“I began by telling her all about Rebecca’s trunk in the attic, and then Rebecca’s ghost and what had happened, and then I went over again everything that was on the island and how perfectly strange it was out there, and that there was clear evidence of murder on the second floor of the house.

“ ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard many a story of Manfred, and you know now that after Virginia Lee died and left him a widower he was considered a madman in these parts.’

“I nodded for her to go on. I also took note that Goblin was right behind her, some distance from her, just watching me with a kind of abstracted expression on his face. He was also leaning against the wall kind of casually, and something about that struck a bad note with me—that he would present such an image of comfort, but my mind was really not on Goblin but on Rebecca and Aunt Queen.

“Aunt Queen went on with her tale.

“ ‘But what you don’t know,’ she said, ‘is that Manfred brought women here to Blackwood Manor, always claiming they were governesses for William and Camille, when in fact they were nothing more than playthings for him—starry-eyed Irish girls he got from Storyville, the red-light district in New Orleans—whom he kept for as long as it suited his purposes, and then from the picture they were abruptly erased.’

“ ‘God, you’re telling me he killed more than one of them?’ I asked.

“ ‘I don’t know that he did any such thing,’ said Aunt Queen. She went on. ‘It’s your story about this island that has put it in my mind that perhaps he did murder them. But no one knew what became of them, and it was an easy thing to get rid of a poor Irish girl in those days. You simply dropped her down in the middle of New Orleans. What more need be done?’

“ ‘But Rebecca, did you hear tell of Rebecca?’

“ ‘Yes, indeed, I did,’ said Aunt Queen. ‘You know I did. I heard plenty tell of her. And I’m telling you now. Now let me go on in my fashion. Some of these Irish girls were kind to little William and Camille, but in the main they didn’t bother with them one way or another, and so they don’t come down to us with any names or faces, or even mysterious trunks in the attic, though that would have been a significant clue.’

“ ‘No, there were no other suspicious trunks in the attic,’ I interjected. ‘But there are clothes, heaps of old clothes, clothes museums would pay for, I think. But only Rebecca’s trunk.’

“ ‘Slow down and let me talk,’ Aunt Queen said with a little graceful exasperation. ‘Quinn, you’re overexcited and it’s a marvelous thing to see,’ she said, smiling, ‘but let me talk.’

“And talk she did.