Agatha was in the living room and was introduced to “my cousin—second or probably third, as his father’s the actual cousin.” Whereupon, Agatha stood aghast and agape. Melrose took note of “agape,” for it might come in handy if he got another goat.

“Cousin? Cousin?” She said it a third time: “Cousin?” Being in locked-in-cousin syndrome, she did not take the hand that Gerrard politely extended. “But you—” she addressed Melrose, “—don’t have—”

“A cousin? Oh, but I do. I’ve just never mentioned the family. The Gerrards of London.” As if all London were bowled over by the name. “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen them.”

Gerrard should not have taken “clever” out of the mix, for he was as good at filling in blanks, at making deductions from minimal information, as Marshall Trueblood.

“Dad was afraid you’d forgotten him. You know, Ben.”

“Forget Ben Gerrard? Never. Not in a million years. Though it’s certainly bad of me that I’ve seen so little of you all. How long’s it been …?” Melrose looked at Gerrard for help.

“Dad says maybe twelve years.”

“Oh, surely not. A few London visits ago, I’m sure I stopped by to say hello. Your family being my only blood relations, after all.”

Although Agatha was physically immobile, Melrose knew “blood” would have her mind racing at the speed of light, or at least of the wind that had raked the wheat fields around Dorothy’s cottage and spun Dorothy and Toto into the sky, as it now threatened to pull all of the beautiful objects in Ardry End with it, together with the house itself, which it would then drop plunk into the Munchkinland of North London.

“If it was all them years ago, you never even seen—saw—three of us kids—” Gerrard turned to Agatha with that bit of divvying-up-the-inheritance news, and then made it worse: “There’s six altogether.” Back to Melrose. “Let me tell you, to live in a place like this—oh, no disrespect, Cousin Melrose. We ain’t lookin’ forward to—you know—none of us wants to see you—” He put his hand to his neck in a throttling gesture. “You know.”

Wrong. One of us does and she’s sitting right opposite you.

Gerrard went on to talk about the size of Ardry End, how grand it was, all of these big windows and fires and mantel-places. If horror could be said to double, triple, quadruple, like vodka and vermouth in a Demorney martini—if horror could move in waves coming more quickly upon them like the walking dead—Agatha’s expression moved from abject to absolute to all-engulfing as she drank what must have been her fourth sherry. Ruthven stood with the decanter ready with refills.

Melrose was gazing through the top of the high window at a moon that looked newly minted, wanting only a starry bow tie to join the party.