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"Let me set the stage, Sergeant." I pulled open the shower curtain and turned
on the bath taps. "We need one or two props . . ."
Payne stepped back, trying to avoid his multiplying images in the mirror
walls. "If you're thinking of taking a bath, Doctor, the heating's been turned
off."
"Don't worry, I won't embarrass you." When there were two inches of cold water
in the tub I turned off the taps, then took Mrs. Miller's hair dryer from its
stand above her washbasin. Holding it in my hands, I turned to Payne.
"Now, Sergeant, you saw the television film of Marion Miller, apparently
unlocking a door as she made her escape. She was certainly escaping, but not
by turning a key. . ."
For the first time I was ahead of Payne. He watched me cautiously, an unlit
cigarette between his lips, as I transferred the hair dryer to my right hand
and held the plug in my left.
"So, let's assume that Miller was taking a bath that Saturday morning. At
about 8:15 Marion and her brother come into the bathroom. Perhaps they ask a
special favor, the answer to which they already know, a last chance for their
father to save his life."
"Doctor. . ." Payne was shaking his head, clearly disappointed in me. "That's
pure speculation."
"All right, I'm guessing there. But of this bit I'm sure." I placed the hair
dryer on its stand above
Miller's washbasin. "Marion picks up the hair dryer and plugs it into the
socket. To do this she has to step around the edge of the basin and reach
forward with her left hand. Sadly for the father, these childproof sockets
aren't quite childproof enough . . ."
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I pushed the plug into the socket, then made the familiar turn, press, turn
again motion which the stricken child in the TV film had made so memorable.
The hair dryer whirred into life, blowing hot air across my face.
"She's now holding the dryer in her left hand by the pistol grip--it's
difficult to hold the thing any other way--and there's a rush of air that
blows her fringe into her eyes. She pushes it away with her right hand . . ."
I made the second gesture that we had seen in the film, smoothing down the few
hairs that danced across my forehead.
Then I stepped back and tossed the hair dryer into the bath. There was a
violent hiss, and a muffled flash that jolted the sides of the bath, lighting
up the mirrors around us. Scalded water spat across Payne and myself, spraying
fine drops across the ceiling.
Its fuse blown, the hair dryer lay inertly below the seething water. I
switched it off at the socket and disconnected the plug. Payne was drying his
jacket with one of Mrs. Miller's face towels.
"You heard the hiss, Sergeant--something that poor child will never forget. In
fact, it's probably the last thing she remembers."
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"I won't forget it either, Doctor." Payne gingerly lifted the hair dryer by
its cord from the bath. "To be honest, I hadn't worked out the plug business,
but I knew she wasn't opening a lock."
"Of course not. Why should that have traumatized her? Only an overwhelming
crisis would have buried itself so deep in her mind, something that involved
matters of life and death, or beyond life and death."
"Like deciding to kill her father?"
"Exactly--though I don't think she did kill him, and she may well know it. She
stunned him with the hair dryer, and her brother then killed him with the
kitchen knife."
Payne leaned over the bath taps and released the water from the tub. "So you
think they planned it?
The brother and sister together?"
"Yes, they planned it, just as all the murders at Pangbourne Village were
planned. You know that, Sergeant. In fact, you've known it ever since my first
visit here."
"That leads to another question, Doctor. The question--who actually carried
out the Pangbourne
Massacre?"
"The children, without any doubt. It sounds so outlandish, I'm not even sure
if I believe it myself.
There's no proof and we may not find any. All the same, I'm certain that the
Pangbourne parents, one by one, were killed by their own children."
We stood in the dripping bathroom, surrounded by the endless images of
ourselves, listening as the last trickle of water ran away through the house.
Uneasy with his own reflection, Payne said: "I agree, Doctor, but it's hardest
to prove right here, in this bathroom. An eight-year-old girl and her
thirteen-year-old brother? You'll have a merry time making that one stick."
"Perhaps, but I'm sure that Robin and Marion Miller are the key to everything.
Remember, they were the youngest of the thirteen children, and they had a
particular problem that none of the others faced. Their father was a huge man,
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