Every single contact leaves a trace of the person involved.

The people involved.

That family. He’d seen some messed-up individuals in his time, but never so many, so tightly bound together in a shared darkness. Sharing the darkness between them, gleefully at times, then reluctantly, but always coming back to the family’s own moral code, passed down from one generation to the next.

It made him think of David Kepple, and their conversation in the art gallery. Even he, the grandchild, still shared that interest: his precious paintings of decomposition. How they tied in with Adeline’s view of herself as a living corpse. And what was it he’d said? Yes, something about narrative. How narratives could no longer be trusted,

There is no single truth, only a mist of possibilities.

Something like that.

And then: beware of false endings.

Hobbes made a noise. A sigh, a groan. He broke away from his mood a little. He turned to look at the blue and yellow dress he’d stolen from Bridlemere. He’d taken it down from the wall and now it lay draped over the back of a chair. He’d followed this object for a week and a half, hoping to find the person who had once worn it, or at least its original version. Hopefully, an examination of Adeline’s remains would bring an end to the story, especially if they could find dental records. Despite Kepple’s insistence, there might yet be certainty in the world.

Still, the doubts remained. In the well-remembered words of Jack Collingworth: Always doubt, keep asking questions, even when all seems done. That had been one of his initial lessons, back when he’d first taken on Hobbes as an acolyte. And only yesterday he’d still been giving out advice: ‘Sometimes all it takes is brushing away a single layer of dust.’ All good stuff, if you knew how to apply it.

Hobbes studied once more the two items he’d brought with him from Bridlemere. One was the framed playbill that had adorned the chimney breast where Adeline Graves had been buried.

Why the chimney breast? It didn’t seem right. Why not bury the body in the garden, or under the shed? Or, better yet, take it far afield, out to Epping Forest?

But the house was important. Perhaps they wanted to keep the girl’s spirit there.

The other item was a copy of the burial ritual he’d found in the pile of manuscripts in Leonard’s old room, on the second floor of the house. Rosamund Kepple had been right: her father had kept the script, six copies in fact. It was only four pages long, and Hobbes had already read through it once that night. Here were the words to be spoken aloud by each member of the family, whenever the annual ritual of the dress took place. There were lines for Mary Estelle, for Nicholas, for Rosamund and Camilla, for Leonard himself. He recognized the words that Camilla had muttered, at the end of her interview: Here we lay to rest the body of Adeline Graves.