At the base of the summit, she tossed me the keys to her car and said, “Go.” Back at the house near the top of the stairs, I startled a maid, who pointed out Lily’s room. The bed was unmade, the duvet half hanging to the floor. But Lily was not there. For a moment I stood panting on the threshold, and then I turned on my heel and went down the hall to my own room. Someone had tossed it. The mattress had been pulled off the bed, the bedding left in forlorn heaps on the floor. Pillows had been slit and every drawer pulled out and turned over. The drawer where I’d hidden the knife was at the top of the heap. The pillow I’d put over it was still there, and the towel in which I’d wrapped it, but the knife was gone. Had there been enough time, after I’d left for breakfast, for someone to take it and get up the hill before us? And use it? Just barely. Whether or not it had been mine, some knife had certainly been used up there.
