Neils Vander, Benton Wesley, and I drove west toward the University of Richmond, a splendid collection of Georgian buildings surrounding a lake between Three Chopt and River roads. It was from here that Robyn Naismith had graduated with honors many years before, and her love of the area had been such that she had later bought her first home two blocks from the campus.

Her former small brick house with its mansard roof was set on a half-acre lot. I was not surprised that the site should have been ideal for a burglar: The yard was dense with trees, the back of the house dwarfed by three gigantic magnolias that completely blocked the sun. I doubted the neighbors on either side could have seen or heard anything at Robyn Naismith’s house, had they been home: The morning Robyn was murdered, her neighbors were at work.

Due to the circumstances that had placed the house on the market ten years ago, the price had been low for the neighborhood. We’d discovered the university had decided to buy it for faculty housing, and had kept much of what was left inside it. Robyn had been unmarried, an only child, and her parents in northern Virginia did not want her furnishings. I suspected they could not bear to live with or even look at them. Professor Sam Potter, a bachelor who taught German, had been renting the house from his employer since its purchase.

As we gathered camera equipment, containers of chemicals, and other items from the trunk, the back door opened. An unwholesome-looking man greeted us with an uninspired good-morning.

“You need a hand with that?” Sam Potter came down the steps, sweeping his long, receding black hair out of his eyes and smoking a cigarette. He was short and pudgy, his hips wide like a woman’s.

“If you want to get the box here,’ Vander said.

Potter dropped the cigarette to the ground and didn’t bother stamping it out. We followed him up the steps, and into a small kitchen with old avocado-green appliances and dozens of dirty dishes. He led us through the dining. roam;, with laundry piled on the table, then into the-living room at the front of the house. I set down what I was carrying and tried not to register my shock as I recognized me console television connected to a cable outlet in the wall, the draperies; the brown leather couch, the parquet floor, now scuffed and as dull as mud. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, and Potter began to talk as he carelessly collected them.

“As you can see, I’m not domestically inclined,” he said, his German accent distinct. “I will stick these things on the dining room table for now. There,” he said when he returned. “Anything else you would like me to move?”