A question had gotten itself stuck in my mind and I thought I might find the answer inside Hewett’s home. It would run me no additional risk with the law to look around. After all, I was now an intruder whether I examined things or not.

I went to the front door, grabbed its inside knob with my pocket handkerchief, turned it as I gently pulled, leaving the door just slightly ajar. If caught, I could say I’d discovered the door that way and had entered the house out of concern for Gail. I didn’t know the law, but perhaps that would make a difference.

Out of sheer curiosity, I first explored the bedrooms of the deceased, hoping to find some insight into their strange relationship. Martha’s room was a shrine to the nondescript. Her closet had several brand-new old-looking dresses. Two puce cardigans dominated the top drawer of her dresser, where I also found a rectangular tin originally intended for shortbread cookies. I opened it and leafed through Martha’s personal documents: a birth certificate, a list of her important phone numbers, some contracts for two small personal loans back when she and Gail had lived in Cincinnati, an Avondale library card, a red ribbon for second prize in a bake sale.

Russ’s room was a continuation of the Russ story. Light pine walls and bed, gray plaid bedspread. Photographs of Russ having caught a fish of modest size. Half his face visible in a shot of Joe E. Brown mugging for the grand opening of something.

Russ had a night table. I opened the drawer. There was a jar of Vaseline petroleum jelly. Rubbers wrapped like shoelaces, with a paper band around the middle. A book called The Decameron and a digest-sized edition of Snap magazine.

I went to Gail’s room, where I believed I’d find the answer to my question, one that Professor Haffner had posed at our lunch together.

This young woman, what else has she written, he’d demanded, has it all been in this style? His voice had put mocking quotes around “style.”

I stepped over to the orange crates, which were filled to the brim with her compositions. Atop one crate were sheaves of blank score paper, at the ready should she be inspired.

Beneath them was a worn folio entitled Bach Two-Part Inventions. Below it, a collection of Clementi sonatinas. Preludes by Liszt and Chopin. Vocal and piano-reduction scores of Turandot and La Bohème. Beethoven sonatas.

I went to another crate. Gilbert and Sullivan. Gershwin preludes. Tons of sheet music, with an emphasis on Jerome Kern. The Hits of Fats Waller. A Guide to Stride Piano. Trademark Stylizations of Teddy Wilson.

Yet another crate was filled with Debussy, Ravel, and myriad Russian composers famous and obscure.

I searched through the remainder of the crates, inside the piano bench, under the bed, in the closet.