The woman knew what the staircase had cost.
Oren had forgotten. He remembered the carpenter's quarrel with the architect, the delay, the temporary steps that shook beneath his feet. The price had become part of the house, something he no longer saw.
"Forty-six thousand," she said. "Before the alterations."
He kept his hand on the polished rail. Her surname had troubled him when the agent confirmed the viewing. Now he knew where it belonged.
She had brought a man carrying a leather measuring case. He knelt by the skirting board while she looked up through the stairwell. The agent was absent because Oren had asked for discretion. He was selling before anyone realized he needed to.
"Your father wrote to me," he said.
"Both of them did."
She opened her bag. He recognized the blue envelopes before she laid them on the hall table. They had arrived every week near the end, when there was still an office and somebody paid to bring his correspondence upstairs.
"I didn't keep personal control of withdrawals."
"I haven't asked you anything yet."
The man stood, brushing dust from his knee. He asked to see the study. Oren pointed him down the hall. He was used to people examining the house; lately every object seemed to require a stranger's opinion before it could have a price.
The woman stayed beside the stairs.
"We don't have much time," she said.
Oren glanced at the front gate through the glass. Her car blocked it. He had let them in himself, and the little remote he normally kept on the hall table was no longer there.
"You're making a mistake."
She spread the letters in order. On the last envelope his office had stamped RECEIVED, then written a date three days after the transfer that emptied the remaining accounts.
"My mother needed the money for a deposit on a flat. They were losing the house."
"There was a process."
"I know. I paid for it. I can tell you what every stage cost."
He looked toward the study. The man was measuring something, pulling out the steel tape and allowing it to snap back. Oren had hidden an envelope behind the bottom drawer of his desk. Enough for a few months somewhere nobody knew the house. He had wrapped it in an old prospectus because, at the time, that had amused him.
"What is it you want?"
"The withdrawal book."
"There wasn't a book."
"My mother spoke to your assistant. She said you wrote down the people you were going to help."
He remembered the assistant. She had cried at her desk on the final morning, making it difficult for the removal men to get past.
"It was an informal list."
"Then it won't take long to find."
The woman picked up the remote. She had put it beside the letters, in plain sight. Oren could take it, open the gate, make them leave. He pictured the attempt, her hand closing over his, the man coming out of the study. He was seventy-one. The stairs had grown steeper without anything being done to them.
"It won't recover any money," he said.
"Let me decide whether I want it."
He took her upstairs. The book was in a suitcase he had used only once, on a trip he still thought of as a holiday, although he had not returned until the hearings were over. She watched him kneel beside it.
"You said you didn't have it. Under oath."
"I said I couldn't locate it."
He found her parents' name without turning many pages. There was a tick beside it and an amount smaller than they had requested. He had meant to authorize that amount. Then there had been another call, a larger client, a person it was useful not to disappoint.
She read the page. Her finger remained on the tick.
"Was this yes?"
"It was consideration."
"What did no look like?"
He did not answer. She closed the book and went downstairs. He followed more slowly, imagining calling his solicitor, who now required payment before returning calls.
The measuring man stood by the door with his case shut. The woman gave Oren the remote.
"You'll receive a request for a statement," she said.
After they left, Oren went straight to the desk. The bottom drawer sat slightly crooked. Behind it lay the prospectus, opened flat, its optimistic graph climbing through the place where the notes had been.
He called the police. The word robbery brought an immediate steadiness to his voice. He described the visitors, the money and the empty wrapper. The operator asked whether anything else had been taken.
Through the study door he could see the blue envelopes still arranged on the hall table. The woman had left every letter. One was open to a photograph of a small flat with a handrail beside the bath. He had bought a handrail like that for the downstairs bathroom the previous winter, and could not remember the price of that one either.
"Sir? Anything else?"
Oren drew the prospectus toward him. For the first time since making the call, he lowered his voice.
"There was a book."
