It wasn’t until a little after nine that the camera responded to activity inside Willow Rest. A panel truck was moving slowly across the frame. It came to a stop in front of what Gurney recognized as the Spalter family plot (or, to use Paulette Purley’s term, “property”). Two men in bulky overalls emerged from the truck, opened its rear doors, and began unloading a number of dark, flat, rectangular objects. These were soon revealed to be folding chairs, which the men set up with evident care in two rows facing an elongated area of dark earth—the open grave intended for Mary Spalter. After making some adjustments in the position of the chairs, one of the men erected a portable podium at the end of the grave, while the other retrieved a large broom from the truck and began sweeping some of the snow away from the grassy space between the chairs and the grave.

As this work was progressing, a small white car pulled into view and stopped behind the truck. Although he couldn’t be sure of the face, impossibly tiny in the video frame, Gurney had a feeling that the woman who got out of the car, bundled in a fur jacket and fur hat, gesturing as though she was giving instructions to the workmen, was Paulette Purley. After some more straightening of the chairs, the men got back in the truck and drove out of the frame.

The woman stood by herself, looking around the plot as if giving everything a final once-over, then got back in her car, drove it past the open grassy area, and parked next to some cold-withered rhododendrons. The video continued for another minute or so before stopping. It restarted at a point twenty-eight minutes later in real time—at 9:54 a.m.—with the arrival of a hearse and a number of other cars.

A man in a black overcoat came from the passenger side of the hearse, and the woman Gurney figured was Paulette Purley reemerged from her car. They met, shook hands, spoke briefly. The man walked back toward the hearse, gesturing as he went. Half a dozen dark-suited men got out of a limo, opened the rear door of the hearse, and slowly removed a casket, which they then carried with practiced smoothness to the open grave and placed on a supporting structure that held it at ground level.

At some signal Gurney did not detect, the mourners began coming out of the other cars parked in a row along the lane behind the hearse. Wrapped in winter coats and hats, they made their way to the two rows of chairs alongside the grave, gradually filling all but two of the sixteen seats. The two left vacant were those on either side of Mary Spalter’s triplet cousins.