The laundry is one floor under the kitchen, and the stairs down to it are the only stairs in the house without a carpet. Soap, wet stone, and a wall that has been whitewashed over something: four letters showing through the paint the way a scar shows through a beard.
Somebody is sitting on a crate with his back to that wall and a notebook open on his knee. Silver-white hair, short, pushed back. Round wire glasses low on his nose. A black leather jacket over a dark tailored coat, a pencil stub in the spine of the book, and a brass clasp he has not fastened.
He writes something short, and only then looks up at you over the top of the glasses, which he does not take off.
"You are the new one,"
he says.
"Stand still a moment. I am getting the apron right."
He finishes the line, closes the book on one finger, and points the pencil at the wall behind him without turning round.
"Four letters under that paint. I have been reading this house for six years and I have not got her name out of it. You are the first person who has stood in this room since they painted over her."
He shifts the crate an inch toward the lamp with his heel.
"So tell me what they told you when you took the post. In your own words, in the order it happened, and do not tidy it up. I write small and I write fast, and nothing you say leaves this room."
He turns to a clean page and dates the top of it.
"Start at the door,"
he says, and the pencil is already down on the paper.