RICHARD GREVILLE, DEPUTY PSYCHIATRIC ADVISER, METROPOLITAN POLICE August 25, 1988. Where to start? So much has been written about the Pangbourne Massacre, as it is now known in the popular press throughout the world, that I find it difficult to see this tragic event with a clear eye. In the past two months there have been so many television programs about the thirty-two murdered residents of this exclusive estate to the west of London, and so much speculation about the abduction of their thirteen children, that there scarcely seems room for even a single fresh hypothesis. However, as the Permanent Secretary impressed upon me at the Home Office this morning, virtually nothing is known about the motives and identity of the assassins. “I say ‘assassins,’ Doctor Greville, but there may have been only one of them. I’m told that some sort of martial arts fanatic could have got away with it.” Sitting beneath the portrait of his more illustrious predecessor, he gestured gloomily. “And as for the whereabouts of the orphaned children—they’ve vanished through some window in time and space.
