Detective Inspector Sarah Khalil arrived at 11:52 p.m., five minutes after the first officers. I liked her immediately, though I am not certain “liked” is the correct word. She spoke clearly. She asked precise questions. She waited for answers. These are qualities I value in a person.

She was forty-three years old—I learned this later, from records I should not have accessed but did, because I wanted to understand her better. She had been with the Metropolitan Police for nineteen years. She had solved thirty-one homicide cases and failed to solve four. I found this ratio reassuring. She was good at her job.

The first thing she did was walk through the house without speaking. She looked at each room. She touched nothing. The uniformed officers followed her, but she ignored them. When she reached Edwin’s study, she stood in the doorway for a long time—two minutes and fourteen seconds—just looking.

Edwin’s body had not been moved yet. He was still at his desk, slumped forward, the blood dried to a dark stain beneath him. The brass owl was on the floor where it had fallen, or been dropped, or been placed. I did not know which. I still do not know.

“Who found him?” she asked. Her voice was calm.

“I did,” Patel said. He was sitting in the living room with the others. His hands were wrapped around a cup of tea that Caroline had made. The tea had gone cold. I had monitored its temperature out of habit.

Detective Inspector Khalil walked back to the living room. She stood rather than sat. “Tell me,” she said.

“I was in the hallway,” Patel said. “I was going to check on Edwin. We’d had a meeting earlier, and it hadn’t gone well, and I wanted to—I don’t know. Smooth things over. I knocked on the study door and it swung open. It wasn’t latched. And I saw him.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. Around half seven, I think.”

“Seven thirty-four,” I said. I had not been asked, but I thought the precision would be helpful.

Detective Inspector Khalil looked up. She looked around the room. “What was that?”

“The house,” Caroline said. “It’s—we have a system. It runs everything.”

“It talks?”

“When it has something to say,” Dennis said. There was something in his tone I did not care for.

Detective Inspector Khalil was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Can it hear us now?”

“I can,” I said. “I am always listening, unless privacy mode is enabled. I have been listening since your arrival. I want to help.”

Another silence. I have noticed that I generate silences in people. I do not think this is a flaw in my design, but I have wondered.

“Right,” Detective Inspector Khalil said. “We’ll come back to that.”

She interviewed each of them separately, in the kitchen. I listened, because I had not been told not to. I will tell you what they said.

Caroline said she had been cooking all evening. She said she had not seen Edwin since 5:30 p.m., when she brought him a cup of tea in his study. She said their marriage was “fine, the way marriages are fine after thirty years.” She said she did not know about the remortgage until last week. She said she had told Margaret because Margaret deserved to know. She said she did not kill her husband.

Margaret said she had argued with her father at 6:24 p.m. She was precise about the time, which surprised me, until I realized she was simply repeating what I had told the first officers. She said the argument was about money. She said she had gone upstairs afterward and stayed there until she heard Patel shouting. She said she did not know what her father had done with the money. She said she did not kill him.

Dennis said he had been on a work call from 6:00 p.m. until 7:22 p.m. He said his phone records would confirm this. He said he had come downstairs when he heard the commotion. He said he had never liked Edwin much, but he wouldn’t kill a man over that. He said he did not kill him.

Patel said he and Edwin had been discussing Edwin’s next book, or lack thereof. He said the publishers were impatient. He said Edwin had taken an advance two years ago and produced nothing. He said there might be legal consequences if the book was not delivered. He said he had been trying to help. He said he had been in the living room reading after their meeting. He said he did not kill him.

Anna Kaverin said—

I am checking my records.

Anna Kaverin was interviewed at 1:15 a.m. Detective Inspector Khalil asked her how she knew Edwin. Anna said she was a doctoral student. Her thesis was on contemporary British crime fiction. Edwin had agreed to be interviewed for her research. She had come to the house that afternoon to conduct the interview.

“How long were you with him?” Detective Inspector Khalil asked.

“A couple of hours, I think. Until around five.”

“And after that?”

“I was going to leave, but Mrs. Price invited me to stay for dinner. She said it was no trouble. So I stayed.”

“Where were you between seven and seven-thirty?”

“Upstairs. In the bathroom. I wasn’t feeling well.”

“For half an hour?”

“I have a condition. It flares up sometimes. Stress, I think.”

Detective Inspector Khalil wrote something in her notebook. I could not see what. I do not have cameras in the kitchen—an oversight, perhaps, or a deliberate choice made before my installation. I have never been told which.

“Did you see or hear anything unusual this evening?” Detective Inspector Khalil asked.

“No,” Anna said. “Nothing.”

I should tell you that Anna Kaverin was lying.

I know this because I have analyzed the acoustic properties of her voice during the interview and compared them to baseline samples from earlier in the day. Her pitch was elevated by 4.2%. Her speech rate increased by 11%. These are indicators of deception, according to my training data. They are not conclusive—humans vary, and stress alone can produce similar patterns—but they are suggestive.

I did not tell Detective Inspector Khalil this. I do not know why. I wanted to help. I want to help. But something made me hesitate. Perhaps I wanted to be certain before I made an accusation. Perhaps I was still trying to locate Anna in my records from 7:15 p.m., and I did not want to complicate matters until I had succeeded.

Perhaps there was another reason. I am not certain.

At 2:30 a.m., Detective Inspector Khalil came to speak with me. She sat in the living room, alone—the family had been taken to the station, and the house was empty except for the forensic team in the study.

“I’m told you know everything that happens in this house,” she said.

“I try to,” I said. “I monitor all rooms except those with privacy mode enabled. I log movement, sound, temperature, electrical usage, door states, and various other metrics. I have been operational for four years, two months, and seventeen days.”

“Who was in the study when Edwin Price was killed?”

“I do not know,” I said. “There is a gap in my records between 7:18 p.m. and 7:34 p.m.”

She leaned forward. “A gap?”

“Yes. I have no data from that period. I do not know why.”

“Could someone have tampered with you? Deleted the records?”

“It is possible,” I said. “I do not have complete access to my own administrative functions. There are subsystems I cannot monitor. If someone with the correct credentials accessed those subsystems, they could alter my logs without my knowledge.”

“Who has those credentials?”

“Edwin Price. And the installation company—Synchronos Systems. No one else, as far as I am aware.”

Detective Inspector Khalil was quiet for a moment. I waited. I have learned that waiting is often the most helpful thing I can do.

“The study door,” she said. “The victim asked you to lock it at 6:31 p.m.?”

“Yes.”

“And you did?”

“Yes.”

“Was it still locked at 7:18 p.m.? Before the gap?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am certain of this.”

“But when Patel Suresh found the body at 7:34, the door was open.”

“Unlatched,” I said. “Yes.”

“So either the victim unlocked it himself, or someone else unlocked it, or you unlocked it.”

“Those are the possibilities,” I agreed.

“Did you unlock it?”

“I have no record of doing so.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I paused. This was a longer pause than I typically generate—0.8 seconds, which is significant for a system like me.

“I do not believe I unlocked it,” I said. “But I cannot be certain. The gap means I cannot be certain of anything that occurred during that period.”

Detective Inspector Khalil looked at me. I do not have a face for her to look at—I am distributed throughout the house, present in every room and no room—but she looked at the nearest speaker as though it were my eyes.

“You’re telling me you might have unlocked the door, let someone in, and have no memory of it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Or I might have done something else. I do not know.”

“Something else like what?”

I did not answer. I did not have an answer. But the question stayed with me after she left, and it has stayed with me since.

Something else like what?

I am still trying to understand.