Morrow stood with her bum on the still warm engine and looked up at Glenarvon. It was a brighter day today and the house looked less creepy and faded. Gray stone glinted in the patchy sunlight. The solidity of it gave the house the air of a firm elder, playful in parts but stolid and benign.

She didn’t want anyone to talk to her, and had sent Leonard off to the officer on duty to quiz him about who had been and to check his record-keeping of entries to the house. Leonard was being left out of whatever was going on in the department and Morrow found herself drawn to her company, to the balm of neutrality. So she stood facing the house, clearing her mind as she approached the steps and walked up, letting her impressions of before flood aimlessly in. She needed to get to know Sarah but she was slippery. Bannerman had booked her on a flight to London for the next day, to interview the people from the bar Sarah had worked in, to get a fix on her and try to get her national insurance details. She needed to know what sort of person she was.

Carers coming and going, through the front, always through the front door. No one had a key because Kay Murray was always there to let them in and out. She must have worked long hours. Morrow was pleased Kay had a key: it made it less likely that she had anything to do with the break-in through the kitchen window.

As she walked past and went in through the door she heard Leonard asking if Kay Murray had been up and being told that she hadn’t. Morrow would have to go and look for her.

Dark porch, the suitcase gone now, but the jacket still there. Dark porch, the shoes, one upright, one on its side. Darker hall, imposing. Through the arch to the stairs. Her shoulders crept up to her ears at the memory of Sarah’s body. The dried, black bloody stamp of her mess still there, on the floor, rising up two stairs as if it was crawling up to the top of the house to hide.

She glanced to the side. The taser phone had been there, but even as she was thinking it she knew she was avoiding looking at the stairs.

She turned her head deliberately.

The blood on the ledge of the steps was still scarlet and tacky but the spills down the side had dried black. Two sets, one very slightly larger than the other, both facing her now. The smaller prints were nearer the black hole where Sarah’s head had been. They were consistently nearer. The bigger feet had made impressions further along the step, away from Sarah.

Morrow stepped back. They were definitely next to her head. On one step she could see that the left foot of the smaller feet had stood alone, the person was standing on one foot, very close to Sarah’s head.

They’d been stamping on her with the other.

She looked at the footprints and imagined the people who made them standing there, arms down, as blank-faced as men in a line-up. They’d be interviewed separately. They’d blame each other, they always did. It didn’t matter and they’d both be convicted, but this time maybe one of them would be telling the truth when he said he was innocent.

She went outside for a breath of air and found Leonard on the step. “Where was Kay Murray working yesterday?”

Morrow paused for breath at the gate. It was a lovely garden. The ground in front of the house was a sea of raked white gravel with a stepping-stone pathway that arced around to the front door. The border plants were brightly colored, pink and blue, hanging over the watery white-marble chips. A high fence protected it from the view of the neighbors, a trestle of brilliant orange flowers disguising it.

Leonard had referred to Mrs. Thalaine’s house as “the old Glenarvon stable block” in the written report. Looking at it now, Morrow could make out a portion of the path to the big house, a stripe of worn ground at the head of the hill beyond the cottage.

It didn’t look like a stables anymore, it looked like a brand-new, whitewashed house designed as a picturesque drawing of a stables. She opened the spindle-topped gate and held it behind her for Leonard. She had been here before and it seemed sensible to bring her back, so Mrs. Thalaine would know who they were and wouldn’t feel the need to waste time with preliminaries.

Morrow rang the bell.

After a short pause a slim woman opened it; a neat woman, her gray hair streaked with blonde, dressed in beige slacks and a matching stone jumper, a blue silk neckerchief loose at her throat, tucked into her crew neck. She looked out at them over half-moon reading glasses and recognized Tamsin Leonard.

“Well, hello again!”

There were no preliminaries. Leonard had promised to come back and inform jittery Mrs. Thalaine if there was a murderer roving around the village and she and her husband should evacuate. She was very keen to establish whether or not this was the case and didn’t offer tea or coffee or a wee plate of nice biscuits but sat them down in the living room and quizzed them about the progress of the investigation so far.

“No one yet, then?”

“No,” said Morrow firmly. “We’re quite sure that whatever led to Sarah’s death was a personal matter and there’s no ongoing threat.”

“So, it doesn’t concern me?”

“No.”

“OK.” She seemed relieved at that until it occurred to her: “What are you doing back here, then?”

“I was looking for Kay Murray.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Kay?”

“Do you know her?”

“Indeed I do. She’s my lady-what-does.” She tittered at that. Morrow declined to titter back.

They looked at each other for a moment. A bird pecked at a feeder hanging in a window, tuck-tuck.

“Did you know Sarah?”

Mrs. Thalaine wasn’t enjoying this. She seemed to realize that Morrow was a different sort of police officer, not the nice sort either. Tuck-tuck-tuck.

“Sarah grew up here. Went away to school obviously, and we keep ourselves to ourselves, but she grew up nearby.”

“What sort of a person was she?”

“She was an only child. Shy growing up. Kept away from the local children…”

“She kept away or was kept away?”

“Well, my children were invited up for birthday parties but we always felt that they weren’t very welcome: they were padding really. My older son liked Sarah very much. Said she was funny. She did impersonations of her nannies. They were all French. She made them laugh.”

“The family fortunes had declined recently, hadn’t they?”

“Everyone’s fortunes have declined recently. Look at someone like Kay Murray, I mean, people get desperate, don’t they? Four children and no husband—”

Morrow snapped at her, “Have your fortunes declined recently?”

Mrs. Thalaine touched her neckerchief with her fingers, at the jugular. She opened her mouth but snapped it shut again. Tuck-tuck-tuck and a flutter of black wings at the window as the bird flew away, sated.

Mrs. Thalaine filled her lungs. “We invested our savings in shares, through a brokerage firm, AGI. They lost it. All.”

“How much was that?”

Mrs. Thalaine tapped her jugular again. “Six hundred thousand. More or less.”

She began to cry but refused to give in to it. Her lips quivered and she pulled a silk handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed at the corners of her eyes, trying to preserve her make-up.

Morrow would have been ashamed to admit it, but it was quite boring to watch. Thalaine was crying about money while the stairs in Glenarvon were carpeted in chunks of Sarah’s face. When the sobs and hiccups abated Morrow spoke softly, “And AGI lost the money?”

“Did they? Where did it go?” She slumped, as if it was all too much for her, and looked coldly at Morrow. “Do you have any idea who did this?”

“Who do you know in the village?”

“Most of the older residents.”

“Is it quite mixed around here?”

“How do you mean?”

“Old people, families with children?”

“Yes, quite mixed.”

“Many teenagers?”

“Some.”

“Who do you know with teenager children?”

“The Campbells have two daughters, nineteen and fifteen.”

“No boys?”

She stopped, looked at Morrow, knew, somehow, that this was what she didn’t want to hear: “Kay Murray has three boys. Teenagers.”

“I meant in the local area.”

Mrs. Thalaine started crying and couldn’t stop herself. “We’re moving anyway!” She pressed her hankie to her mouth in between fractured exclamations. “We’re going to have to sell our family home and live with our children. We’ve been here for thirty-two years. Now we have to go and live with our children.”

Morrow was sorry for being so dismissive of her loss. She reached forward and touched her arm, apologizing for unkindnesses committed in her head.