“But now you do know, Trina, you mustn’t come back here. We don’t know who killed that reporter. Someone is taking advantage of Larchmont standing empty to use the house: that’s why your detective was here. Geraldine Graham has been seeing lights in the attic, and while Darraugh thinks she could be making it up to force him to spend more time with her, I don’t agree: she’s a shrewd woman, she doesn’t use petty tricks. A deranged person could be hiding in this house. If you’re coming here to meet a friend or a lover or to use drugs or anything you don’t want me to know about, please-” She broke off, unable to complete the thought.

“No one can get into these buildings, they have a security system,” Catherine said. “An alarm goes off in Julius Arnoff’s office.”

“Do you know that because you’ve triggered it?”

“It’s not like it’s a secret. I mean, we all have alarms on our houses, and we all know what to do when they go off, and everyone knows they ring at the lawyer’s office and at the police.”

Catherine was talking in the breathless run-on sentences she’d used on me yesterday when she wanted to rush me past sensitive topics. What didn’t she want her grandmother to push on here? Renee Bayard clearly was wondering the same thing, because there was another long pause before she spoke again.

“Do you have a key to the alarm system, Catherine?”

“No, Gran-how could I have a key to someone else’s house?”

“By taking it if you found it lying around.” Renee Bayard’s voice was casual, almost as if she wasn’t interested in the subject. “I expect this house is like all the houses out here. We’re such special people in New Solway, so unusually honest and moral by virtue of our wealth and position, that newcomers don’t have to bother with new alarm systems: they know the old owners won’t come around breaking in. I daresay the-what was the name of the family that bought Larchmont?-I daresay they left the Grahams’ alarm in place and keys to that system could have been drifting around out here for years. I’m not suggesting you stole anything, but that you couldn’t resist using a key once you’d found it.”

“Oh, please, Gran, I couldn’t stand those Jablon kids long enough to get a key from them, they were such nounous with their-“

“Such what?” her grandmother demanded.

“Sorry,” Catherine mumbled. “We use it at school. Nouveaux-nouveaux riches, you know”

“I do now,” Renee said dryly. “Contempt for those born in different circumstances than your own is the easiest way to stop thinking.”

“I know, I know, but if you’d-hey, Gran, someone has been herelook at all this stuff laid out, like they’d been having a picnic or something, except using all this old broken china.”

Renee swept a circle of light outward toward the china shards Catherine had seen. These were from my first lot, at the end of the pond closest to us. I watched her feet march over. Catherine followed.