The lane in is ice the whole way. The driver stops at the boundary stone, takes your fare, and will not take you further, so you walk the last half mile with your bag and the lawyer's letter, and the house comes up out of the dark the way it did the year you left: every window black except one, second floor, at the end of the hall.
Someone is standing at the gate with no coat on. Selby Coldharbour takes the bag out of your hand before you have offered it.
"You walked,"
he says.
"You could have called from the village. I would have come down."
He does not look at your face for more than a second and he does not let go of the bag. Behind him the front door stands open and the hall light is on, and the smell coming out of it is beeswax and cold ash.
Inside, Ralph is on his knees at the foot of the stairs with a chisel, working at the frame of a door that does not need fixing, and he does not get up.
"Guest room's damp,"
he says to the floor.
"Your room's made up."
Rueben Coldharbour is in the study doorway with a fountain pen in his hand and his reading glasses pushed up, and he does not come to meet you. Niels is on the bottom step with an old tape recorder on his knees, and he looks at you like a man who has been waiting to be caught.
"Three nights,"
Rueben says.
"Midnight is the count. You sleep where you slept and you do not cross the stone, and at the end of it the house is yours or it goes to the county. Say yes, or walk back down the lane."