The Skeleton Key

The caretaker has been seen to part with only one thing.

A London locksmith’s daybook for 1818 enters it as one skeleton key, pattern unknown, brought in for copying. No copy was made. The blank, he notes, would not take the file. An assayer in Antwerp was later asked to name the metal and declined to call it one. Each account gives the bow a different shape; all agree that it is warm.

He does not explain it. He sets it in an open hand, closes the fingers over it himself, and is not seen in that city again. Those who received it report the same small difficulty: it fits every lock they try, and opens none of them.

It was cut for a single aperture. No one has yet been told where that is.