I silently removed myself from the screaming matches and arguments while inwardly I ran for my life. AWOL from the wars within my house, I spent increasing lengths of time engaging the tutelage of the Gray Nuns after class or ensconcing myself in the library, where I began to realize the precocity of my mind and the rewards it would bring to me. I excelled in science and was intrigued by human biology. I was poring over Gray's Anatomy by the time I was fifteen, and it became the sine qua non of my self-education, the vessel of my epiphany. I was going to leave Miami for college. In an era when women were teachers, secretaries, and housewives, I was going to be a physician.

In high school I made all A's and played tennis and read during the holidays and summers while my family struggled on like wounded Confederate veterans in a world long since won by the North. I had little interest in dating and had few friends. Graduating at the top of my class, I went off to Cornell on a full scholarship,- then it was Johns Hopkins for medical school, law school at Georgetown after that, then back to Hopkins for my pathology residency. I was only vaguely aware of what I was doing. The career I had embarked upon would forever return me to the scene of the terrible crime of my father's death. I would take death apart and put it back together again a thousand times. I would master its codes and take it to court. I would understand the nuts and bolts of it. But none of it brought my father back to life, and the child inside me never stopped grieving.

Embers shifted on the hearth, and I dozed in fits and starts.

Hours later the details of my prison began to materialize in the chilled blue of dawn. Pain shot through my back and legs as I stiffly got to my feet and went to the window. The sun was a pale egg over the slate-gray river, tree trunks black against the white snow. The fire was cold, and two questions were tapping at the back of my feverish brain. Would Miss Harper have died had I not been here? How convenient for her to die while I was inside her house. Why did she come down to the library? I imagined her making her way down the stairs, stoking the fire and settling on the sofa. While she stared into the flames, her heart simply stopped. Or was it the portrait she had been looking at in the end?

I switched on every lamp. Pulling a chair close to the hearth, I climbed up and lifted the unwieldy painting free of its hooks. The portrait did not seem so unsettling up close, the total effect disintegrating into subtle shades of color and delicate brush strokes in heavy oil paint. Dust floated free of the canvas as I climbed down and laid the painting on the floor. There was no signature or date, nor was the portrait nearly as old as I had assumed. The colors had been deliberately muted to look old, and there wasn't the slightest bit of cracking evident in the paint.

Turning it over, I examined the brown paper backing. Centered on it was a gold seal embossed with the name of a Williamsburg picture-framing shop. I made note of it and climbed back up on the chair, returning the painting to its hooks. Then I squatted before the fireplace and delicately probed the debris with a pencil I had gotten out of my bag. On top of the charred chunks of wood was a peculiar layer of filmy white ash that wafted like cobwebs at the slightest stirring. Beneath this was a lump of what looked like melted plastic.

"No offense, Doc," Marino said, backing his car out of the lot, "but you look like hell."

"Thanks a lot," I muttered.

"Like I said, no offense. Guess you didn't get much sleep."

When I didn't show up to take care of Gary Harper's autopsy in the morning, Marino wasted no time calling the Williamsburg police. Midmorning two sheepish officers showed up at the mansion, chains clanking and chewing tracks into the smooth, heavy snow. After the depressing rounds of questions about Sterling Harper's death, her body was loaded into an ambulance headed for Richmond, and the officers deposited me at headquarters in downtown Williamsburg, where I was plied with coffee and doughnuts until Marino picked me up.

"No way I would've stayed in that house all night," Marino went on. "I don't care if it was twenty below. I'd freeze my ass off before I'd spend the night with a stiff-"

"Do you know where Princess Street is?" I interrupted.

"What about it?" His mirrored shades turned toward me.

The snow was white fire in the sun, the streets fast turning to slush.

"I'm interested in a five-oh-seven Princess Street address," I replied in a tone indicating I expected him to take me there.

The address was at the edge of the historic district, tucked between other businesses in Merchants' Square. In the recently plowed parking lot were no more than a dozen cars, their roofs thatched with snow. I was relieved to see that The Village Frame Shoppe amp; Gallery was open.

Marino didn't ask questions as I got out. He probably sensed I wasn't in the mood to answer any at the moment. There was only one other customer inside the gallery, a young man in a black overcoat casually riffling through a rack of prints while a woman with long blond hair worked an adding machine behind the counter.

"May I help you?" the blond woman inquired, blandly looking up at me.

"That depends on how long you've worked here," I answered.

The cool, dubious way she looked me over made me realize I probably did look like hell. I'd slept in my coat. My hair was a god-awful mess. Self-consciously reaching up to smooth down a cowlick, I realized I had somehow managed to lose an earring. I told the woman who I was and drove home the point by producing the thin black wallet containing my brass medical examiner's shield. "I've worked here two years," she said. "I'm interested in a painting your shop framed probably before your time," I told her. "A portrait Gary Harper may have brought in."

"Oh, God. I heard about it on the radio this morning. About what happened to him. Oh, God, how awful."

She was sputtering. "You'll need to speak to Mr. Hilgeman." She disappeared in back to fetch him.

Mr. Hilgeman was a tweedy, distinguished-looking gentleman who stated in no uncertain terms, "Gary Harper hasn't been in this shop in years, and no one here knew him well, at least not to my knowledge."

"Mr. Hilgeman," I said, "over the fireplace mantel in Gary Harper's library is a portrait of a blond girl. It was framed in your shop, possibly many years ago. Do you remember it?"

There wasn't the faintest spark of recognition in the gray eyes peering at me over reading glasses.

"It appears very old," I explained. "A good imitation but a rather unusual treatment of the subject. The girl is nine, ten, at the most twelve, but she's dressed more like a young woman, in white, and sitting on a small bench holding a silver hairbrush."

I could have kicked myself for not taking a Polaroid photograph of the painting. My camera was inside my medical bag and the thought had never occurred to me. I had been too distracted.

"You know," Mr. Hilgeman said, his eyes lighting up, "I think I might remember what you're talking about. A very pretty girl, but unusual. Yes. Rather suggestive, as I recall."

I didn't prod him.

"Must have been at least fifteen years ago… Let me see." He touched an index finger to his lips. "No."

He shook his head. "It wasn't me."

"It wasn't you? What wasn't you?" I asked.

"I didn't do the framing. That would have been Clara. An assistant who worked here then. I do believe - in fact I'm certain - Clara did the framing on that one. A rather expensive job and not really worth it, if you must know. The painting wasn't terribly good. Actually," he added with a frown, "it was one of her least successful efforts-"

"Her?"

I interrupted. "Do you mean Clara?"

"I'm talking about Sterling Harper."

He looked speculatively at me. "She's the artist." He paused. "That would have been years ago when she did a lot of painting. They had a studio in the house, as I understand it. I've never been there, of course. But she used to bring in a number of her works, most of them still lifes, landscapes. The painting you're interested in is the only portrait I recall."

"How long ago did she paint it?"

"At least fifteen years ago, as I've said."

"Did someone pose for it?" I asked.

"I suppose it could have been done from a photograph…"

He frowned. "Actually, I really can't answer your question. But if someone posed for it, I don't know who that might have been."

I didn't show my surprise. Beryl would have been sixteen or seventeen and living at Cutler Grove then. Was it possible Mr. Hilgeman, the people in town, didn't know this?

"It's rather sad," he mused. "Such talented, intelligent people. No family, no children."

"What about friends?" I asked.

"I really don't know either of them personally," he said.

And you never will, I thought morbidly.

Marino was wiping off his windshield with a chamois cloth when I went back out into the parking lot. The melted snow and salt left by road crews had splotched and dulled his beautiful black car. He didn't look happy about it. On the pavement beneath the driver's door was an untidy collection of cigarette butts he had unceremoniously dumped from his ashtray.

"Two things/' I began very seriously as we buckled up. "In the mansion's library is a portrait of a young blond girl that Miss Harper apparently had framed in this shop approximately fifteen years ago."

"Beryl Madison?" He got out his lighter.

"It may very well be a portrait of her," I replied. "But if so, it depicts her at an age much younger than she would have been when the Harpers met her. And the treatment of the subject is a little peculiar. Lolita-like…"

"Huh?"

"Sexy," I said bluntly. "A little girl painted to look sensual."

"Yo. So now you're going to tell me Gary Harper was a closet pedophile."

"In the first place, his sister painted the portrait," I said.

"Shit," he complained.

"Secondly," I went on, "I got the distinct impression the owner of the framing shop has no idea Beryl ever lived with the Harpers. It makes me wonder if other people know. And if not, I wonder how that's possible. She lived in the mansion for years, Marino. It's just a couple of miles from town. This is a small town."