Now, with Mrs. Liang missing, Diana Olmstead had a whole new purpose for staying on Trachis aside from tending to the dead. She needed to watch Mr. Liang. He was resting now in a chaise longue opposite her, his eyes closed. She repositioned her chair so the sun fell on her face. The poor man, she thought, first his daughter, now his wife missing. She inhaled deeply the smell of ocean. She started her prayers, reciting silently to herself, making sure to focus. She believed, based on nothing but her own intuition, that his wife, at least, would be found.

The day turned warm. The afternoon came slowly. Of all the remaining guests, Orfeo Raskolov alone knew nothing about Mrs. Liang’s disappearance. He’d stayed inside his cottage and emerged only in the late afternoon. No one seemed to be around. The lawn lay empty, the beach too. He slipped up to the main house but saw no one there either, and the library was desolate as well. He pulled out the piano bench and sat. Someone had left a window open, and he could hear the sound of the surf below. He touched the keys, as he had two nights earlier, and played again, this time Beethoven: the Pathétique. Sonata number 8 in C minor. He closed his eyes. He could almost see the music, the shape of the notes within the first few measures. He played the chords with abandon. He didn’t care if anyone came in, as they had the other night. What would Orfeo Raskolov tell them if he had words instead of octaves? Would he tell them about his wife: how she was one of his students at the State Academy of Music in Sofia? How she’d come to class early one afternoon in the rehearsal room on Evlogy Georgiev Street. Orfeo Raskolov once played the cello himself—but had since given it up for the piano. And that afternoon in the rehearsal room, Evdokiya asked for help with her bowing. When she couldn’t get the angle right, he stood behind her and held her elbows outward, two fingers firmly supporting the ulna of each arm. Relax, he told her. Breathe, he told her. Don’t tighten your shoulders. She couldn’t relax at first; she felt like a marionette. But eventually she did, and as he held her elbows at her sides, she began moving her right arm fluidly, back and forth, while he kept reminding her to breathe.