not what I�m talking about.� She looked at him resentfully, wincing as she touched the flesh below her collarbone. �Ever since the lights went out, I�ve had a terrible pain like a needle in my shoulder.�

Eric made an effort to mask his exasperation. It was just like her to pick a time like this for one of her neurotic attacks.

�I suggest you get hold of yourself, Maudie.�

�Stop using that tone. I�m not some kind of hypochondriac freak.�

�But you�re always worked up about something. Now it�s your shoulder.�

�I�m worried sick, damn it!�

�Ah-ha! Now you�ve put your finger on it. You�re not worried because you�re sick. You�re sick because you�re worried.�

A clap of thunder sounded and Maud started nervously. The window panes trembled, creating a singing hum on the air. A gust of wind from the fireplace caused the lighted candles to flicker erratically, sending shadows leaping about the tiered room.

�God, I�ve come to hate this place!� Maud said.

�Steady, old girl. We�re almost home free. The first thing in London, we�ll get you to a doctor � not just the hotel chap; I�ll call a specialist. Meanwhile, I�ve got a job for you.

�I want you to write a cheerful note to Jessica. We�ll both sign it. Tell her how much we�ve liked being here�� Pacing, Eric composed his thoughts. �Tell her how much we enjoyed meeting her friends, Miss Bostwick and old Ryan. Say we�re taking the early flight from Shannon to London and will be at the Cumberland. Didn�t want to disturb her at such an ungodly hour and so forth.

�Assure her that we�re eager to have her visit us in the States the first chance she gets. Then close with love and best wishes for health and happiness from her auntie and uncle.�

Eric made a drink and raised the glass to Maud. �You see, it is absolutely essential that the authorities conclude that the child took her last ride up the cliffs after you and I left for Shannon Airport.�

�Eric, will you really help me find a specialist in London?�

�You have my word on it.�

Eric left the library and went into the drawing room off the great hall. This elegant room faced the driveway and park. Candles created cones of warm light in the corners, providing a feeling of sanctuary against the storm still battering the trees and walls of the mansion.

Eric drank several whiskeys. The dark thought of what lay ahead blurred by the liquor, he slumped into his chair, his head lolling back against the leather cushion.

His thoughts were slow and drowsy. The sequence of events was inevitable. He enjoyed seeing them parade in measured cadences through his lulled consciousness.

There would be a funeral mass, of course, here where she had lived most of her life, lamentation for the soul borne to her final resting place in the cemetery. He would be there, of course, the devoted uncle, eyes flushed with tears, steadying himself with a hand on old Ryan�s arm. Whispers around them... �He�s an American, her uncle is. They were very close.�

And then as the seasons wheeled, Boniface might stay on here, somewhere in the neighborhood, a snug home with a view of the sea perhaps, servants, and enough land for a few good horses. There was salmon fishing. He had never tried that and he imagined he would fancy it. And riding on frosty mornings, the horse�s hooves like iron on the hard ground, the village lads would greet him with quick smiles...

The empty glass slipped from his fingers and dropped with a muffled thump onto the carpeting.

When Maud ran into the library, she saw that Eric was in the adjacent study at Dalworth�s desk, speaking into the telephone. Holding the candlestick high to guide her, she hurried to join him, seeing then the patronizing smile which usually accompanied his adoption of a successful charade.

�Please be good enough to tell Constable Riley I am most grateful,� he was saying. �My wife and I are leaving within an hour for Shannon. We�ll stop at your office on the way to collect our money. And, of course�� Eric smiled across the phone at Maud. ��we�ll leave something tangible as a gesture of our appreciation.�

After a pause, he added, �No, I don�t have an address in the States for them. Mr. Saxe and Mr. Stiff were casual acquaintances, you understand. I suggest you contact the American Embassy in Dublin for that information.�

Replacing the receiver, Eric said, �Benny Stiff�s pounds quite literally went up in smoke, but Tony�s wallet and its contents are intact and in good hands. That was Riley�s clerk I just spoke with. He bought my explanation without a quibble. I told the good man that Tony Saxe was acting as our agent, carrying a large sum of our cash to purchase certain real estate in England. I added, of course, that I had Mr. Saxe�s fully legal receipt for said monies, which we�ll just make out and sign before we leave for the village.�

�Eric, forget the money. We can�t��

�Are you out of your mind? Maud, have you any concept of what twenty thousand pounds pays off on a fifty-to-one shot? We�re talking about a million pounds, Maud. Nothing else matters now.�

�Damn you, listen to me!�

�Maud, I�m warning you... I�m almost out of patience.�

�I talked to Jessica. She said she isn�t��

�You idiot! I told you not to listen to her!�

Maud slammed her open hand down on the desk top. The sound was startlingly loud, echoing away to the corners of the murky room. �Shut up, Eric! Try to understand what I�m telling you. The child has changed before our eyes. She�s strong, so strong I�m afraid to touch her. She must know everything! She told me she isn�t frightened about what will happen to her tonight. She insists she has no reason to be. For God�s sake, don�t you understand what that means?�

�I�ll tell you what it means. It means she�s a fool and you�re a bigger fool.�

Eric signed his name to the bottom of the letter Maud had written to Jessica. Folding it into a neat square, he printed Jessica�s name on it in block capitals. Tucking it into his shirt pocket, he unlocked the gun cabinet with a key he had commandeered from old Flynn, and chose a small calibre Belgian handgun with silver filigree and inlaid ivory handgrips. Opening a drawer inside the cabinet, he selected a clip of appropriate ammunition and inserted it into the butt of the gun.

�Eric, please. Let�s clear out now...�

�You�re more than a fool, Maud. You�re gutless.�

�We still have time��

Eric closed the door of the gun cabinet and locked it. When he turned the automatic in his hand, he swung it around to point it at a spot just above the third button of her light gray jacket. She looked uneasily at the gun barrel and then put a hand to her throat.

�Eric, please...� Her voice was almost lost in a sudden break of thunder. �Just listen to me.�

�No, goddamn it, you listen to me, Maud! This is my chance, the only one I�ve ever had and nothing�s going to stop me now. With you or without you, I�m going for it. You�ve let that little bitch upstairs talk you into a galloping case of nerves. She�s in her bedroom, trussed up like the Christmas goose, can�t move hand or foot. Our job now is to jam her into boots and riding clothes, lead her and her horse up the hills to the cliff.�

Eric turned the gun away from Maud, glanced at the play of candlelight along the barrel. �Imagine how Windkin will take off when I fire a few rounds from this beauty around its hooves.�

They stared at one another through the flaring candlelight and then Eric said matter-of-factly, �Well, luv. What�s it going to be? In or out? Play the cards I�ve dealt and we�ll be home free in a suite in London tomorrow morning, on the phone to room service for a hot breakfast and then off to see a Harley Street specialist.�

Maud nodded slowly. In a weary voice she said, �I�ll help you, Eric, but for God�s sake, let�s get it over with.�

She turned quickly then, holding the candlestick and glowing taper above her head. Eric followed her from the study into the library which was full of erratic shadows, some sent leaping by draft-stirred candles, others from the lightning that flashed through the heavy trees.

Eric pressed the sides of Jessica�s note, crimping them so that the letter would stand upright like a small tent. When they went through the arches of the library into the great hall, Eric strode to the table beside the main entrance, placing the letter prominently on the silver tray set out for calling cards.

Standing in the gloom beyond the circle of Maud�s candle, Eric wondered who would be the first to see the letter � the Constable perhaps, or the Bostwick woman, or Mr. Ryan; and who would put through the distressful telephone call to the child�s uncle and aunt at the Cumberland Hotel...

The house was fittingly silent at the moment, Eric thought, the stillness marred only by the sounds of the storm and the tapping of Maud�s high heels across the parquet floor.

As Eric turned, his mood poignant and reflective, Maud began screaming, the sounds beating like frantic flails against the carved walls and ceilings.

Eric wheeled around and saw Jessica Mallory standing motionless on the top landing of the great stairs, her face pale above her twill jacket, her dark hair brushed back, and the silken tips falling to her shoulders. There was a calm but almost hypnotic expression on her face. Her eyes were luminous and foreboding. The spectral concentration in her manner, a blend of energy and resignation to her visions, caused Eric�s breath to become suddenly ragged.

He braced himself but took an involuntary step backwards as Jessica started down the long stairs, placing each foot down neatly and precisely, as formally as a young lady descending to join her partner at a hunt ball.

With an effort, he cried out, �Talk now, Maud, and talk plain and fast. What are you and this little bitch up to?�

�God, don�t blame me, Eric. I didn�t free her!�

�Stop lying to me! Or you�ll take the same goddamn ride she�s heading for!�

Jessica continued down the stairs, stopping on the last step of the staircase, her eyes almost level with theirs.

�No, I�m not going riding tonight, Uncle Eric. I�m leaving you now. They�re waiting for me,� she said.

Eric smiled at her but there was no humor in his eyes or on his lips. His expression was ugly and bitter, the menace emphasized by the false smile. �Do you honestly think, Miss Crystal, that I�m going to step aside and let you walk out of here?�

�I�m not concerned or worried about anything you can say or do, Uncle Eric.�

�I told you! I told you, Eric!�

�Damn it, Maud, shut up now.� Eric said. With the unpleasant smile flaring like a rictus on his face, he took the small automatic from his pocket and said to Jessica, �Just focus your attention on this gun then.�

To his dismay, Eric heard a new and tentative tone in his voice, the gun gave him no sense of assurance, no familiar swell of authority or power. It would be different, he knew, if there was fear in those eyes, if she were begging and pleading with him to spare her life � but no, she had stepped down to the parquet floor and was walking without haste to the double doors as if she were not even aware of the steel threat in his hands, the muzzle pointed squarely at her slim spine.

�Stop, Jessica.�

She turned her back on them and pulled open the double doors that opened on the terraces and park of the estate. A gusting wind blew her hair out behind her and caused Maud�s candle to gutter and smoke, creating grotesque shadows on the walls and ceilings and up the empty, shining staircase.

�But I can damned well stop you!� Eric said, and trained the gun squarely and inexorably on her slender figure.

�No, Eric! Don�t!� Maud�s voice was a hoarse cry and the light from her candle glinted on the desperate tension in her eyes. With her free hand, she pointed insistently through the huge open doors.

Flashes of light streaked the darkness, yellow lances boring into the curtaining rain. �It�s too late, Eric!� she cried as the first cars of a small convoy turned off the Ballytone road into the driveway of Easter Hill.

Jessica started down the broad steps to the lower terraces, and Eric, features working emotionally, steadied his hands, slowly increasing the pressure on the trigger.

Maud shouted at him again, a wordless cry of anger, and threw the heavy candlestick and flaming taper into his face.

The brass base struck his shoulder and jarred him off balance, and his two shots, shatteringly loud in the confines of the hall, went through the open doors and spent themselves harmlessly in the crowns of distant trees.

The burning candle had struck Eric�s cheek. Arms flailing, he fell sprawling to the floor, the gun clattering from his hands. Scrambling to his feet, he reached for the automatic, his thoughts chaotic with panic and rage, unable to absorb the shocking fact that he�d lost, that he would never stand with cheering crowds and watch his horses charging on to victory. No winners� circle, no smiling bank tellers, no silver trophies for Eric Boniface Mallory � not now or ever...

Slamming the big doors shut, he saw in the instant before they closed that several cars had pulled into the circular driveway where Jessica waited for them near the bronze sundial on the flagged terrace.

Eric sagged against the doors, his breathing shallow in the sudden silence.

Yes, Boniface had lost but it wasn�t, in truth, his fault. Everything he had wanted and worked for lay smashed in pieces around him, and there would soon be an even greater price to pay, the vulgar curiosity of jurymen, the humiliating contempt of a judge.

If only Maud hadn�t lied to him and betrayed him. Boniface had had the brains and nerve, the style and the imagination, to conceive and bring this off, the flash of courage in a pinch, yes, and the grace to savor the rewards.

She had been on the little bitch�s side all along, the two of them against Boniface.

With a smile in his voice, he called out, �Maud?�

He saw that the library was dark, and knew that Maud had pinched out the candles. Moving cautiously, he slipped through the arched doorway, freezing when he heard the delicate sound of glass breaking, falling in a tinkling cadence to the floor.

Not a window, he thought, the sound was too fragile. He knew then where she was � in the study adjoining the library. And he knew what she had shattered.

Crouching, Eric ran forward and dropped behind a fan-backed chair. He needed illumination now, to tell him where she was hiding. Raising his gun, he fired twice into the embers of the fireplace, the bullets slamming into the smouldering logs and bringing them alive, creating spurting bursts of flames in whose spreading glow he saw Maud�s dark figure run through the door from Dalworth�s study into the library.

Eric swung the gun and fired two shots at her. A scream burst from Maud�s lips. When she dropped from sight, he stood and walked deliberately toward the illumination thrown up by the glowing logs, so thoroughly avenged, so sensuously elated that he never even heard the next shot that sounded, and hardly felt the bullet that ripped into his body and sent him spinning to the carpeted floor.

With an hysterical moan, Maud stepped from behind draperies and ran through the dark library, stopping only to fling the ornate dueling pistol aside and to stare for an instant in horror at her husband�s carved and motionless features.

And then, heart pounding like a frantic drum, Maud ran on into the great hall and with clawing fingers unbolted the doors and flung them open, flinching as the wind and rain stung her face.

She saw cars parked on the gravel crescent, lights spearing the darkness, men and women climbing from them and running toward Jessica. A white bandage caught the light and she saw Kevin O�Dell with the others� The Irish groom, she thought, with another stab of betrayal. They had lied about that to her, O�Dell was all right, and Jessica had known it. On one car a blue light flashed and Maud saw there were officers standing near it in wet black slickers, carrying rifles.

Maud started down the rain-slick steps, calling plaintively to Jessica. �Please, please, help me! Jessica! Tell them it�s not time for me to die��

Maud cried out to Jessica again, screaming the words now, begging her to listen, but the scene was suddenly like a nightmare, a dreadful, paralyzing dream filled with stark, uncaring people � no matter how much you begged them for help or pleaded for mercy, no kind hand reached out to unlock that terrible door...

Her sandal slipped, her ankle turned, and she fell to her hands and knees, gasping at the impact of the cold, stone steps. Pain streaked through her bruised hands. As tears started in her eyes, she saw that one of the figures below had turned a powerful flashlight on her, and all of them were waving and gesturing. She could see mouths opening and closing in white faces, but their words were lost in the winds.

Then Maud realized that they were not pointing to her at all, but toward something behind her in the darkness. When she turned and looked up the steps, Eric stood there in the double doors of the mansion, a dark wetness gleaming against his white shirt, his face twisted with agony, and his arm extended toward her, the candlelight in the hall reflecting in the wet pavement and on the silver filigree of the gun.

But after an instant that seemed stretched to an eternity, Eric Griffith staggered and fell forward to his knees, the hand holding the gun dropping slowly an inch at a time toward the ground. He was staring at her, she saw, his eyes bright points of malice in his white face.

After a straining instant, he shook his head wearily. When his eyelids began to close, Maud laughed with relief, the sound mingling with the driving rain, because she remembered then what Jessica had prophesized � had promised her � that Eric would die before her � and Maud�s laughter was an astonished accompaniment to the unfolding of that prophecy.

And what was the rest of it?... that he would somehow give her a release.

It was all coming true, she thought, as Eric fell forward on the wetly shining terrace, his gun-hand slamming against the flagstones in what seemed like a last gesture of frustration and defiance, the long fingers clenching in a gesture of fierce rigor mortis.

Maud heard the crack of the gun through a rill of thunder, but it wasn�t until she felt the wet stones against her cheek that she realized she had been shot, and she knew that because she was surprised in a hurt and childish fashion by the intensity of the pain.

As she began to lose consciousness, she lay very still, watching the blood from her wound mingle with the rain water on the steps of Easter Hill. Maud tried to laugh but that hurt too much. She pressed her lips tightly together and let the laughter surface only in her mind where it seemed to circle with the sound of excited, springtime birds.

What amused Maud so strangely in her last moments of awareness � Constable Riley was beside her then, hand gentle on her shoulder, she was aware of that, too � was the superb irony of Jessica�s second prediction, the prediction that Eric would somehow bring her freedom from the fear of death, which he had done (oh, yes... oh, yes) by freeing her from life itself...