Maxine’s next attempt to further probe Mrs. Whitlock for answers slipped away when the entire entourage began spilling into the room in procession. Morning greetings were exchanged, and, by the hand of the matriarch, breakfast was served by the fire.

Only after the meal was done and the other guests were sitting lazily did Maxine manage to attain a fresh clue to the mystery that, for reasons she could not comprehend, was becoming an obsession with her. Her discovery came when she pushed through the swinging door of the kitchen to ask Mrs. Whitlock if she could help in any way.

At that instant, Mrs. Whitlock was exiting the door that led from the large kitchen to the back gardens. She hadn’t noticed Maxine entering the kitchen, but Maxine had noticed Mrs. Whitlock reaching behind the large china hutch, where she retrieved a key.

Exhilarated by the extent of what she might learn this morning, Maxine scuttled across the kitchen’s marble floor and crouched at the base of one of the sparkling windows.

Mrs. Whitlock marched briskly along the stone walkway. When she crossed onto the snow, she revealed that she was carting the kitchen’s dustbin with her, lugging the cumbersome thing by its rim. Maxine watched this elegant woman plunk the dustbin down onto the snowbank. The matriarch began to struggle with the cabin’s door. Perhaps the old lock had shrunken from the cold and thus was refusing Mrs. Whitlock’s secret key, but eventually it gave. The old woman took up the dustbin and disappeared inside the shack.

Maxine sped to the sitting room, shoehorned her slight frame onto the sofa next to Xavier, and then shoehorned her way into the conversation. When Mrs. Whitlock re-entered the room some time later, she did not appear to suspect that anything was amiss. But the old woman’s face was flushed. Now and again she reached one of her tapered hands to adjust the bun in her hair, which was visibly looser than it had been at breakfast. Mr. Whitlock took no notice of his wife’s rather haggard state, nor did any of his sons, or their spouses. This fact pained Maxine. It saddened her to think of the endless, exhausting chores Mrs. Whitlock must have faced daily in order to keep the great house in such gleaming condition.

Greater than her empathy, however, was Maxine’s thirst to uncover why the old woman went to such lengths to keep the tiny cabin a secret.