This high-ceilinged, marble-floored living room with its golden-brown paneling and overstuffed furnishings—tall, burgundy-swagged windows looking out on Fifth—should have had a welcoming warmth. Despite the lived-in, overstuffed furnishings, a museum-like stuffiness pervaded.

Over a wood-burning, decorative fireplace loomed a large gold-framed portrait of a very beautiful dark-haired woman whose features prefigured her late son’s; judging by the gown, I’d say the painting dated to the 1940s. For some reason I had a sense that when Vincent Colby’s mother died (because this was surely her), she’d taken the warmth with her.

Of course, the fireplace wasn’t lighted, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I was shown to the kind of bulging, tufted sofa you can get lost in, along with the change in your pockets, gold-and-brown brocade and decades old. Plump brown leather chairs at left and right completed a sitting area on an oriental carpet, in front of the not-roaring fireplace with the painting supervising.

And then it hit me—nothing in here had changed since this lovely woman passed. I would give ten-to-one odds on that. This felt not so much like the chamber had been preserved, rather frozen in place, like her warm hovering expression. Either the artist was a liar or that expression conveyed genuine compassion, and a touch of sadness.

Had she died too young to pass her humanity on to her son? Or was he just born that way, blind and crippled to right and wrong?

A voice behind me wasn’t what I expected.

“Mr. Hammer,” a husky female voice intoned, “are you sure this is wise?”

I craned my neck and saw Sheila Ryan, in a black sweater dress that I guess was her idea of mourning weeds. She was walking briskly toward me, her red hair bouncing off her shoulders. She seemed cross. Well, I had killed her boy friend.

She planted herself a ways behind me, as I turned to look at her from the sofa. Her arms were folded on the impressive shelf of her bosom. Her make-up was subdued, but the red lipstick on her bruised Bardot mouth brought to mind blood. The green eyes flashed.

She got some indignation going. “Hasn’t poor Mr. Colby suffered enough? What more would you put him through?”

I stood and moved around to her; we were rather small players in this orchestra pit with sitting areas, paintings worth thousands, and furniture that had been antiques decades ago, when the late lady of the house likely decorated it.

“Mr. Colby knows I’m coming,” I said. “I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed calm enough. Or at least weathering this well, considering. I told him he had a right to face me, if he wished. He said he did. So here I am.”

Her eyes bore into me. “It’s ill-advised.”