In the Woods

Simone shook her head. "Not recently, no. But she isn't a strong child." Her eyelids dropped for a moment, hooding her eyes: "Wasn't." Then she looked up at me again. "I've taught Katy for six years now. For several of those years, beginning when she was perhaps nine, she was ill very often. So was her sister Jessica, but her illnesses were colds, coughs-she, I think, is simply delicate. Katy suffered from periods of vomiting, diarrhea. Sometimes it was serious enough to need hospitalization. The doctors thought it was some form of chronic gastritis. She should have gone to the Royal Ballet School last year, you know, but she had an acute attack at the end of the summer, and they operated on her to find out more; by the time she recovered, it was too far into the term for her to catch up. She had to reaudition this spring."

"But recently these attacks had disappeared?" I asked. We would need Katy's medical records, fast.

Simone smiled, remembering; it was a small, wrenching thing, and her eyes flicked away from us. "I was worried about whether she would be healthy enough for the training-dancers can't afford to miss many classes through illness. When Katy was accepted again this year, I kept her after class one day and warned her that she would have to keep seeing a doctor, to find out what was wrong. Katy listened, and then she shook her head and said-very solemnly, like a vow-'I'm not going to get sick any more.' I tried to impress upon her that this wasn't something she could ignore, that her career might depend on this, but that was all she would say. And, in fact, she hasn't been ill since. I thought perhaps she had simply outgrown whatever it was; but the will can be a powerful thing, and Katy is-was-strong-willed."

The other class was letting out; I heard parents' voices on the landing, another rush of small feet and chatter. "You taught Jessica as well?" Cassie said. "Did she audition for the Royal Ballet School?"

In the early stages of an investigation, unless you have an obvious suspect, all you can do is find out as much about the victim's life as possible and hope something sets off alarm bells; and I was pretty sure Cassie was right, we needed to know more about the Devlin family. And Simone Cameron wanted to talk. We see this a lot, people desperate to keep talking because when they stop we will leave and they will be left alone with what has happened. We listen and nod and sympathize, and file away everything they say.

"I taught all three of the sisters, at one time or another," Simone said. "Jessica seemed quite competent when she was younger, and she worked hard, but as she grew she became cripplingly self-conscious, to the point where any individual exercises seemed to be a painful ordeal for her. I told her parents I thought it would be better if she didn't have to go through this any more."

"And Rosalind?" Cassie asked.

"Rosalind had some talent, but she lacked application and wanted instant results. After a few months she switched to, I believe, violin lessons. She said it was by her parents' choice, but I thought it was because she was bored. We see this quite often with young children: when they aren't immediately proficient, and when they realize how much hard work is involved, they become frustrated and leave. Frankly, neither of them would ever have been Royal Ballet School material in any case."

"But Katy…" Cassie said, leaning forward.

Simone looked at her for a long time. "Katy was…sérieuse

."

That was what gave her voice some of its distinctive quality: somewhere, far back, there was a touch of French shaping the intonations. "Serious," I said.

"More than that," said Cassie. Her mother was half French, and as a child she spent summers with her grandparents in Provence; she says she's forgotten most of her spoken French at this point, but she still understands it. "A professional."

Simone inclined her head. "Yes. She loved even the hard work-not only for the results it brought, but for its own sake. A real talent for dance is not common; the temperament to make a career of it is much rarer. To find both at once…" She looked away again. "Sometimes, on evenings when only one studio was being used, she would ask if she could come in and practice in the other."