Pale gold damask draperies are drawn over the glass sliders, and I part the heavy satiny fabric. I look out at a narrow side yard hemmed in by a wrought-iron fence. Rain splashes deep puddles that are like small ponds, and rose petals litter the lawn like pastel confetti. The fence terminates at a tall dense boxwood hedge at the back of the property. I notice loose bricks and large stones, a hint of ruins possibly from an outbuilding in an earlier more gracious era, and I’m reminded of the people of New England. They’ll work around and build on the past. But they’ll never get rid of it.

Then I hear it again. A muffled thud. As if someone just slammed a door a floor below us in the cellar.

“What the hell was that?” Marino’s hand drops to his gun. “Stay here,” he orders me, as if I’d ever consider such a thing.

“I’m not staying anywhere alone in this house.” I follow him past the staircase, and he opens the door I saw him use this morning, flipping on lights.

“I’m checking,” he says.

“I’m right behind you.”

The wooden stairs leading down are very old and scuffed, and the walls are stone. I feel as if I’m descending into the bowels of an old English castle as I take one steep step at a time, slowly, pausing every other second and careful with my leg. The air is cool. I smell dust. I detect fluctuations in light and shadow as if clouds are passing over the sun. But there are no clouds down here. There’s no sun. The cellar is subbasement and there are no windows.

“What’s moving?” I ask Marino. “There’s a light barely moving on the wall.”

“I don’t know.” He’s in front of me with his gun drawn.

Ten steps and then a landing, and four more steps and we’re inside an empty windowless space of stone and plaster walls, and I scan stone-pillared archways and a rough stone floor covered with rush mats. Suspended by braided fabric cords from the high cave-like ceiling are ceramic funnel lamps, and the one closest to the bulkhead doors is swinging slightly.

We silently stare up at it, then at the double doors, the wood gray on this side, repainted many times, and I notice dried water spots. The doors were opened at some point when it was raining. They’re built into the wall about four feet off the ground and accessed by a stone ramp that is bone dry and very clean. I notice that the latch lock is modern and the key is in it. There’s no sign that the doors are alarmed, and Marino pushes them with a Tyvek-covered shoe. They don’t budge. He looks up at the lamp swaying imperceptibly now as if touched by a spirit or a draft.