I ignored the end of her statement. “Larchmont Hall was your home? Darraugh didn’t tell me that.”

“I was born in that house. I grew up in it. But neither of my children wanted the burden of looking after such a property, not even to hold in trust for their own children. Of course my daughter doesn’t live here, she’s in New York with her husband; they have his family’s property in Rhinebeck, but I thought Darraugh might want his son to have the chance to live in Larchmont. He was adamant, however, and when Darraugh has made up his mind he is as hard as any diamond.”

Why hadn’t Darraugh told me he grew up here? Anger at feeling blindsided distracted me from what she was saying. What else had he concealed? Still, I could see that looking after Larchmont Hall would be a full-time job, not something a widower wedded to his business would take on willingly. I pictured Darraugh in a Daphne du Maurier childhood, learning to ride, to hunt, to play hide-and-seek in the stables. Perhaps it’s only bluecollar kids like me who imagine that you’d feel nostalgia for such a childhood and find it hard to give up.

“So you watch the place to see how it’s faring without you, and you’ve noticed someone hanging around there?”

“Not exactly.” She swallowed noisily and set the mug down on her coaster with a jolt that sprayed drops onto the wood. “When you’re old, you don’t sleep long hours at a time. I wake in the night, I go to the bathroom, I read a little and doze in my chair here. Perhaps a week ago,” she stopped to count backward on her fingers, “last Tuesday, it would be, I was up around one. I saw a light glow and go out. At first I assumed it was a car on Coverdale Lane. You can’t see the lane from here, but you can see the reflection of the headlights along the facades.”

Reflection along the facades. Her precise speech made her sound even more formidable than her commanding manner. I stood at the window and cupped my hands around my eyes to peer through the wintry twilight. Across Powell Road, I could just make out the hedge that shielded New Solway from the vulgar. Larchmont Hall lay on the far side, in a direct line from where I was standing. It was back far enough from the road that even in the dusk I could make out the whole house.

“Take the binoculars, young woman: they allow one to see in the dark, even an old woman like me.”

The binoculars were a lovely set of Rigel compact optics, with a nightvision feature usually used by hunters. “Did you buy these so you could see in the dark, ma’am?”

“I didn’t buy them originally to spy on my old home, if that’s what you’re asking: my grandson MacKenzie gave them to me when I still managed Larchmont. He thought they would be helpful to me since my vision was deteriorating, and he was correct.”