She warned me, with those pearls, that I was now responsible for the maintenance of that silence.

I understood her perfectly.

And I had already decided to let the whole house fall down.

Chapter 16 — A Lip of Wood

At five the house was quiet, Jonathan gone to the beach club and Rosalind resting behind closed doors in the east wing.

I let myself into the study with the kitchen key, the lock turning with a dry metallic click that sounded enormous in the empty hallway, and stood in the smell of old paper and leather and beeswax.

I had perhaps ten minutes before the housekeeper came through to turn down the lamps, and I knew her schedule to the minute.