The lamp was also out of reach, but that was not a problem as James intended to keep it on all night. He had made sure that his knife was close by, and his plan was to hold it lightly in his fist. If he became sleepy, he would squeeze the blade hard enough to wake himself up with the pain.

A little blood was nothing if it meant proving to himself that he was not a murderer.

Much of the afternoon was a blur. Cordelia returned to Cornwall Gardens and helped Alastair get Sona into bed, a pillow propped behind her back, cool cloths for her eyes. She held her mother’s hands while Sona cried and repeated over and over that she could not bear to think that Elias would now never see his third child. That he had died alone, without his family, without knowing he was loved.

Cordelia tried not to look too much at Alastair; he was her big brother, and it pained her to see him as helpless as she was. She nodded along as Sona spoke, and told her mother it would all be all right in the end. At some point Risa arrived with a small valise holding a few of Cordelia’s things and took over. Cordelia could only be grateful as Risa gave Sona tea laced with laudanum. Soon her mother would sleep, and forget for a while.

She and Alastair went into the drawing room and sat side by side on the divan, silent and shocked, like the survivors of a shipwreck. After some time, Lucie arrived, breathless and tearful—it seemed James had indeed sent a runner to the Institute carrying Cordelia’s request. Alastair told Cordelia that he could remain and receive visitors, if any came; she and Lucie should go upstairs and rest. They all knew few would come to pay condolences: Elias had been neither well known nor well liked.

Lucie went to get tea while Cordelia changed from her dress into a nightgown—quite a few of her old clothes were still folded away in drawers. She clambered into bed. Though the sun had not yet set, she felt exhausted.

When Lucie returned, Cordelia cried a bit on her warm, ink-smelling shoulder. Then Lucie poured her tea, and together they reminisced about Elias—not Elias as Cordelia had come to know him, but the father she’d always thought she had. Lucie recalled the way he had shown them where the best berries were to be found in the hedges at Cirenworth, or the day he had taken them horseback riding on a Devon beach.

When the sun began to slip below the rooftops, Lucie rose reluctantly and kissed the top of Cordelia’s head. “I am so sorry, my dear,” she said. “You know if you need me, I will always be here.”