After they’d wandered upstairs Effie said, “No, he’s a bachelor.” In one room was a metal-framed bed and bare walls, in another a workbench of some kind and a strong smell of varnish, and in another a small four-poster bed with a plush quilt. “His mother comes to visit sometimes.”

Quietly Alma inspected every piece of furniture, every decoration and trinket, as if searching for something in particular. Back down in the den she stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly in a circle, her eyes closed, while Clara led the others back outside. Henry hung back. “What are you doing?”

She opened her eyes, holding the flashlight aloft. “Just imagining them here.” She smiled at him. “I don’t think I’d like them very much.”

Outside, the night was warm and still. “Can we go back now, friends?” Clara said. “I’m afraid the gin is wearing off.”

But Alma said, “Just one more,” and pointed to the big Victorian house diagonally across the street, three houses down from Aunt Lizzie’s. It was the only house like it on the street—purple in the daylight, now a looming black mass, only part of its slate roof, its widow’s walk, its lone tower exposed to the moonlight. It looked like a haunted castle.

“That’s where that old couple lived,” Effie said to Henry, “the one I told you about.”

“The Bishops,” Clara said. “That’s the Bishops’ house. Edith and—I don’t remember the man’s name.”

“Do you know them?”

“They’re old friends of my mother’s. I remember them from parties.”

Alma had started across the street already. They followed.

Wraparound porches surrounded the first and second floors, deep and impenetrably dark. They stepped carefully, blind, up the front steps. The door was locked, Alma announced. They felt around for the windows and tried them, but they were all locked too. Alma said she might have seen another way in, and they followed her back down the steps and around the side of the house, where, in the open moonlight, a metal staircase led up to the second-story porch. Alma climbed it and a moment later called down to them: “It’s open.”

They found her in a spacious, brightly lit room at the end of a narrow hallway. “The electricity’s working,” she said, and Clara cried, “Have you gone mad? Turn the lights out!” But Alma ignored her.