An elaborately embroidered screen blocks off the deep brick fireplace, and I don’t see any indication it’s ever used. I don’t smell the stale acrid odor of old burned wood and soot. I don’t see sawdust, firewood or firelogs, and I think how dreary. Even on a sunny day it would be. There’s no television and I can’t find a sound system or speakers anywhere, and there are no magazines or newspapers. Not that I can imagine reading in here or relaxing with a friend.

The room is vast and unlived in, and as I stand silently and look around I detect a vague spectrum of other odors. Musty upholstery. Mothballs. Dust is on every surface and suspended in the overhead light, and I entertain stronger doubts about Chanel Gilbert’s housekeeper.

THE LIVING ROOM hasn’t been used or cleaned in quite a while, I tell Marino as I wander toward a menagerie of antique silver animals arranged on a pedestal table.

A horse, a grouse, a bison, a fish with glassy eyes, intricately handcrafted but tarnished and cold, and I see nothing whimsical. The decor is splendid but static and impersonal except for what I think of as talismans, symbols and tools of divination, and the clocks. Several are as old as the house including a lantern clock and a Swiss Gothic one.

“I can’t imagine the housekeeper has been keeping this place up properly,” I add, and I’m keenly mindful of the tactical team and what it’s doing.

“The master bedroom’s way in the back if you keep following the hallway.” Marino walks to a window and pushes aside a panel of the deep red French jacquard curtains. “It’s a long haul to the front door if you’re in bed and someone rings the bell.” He looks out at the dark rainy afternoon, and I hear the downpour and the wind but nothing else.

“I don’t know what they pay Elsa Mulligan or how many hours she works but they aren’t getting their money’s worth.” I continue making the point because Marino isn’t interested in my domestic acumen, and he should be.

I try to envision Elsa Mulligan based on how she’s been described, imagining her large framed glasses, her spiky black hair. Hyde commented that his first reaction was he assumed she was a family friend from Los Angeles, and she seems an odd choice for a housekeeping job. Clearly she isn’t thorough or industrious, at least not about cleaning. If she shows up at eight o’clock every morning then what does she do while she’s here? What she told Hyde strikes me as yet one more story we’re supposed to believe that isn’t adding up.