That bed too was untouched. The coverlet was as smooth as glass. Like Mr. Nicholas’. And there was no one in the chairs.

Suddenly very frightened, she listened to the house around her. Surely if Miss Livia had been taken down to the doctor’s surgery in the night, there’d be a message left in the kitchen! But this wasn’t her day; Mr. Nicholas wouldn’t have known she was coming in. Well, then, someone would have mentioned it at services on Sunday morning. Eager to gossip—

Going to the long study at the end of the gallery, which Mr. Nicholas and Miss Livia shared, Mrs. Trepol knocked and waited, then reached for the knob as she had twice before.

And then fright turned suddenly to terror. She quickly drew her hand back, bringing it to her flat chest almost protectively, her heart thudding uncomfortably beneath her fingertips.

She stood there for several seconds, staring at the shut door, her voice refusing to call Mr. Nicholas’ name, her hand refusing to reach again for the brass knob.

Whatever was behind that door, it was something she couldn’t face, not alone, not with her heart hammering like it was going to jump out of her chest and run away.

She turned and fled down the stairs, stumbling on the old, worn treads, nearly falling headfirst in her haste, thinking only of the safety of the kitchen but not stopping there, rushing down the passage, on into the early sunlight and back the way she’d come, toward the village and Dr. Hawkins. Only then did she remember her coat, but nothing would have taken her back into that house. Shivering, on the verge of tears, driven by uncertainty, she ran heavily and awkwardly through the gardens, heedless of the cabbages, and towards the copse of trees where the path to the village began.

What was left of the family gathered in the drawing room for a drink when everyone else had finally gone home, but conversation was stilted, uneasy, as if they were strangers meeting for the first time and had yet to find common ground. The truth was, they felt like strangers. In the circumstances. Unsettled, uncomfortable. Isolated by their thoughts.

Then Stephen said abruptly, “Why do you suppose they did it?”

There was an odd silence. No one, thank God, had asked that all the long day! Not through the services nor the burials nor the reception at the Hall afterward, where friends and villagers had mingled, talking in subdued voices. Remembering Olivia and Nicholas, recalling some small incident or ordinary encounter, a conversation—all safely in the past. Avoiding the how and why of death, as if by tacit agreement. Avid curiosity dwelt in their eyes, but they were sensitive to the delicacy of the situation. Suicides.

No one had spoken of the poems, either.

Susannah said quickly, “What business is it of ours? They’re dead. Let that be the end of it.”