“Maybe you’re just plain lucky,” Sewell said, his eyes resting on me thoughtfully. He polished his glasses on a gleaming white handkerchief. “Or maybe the kids were so young that just breaking in was enough thrill. Maybe they got scared halfway through. Who knows.”

“Tell me a few things.” I sat on one of the white beds and he sat down opposite me. The broken window (the storm this morning had soaked the curtains) made the room anything but intimate. I propped the broom against my knee and put the dustpan on the floor. “What happened with this house after Jane died? Who came in here? Who has keys?”

“Jane died in the hospital, of course,” Sewell began. “When she first went in, she still thought she might come home, so she had me hire a maid to come in and clean… empty the garbage, clear the perishables out of the refrigerator, and so on. Jane’s neighbor to the side, Torrance Rideout-you know him?-he offered to keep her yard mowed for her, so he has a key to the tool and storage room, that’s the door at the back of the carport.”

I nodded.

“But that’s the only key he had,” the lawyer said, getting back on target. “Then a few days later, when Jane learned-she wasn’t coming home…”

“I visited her in the hospital, and she never said a word to me,” I murmured.

“She didn’t like to talk about it. What was there to say? she asked me. I think she was right. But anyway… I kept the electricity and gas-the heat is gas, everything else is electric-hooked up, but I came over here and unplugged everything but the freezer-it’s in the toolroom and it has food in it-and I stopped the papers and started having Jane’s mail kept at the post office, then I’d pick it up and take it to her, it wasn’t any trouble to me, my mail goes to the post office, too…”