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quite clearly and with a kind of wonderment, 'I broke it. That's what I did.' His grief temporarily forgotten, Richard cried out and seized hold of her, put his arms round her, holding her tightly against him. Unwise, probably, frightening to a child, but he couldn't help himself and in the event it didn't stop her speaking again. 'It was on the record player,' she said. 'Mummy said to be careful jf I wanted to take it off, but I wasn't care fril enough and I dropped it and it broke, and Mummy sent me upstairs. I remember now. 'Oh, my darling,' said her father, 'my sweetheart, you're talking, you can speak.' The psychologists came back again with their dolls. The kind, gentle police ladies came back. They showed her hundreds of pictures of cars and played her dozens of tapes of men's voices. In her mind's eye she saw the car parked on the verge, under the overhanging branches, but she saw it like a black-and-white photograph. The car might have been green or red or blue. It looked pale grey to her, as the grass did and the, sk. She saw the top of the man's head, brown like rabbit fur, and his brown shiny shoes. She had the big room at the back of the house where her window gave on to their garden with its summer-house and swing and apple trees, and on to all the gardens next door and behind. She had her own bathroom, called en suite, and completely new bedroom furniture. But for a time, while her bedroom was being decorated, she had the small room at the front and several times she had looked down from her window and seen a man standing on the doorstep, seen his shoes and the top of his head, and she had screamed out, 'It's him! It's him!' Once it was the postman and the other times David Stanark and Peter Norris, who lived next door. Her father grew very upset when that happened and later on she found out that he had told the police and the psychologists that they must stop questioning her. They must give it up. Julia agreed with him. It was bad for her, it would traumatise her. They must close the case. But they wouldn't do that. Not, at any rate, for years. They would find him, the Detective Inspector said, if it was the last thing they did. They had a theory. The reason for the murder that they had decided on, the man's motive, horrified Richard Hill. It brought him so much shame and guilt that he wished many times that they had never told him.
    Chapter 5
    A week after the murder David Stanark had come round unasked to see Richard. He presented himself on the doorstep, a good-looking man of about Richard's own age with an anxious expression. He held out his hand and said who he was. 'I was the man on the train, the one you didn't know.' Usually mild and self-effacing, Richard in his grief and confusion shouted at him, 'I suppose you've come to be thanked? Is that it? You want gratitude?' David Stanark said, 'May I come in?' 'You don't know what it's like,' Richard said, 'no one does. No one who hasn't been through it knows what it's like to be suspected of murdering the person you -, his voice fell and he turned away before muttering '- love best in the world.' 'I think I can imagine.' After that David came in and the two men talked. Or, rather, Richard talked and David listened, and when that had gone on for two hours David told Richard that he too had once lost the woman he loved, that she had died violently. But it was to be some months and the friendship firmly established before Richard told him of the load of guilt that weighed on him and the shame that went with It. Flora Barker, who had been a nurse, came to look after Francine while her father was at work and away on business trips. Francine went back to school. Or, rather, she went to a new school in the new place and made new friends. She was behind in her school work, but she soon caught up because she was bright. And she liked Flora. In finding her to care for his daughter and as a mother substitute, Richard had chosen wisely. It was one of the few wise