Mahler quietly greeted Carol Durand as he and Eden entered the interview room. She sat stiffly behind the table and looked toward Mahler without meeting his eyes. Despite her stillness, something was alive in her presence, as if whatever made her rigid was vibrating inside.

Mahler introduced himself and Eden. “Thank you for coming all this way, Ms. Durand. Did you have any trouble finding a place to stay?”

Durand shook her head.

Mahler waited a beat to see if she would speak. “I understand you’ve had a chance to identify your daughter…Elise.”

“My ex-husband gave her that name,” Durand said softly. “After the Beethoven piece. Sebastien only cared about one thing: music. He thought if he named his daughter Elise, he would care about her.”

“It’s a pretty name,” Eden said.

“When she was a little girl, she’d hum ‘Für Elise’ to herself. Over and over, because she knew it drove me crazy. When she grew older, she hated people bringing up the song—as if she’d never thought of it and they were the first to tell her. Sometimes, when we’d meet someone, a new teacher or a parent of another child, and they’d say something about the song, Elise would pretend she didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Mahler leaned forward. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“She called two weekends ago. She mostly talked about her job. Said they really liked her.”

“Did she say if she was having any problems?”

“Problems?”

“Outside her job. With friends or a boyfriend?”

“My daughter always had problems, Mr. Mahler. Elise was bipolar. After Sebastien left, she was a handful. She ran around the house, playing one game after another. At parties, she scared the other children and wasn’t invited back.”

Eden opened her notepad. “What about recently? Did she talk about any difficulties in her life the past few weeks?”

“No, as long as she remembered to take her medicine, she didn’t have any trouble.”

“What was her mood in that phone call? Did she sound worried?”

“She was excited and talked too fast. She had medicine for that, too. When she was a little girl and got too excited, she’d sit in one place to calm herself down. She’d rock back and forth and say the same thing a hundred times. Anything that rhymed. ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.’ Again and again, until you wanted to scream.”

“Another witness told us that Elise seemed fearful lately,” Mahler said. “Did she say anything to you about something she was afraid of?”