They occupied Emerson Steiner’s study with the permission of his newly-minted widow. Kellen settled himself in the window seat, immediately lighting a cigarette. After taking out his notebook and pencil, he simply sat waiting for the interviews to begin. He was artistically illuminated in afternoon light styled by an overcast sky and the light rain speckling the window behind him. Suit crisp and expertly tailored. Serpentine trails of smoke coiling sinuously about him as he shifted his all-too-attentive gaze from momentary points of interest in the study and then to the wider expanse of the garden beyond.
Geld took the desk, determinedly establishing themself a beachhead by shifting the previous layout to their satisfaction. A few of the smaller ornaments they exiled to the mantelpiece behind them. A pair of overbearing twinned statuettes of Daedalus and Icarus were shifted out of mind to the lower extremities of the fireplace itself. On either side of the fireplace were shelves crammed with books, scuffed magazines and a variety of bundles of miscellaneous reading matter that left no space for anything else.