“Well,” she finished brusquely. “At the end of the day, I think you should come to bed.”

21

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

Sir Michael sat erect, motionless, in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. The sound traveled to him through the walls.

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

He gave no indication that he heard it, no visible sign. But he heard it. It completely occupied his attention. It sparked his imagination. He sat with his eyes open, gazing ahead. Imagining. The mahogany desk before him hunkered hugely in the unlighted room. The carved ram’s heads on its pilasters stared as the Great Man stared.

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

It was coming from the floor above him. From the room just above him, his daughter’s room. He imagined that it was the frame of her bed, clicking as it strained at the pegs of its ancient joins.

He sat without moving, his lips slightly parted. Sat tall and precise. He had been sitting like that for over an hour now. In the study, with the door closed, the lights off, the room growing darker and darker. He had sat and sat like that as night had come.

He had removed the box from the bottom drawer, removed the pistol from the box. The box stood open on the desktop blotter, the tray with the cigars and the silver lighter lay next to it. Next to that lay the gun. And he supposed that was what he was gazing at—that he was gazing at the gun, but in truth he hardly saw it. He was just gazing, listening, imagining, his hands folded in his lap, motionless.

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

And there was another sound now, another sound above the sound of the straining bed. There was the sound of voices. His daughter’s voice, her lover’s. Their whispers, groans. Scrabbling in the wall like squirrels. Coming down to him.

Sir Michael did not move. Sat with his hands clasped. Gazed. Now he did see the gun on the blotter. He focused on it. The blunt gun.

Suddenly, Sophia cried out above him. It was unmistakable noise. She cried out twice, once harshly as if in anguish and denial, once again as if in triumph and release.

Sir Michael sniffed. The ticking had stopped.

After that, it was quiet. It was quiet all over the house for a long time. Minute after minute passed, and Sir Michael didn’t move and there was no sound in the house anywhere. Sir Michael didn’t know how much time passed. Half an hour, an hour, he wasn’t sure. He sat without moving. He thought about his wife, Ann. It was twenty years since she had died, but the thought of her was still wrenching to him.

After that long time, sitting like that, without thinking at all, he picked up the pistol. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.