In Which Dr. Wintermute Recovers a Lost Object
- Dr. Wintermute tries to chase after Parsefall but loses him. He's shaken by the sight of the puppet with his daughter's face and wonders why Grisini would create such a thing.
- He wanders home and takes a detour toward Grisini's home, thinking about how Parsefall blurted out earlier that Grisini was dead.
- As he's walking, he sees a girl walking a bunch of dogs go into Grisini's house. Then, he hears her crying out in distress.
- He rushes over to find the girl struggling against a man who's trying to kiss her. The girl keeps telling the man to stop, and Dr. Wintermute immediately steps in and tells the man to release the girl.
- The young man leaves her alone, and Dr. Wintermute recognizes the girl—she performed in the puppet theater at Clara's birthday party, too.
- He asks if he can ask her some questions, and she says that of course he can. Leading him upstairs, she impresses him with her impeccable manners. She acts more like a lady than a servant girl, that's for sure.
- Lizzie Rose offers him the only chair in the room while she sits on the floor. She tells him about how Grisini isn't her father and how she and Parsefall saw him fall down the stairs and how they think he might be dead.
- He asks her about the puppet that looks like Clara, and Lizzie Rose is horrified—she can't believe that he had to see something so grotesque. She doesn't tell him that the puppet is Clara but says instead that Grisini makes some of his own puppets.
- When Dr. Wintermute asks her when Grisini disappeared, she names the date, and he recognizes it as the same night he was supposed to meet with Clara's kidnapper in the cemetery to give him the ransom money. Huh …
- They both come to the realization that Grisini was almost surely the person who sent that note, and Dr. Wintermute is horrified to think that Grisini may have died on his way to collect the ransom.
- If that happened, then what if Clara is being held prisoner somewhere without anyone to feed or check in on her?
- He starts to cry while Lizzie Rose comforts him. As he stands to leave, though, he sees the framed picture of Charles Augustus on the mantel and flies into a rage.
- He accuses her of stealing, and Lizzie Rose tells him that Grisini did it—in order to spare Parsefall—but she's a bad liar, and he doesn't believe her. He storms out of the house with the photograph.