“Wired? Oh, you mean the burglar alarm system. Yes. And it was set—at least for downstairs. We’ve had so many false alarms over the years, however, that we had the upper floors disconnected.”

“What do you mean, ’false alarms’?”

“Well, sometimes we’d forget and get up at night to open a window. The racket is terrifying. So now when we set the system, only the downstairs doors and windows are activated.”

“Which means Grace couldn’t have left by the downstairs doors or windows without tripping an alarm…” A thought struck him. “Wait—all these systems have delays so you can arm it and get out the door without setting it off. That must have been what she did. She just walked out.”

“But her key to the system is still upstairs on her dresser. And all her clothes are in her closets.”

“May I see?”

“By all means, do come and look,” Nellie said, rising. They all trooped upstairs.

Jack found the small, frilly-feminine bedroom nauseating. Everything seemed to be pink or have a lace ruffle, or both.

The pair of French doors at the far end of the room claimed his attention immediately. He opened them and found himself on a card-table-sized balcony rimmed with a waist-high wrought iron railing, overlooking the backyard. A good dozen feet below was a rose garden. In a shady corner sat the playhouse Vicky had mentioned; it looked far too heavy to have been dragged under the window, and it would have flattened all the rose bushes if it had. Anyone wanting to climb up here had to bring a ladder with him or be one hell of a jumper.

“The police find any marks in the dirt down there?”

Nellie shook her head. “They thought someone might have used a ladder, but there was no sign. The ground is so hard and dry, with no rain—”

Eunice the maid appeared at the door. “Telephone, mum.”

Nellie excused herself and left Jack and Gia alone in the room.

“A locked room mystery,” he said. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes.”

He got down on his knees and examined the carpet for specks of dirt, but found none. He looked under the bed; only a pair of slippers there.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for clues. I’m supposed to be a detective, remember?”

“I don’t think a woman’s disappearance is anything to joke about,” Gia said, the frost returning to her words now that Nellie was out of earshot.

“I’m not joking, nor am I taking it lightly. But you’ve got to admit the whole thing has the air of a British drawing room mystery about it. I mean, either Aunt Grace had an extra alarm key made and ran off into the night in her nightie—a pink and frilly one, I’ll bet—or she jumped off her little balcony here in that same nightie, or someone climbed up the wall, knocked her out, and carried her off without a sound. None of those explanations seem too plausible. “