“Our investigations proceeded rapidly, and I know that I focused on them to escape the pure horror of Pops’ death—the loss of the only man who had ever been my father. We had the reading of his will to attend to, and I was dreadfully concerned that he might have cut out Patsy altogether. If I had been left anything at all I resolved to split it with Patsy or at least to give her some of it.

“Meantime she was still out roaming the South, playing beer joints and small clubs, and Aunt Queen was desperately chasing after her by phone, trying to get her to come back so we could all face what Pops had done, whatever it was.

“Now let me return to the investigation.

“Regarding the mysterious letter, Mayfair Medical’s laboratory could find no discernible fingerprints on it and reported that the brand of paper was rare, marketed in Europe and not in the United States, the ink was India ink and that the writing did not indicate any pathology and might have been done by a woman or a man. They noted further that the writer had used a quill pen, pressing down uncommonly hard for such an instrument, implying that the letter writer had been extremely sure of himself.

“In other words, they could tell almost nothing about the letter. And it had been passed on to a true graphologist with our happy permission.

“As to the rest of our concerns, we had better luck.

“Mayfair Medical confirmed in short order that the DNA collected from the residue in the Hermitage matched the DNA in the hair found in Rebecca’s trunk. The materials were very old but there had been an abundance of both and the testing had been simple.

“Aunt Queen now felt certain that Rebecca had met her death at Manfred’s hands, and that my dreams weren’t entirely the work of a diseased mind, if she’d ever had any doubt in the matter.

“I cleaned all those cameos found in Rebecca’s trunk and the cameos I’d taken from the island. These I placed in the china cabinet on the first floor with a display card, explaining they were gifts from Manfred Blackwood to a woman with whom he had been passionately in love. I explained the connection between Rebecca’s name and the theme of the cameos, and I felt in so doing—in making this display for the public eye—I had done right by Rebecca.

“After long and intense discussion involving Aunt Queen, Jasmine and me (Aunt Queen had been bedridden since the night of Pops’ burial), we agreed that we would include in the tour information that the Old Man, Manfred, was believed to have murdered a young woman with whom he was romantically involved, and her remains had only recently been discovered and properly interred.