It was the children who, innocently, started

the train of events that was to have such a

devastating climax. Every day, in a newly

opened primaryschool next door to the

Marchington home, the pupils would create

a minor uproar under the elder Miss

Marchington swindow and disrupt her cus-

tomary afternoon nap. So her great-nieec,

the young painter, Avril Marchington, went

over to the school to see if she could persuade

the teachers to keep the children more quick

It all seemed so simple

As simple and uncomplicated as the

fact that the same day, Avril s cstranged sister

and her husband and two children arrived

back in the States after years abroad and

came to stay in the tall brownstone on New

York s blast Side. Yet these two events were

linked in a way that Avril could not have

imagined in hcr wildest nightmare. Any

more than she could imagine the real and

crucial role played by her old enemy, Julian

Demarest, young partner of her tyralmical

late fathcr, and, she believed, fellow-

conspirator in her own unhappiness.

But if Avril was now haunted by the

ghost of a child that had been takcn from her,

Julian had his own, tragedies and fears to

contend with. That a chain of terror linked

the school, Avril, her family, and Julian

together--and that a shattering cuhnination