Chapter 4: What He Won't Say

That night I asked Jonas to come to my sitting room and shut the door.

The police tape still hung across the study downstairs.

I had walked past it on the way up, counting stairs, and my feet had known where the wet had been.

I sat in the armchair by the window with my legs folded under me.

I heard him stop just inside the door.

"Sit down," I said.

"There's a chair across from me."

"Move it closer."

The legs scraped.

He sat so near that his knees nearly touched mine.

"Give me your wrist."

He did not ask why.

I found it in the dark, a thick wrist with a hard watch, and slid my fingers around it until my thumb lay over the pulse.

"I'm going to ask you questions," I said.

"You can say whatever you like."

"I'll know when it's not true."

"That's not a real thing."

"Try me."

"Where were you when the shot went off?"

"In the hall outside your father's study."

"I was on post."

His pulse beat slow and even.

"Did you hear anything before the shot?"

"A chair fell."

"Then a cough, a man's, not your father's."

"I opened the door."

Still even.

"What did you see?"

"A man in a gray coat, his arm across your father's throat."

"The lamp was off, only the window."

"I fired."

I waited.

The beat under my thumb had not changed, and I felt a flicker of disappointment.

"Where did the man go?"

"Out the garden door."

"I chased him to the hedge and lost him."

"And my father?"

His pulse jumped.

Not hard.

A small stumble, a missed step on a stair.

"He was on the floor when I came back," Jonas said.

"I went for the phone."

"That's not all of it."

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