When I learned the circumstances of her death, and that I was still at her breast when my father found her, I had been about twelve years old. I remember that I pursed my lips and tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be nursed by her.

I had showed the hospital picture to Peter the first time he was here, and he had said, “I hope someday we’ll be taking pictures like that, Kay.”

Then he picked up the picture of my father and me that had been taken shortly before Daddy drove his car to that remote spot and disappeared into the Hudson River. Peter had said, “I remember your father very well, Kay. I was very interested in why and how he chose the plantings. We had a couple of interesting conversations.”

Still dabbing my eyes, I crossed to the mantel to get that picture to bring home, too.

That evening, with Peter’s assent, I moved his favorite picture of his mother, and one of him as a child with his mother and father, and placed them on the mantel over the fireplace in the parlor of our suite. I added those of my parents that I had brought from the apartment. “The grandparents,” Peter said. “Someday, we’ll tell our children all about them.”

“What should I tell them about him?” I asked, pointing to my father’s picture. “Should I say that this is the grandparent who quit on life and on his child?”

“Try to forgive him, Kay,” Peter said quietly.

“I do try,” I whispered, “but I can’t. I just can’t.”

I stared at the picture of my father and me, and although I know it seems fanciful, at that moment I felt as if he could hear what I was saying, and that he was reproaching me.

The next morning, just as the weatherman had promised, the sun was shining, and the temperature was up in the high forties. At nine o’clock, I heard the sound of barking outside, and realized that the cadaver dogs were back.

Nicholas Greco had made an appointment to see Barbara Krause in the prosecutor’s office at 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon. “I did not anticipate paying a call on you so soon,” he told her when he arrived.

“Nor, to be honest, did I expect to see you,” she said, “but you are certainly always welcome.”

“I am here because Philip Meredith has engaged me to look into the drowning death of his sister, Grace Meredith Carrington.”

Krause had long ago learned to keep a poker face in court, but could not conceal the expression of surprise on her face at this news. “Mr. Greco, if you could come up with anything that could help us to tie that death to Peter Carrington, I’d be most grateful,” she said.

“I’m not a magician, Ms. Krause. Mr. Meredith has confided to me a piece of information that I am not at liberty to discuss right now. What I can say is that it provides a compelling motive for Carrington to want to do away with his wife. However, despite that fact, I’m confident that in a court of law no sensible jury would find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based just on this information. That is why I would like to see the file you have on the case, and to be allowed to speak to the investigators who went to the scene.”

“That’s easy. Tom Moran headed up that investigation. He’s sitting in on a trial right now, but should be free in an hour or so. If you want, you could wait in his office and read the file there.”

“That would be fine.”

As she pressed the intercom to send for an assistant to fetch the material, Barbara Krause said, “Mr. Greco, we’ve been over that file with a fine-tooth comb. We could not find anything that would stand up as evidence in court. From what you are saying, it’s obvious that Philip Meredith has been withholding information that would help our case. Whether or not you find something in our file that seems relevant, I would encourage you to urge him to be forthcoming with us. You might remind him that an admittance of guilt from Carrington would open the door to a huge civil suit for the Meredith family.”

“I am very sure that Philip Meredith is quite aware of that. I also think that, in the end, even if I see nothing else in the file, he can be persuaded to reveal to you what he has already told me.”

“Mr. Greco, you are making my day.”

For the next hour and a half, Nicholas Greco sat in the one extra chair in Tom Moran’s small office, making neat entries in the notebook that was ever present in his briefcase. Of special interest to him in Moran’s notes was a reference to the fact that there had been a folded paper in the pocket of Grace Carrington’s evening suit, a page from the August 25, 2002, issue of People magazine containing an interview with legendary Broadway star Marian Howley. “Howley had just opened in a one-woman show,” the notes read. “Although the page was soaking wet, it was identifiable, and contained two words scrawled in Grace Carrington’s handwriting: ‘Order tickets.’ Page is now in evidence file.”

Grace Carrington was planning to attend a Broadway show, Greco thought as he jotted down the date of the magazine. That is not the thinking of a woman contemplating suicide.

There had been another couple at the dinner the night Grace Carrington drowned, Jeffrey and Nancy Hammond, and as of four years ago, they were living in Englewood. Greco hoped they were still there. If so, he would try to talk with them in the next few days.

Gary Barr had served the cocktails and dinner that evening, he noted.

Interesting, that Mr. Barr, Greco thought. He had worked for the Althorps on and off, even as the occasional driver for Susan Althorp and her friends. He had been serving at the formal dinner at the Carrington estate the night Susan disappeared, and at the brunch the next day. He was also there and on the estate in the gatehouse the night Grace drowned.

The ubiquitous Mr. Barr. He may be worth another visit, Greco decided.

It was five o’clock, and Moran still had not returned to his office. He’s been in court, Greco thought. He’ll want to get home now. I’ll phone him tomorrow and set up an appointment for a more convenient time.

He walked down the corridor to Barbara Krause’s private office to return the Grace Carrington file. Moran was with her. Krause looked at Greco as though she had forgotten his existence. Then she said, “Mr. Greco, I’m afraid we’ll have to put off any further discussions now. Tom and I are on our way to the Carrington estate. It seems the cadaver dogs have dug up more human bones there.”

Sometimes, when I held a storytelling hour for young children at the library, I would recite one of my favorite poems to them. It was “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and begins like this: “Between the dark and the daylight, when the night is beginning to lower…”

The daylight was just fading away when I heard the cadaver dogs barking outside, the sound coming from the west side of the grounds. Peter had gone to the lawyers’ office in Manhattan again, but I had elected to stay home. I felt overwhelmingly tired, and actually spent a good part of the day in bed, napping off and on.

It was four o’clock when I finally got up. Then I showered and dressed and went down to Peter’s library and sat reading in his comfortable chair, waiting for him to get home.

At the sound of the barking, I hurried back to the kitchen. Jane was coming in from the gatehouse to prepare dinner. “There are more police cars at the gate, Mrs. Carrington,” she told me nervously. “Gary went over to see what’s going on.”

The dogs must have found something, I thought. Not bothering with a coat, I raced out into the cold twilight and followed the footpath that led to the yelping. Detectives were already taping off an area on the near side of the pond that in the summer was stocked with fish. Squad cars were racing across the frozen lawn, their lights flashing.