Nobody will be upset with you.”

He considered this. “Can I bring Captain Seal?”

“Captain Seal outranks all of us,” I said, and he gave me the smallest smile.

In the ambulance, I wrote down the symptoms I had observed and the details Kenneth supplied: the dates, the affected bedrooms, the smell, the medications, the times the children seemed worse.

I also noted something important that I had almost overlooked.

For two weeks last summer, the twins had stayed at a relative’s cottage while work was done on the mansion’s swimming pool.