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was in full bloom that day, the day of the accident, when Eva was killed.”
I looked around. “You and Alicia came up here together, you said?”
He nodded. “Mum and Uncle Vernon were looking for us down there. We could hear them calling.
But we didn’t say a word. We stayed hiding. And that’s when it happened.”
He stubbed out his cigarette and gave me an odd smile. “That’s why I brought you here. So you
can see it—the scene of the crime.” “The crime?”
Paul didn’t answer, just kept grinning at me.
“What crime, Paul?”
“Vernon’s crime. Uncle Vernon wasn’t a good man, you see. No, not at all.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, that’s when he did it.”
“Did what?”
“That’s when he killed Alicia.”
I stared at Paul, unable to believe my ears. “Killed Alicia? What are you talking about?”
Paul pointed at the ground below. “Uncle Vernon was down there with Mum. He was drunk. Mum
kept trying to get him to go back inside. But he stood down there, yelling for Alicia. He was so angry with her. He was so mad.”
“Because Alicia was hiding? But—she was a child—her mother had just died.”
“He was a mean bastard. The only person he ever cared about was Auntie Eva. I suppose that’s why he said it.”
“Did what?” I was losing patience. “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. What exactly happened?”
“Vernon was going on about how much he loved Eva—how he couldn’t live without her. ‘My girl,’ he kept saying, ‘my poor girl, my Eva ... Why did she have to die? Why did it have to be her? Why didn’t Alicia die instead?’”
I stared at Paul for a second, stunned. I wasn’t sure I understood. “‘Why didn’t Alicia die instead?’”
“That’s what he said.”
“Alicia heard this?”
“Yeah. And Alicia whispered something to me—I’ll never forget it. ‘He killed me,’ she said.
‘Dad just—killed me.’”
I stared at Paul, speechless. A chorus of bells started ringing in my head, clanging, chiming,
reverberating. This was what I’d been looking for. I’d found it, the missing piece of the jigsaw, at last —here on a roof in Cambridge.
***
All the way back to London, I kept thinking about the implications of what I had heard. I understood now why Alcestis had struck a chord with Alicia. Just as Admetus had physically condemned Alcestis to die, so had Vernon Rose psychically condemned his daughter to death. Admetus must have loved Alcestis, on some level, but there was no love in Vernon Rose, just hate. He had committed psychic infanticide—and Alicia knew it.