Dumas crumpled. She slumped in her chair and assumed the appearance of a defeated woman. She knew that the clever and persistent Scottish detective had learned, or guessed enough to make her position untenable. All her years of deceit, subterfuge, and the string of murders that littered her past now meant nothing, as the realisation was forced upon her that this clever young detective had unravelled almost every thread of the story behind the Nemesis cell and its awful consequences. Perhaps in a last twisted show of defiance, an attempt to prove how clever she had been for so long, and how superior her intellect was when compared with her peers, Dumas took the conscious decision to reveal all, to ensure that Houston realised just what a genius she was, such was the insanity that now found
