“The tragedy of those buried cities had always enthralled me and sometimes in a painful way. Years ago I’d seen photographs of plaster casts made of those poor Romans struggling to escape the cinder rain falling on Pompeii and they had made me cry.

“Of course Pompeii and Herculaneum were on the Bay of Naples, and Manfred had taken Rebecca to Naples. Vesuvius loomed over Naples, and Rebecca had cried, ‘Remember Naples’ when Manfred had been beating her, when he had carried her or dragged her out of the house.

“Again, the dizziness came and there rose the simmer of voices. I tipped forward until my forehead touched the gold carving. I was aware of the perfume of flowers. Was that wisteria? My senses were scrambled. I was dry-mouthed and sweating. And I heard Rebecca sobbing, What they did to me, Quinn, what they did.

“With a supreme act of will, I threw off the dizziness. I was on my knees. And as I looked up I realized there was an inscription running in a band along the top of the gold plates, just beneath the granite roof of the tomb, an inscription I hadn’t seen for the glare of the vagrant sun on the gold.

“I went round the mausoleum twice. The words were in Latin, and I couldn’t translate, but I could pick out the name Petronia, and the words for sleep and for death.

“I cursed myself that I didn’t have any paper with me, except my letters to the trespasser, so that I could copy this down. Then I realized I had four copies of my letter, for posting in four places, and all I needed to do was sacrifice one copy. So, taking out my pen, I scribbled down the entire inscription, circling the monument twice to make sure I had the words correct.

“By now I was thirsting and I went back to the pirogue, picked up the small plastic cooler that Jasmine had packed for me and went up the stairs into the house.

“All was the same as I had found it yesterday. I crept up the staircase and stared again at the iron chains. I noted with a faint twinge of horror that the fifth chain with the hook was somewhat shorter than the other chains but I didn’t know what it meant. There were hooks in the wall also. I hadn’t noticed those before either, and in the morass of blackish tarlike substance I thought I saw more of the shape of human bones.

“I took out the camera, and with trembling hands I snapped two pictures, and then I backed up and took a couple more. What would it show? I wasn’t certain. All I could do was snap another two close-ups and hope that someone believed in what I saw.