“Of course he did.” An unnerving suspicion niggles me: has Mrs. Waugh come to decide that she knows as much, or perhaps even more, about James Wolfe than the man himself understands?

“He wanted to leave space for unknown forces to play a part…The more I study the letters, the more I see him as a man not afraid to admit he’s ambivalent, comfortable with self-doubt, and frail of mental as well as physical constitution.”

“I told you I’m delicate.”

“Changeability was Wolfe’s friend…and he possessed a strange kind of ambition…he trusted not in titles or in status, but in his own keen discernment of even the most evanescent opportunity….”

“Look here, I wish I were still that man you describe. But please don’t—are you looking at me with pity?”

“I feel,” says Mrs. Waugh, “alone with James Wolfe in all the world, as if nobody cares about him right at this moment as I do. I feel, after reading and following and casting runes on his behalf…”

“Rune-casting?”

“And drawing that tarot card—have you still got it? The five of cups…”

I take the melancholy man out of my pocket and place him between my fork and the sugar dispenser.

“I feel Wolfe has been waiting for me to find him, and talk to him, and help him understand what the hell happened.”

I feel uncommonly exposed by Mrs. Waugh’s gaze. The woman almost makes me miss Sophie’s tactics of argument and neglect. I stare at the melancholy man with the cups. “What’s the tarot card supposed to mean?”

“It’s a card of loss, there’s no doubt. But if I could talk to James Wolfe, I’d tell him—no, I’d ask him—what’s in those two upright cups behind his desolate form as he stands on the riverbank? What remains and has not been wasted? Did I tell you I drew you a second card?” She shows me a young man dancing away from the sea in his too-tall helmet, balancing two pieces of gold in an infinite loop of green ribbon.

“The two of pentacles. I didn’t give it to you because it seems not like Wolfe at all. Too happy…somebody else’s card maybe? Do you recognize it? I’ve no idea what it means.”

“Neither do I.” Although the happy card in fact does remind me of someone. “What about the rune-casting?”