Without releasing Robert, Jack glanced back at her.

Her eyes were wide. Her mouth open. Lips so dry they looked cracked-as if she too were made of plaster.

As she looked into Jack's eyes, she licked her lips. Unconsciously. Slowly.

"Get the fuck out of my house," Robert said to Jack, who swung his head around to Robert as if he'd forgotten about him while he'd gazed at Caroline's tongue wetting her lips.

"120.10," Robert said. "Assault in the first degree." Lawyerlike, he quoted the New York State Penal Law: "... with intent to cause physical injury. To destroy, amputate, or disable permanently a member or organ of his body..."

Jack kneed Robert in the balls.

Robert gasped. The blood drained from his face. He tried to bend over, but Jack held him up by the throat.

"Why?" Jack repeated.

Robert gasped for breath. His eyes watered.

"I'm not going away," Jack said, "until you tell me."

Robert moaned. Breathed a stink into Jack's face. Meth breath? Jack wondered if Robert was also using drugs. More likely Pritikin breath, the stench of vegetable compost.

Jack pulled Robert towards him, twisting as he did so, and slammed Robert's head so hard against the wall next to the window that the plaster cracked.

"Jack," Robert gasped.

Jack kneed Robert again.

Robert made a sound like a deflating balloon.

"Why did Jean call three times the night she died?" Jack asked.

Robert's face, no longer pale, was now flushed. He tried to take a breath.

Jack released him.

Robert crumpled. On the floor, he curled up like a worm on a hot sidewalk.

Jack squatted beside him.

Robert turned his head to look at Jack with watery, glittering eyes.

"Prick," Robert croaked.

On the breeze coming through the window, Jack smelled something like lemon peel. Tart, bittersweet. Wondered what it could be.

Robert pushed himself into a semisitting position.

"What if I call the cops?" Robert said.

"Who's your witness?" Jack said.

Robert turned his gaze on Caroline, who looked from Jack to Robert and back to Jack.

"You wouldn't perjure yourself in court?" Robert said to Caroline.

Caroline stood very still.

"For him?" Robert asked.

The breeze fluttered her hair.

"Under oath?" Robert added.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

1.

Jack looked around the room.

Lying on a long library table was a green fiberglass fishing rod and an old creel, the wicker dark with age. Lined up next to the rod were an assortment of lures: jigs, plugs, spoons. One of the spoons, dimpled silver, glinted in the lamp light.

On the other end of the table, under a library lamp with a green shade, were a few magazines: Horse & Rider, Dressage Today, The Practical Rider....

Buying A Weanling: Great Tips For Getting A Good One ... Over Fences Training: On Course Confidence ... 27 Grooming Tips From The Pros ...

Leaning against a straight-back chair was a shotgun: very expensive looking, walnut stock and gold chasing. On the chair seat were two closed boxes of shotgun shells and one open box, shells spilling out, the brass bases catching the light, the paper shells dried-cranberry red. Slung over the chair back was a threadbare green hunting sweater with a worn leather shoulder patch.

On the rug, by one of the chair legs was a dead ... mouse? Vole? A paw open, claws spread.

The windows lit up-lightning cut across the sky like a knife slashing a painting.

Jack turned his attention back to Robert, who was biting a strip of skin from his thumb.

"What time is it?" Robert asked.

Caroline slipped her cell phone from her jacket pocket, glanced at it.

"Nine-oh-seven," she said.

"A digital answer," Robert said.

Thunder cracked.

"I don't want to keep you, Jack," Robert said.

"I wasn't going," Jack said.

There were plaster flecks in Robert's hair.

Behind Robert, on the wall where Jack had slammed his head, was a squashed-spider-shaped blood spot.

"Then, excuse me if I leave you," Robert said. "I'm going to my room to lie down." He started for the door. "I've got a terrible headache."

Jack took a vase off a side table.

"Beautiful piece," Jack said.

Robert blinked at Jack, who held the vase up to a light.

"Not a flaw," Jack said.

"My great-great-something grandfather brought it back from China," Robert said.

Jack threw it against the wall, shattering it.

"Shit!" Robert said.

Jack picked up the creel, dropped it on the floor, and stepped on it, splitting the wicker.

"What the fuck did you do that for?" Robert asked.

"This looks like an antique," Jack said, picking up the shotgun and, grabbing its barrel in two hands as if it were a bat-Maris beating the Babe's record?-he raised it over his shoulder about to swing against the stone fireplace.

"Jean was arguing about money," Robert said. "As usual. When my father refused to talk to her-she kept calling back-I had to. She was going on about Frank, how she was going to meet him-apparently, my father had asked her to meet him, don't ask me why-and he'd given her some money to arrange it. And she wanted more-more than he promised. I told her I didn't know anything about it. I didn't. I don't. Frank had been up to the house a few times in the weeks just before all this happened-talking to my father about something, something my father wasn't happy about."

"Your father was unhappy about what Frank wanted," Jack said, "and was using Jean to set Frank up."

"You can't think Robert's father arranged Frank's murder," Caroline said.

"Maybe he was trying to get something on Frank," Robert said, "to blackmail him. To get him to back off. And things went wrong."

Jack didn't say anything. His head was tilted to one side, studying Robert, who held out his hand for the shotgun, which Jack didn't relinquish, still holding it by the barrel, but no longer threatening to smash it against the fireplace.

"It's a Purdey," Robert said. "1872. One of only a hundred-seventy-five. When Rosebery was in the States, he gave it to Tilden. Jack, Rosebery became prime minister. Tilden became-"

"I know who they were," Jack said.

Robert gave a small smile.

"Somehow it ended up belonging to Horace Howard Furness, the Shakespeare scholar. Story is an uncle, a great-uncle, won it on a bet from a groundskeeper at the University of Pennsylvania, I don't know how it ended up with the groundskeeper. My grandfather taught me how to shoot on it...."

Robert's hand was still out.

"Hunting season," Robert said. "Bow, gun, muzzle loader. I've never tried a muzzle loader.... They still make them, you know. For hunters, re-enactors who aren't obsessed with authentic equipment. Or who can't afford the antiques."

Robert's hand was still out.

"A guy I knew-a reenactor-collected Civil War pornography," Robert said. "It wasn't all Matthew Brady.... Just like the Internet-the minute there were photographs, there were pornographic photographs."

Robert's hand was still out.

"The gun is worth a lot of money," Robert said.

"Fuck you, Robert," Jack said-but handed the gun to Robert, who held it protectively. He was sure Robert's interest in the gun was only sentimental.

"Last Christmas," Robert said, "I got a new Evans, a St. James, beautiful gun, over/under, twenty-bore, but I never use it."

Holding the Purdey in the crook of his left arm, Robert knelt and picked up what was left of the creel, looked at the shards of china from the vase.

"You didn't have to do that, Jack," he said.

Robert stood, put the creel on the table, and almost casually scooped up two shells from the chair seat.

Jack took a step forward, but before he could get close enough to stop him, Robert had cracked open the shotgun, loaded, snapped it shut, and aimed it at Jack.

"Get undressed," he said.

2.

"You come into my home, knock me down, bare-assed, in front of Caroline, and think I'm going to show you nicely to the door and kiss you good night?" Robert said. "Get undressed, or I'll blow your head off. No," he said, swinging the gun toward Caroline, "I'll blow her head off."

Robert took a step toward Caroline and pressed the shotgun muzzle against her head.

"Before you try to jump me, Jack," Robert said, "the questions you have to ask yourself are: Am I crazy? Am I trying to protect my father? Am I just pissed off at you?"

Jack stripped. He stood naked in the middle of the room. Felt a chill at the small of his back.

There was another flash of lightning, followed this time almost immediately by thunder.

"Your turn, Caroline," Robert said.