I got up, poured myself a second cup of coffee, and retrieved a pen and the notebook I kept by the telephone for messages. Not, presumably, how actual investigators did things, but I would make do.

First, I thought, begin at the beginning. That was the open house, where I’d found the stationery with the drawing of the steeple. Then the dinner with the guest lecturer, and my brief, unplanned visit to the Old Mission Hotel. The next day, the lunchtime concert of the Kindertotenlieder, where I’d seated myself next to Kirstie, and she had commented on my physical resemblance to my father. Then, that evening—yesterday evening, I amended—dinner with the Van Gelders, and in the night, my dream, in which Kirstie and the guest lecturer had both featured, although in my dream, I noted, their roles had been reversed: Kirstie had been at the Old Mission Hotel, and the guest lecturer at the concert.

I looked up at the bay window for a moment. Could this all have really happened in the course of a few days? Certainly, events seemed to be building on themselves at a rate I had not personally experienced before.

But that was enough marveling at events, I told myself. I could use the day to decide how to proceed. First I considered the open house: Would it be helpful to return? I sipped my coffee and thought. No, I concluded. The real estate agent had already been there, confusing the situation with her props and scents—it had been a stroke of pure luck that I had found the stationery there. The guest lecturer, too, I dismissed, despite the grotesque thing in the briefcase and her strange prominence in my dream. She was nothing but a distraction; the reason being: she had nothing to do with my father.

Two possible avenues presented themselves. First, there was Kirstie’s declaration at the lunchtime concert of the Kindertotenlieder. True, it was not exactly incriminating to say I resembled my father; to be sure, anyone could have said it. But as I had conjectured on the Van Gelders’ sofa, it was also possible that there was something more there, some depth to be plumbed. Still, the more I turned things over in my mind, the more convinced I became that my second idea would be more fruitful: to return to the Old Mission Hotel. People were changeable, I thought; there was no telling what they might say if they thought it suited them. But a place held all its history without bias, like layers that sat one on top of the other. It could no more hide or delete them than a leopard could change its spots.

I took another sip of coffee. But how to return?