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Monday.
    â€œCome in on the one-fourteen. That’s the twelve-ten out of the city. He took my cab. Old lady Radford come in on the three-two; the two-eight out of the city. Cops already asked me that. You a cop?”
    â€œPrivate,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t say?”
    The driver glanced at my empty sleeve and looked like he would like to talk some more, but I wasn’t in the mood to tell any of my stories about losing the arm. We finally turned through a high iron gate and went along a curving drive through thick woods deep in snow to a house set in a large, snow-covered lawn.
    It was a big house, but austere. The simple three-story brick center section was over a hundred and fifty years old. Two white frame wings had been added later, but no later than 1850. My driver had another train to meet, but he’d come back in an hour unless I called earlier. I knocked and waited in the brittle cold and impossible silence of a country twilight.
    A short, dark man in a butler’s outfit answered the door. Walter Radford was not at home. I gave my name and asked if I could talk to Mrs. Radford. The butler bowed me into an elegant entry hall and vanished through sliding doors to the left. A fine Federal Period staircase curved upward at the rear of the entry hall. A thin woman came through the sliding doors.
    â€œMr. Fortune? I’m Gertrude Radford.”
    She had the neat white hair, veined hands, and loose skin of her years, but there was a youthfulness about her. It was her eyes: wide, blue, almost innocent eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had faced few hard knocks, and who had never had to doubt anything. She wore a long black silk dress. Her pale face and nervous hands were the only signs that she might be disturbed by what had happened.
    â€œI’d like to talk about Monday, Mrs. Radford? About your brother-in-law?”
    â€œYou’re the detective George and Deirdre mentioned,” she said. “I don’t understand what you want. The police assure us that the man will be caught soon. He must be put away.”
    â€œThey’ll throw away the key.”
    â€œDon’t be sarcastic, Mr. Fortune,” she snapped, and frowned. “We are at coffee. You’ll join us for a cup.”
    It was a command. I followed her into a dining hall of ornate sideboards, high-backed chairs, and a center table as long as six pool tables. Portraits of grim men from the past hung on the walls, all of them having a vague resemblance to the late Jonathan Radford and to George Ames. There were some fifteen people in the room. One of them was George Ames. They were all drinking coffee.
    â€œHow do you like it prepared, Mr. Fortune?” Gertrude Radford said.
    The question would have been a surprise except that I was looking at the sideboards. There were percolators of every type; drip pots; filter-paper pots; silex types; espresso pots; one large urn; pots for boiling; and some ways of making coffee I couldn’t even name.
    â€œWe each brew our own, Mr. Fortune, in our own way,” Mrs. Radford said. “A family tradition going back over a hundred years. Coffee was the original Radford-Ames business. I myself favor a simple percolator.”
    â€œPercolator is fine,” I said.
    She led me into a corner. For a time we sat and drank. Coffee was sacred. It was good coffee. I watched the whole crew mothering their pots and cups, and all at once it gave me a chill. It was like a blood ritual with the celebrants drinking the blood of their ancestors at the high altar of family. A tribal rite designed, as all rites are designed, to keep the members inside and everyone else outside.
    Mrs. Radford brought me out of my visions. “You’re suggesting, Mr. Fortune, that there is doubt about what happened to Jonathan?”
    â€œI don’t know what happened to Jonathan,” I said.
    â€œThe police seem sure this Weiss …”
    â€œSure isn’t the same as