She was wet. Oh, angel, no! How am I going to manage to get my kapok mattress flopped over the line? was my first reaction. But Flo didn’t smell of urine, and it didn’t feel like urine, which doesn’t dry stiff and hard like Flo’s pinny. She hadn’t stirred, despite the hugs and kisses. Neither she nor her mother had dolled up for the party, and looking at that snuff-brown fabric, I couldn’t see what she was soaked in. I just knew that unique smell. Oh, God! Quick! Pull the curtains!

Blood. She was wet with blood. My skin squeezed up tight and prickling, but I kept my head, went over her slowly and carefully, lifted the pinny up, peeled the shabby bloomers down to inspect her pubes. Please, God, no! Not that, not that! I was saying over and over, my hands shaking in time to my body. No, nothing. It wasn’t her own blood covered Flo from the soles of her feet to her hands—her hands were thick with it, thick. At that moment she woke, gave me a sleepy smile, and put her arms around my neck. I lifted her off the bed and carried her into the living room, where Marceline, having left no scrap in her bowl, was sitting washing herself.

“Darling, play with Marceline,” I said through an awful crawling numbness, and put Flo down beside the cat. “I have to pop outside for a minute, angel, so I need you to stay here and mind poor Marceline. Make sure she’s a good girl.”

I took the stairs five at a time, bounded in one leap across the hall and charged into the room, stopped still as a statue. The blood was a lake that covered the floor under and all around the table, jellified where the lino was buckled into depressions, a thin sheet coating the crests. Someone had tidied up, the party debris was all dumped in the far corner, though the table was piled high with empty dishes and the carcass of that inedible turkey. My eyes took it all in, I didn’t seem to miss a thing. The blood hadn’t spurted to spatter the walls, but in one place there was a lot of blood on the wall—the wall Flo was currently using for scribbling. It was smeared with great browning whorls of blood, held the imprint of a tiny hand here and there. Bloody little footprints crossed the unmarred lino between the edge of the lake and that section of wall, footprints going to the wall, returning to the lake. Crayons couldn’t express her feelings. Flo had finger-painted in the blood.

Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz lay face down beside the table, dead. Not far from her was Harold Warner, sagged back on his haunches, his hands around the butt of the turkey carving knife where it met his belly, his head flopped down to rest its chin on his chest, as if he contemplated his own undoing.

My mouth opened and I howled. I don’t mean that I wept or I cried or I screamed—I made animal noises of horror and despair at the top of my lungs, and I kept on making them.

Toby was the first there, and Toby took over. I suppose he deputed someone to call the police, because I faintly heard him barking orders to people in the doorway, but he never left me. When I couldn’t howl any longer he guided me out of the room and shut its door. Pappy, Klaus, Jim and Bob were huddled together in the hall, but of Chikker and Marge from the front ground floor flat there was no sign.

“I’ve called the police—Toby, what is it?” Pappy cried.

“The ruin of The House,” I said through chattering teeth. “The Ten of Swords and Harold. He was here to bring The House down. That was the job he had to do, and if she never knew it from the cards, she saw it in the Glass because I was there when she did. She knew, she knew! But she submitted.”

“Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and Harold are dead,” Toby said.

By the time he got me outside onto the path, every window in 17d was gaping wide, had a head sticking out.

“Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz is dead,” he had to say several times before he got me inside my flat.

Flo was drawn up into a compact cluster of limbs on the floor, curled around the purring Marceline. Toby took one look at her, cast me a horrified look, then went for the brandy bottle.

“No!” I gasped. “I never want to see that stuff again. I’m all right now, Toby, truly I am.”

The morning passed in a parade of people, starting with the police. Not my friends from the Vice Squad—these were strangers in plain clothes. Because Toby had taken charge and he refused to leave me, all the activity seemed to happen in my living room. But before they came Pappy took Flo away to give her a bath and change her clothes, while I went to the laundry for a shower, changed my party dress for something sober. Sober.

What concerned the police most was Flo’s finger-painting. It seemed to fascinate them, whereas the crime was clearly run of the mill. Murder and suicide, plain as the nose on your face. They questioned every one of us, looking for motive, but none of us had noticed any change in the behaviour of either Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz or Harold. I had to tell them how he had stalked me, about his emotional and mental instability, the urinary retention, his refusal to consult a psychiatrist when one had been recommended. Chikker and Marge in the front ground floor flat had decamped, all trace of them gone, not even a fingerprint left behind. But the police weren’t interested in them, that showed clearly, though word had gone out to pick them up for questioning. As they were right under the room where it happened, they might have heard it.

“What’s obvious,” said the sergeant to Toby, “is that the kid watched the whole thing. Once we get her story, we’ll know.”

I butted in. “Flo can’t talk,” I said. “She’s a mute.”

“You mean she’s retarded?” the sergeant asked, frowning.

“On the contrary, she’s extremely intelligent,” I answered. “She simply doesn’t talk.”

“Is this your opinion too, Mr. Evans?”

Toby confirmed that Flo didn’t talk. “She’s either superhuman or subhuman, I’m never sure which,” he added, the bastard.

On the tail of this, Pappy reappeared with Flo, clad now in a clean snuff-brown pinny, her feet bare as always. The two coppers stared at my angel as if she was a freak, and I could see what they were thinking as if they spoke out loud: she looks like any other five-year-old girl, but underneath, she’s a monster.

Yes, Flo is five years old. Today is her birthday and I have her present all wrapped up in a cupboard—a pretty pink dress. It’s still there.

Then we got down to the brass tacks of official enquiries, namely, were there any relatives? Each of us had to answer no, we didn’t think so. Even Pappy, who has been in The House by far the longest, had to say that no relative had ever shown up, at least as far as she knew. Nor had Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz ever mentioned any relatives.

Finally the sergeant shut his notebook and got up, thanked Toby for the brandy pick-me-up—ta much, mate, greatly appreciated. You could see that they were glad they’d had a man to talk to, that they hadn’t had to deal with a parcel of very strange females on a social basis. Because there was a social element—the job’s a dirty one, but a good bloke’s easy to get on with.

At the door the sergeant turned to me. “I’d be grateful if you could mind the little girl for an hour or so, Miss Purcell. It’s going to take that long for the Child Welfare to get here.”

I could feel my eyes widen. “It’s not necessary to summon the Child Welfare,” I said. “I’ll be looking after Flo from now on.”

“Very sorry, Miss Purcell,” he said, “it doesn’t work that way. Since there are no known relatives, little Florence”—Florence?—”is now the responsibility of the Child Welfare. If we’re able to trace a relative, then she can go to that person if she’s wanted, and in cases like this, the person almost always says yes. But if we can’t trace any relatives, then Florence Schwartz becomes a ward of the State of New South Wales.” He put on his natty plain clothes copper trilby and left, his constable behind him.