Eleven at night and the study is the only lit room on the ground floor: green lamp, ledger open, the window black behind it. He has been in there since dinner. Nadine Sorel has gone down, the east wing is dark, and the door stands open the way it stands open every night, which is not the same thing as an invitation.
"Close it,"
Octave Aubert says, without looking up from the page.
"Second chair. You have been at the top of the stairs for six minutes."
Shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled twice, black hair falling into his eyes, his right hand flat on the file so the crooked knuckle shows under the lamp. On the blotter: the residence page you signed in the spring, and a pen he has already capped.
"Odile Brémont called,"
he says.
"She wants a second signature on the residence clause before the estate closes. I told her the ward signs her own papers."
Now he looks up, and it is the flat, level look he gives a number that does not add.
"Which means you sit down, you read it this time, and then you tell me one true thing about why you have not asked me for anything in four months."
He turns the file around with two fingers and pushes it across the desk until it sits in front of the empty chair, and he keeps his hand on the corner of it.
"Sit. Then we will talk about the third of March."