The senior policeman, who was not old so much as weary and crumpled looking, had regarded me solemnly, perhaps waiting to see if I would answer my own question. He had watchful, intelligent grey eyes that offered neither judgement nor expectation. I had noticed that he spoke a good deal less than the other policemen, and yet when he did speak, it was always to mention something that no one else had noticed. After a long moment, he asked if I thought my mother would have lain down because she felt ill. I said I did not think she would have lain down in the snow if she was ill. A younger policeman who had been listening glanced sharply at me, and only then did I realise that I had spoken of snow. No doubt he thought my mind had foundered. The senior policeman merely looked at me, saying nothing.
Now, I watched the moon cross the sky, thinking how many times the senior policeman had come back to the house to ask questions about Rose and Mama of my stepfather and me, and of the servants, and of the way Reynaldo mimicked with vicious accuracy the slow, careful, waiting silences that punctuated these interviews, muttering wrathfully about harassment.
I felt the policeman suspected me of hiding something because he always sought me out in the end, no matter who else he questioned, yet I had been glad of his visits, for he had seemed to be the only other person besides myself and poor Ernst who had not given up on finding Rose.
One day he came upon me in the garden, sitting on a bench in the shade and gazing across at the winter park. I asked him mildly if he suspected me of knowing something about Rose’s disappearance.
‘The mind is full of secret corners and strange rooms,’ he had answered. ‘It is possible you know something without being aware of it.’
I wept, surprising myself more than I surprised him. He did not try to comfort me or question me or stop me weeping. But when I stopped of my own accord, he offered me his handkerchief and said in the same quiet, unprovoking voice he always used, ‘I thought you did not believe your sister was dead.’
‘I did not cry because I think she is dead,’ I said. ‘I feel as if I am to blame for whatever has happened to her. Mama was always so concerned about what would happen to me, when she ought to have worried about Rose!’
I still felt responsible for what had happened, I realised.
I wondered what the policeman would make of the dream and decided I would tell it to him when he came next. Somehow I did not doubt that he would continue to call, for the mystery of Mama’s death and Rose’s disappearance had taken hold of his mind. I thought of his earlier suggestion that Rose might have gone into the park first, and wondered what had made him think so. It struck me that he might all along have had some theory he had never voiced. Certainly Rose had never feared the park and sometimes she had spoken as if she was only putting off the pleasure of entering it, like someone leaving the icing on a cake till last. I had imagined she was teasing me, but once she ventured to take a few steps under the trees when Mama had not accompanied us, and I had been forced to show her my fear before she would come out to me. Was it possible that Mama had become distracted by something, allowing Rose to slip away? I did not think so, but nor could I believe that Mama and Rose had accidentally strayed into the winter park.
If only I had gone with them to the pantomime. If I had been there, holding Rose’s other hand, I could have kept her from the park, or if not that, then at least we would have been lost together.
I heard a strain of music that reminded me of the velvet song walkers, and I glanced out of the window to see that dawn had come. I looked this way and that along the street, trying to see one of the rare velvet men who passed through the town, but instead I saw a flash of colour, red as blood, vivid and unmistakeable at the edge of all that black and grey and white that was the winter