It was a family portrait, taken on a wildflower-covered hill on a beautiful cloudy day. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton—or should I say John and Laura—stood in the background. In front of them were two young teens: a boy with neatly cut dark brown hair and brown eyes like Laura’s, and a teenage girl who was beautiful enough to be a movie star. She had long waves of golden hair, perfectly chiseled cheekbones, and glinting, intelligent blue eyes.

“That’s our family,” Laura said. Her voice was strained, like she was worried I wouldn’t approve. “Barrett—he’s sixteen. He goes away to school, to St. Paul’s in Thurmond, about a three-hour drive from here. He’s been in Italy with one of his friends, but he flies back in a few weeks.”

“Oh,” I said. “Nice.”

She drew a deep breath. “And that’s Agatha.”

“Does she go away to school, too?”

For a moment, no one answered, but when I looked up at Laura, she smiled almost painfully. “No.”

Oh no. Oh God. She was dead.

Why did everyone have to be dead?

The silence that followed was agonizing. Finally, it was broken by Laura’s shaky inhalation.

“Agatha is upstairs,” she said. “Would you like to meet her?”

CHAPTER

4

I FOLLOWED JOHN and Laura down the long wallpapered corridor and into the grand main hall, with its two-story ceiling of ornamental plaster. I was vaguely aware of faces staring at me from paintings, of glass-doored cabinets packed with figurines—a flock of delicate birds, a squadron of tiny ballerinas, collections of vases and teacups and tiny bowls—but they passed into my head and then out, like snapshots of things I’d seen long ago.

Why couldn’t Agatha just come downstairs to say hi? I tried not to dwell on the question, just as I tried not to dwell on the fact that I was pretty sure I’d asked Mr. Albright if the Suttons had children and he hadn’t said yes.

I don’t know . . . maybe he hadn’t said no, either.

But he definitely hadn’t said yes.

Two separate sets of stairs wound dramatically up opposite walls and met on a shared landing. Laura paused at the base of one set of the stairs. “To the right, here, is our bedroom. Our offices, as well—and straight ahead you can see the library. The door behind the stairs leads to the service hall, which you won’t be needing to visit.”

Shows what you know, Tam, I thought.

She looked over her shoulder. “And obviously, back the way we came, you saw the kitchens, the dining room, and the breakfast room. Plus the drawing room, the music room, and the sitting room.”

Did I see those things? It was all a blur.

When the four of us reached the top of the stairs, I could see that the landing branched off into three halls: left, right, and center.