He'd suspected that sort of answer, which was partly why Barnaby had brought it up in the first place. Although Arthur wasn't off the mark in his assessment of Barnaby's ability to compartmentalize, that probably went only so far when dealing with someone's subconscious.

"I understand," he said. None of these things were topics of he enjoyed talking about, but they were common knowledge back home, and had always been a large fixture in his life. To ignore them just because Keeliai afforded him some sense of privacy would have been foolish in this instance.

"In that case," Barnaby continued in a calm, measured voice, "you should probably know that my parents were murdered in front of me on Christmas Eve when I was 4 years old. My memories of that day have always been very vivid, even now. My recollection of the killer's identity, however, was heavily tampered with, so that detail didn't come back to the surface until about a year ago."