“Sorry, ma’am, I wasn’t laughing at you, just my own absurd ideas. I went to the Bayard house before coming here, because my first thought had been that Marc Whitby wanted to talk to Mr. Bayard. The staff said he hadn’t been around. Should I believe them?”

“Ruth Lantner,” Geraldine Graham said. “She’s what I had in mind when I said I didn’t want a staff managing me. She and her husband run Calvin and Renee Bayard, oh, they do it well, they’ve been with Calvin since the boy was born. Edwards. One of those old family names people like to give their children. No odder, I daresay, than Darraugh calling his own boy MacKenzie, although Mother tried to change his mind at the time. I remember Mrs. Edwards Bayard-she and my mother had famous feuds. My mother thought she was a hypocrite, with her extraordinary causes and habits-she didn’t allow any alcohol or tobacco in her house, although her husband’s behavior was an open secret in our milieu. Mrs. Edwards thought Mother was an odalisque. Whereas Mother was something far more dangerous.”

I was tempted to follow this historical byway: What had Mr. Edwards Bayard’s behavior been? But I kept to the main topic. “Would Ruth Lantner lie about Whitby coming to the house?”

“Oh, don’t ask me about servants’ characters. I don’t know her well. I daresay she would lie to protect Calvin, probably Renee as well.”

So she expected Lisa to lie to protect her. Which meant if Geraldine Graham was hiding something about Whitby, or Bayard, Lisa would back her up. How nice and feudal.

“I met the Bayards’ granddaughter the other day,” I said.

“Catherine? That’s a sad story, the mother dying when the baby wasn’t a year old. The boy, Edwards, fell apart for a time under the blow. I will say in Renee’s favor that she took on raising her granddaughter without a murmur. What kind of job has she made of it?”

I smiled. “Catherine’s a lively, ardent young person-who so far has run rings around me. And she’s extremely close to her grandmother. Catherine says Calvin wanders over to Larchmont at night.”

“He does; How astonishing.” She gave a dry laugh. “Perhaps in the secret recesses of his mind he is trying to escape Renee.”

“Catherine says her grandfather has a key to Larchmont Hall, that he uses it to let himself in there at night. Is that possible? When I asked Darraugh, he became angry and hung up on me. Why?”

Ms. Graham put her down cup, her jaw working. “Do you have children, young woman? No? They are a mystery. You bear them in your body, you watch over them, but they grow up as strangers. Darraugh’s anger is one of those mysteries to me.”

Once again she danced away from talking about Darraugh and Larchmont. I reverted to the key: Would Calvin Bayard have one?

“I should be most surprised. But we live in a very odd world. Are they looking after him properly? How did he seem?”