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chapel while his back was turned? What was there to steal except Bibles and prayer books?
    A candle, he told the Governor afterwards. Olive Martin took a six-inch candle from the altar. But she, of course, denied it, and though her cell was searched from top to bottom, the candle was never found.

THREE
    Graham Deedes was young, harassed, and black. He saw Roz’s surprise as she came into his room, and he frowned his irritation.
    “I had no idea black bannisters were such a rarity, Miss Leigh.”
    “Why do you say that?” she asked curiously, sitting down in the chair he indicated.
    “You looked surprised.”
    “I am, but not by your colour. You’re much younger than I expected.”
    “Thirty-three,” he said.
    “Not so young.”
    “No, but when you were briefed to appear for Olive Martin you can only have been twenty-six or twenty-seven. That is young for a murder trial.”
    “True,” he agreed, ‘but I was only the junior. The QC was considerably older.”
    “But you did most of the preparation?”
    He nodded.
    “Such as there was. It was a very unusual case.”
    She took her tape-recorder from her bag.
    “Have you any objections to being recorded?”
    “Not if you intend to talk about Olive Martin.”
    “Ido.”
    He chuckled.
    “Then I’ve no objections, for the simple reason that I can tell you virtually nothing about her. I saw the woman once, on the day she was sentenced, and I never even spoke to her.”
    “But I understood you were preparing a diminished responsibility defence. Didn’t you meet her in the course of doing that?”
    “No, she refused to see me. I did all my work from material her solicitor sent me.” He smiled ruefully.
    “Which wasn’t much, I have to say. We would, quite literally, have been laughed out of court if we’d had to proceed, so I was quite relieved when the judge ruled her guilty plea admissible.”
    “What arguments would you have used if you had been called?”
    “We planned two different approaches.” Deedes considered for a moment.
    “One, that the balance of her mind was temporarily disturbed as far as I recall it was the day after her birthday and she was deeply upset because instead of paying her attention the family teased her about being fat.” He raised his eyebrows in query and Roz nodded.
    “In addition, I believe, she made a reference in her statement to not liking noise. We did manage to find a doctor who was prepared to give evidence that noise can cause such violent distress in some people that they may act out of character in trying to stop it. There was no psychiatric or medical evidence, however, to prove that Olive was of this type.” He tapped his forefingers together.
    “Two, we were going to work backwards from the appalling savagery of the crime and invite the court to draw what we hoped to persuade them was an inescapable inference that Olive was a psychopath. We hadn’t a cat’s chance on the balance of her mind argument, but the psychopathy’ he made a see-saw motion with one hand ‘maybe. We found a professor of psychology who was prepared to stick his neck out after seeing the photographs of the bodies.”
    “But did he ever talk to her?”
    He shook his head.
    “There wasn’t time and she wouldn’t have seen him anyway. She was quite determined to plead guilty. I assume Mr. Crew told you that she wrote to the Home Office demanding an independent psychiatric report to prove that she was competent to plead?” Roz nodded.
    “After that there was really nothing we could do. It was an extraordinary business,” he mused.
    “Most defendants fall over themselves to come up with excuses.”
    “Mr. Crew seems convinced she’s a psychopath.”
    “I think I’d agree with him.”
    “Because of what she did to Amber and her mother? You don’t have any other evidence?”
    “No. Isn’t that enough?”
    “Then how do you explain that five psychiatrists have all diagnosed her normal?” Roz looked up.
    “She’s had