She was stacking a dozen or so books in two neat columns on the floor. She paused and again her tranquil brow creased. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Scrounging around for something to read. I thought maybe…”

“I mean here. In this house.”

“I…” I clamped my mouth shut, succumbing to a mute sense of panic. According to no less an authority than Joseph Grady, what one did under Chatterton’s quirky roof was not to be bandied about; indeed, he had made it emphatically clear that silence was requisite.

“I’m working for your father.”

“Doing what?” She continued to rummage among the books, stretching, bending, twisting her torso shamelessly; all her parts engaged with elegant grace. Then she turned and tilted her head to one side and gave me an absent, reassuring smile that obliterated my defenses before they were properly constructed. “You can tell me,” she said. “I don’t talk.”

“I play the tuba,” I told her.

“In his rinky-dink band of brothers?”

She was not impressed. Perhaps I needed to intensify my contribution to her daddy’s enterprise, whatever it was. “I’m also doing a study on suicide.”

She stiffened. Two books exploded out of her hands and landed thuddingly at her feet.

“You know why?” she asked in a flat voice.

I shrugged. “Because he wants me to. He didn’t confide…”

“He didn’t tell you about my mother?”

My eyes went to the picture on the sewing machine table.

“Is that your mother?”

“Yeah. She killed herself.”

That kind of jolted me.

Valerie stared down at the fallen books. “Why’d he hire you?” she asked.

“Well, maybe because I did a study about a suicide. A young man, seventeen.”

With infinite care she restacked the books, aligning the spines with the tips of her fingers. “This kid,” she said, “who did himself in… why’d he do it?”

“I think he was just overwhelmed. The world was too much for him.”

“I think that was the trouble with my mother.”

“When did she…?”

“I was thirteen. Three years ago. September 2001.” She hesitated, then, “I think my father still feels guilty about it.”

“Why?”

“Because she gave him certain signs. He never picked up on them. Like the first time she tried. The sixth of August, 1995.” She picked up a book, put it down. “So maybe he wants to prove it wasn’t his fault—that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. Or maybe he just doesn’t understand.”

“There was no hint why? No suicide note?”