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several sessions, as far as I can gather, in the prison.”
    “Who told you this? Olive?” He looked sceptical.
    “Yes, but I spoke to the Governor afterwards and she verified it.”
    He shrugged.
    “I wouldn’t place too much reliance on it.
    You’d have to see the reports. It depends who wrote them and why they were testing her.”
    “Still, it’s odd, don’t you think?”
    “In what way?”
    “You’d expect some measurable level of sociopathic behaviour over a period of time if she was a psychopath.”
    “Not necessarily. Prison may be the sort of controlled environment that suits her. Or perhaps her particular psychopathy was directed against her family. Something brought it on that day and once rid of them, she settled down.” He shrugged again.
    “Who knows? Psychiatry is hardly an exact science.” He was silent for a moment.
    “In my experience, well adjusted people don’t hack their mothers and their sisters to death. You do know they were still alive when she set to with the axe?” He smiled grimly.
    “She knew it, too. Don’t imagine she didn’t.”
    Roz frowned.
    “There is another explanation,” she said slowly, ‘but the trouble is, while it fits the facts, it’s too absurd to be credible.”
    He waited.
    “Well?” he asked at last.
    “Olive didn’t do it.” She saw his amused disbelief and hurried on.
    “I’m not saying I go along with it, I’m just saying that it fits the facts.”
    “Your facts,” he pointed out gently.
    “It seems to me you’re being a little selective in what you choose to believe.”
    “Maybe.” Roz remembered her extremes of mood of the previous evening.
    He watched her for a moment.
    “She knew a great deal about the murders for someone who wasn’t responsible for them.”
    “Do you think so?”
    “Of course. Don’t you?”
    “She doesn’t say anything about her mother trying to ward off the axe and the carving knife. But that must have been the most frightening part. Why didn’t she mention it?”
    “Shame. Embarrassment. Traumatic amnesia. You’d be surprised how many murderers blot what they’ve done from their memories. Sometimes it’s years before they come to terms with their guilt. In any case, I doubt the struggle with her mother was as frightening for Olive as you suggest. Gwen Martin was a tiny woman, five feet at the most, I would think. Physically, Olive took after her father, so containing her mother would have been easy for her.” He saw the hesitation in Roz’s eyes.
    “Let me put a question to you. Why would Olive confess to two murders she didn’t commit?”
    “Because people do.”
    “Not when they have their lawyers present, Miss Leigh. I accept that it happened, which is why new rules were introduced governing the taking of evidence, but Olive did not fall into the category of either forced confession or having her confession subsequently tampered with.
    She had legal representation throughout. So I repeat, why would she confess to something she didn’t do?”
    “To protect someone else?” She was relieved they weren’t in court. He was a bruising cross-examiner.
    “Who?”
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t know.”
    “There was no one else except her father, and he was at work.
    The police had him thoroughly checked and his alibi was unbreakable.”
    “There was Olive’s lover.” He stared at her.
    “She told me she’d had an abortion. Presumably, then, she must have had a lover.”
    He found that very entertaining.
    “Poor Olive.” He laughed.
    “Well, I guess an abortion is as good a way as any of keeping her end up. Especially’ he laughed again ‘if everyone believes her. I shouldn’t be too gullible, if I were you.”
    She smiled coldly.
    “Perhaps it’s you who is being gullible by subscribing to the cheap male view that a woman like Olive could not attract a lover.”
    Deedes studied her set face and wondered what was driving her.
    “You’re right, Miss Leigh, it was cheap, and I