“Fiona said you accused her of using her keys to get in.”

Jenny’s eyes went to the ceiling. “I told you before: Fiona turns everything into a big deal. I didn’t accuse her of anything. I asked if she’d been in our house, because she’s the only one who had the keys. She said no. End of story. It wasn’t, like, some big drama.”

“You didn’t ring the local police?”

Jenny shrugged. “And say what? Like, ‘I can’t find my pen, and someone’s eaten some ham slices out of the fridge’? They’d have laughed. Anyone would’ve laughed.”

“Did you change the locks?”

“I changed the alarm code, just in case. I wasn’t going to get all the locks done when I didn’t even know if anything had happened.”

I said, “But even after you changed the alarm code, there were other incidents.”

She managed a little laugh, brittle enough to shatter against the air. “Oh my God, incidents? This wasn’t a war zone. You make it sound like someone was, like, bombing our sitting room.”

“I might have the details wrong,” I said smoothly. “What exactly did happen?”

“I don’t even remember. Nothing big. Could this wait? My head’s killing me.”

“We just need a few more minutes, Mrs. Spain. Could you set me straight on the details?”

Jenny put her fingertips gingerly to the back of her head, winced. I felt Richie shift his feet and glance at me, ready to leave, but I didn’t move. It’s a strange sensation, being played by the victim; it goes against the grain to look at the wounded creature we’re supposed to be helping, and see an adversary we need to outwit. I welcome it. Give me a challenge any day, over a mass of flayed pain.

After a moment Jenny let her hand fall back into her lap. She said, “Just the same kind of thing. Smaller, even. Like a couple of times the curtains in the sitting room were pulled back all wrong—I straighten them out when I hook them behind the holdback, so they’ll fall right, but a couple of times I found them all twisted up. See what I mean? It was probably the kids playing hide-and-seek in them, or—”

The mention of the children made her catch her breath. I said quickly, “Anything else?”

Jenny let her breath out slowly, got herself back. “Just … stuff like that. I keep candles out, so the house always smells nice—I’ve got a bunch of them in one of the kitchen cupboards, all different smells, and I change them every few days. Once in the summer, maybe August, I went to get the apple one and it was gone—and I knew I’d had it just the week before, I remembered seeing it. But Emma always loved that one, the apple one; she could have taken it to play with in the garden or somewhere, and forgotten it.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I don’t remember. It was months ago. It wasn’t a big deal.”