“I’d hate to see day-trippers wandering through here,” Susannah said, “staring like spectators at a hanging, then eating their pasties and cider out on the lawns overlooking the sea.” She shuddered. “It’s horrid.”

“More horrid if this place is lost,” Stephen declared. “She’s a major English poet, for God’s sake!”

“When was the last time you were in Stratford? Or Word-worth’s home in Grasmere?” Rachel asked. “Empty, musty, travesties of houses. Like mummified bodies, on view because of vulgar curiosity. I don’t want to see this place kept like a waxwork long beyond its usefulness, genteelly crumbling at the edges. I want—to be finished with it.”

“Or is it yourself you’re thinking about?” Stephen demanded. “Is it your own secrets they might find, browsing around in here?”

Rachel looked at him coldly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That all of us have private lives, and one day biographers will be delving into them, laying them bare in the name of scholarship. To learn more about Olivia, how she lived, who her family was—that’s the lot of us—how she came to be a poet in the first place.”

“That’s a dreadful thought!” Daniel exclaimed. There were skeletons in his family closet that he wouldn’t care to see rattled. Name him an Irishman who didn’t have them!

“The price of fame,” Susannah said sourly, her fair, pretty face twisting into a grimace. “And an even more cogent reason for stopping them in their tracks. By selling the house. None of us ever expected to live here anyway. Olivia knew that, she could have arranged for her own museum if that was what she truly wanted. She didn’t.”

There was another silence. Then Cormac, used to board meetings and finding consensus, used to making choices, said, “Right, I take it you’re three to one? For the sale of this property? Stephen can do as he pleases with Olivia’s personal papers—manuscripts, letters, contracts, and so on. That ought to satisfy inquisitive scholars. Sad to say, I doubt there’s much of a literary estate. She was young. And poets aren’t . . . prolific.”

No, Rachel thought, watching him. You’ve already gone through her papers, haven’t you? You were here first. Did you take any of them, I wonder? Were you afraid for your reputation in the City? Or were you merely curious about your stepsister’s secrets?

“Livia seldom wrote to any of us,” she said aloud. “Or to anyone else, as far as I know. Perhaps Stephen might want whatever letters we’ve kept of hers? For the collection?” But not Nicholas’ letters, not those.

“Did she keep a diary?” Daniel asked, and as every face swiveled to stare at him, he added, “Well, surprising numbers of people do! Lonely people, especially. Invalids—” He stopped.

“No,” Stephen said shortly. “I’m sure she didn’t.”