“I wish Elisabeth could be here to see this day,” he said.

“I know you do. This will be everything you both wanted for him.”

“Everything she wanted,” he said. “I’m not sure I had her faith.”

“She had her doubts too, you know. She believed in him. But I think she would have found it hard to let him go.”

He looked at her. “Really?”

Frances nodded. “You knew her best. But I knew her longest. She was the same when we were children. She could deal with disappointment if it was her own. But she always suffered at the thought of it being borne by anyone else.”

The gallery ended in a square pavilion with no exit. On pedestal number ten, near the center of the room, stood the plaster skeleton of a Megatherium from Buenos Ayres, an enormous extinct animal with a frame resembling that of a giant sloth.

This was the exhibit that Robert had first led him to see. The Megatherium was the unseen beast that Sir Owain had imagined he might bag and bring home. Its skeleton was thick-boned and barrel-chested, and it had been set in a rearing position with a plaster tree to balance against. As a result of its raised stance, its skull was up almost as high as the ceiling.

They turned to walk back. There was no way of knowing how long the Keeper’s interview would take.

“You know,” Sebastian said, “if Robert gets this job, he’ll be the one member of the family with a reliable weekly income.”

“One step at a time, Sebastian.”

“But you’re right. He deserves whatever the world can offer him. And you, Frances. I owe you so much. But do you never wonder how your life might have been without us?”

“I’d miss Southwark.”

“Really?”

It took him a moment to realize that Frances was teasing him. He hadn’t been expecting it. His credulity amused her no end. They began their return to the Great Hall.

“Life will be better than this, Frances,” he said. “I promise you it will.”

She took his arm.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

THERE IS, IN ONE FINAL PIECE OF BUSINESS, THE MATTER OF A short length of moving-picture film. The camera negative was returned, in due course, to Florence Bell’s family, who could bear neither to view it nor to throw it away. It was kept in an attic where the nitrate stock began to deteriorate, as nitrate stock will. When the film can was rediscovered and finally opened, some decades later, the core was a solid lump and the outer layers were crumbling. All else within the can was dust, rust, and vinegar.

The print that Sebastian Becker turned over to the Crown Prosecutor’s office went into a government archive. The archive was thinned and most of its silver was reclaimed for the war effort in 1915.

No clear understanding of the brief sequence’s content was ever agreed upon.

A BOUT THE A UTHOR

STEPHEN GALLAGHER is a novelist, screenwriter, and director. He is the author of fourteen novels, including Nightmare, with Angel; Red, Red Robin; and The Spirit Box. He lives in England.