the window open on mondays

The small window at the end of the upstairs hallway is found open every monday, regardless of weather, regardless of whether it was closed and latched the night before. The window does not have a faulty latch — the latch is original, brass, and has been tested. The window is not subject to the prevailing wind, which comes from the other quarter. No one has been observed to open it. It is open by the time the keeper goes upstairs, which is usually before seven; on three mondays the keeper has gone up at five, and the window has been open then.

What is known. The opening is small — the sash lifts by perhaps two inches — and consistent. On a few mondays a leaf has been found on the floor below, oak or beech, not from any tree on the property. On one monday the keeper found a single coin on the sill: a copper, mid-nineteenth century, no longer legal tender. The keeper has kept the coin in the drawer of the writing-desk. It has not been claimed.

The theories are mild and there are no fewer than four. The first is mechanical: the building settles weekly along a fault we have not surveyed. The second is meteorological: a pressure event peculiar to mondays in this corner of the coast, which the keeper has been unable to confirm with the almanac. The third, the friend's, is that someone — one of the dawn walkers — opens it on their early circuit and has reasons for not saying. The fourth, the keeper's preferred, is that the window prefers to be open on mondays, that it was so designed, and that no other explanation is owed.

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