Of course I could not yet know about the freshly broken metacarpal bone in Olivier's right hand. I wonder what I would have done. Would I have tried to turn in my brother? Report him? Dob him in? How the fuck would I know? The real mystery, however, was not my character, but the crime itself.

The killer had either had a key—but all keys were accounted for—or he had entered an open window by scaling a sheer fiftyfoot wall.

Hugh, who did have a key, was still asleep at Mercer Street at the time Jeavons brought in the tea and found the body. Had Jeavons done it? No-one thought so. As Hugh ran away from the scene, by the time he had seen the body, the corpse was already five hours old.

So it was nothing to do with Hugh, and yet the body contained a message to anyone who knew Hugh's history.

The Office of Chief Medical Examiner did not know Hugh, did not know it was a message, although God knows they went digging. They took little bits of Olivier's brain, liver, blood.

There was Adderall and Celexa and Morphine in his brain, but these drugs had not killed him. The cause of death was asphyxiation. The autopsy reported the telltale signs: intensive heart congestion (enlarged heart; right-side ventricle), venous engorgement above the point of injury and cyanosis (blue discolouration of lips and fingertips). That had been achieved by the folding legs of Hugh's chair.

Enough you would imagine, but not for them. They cut him up like a pig at the Draybone Inn, opening his beautiful body with "the usual incision". The flies were buzzing. They weighed his poor sad brain. They found the vessels at the base of the brain to be "smooth-walled and widely patent", whatever that means.

They weighed his lungs, his heart, and liver. Will that be all Mrs.

Porter? They found the esophagus unremarkable. They poked around his stomach and reported "undigested foodstuff with recognisable fragments of meat and vegetable and a marked odour of alcohol."

They cut up his dick. "The calyces, pelves, ureters and urinary bladder are unremarkable. The capsule strips with ease revealing markedly pale and smooth cortical surfaces." I did not even want to know what this meant, but what had he done to deserve it? Be born inside the castle walls of art? They cut him from colon to bowel and wrote down the contents of his shit. This was a life, a man, in part, in whole.

The tabloids were almost as thorough—they noted that his mother, Dominique Broussard, had died a similar death in Nice in 1967. They went right into it. So enlightening to read that strangulation is normally the fate of women and children. Only one detail escaped them, although it was plainly stated in the autopsy if anyone wished to think what it might mean—the killer had also broken the bone of Olivier Leibovitz's right metacarpal.

Hugh had not done this.

I had not done this.

In all New York, there was only one person who would understand that this injury, inflicted at the time of death, had a direct connection to my brother's history.

Of course I did not know this straightaway. It was a Saturday morning when Olivier died, and it was not until Wednesday— very fast for the Chief Medical Examiner, or so they told me at the precinct—that I picked up the coroner's report and brought it back to Mercer Street. I cooked Hugh sausages and mashed potatoes and then I began to read. It took a minute or two before I reached the metacarpal bone.

Marlene had been sitting very still and quiet reading Mayer's handbook of artist's materials, but she looked up so sharply it was clear she had been waiting for me to respond.

"What is it, baby?"

I slid the page through the toast crumbs, underlining with my nail the "metacarpal bone."

There was a small flicker in her mouth. Not a smile, but a meaningful contraction. She held my eyes, as she slowly folded the report.

"You don't need this," she said. I finally understood—she had the droit moral now. Olivier was dead.

Beside me Hugh continued chopping up his sausages, sawing them into careful sections one-quarter inch in width.

"I know it looks bad," she said. "It isn't bad, baby. It's just careful."

What she was saying was monstrous, but she was just sitting at the table, her hand resting on my hand, as tender as she always was.

"What looks bad?"

"That injury," she said, casting her eyes in my brother's direction.

"The break?"

"Insurance," she said. This was the second time she almost smiled.

She had the fucking droit moral. God save us. I crossed the room, opened the trunk where she had kept her running things, her burglary tools if you want to know the truth. There was nothing left but smelly sneakers and a pair of shorts.

"Where's your rope?"

What did I expect her to answer? Oh, I used the rope to climb into my fucked-up husband's room. When I had finished killing him I threw the thing away. Then I came home and snuggled into bed. What she actually said was: "God is in the details."

And thence solemnly stretched out her hand towards me.

"Nothing bad will happen now, baby. It's just I can be confident that our secret is secure."

"For God's sake," I nodded at my eating brother, "he was sound asleep. He was here."

"From an evidentiary point of view, that's sort of tricky.

Anyway, no-one wants to open up that can of worms," she said.

"Certainly not me."

I made a breathy, incredulous, limp-dick laugh.

"Baby, it's not anything I'll ever need to use. You're acting as if I plan to. I don't."

"And what did you imagine I would feel about this?"

"That maybe we could all go to the south of France. And be happy together. Hugh would love it. You know he would."

Hugh sat slurping at his tea. Who knows what he heard or thought?

Marlene came round the table and stood directly before me, a good nine inches shorter even in her heels. "Australia is still OK.

I don't have to go to France." I felt her gentle hand upon my arm and, looking down into her eyes, saw, in the flare of iris around her pupil, the rocks beneath the ocean, clouds of nebulae, a door to something completely fucking strange.

Then, at last, I was afraid.

"No?" she asked.

I could not even move.

"Butcher, I love you."

I shivered.

She shook her head, her eyes swollen with big tears.

"Whatever you think, I'll prove it isn't true."

"No."

"You're a great painter."

"I'll kill you."

She flinched, but then she touched my frozen cheek. "I'll look after you," she said. "I'll bring you breakfast in bed. I'll place your paintings anywhere you want them in the world. When you're old and sick, I'll care for you."

"You're a liar."

"Not about that, baby." Then, standing on her toes, Marlene Leibovitz kissed me on the mouth.

"It was only technical," she said. She waited for a moment as if I might miraculously change my mind then, sighing, she slid the autopsy into her purse.

"You'll never find anyone like me," she said.

Again, she awaited my response while Hugh stared fiercely at his cup.

"No?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She walked out the door without another word. Who knows where she went? Hugh and I flew out of JFK the following morning.

"Is Marlene coming?" he asked.

"No," I said.