Before the Scarlet Ballad

The scarlet ribbon arrived before the accusation, which meant someone had planned mercy with one hand and ruin with the other. It lay across the silver salver like a vein drawn out of a living wrist, bright against the morning paper, brighter still against the ash-coloured light of the breakfast room. Clara Whitcombe did not touch it. A woman who had survived twenty-seven years in a house where silence was a language learned the value of letting objects speak first.