“Where is Raymond?” Harrison asked, his eyes sweeping the vast entrance hall, plainly braced for the worst, for a bed and a ruined man.

I pointed toward the top of the grand staircase.

“He’s getting ready,” I said.

Harrison looked at me as though I had spoken nonsense, as though the phrase getting ready could not possibly apply to the man he had come to see.

And then, from the floor above us, there came a sound.

A slow, heavy, thumping sound.

And then another.

I understood what it was before Harrison did, because I was the only one there who knew what it had cost to produce it.