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"Leo didn’t want to blaht in the cops,"

Mrs Yancy said "Leo had great respect for the cops He was an authoritarian type He believed the cops were better at their jobs than they really were, and he was afraid they would s fishy about any rape story that he and Katherine could concoct He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, not attention like that He was scared to death the cops would sniff out the truth He wasn’t about to risk going to jail for child molestation and incest"

"Katherine told you that?" Hilary asked

"That’s right As I said before, she’d been living with the shahtto die in childbirth, she wanted to tell soh Anyway, Leo was sure he’d be safe if Katherine could conceal her pregnancy, hide it completely, and fool everyone in St Helena Then it would be possible to pass the child off as the illegitie days"

"So her father forced her to wear the girdles," Hilary said, feeling sorrier for Katherine Frye than she would have thought possible when she first walked into Mrs Yancy’s parlor "He put her through that agony to protect himself It was his idea"

"Yes," Mrs Yancy said "She’d never been able to stand up to him She’d always done what he’d told her to do It wasn’t any different this ti, even though it caused her a hell of a lot of pain She did it because she was afraid to disobey hi when you consider that he’d spent twenty-soe," Tony said "Wasn’t that an attee was Leo’s idea In 1937, he went to Europe for seven or eight s in the old country He saw World War Two co, and he didn’t want to have any assets frozen over there He didn’t want to take Katherine on the trip with him I suspect he intended to cohly-sexed man And I hear tell some of those European brothels offer all kinds of kinky thrills, just the sort of things to appeal to hioat Katherine would have been in his way He decided she should go to college while he was out of the country, and he arranged for her to stay with a family he knew in San Francisco They owned a company that distributed wine, beer, and liquor in the Bay Area, and one of the things they handled was Shade Tree products"

Joshua said, "He was taking quite a chance, letting her out fro"

"Apparently, he didn’t think so," Mrs Yancy said "And he was proved right In all those an to cos he’d been doing to her She never even considered telling anyone She was a broken spirit, I tell you Enslaved That’s really the word for it She was enslaved, not like a plantation worker or anything like that Mentally and emotionally enslaved And when he cae He took her back to St Helena with him, and she didn’t resist She couldn’t resist She didn’t kno"

The mantel clock chimed the hour Two measured tones The notes echoed softly froe of his chair Now he slid back until his head touched the antis circled his eyes His white hair was no longer fluffy; it was lank, lifeless In the short tied He looked wrung-out

She kne he felt The Frye farim tale of man’s inhumanity to man The more they poked around in that mess, the more depressed they becaed as one awful discovery followed another

As if talking to hiht in his own mind, Joshua said, "So they went back to St Helena, and they picked up their sick relationship where they’d left off, and eventually they nant--and no one up there in St Helena ever suspected a thing"

Tony said "Incredible Usually a simple lie is the best because it’s the only kind that won’t trip you up The story about Mary Gunther was so da act They had to keep a dozen balls in the air at once Yet they brought it off without a hitch"

"Oh, hardly without a hitch," Mrs Yancy said "There was certainly a hitch or two"

"Such as?"

"Such as--the day she left St Helena to come to my place to have her baby, she told people up there that this iinary Mary Gunther had sent word that the baby had arrived Now that was stupid It really was Katherine said she was going to San Francisco to pick up the child She told thelected to say whether it was a boy or a girl That was Katherine’s pathetic way of covering for herself, since she couldn’t knohat her baby’s sex was until it was born Dumb She should have known better That was her onlythat the child was born before she left St Helena Ah, I know she was a coht She couldn’t have been a very well-balanced woman after all that Leo had done to her over the years And being pregnant, having to hide it under all those girdles, then Leo’s death co at a time when she needed hie She was out of her head, and she didn’t think it out well enough"

"I don’t understand," Joshua said "Why was it a mistake for her to say Mary’s baby had already been born? Where’s the hitch?"

Stroking the cat, Mrs Yancy said, "What she should have told the people in St Helena was that the Gunther baby was about to arrive, that it hadn’t been born yet, but that she was going to San Francisco to be with Mary That way she wouldn’t have been committed to the story that there was one baby But she didn’t think of that She didn’t realize what ht happen She told everyone that it was just one baby, already in hand Then she caave birth to twins"

Hilary said, "Twins?"

"Daht Joshua to his feet

The white cat sensed the tension It lifted its head out of Rita Yancy’s lap and peered curiously at each person in the parlor, one after the other Its yellow eyes appeared to shine with inner light

The attic bedrooh to keep Bruno fro in on his to do because idleness ot bored with the duan to ache from the exercise