A Great Deliverance

Havers lays out what she pulled from the house: a vandalized family album, two photographs of the sisters, a battered copy of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and six identical sheets of the newspaper classifieds. Roberta has lined her drawers only with two pages: a personals column that reads “R. Look at the advert. G” (234) and a small ad for the outreach group Testament House, a charity to help runaways in London. One name, Nell Graham, is taken from the Brontë novel on Roberta’s bed. Havers argues that Nell Graham at Testament House is actually Gillian, signaling her survival to her sister through the name of a character in a book they both read. Lynley praises the deduction and sends Havers to London to bring Gillian back.

He drives to Tessa Mowrey and advises her to report Russell missing. He asks about a box of orphaned door keys in William’s wardrobe. When eight-year-old Gillian locked herself in to avoid bible reading, William removed every key in the house, and he never asked her to read with him again. Tessa admits she that she copes by refusing to imagine her daughters’ lives; she “let them die” (240) to survive. Lynley lies to her that he knows nothing about Russell’s whereabouts.