Chapter 4

Friday Evening

 

Six o'clock on a Friday evening in July still feels like the middle of the day, especially in Mellingham, which had that warm, soft, small-town sound of summer evenings. It was not the time to announce a murder but that's what Chief Silva had on his hands. Off duty and making plans for a vacation, Sergeant Dupoulis nevertheless wanted to be in Silva's office just after five o'clock despite the heat, the awkwardness, the extra work.

"We've lost some time," Silva said after reporting the medical examiner's telephone call. He was pleased that Dupoulis spent less than thirty seconds on regretting his error in not recognizing the death as a suspicious one at once and moved into what needed to be done. "I'm going over to Frome's apartment to see if there's anything there to help us, but I'm not expecting too much. It seems to me we have to concentrate on Thursday afternoon and evening at the Arbella Society."

"That's a lot of people and a lot of time," Dupoulis said. He was calculating the full range of work ahead of him, blocking out the time necessary for interviews without any thought for what had already filled those spaces in his weekend. His girlfriend might have commented that this was typical of him, of his perversity that turned the ordinary balance of a life upside down. Sergeant Dupoulis liked to work whenever the chance arose; he also liked to fish. In a picturesque coastal town with a history of fishing, Ken Dupoulis longed to cast for trout—the freshwater variety. His idea of a vacation was heading to the hills and a good stream where he could smell pine trees instead of salt marshes, watch for ospreys instead of egrets, and drink the cold river water when he was thirsty instead of opening a flip-top can. He was anathema to his family, who could not understand his wayward tastes. An undercurrent of life in Mellingham was the oft-spoken belief that the town had everything, meant as an allusion to its beauty, coastal pleasures, and safe life, but understood more metaphorically by others to include the dissatisfied, the secrets and sadnesses, of the unnoticed and disloyal native son who, at least in one case, enjoyed inland more than coastal pleasures.

"With luck this won't cut into too much of your vacation," Silva said, knowing he cared more about this than his subordinate, who was still young enough to believe in work above all else. Silva was willing to let it go, at least openly, because he made sure his men got vacations whether they wanted them or not. He refused to add to his own burdens by encouraging a policeman to narrow his focus to work alone. Such men proved a liability, dangerous in the end, their dedication to duty becoming an obsession, then a handicap, and finally a blinder until they made a mistake and couldn't see it. Dupoulis was never going to have the chance to fall so far.

"I've drawn up a list of everyone we should talk to, at least the ones I know about," Silva said, handing the sergeant a sheet of paper. "That's the entire Board of Trustees of the Arbella Society—they were having their monthly meeting on Thursday night—and anyone else who was there on Thursday. We may have to branch out but the medical examiner says the poison was part of George Frome's meal, which he brought to the Arbella Society when he came over in the afternoon." He looked at his notes. "Take the names checked off and see what they recall about Thursday."

"What're we looking for exactly, or don't we know?" Dupoulis was an eager policeman, determined to do as much as possible in the best way; all he wanted was a pointer, a sign telling him where to apply his prodigious energy. Silva understood this and was willing to give him less and less direction, forcing him to make his own choices. Dupoulis belonged to that new school, begun with the first baby-boom generation and blossoming with today's youth, that thought failure on the way to success a waste of time, the result of nothing less than a superior refusing to offer guidance or applying unreasonably strict standards. Silva had softened much of this attitude but Dupoulis still had a way to go before he expected to run down a few dead ends as a matter of course.

"We're looking for someone who could have poisoned Frome's supper, which he seems to have brought with him to the Arbella House to eat in the attic," Silva said. It rankled that so much time had gone by; board members were liable to blur this past Thursday into all the preceding ones. "I want to know why he was up there with all those paintings."

"How much of a secret was it that he was up there?" Dupoulis asked.

"Hard to say," Silva replied, recalling his earlier talk with Marian Davis. "Marian said he often brought his supper with him, especially on Thursdays. He liked to eat alone after everyone else had left, after the board meeting. She thought he was just using the dining room; she didn't seem to know he was eating in the attic. The shock of finding him blocked that out at first." Silva paused. "At least that's what she wants me to think. We'll have to check all that."

"Why couldn't he look at those paintings downstairs, where it was cooler? Sort of, anyway." Dupoulis grew increasingly sensitive to the heat as his weight went up, a correlation he hadn't yet noticed. As far as he was concerned, George Frome was a bit strange.

"That's one of the things we have to find out," Silva said. "But this is where we begin." He nodded to the list of board members. "Now." Dupoulis looked up at the clock. "We've lost too much time already." The sergeant nodded. He too felt the change that comes within after the discovery of a new purpose.

* * * * *

Chief Silva turned right onto Main Street, opposite the direction he would have taken if he were going directly home; the only cars parked along the curb belonged to the early guests at the small restaurant across from the village green. The town was quiet now, though he knew that would change when children rushed out to hoard with play the long hours of sunlight. Silva followed the road as Main Street turned right at ninety degrees and sank down to sea level, then left. In seconds he pulled over to the side of the road and parked across from an apartment building.

Built in the 1960s on the site of the old gray stucco Horticultural Hall, the small brick building of nine small apartments on three floors had been Mellingham's one and only flirtation with modern life of the sort assumed to be found in big cities. Thereafter, buildings remained more in tune with nineteenth-century New England design, and over the years residents forgave the architect, builder, and owner, and came to look on the building as their own brush with "the real world." The landlord kept the grounds neat in the summer and the parking lot plowed in the winter, and the building well lighted all year round. People who moved in expecting to stay only a year or so were still there when it came time to retire or go to God. George Frome was one of them.

Chief Silva unlocked the apartment door with the super's keys, and felt the heat slide over him, down his back and arms, inside his shirt. He snapped his head back for a moment. No one had pulled the shades in the two-bedroom apartment on the second floor, and the sliding glass doors, which opened onto a small balcony, concentrated the heat of a full July day.

Chief Silva had already learned, from Sergeant Dupoulis, that Frome had been living in the building since it opened, but the chief did not stop the super when he launched into a history of Frome's life as a tenant. Indeed, so deep were Frome's roots in the ground below the Larkin Building, as it was known, that Silva was more than a little disconcerted when he stepped through Frome's front door. From what Silva had just learned about Frome's long years there and from what he already knew of the man's interest in history, especially local, nineteenth-century life, the chief expected to find a comfortable living room cluttered with pictures, decorative objects, sofas, rugs, and all the other things collected over a lifetime. After his first look, Silva checked the number on the door, but he was in the right apartment.

Silva closed the door and crossed the bare wood floor to the windows at the far side. Frome had a corner apartment, with the front windows and balcony facing south, but the man apparently cared nothing for fresh air. No wonder he could eat dinner in an attic in July and not feel suffocated, Joe thought as he slid open the window. It wasn't much cooler outside, but at least the air was moving. He walked around the living room, the sharp noise of his shoes on the wooden floor echoing around the bare walls. The living room contained an old wooden sofa with pillows, in beige, against the outer wall, and two old canvas director's chairs. Nothing softened the space—no rug, no pictures on the walls. A single floor lamp stood by the sofa. A low counter with stools separated the living room from the kitchen, and it too was spare. A few spices stood in a small cardboard box, worn and floppy from years of service, against the wall.

Growing more curious as a man than as a police officer, Joe began opening the cupboards, moving from right to left, from those by the outer wall toward the inner corner and the refrigerator. The first two, over the stove, were empty; the next one held baking soda, cornstarch, flour (stone-ground wheat), honey, and seasalt. The two over the sink were empty. The next two held a few unmatched dishes, glasses, cups and saucers, and serving bowls of various sizes. The two over the refrigerator were empty. The lower cupboards held an assortment of cooking pans, casseroles, and other equipment. One drawer held cooking utensils and another held cutlery, not more than two of each. George Frome was a man determined to be alone. Even if a more gregarious impulse had arisen in his heart, he had ensured it would be thwarted by his stock of food, dinner service, and dining facilities.

Joe's first apartment had seemed bare, but it was nothing like this. He had moved into a studio after he got his first job and before he joined the force. His mother had taken one look at its dirty sterile walls, which he promised to wash and paint, and the dingy kitchenette, and mobilized the family. In one weekend everything was scraped, patched, painted. The tiny refrigerator was stocked, and the room was furnished with a foldout sofa, a café table and chairs, and a comfortable reading chair. The sofa looked suspiciously like one his uncle hoarded in his rec room in the basement, but no one would tell Joe where it came from. The only new items were a crucifix and a picture of St. Anthony his mother hung on the walls while Joe was carrying boxes. Later that Sunday evening, when they had all gone home, he found his favorite soup, caldo verde, in the refrigerator, along with bags of linguiça, chauriço, and other meats, and a six-pack of cold beer. Frome's apartment didn't look as if anyone had ever left anything for him to enjoy.

Silva pulled open the refrigerator door and wasn't surprised by what he saw. On the bottom shelf were three kinds of lettuce; just above were loose tomatoes, half a red onion in a plastic bag, a box of mushrooms, and another bunch of frilly green leaves, but this one Joe didn't recognize. He picked it up; beneath it lay two brown roots, like dirty carrots, one whole and the other scraped into a point at one end. Neither one looked familiar to Joe and he bagged them both. On the top shelf was mineral water, a half-empty container of apple cider, and a bottle of lemonade. I'd starve to death in this place, he mumbled as made his way to the hall.

The bathroom had bright red towels, so far the only admission of any passion in the dead man, but the medicine cabinet belonged to the man who had stocked the kitchen. The cabinet contained an aloe deodorant, baking soda toothpaste, and a few other items. Only a bottle of aspirin suggested that George Frome had the feelings of other mortals.

The first and larger bedroom held a twin bed, which fit the small space well, and a floor lamp. A low pile of books, historical novels, lay on the floor by the lamp. The closet held a limited wardrobe of summer and winter clothing. Underclothes, sweaters, and socks were piled neatly on the top shelf; there was no bureau. In this room alone Frome had put shades on the two windows. The second bedroom held a straw reading chair with a floor lamp, again no rug, and two low bookcases filled with an assortment of school texts, histories, and reference books. None of them looked new, or even faintly interesting to Joe. A large map of Mellingham hung on the wall over an old wooden desk, the single attempt at decoration—or was it merely another reference?—in the whole apartment. On one corner of the desk sat a notebook with drawings, notes about antiques, meetings attended, and drawings of art objects. Joe idly flipped to the end and a drawing of a couple of birds hanging from a peg; Frome had reworked it several times, apparently not satisfied with the design. Scattered across the surface of the desk were a number of photographs from the 1950s and even earlier. As best as Joe could tell, the more recent ones were of a carnival in the park near the harbor, the older ones of a child. The names and dates of all of them had faded from the back or never been recorded, but they ranged from the 1930s to the 1970s, judging by the hair and clothing styles. The faces looked vaguely familiar, and he assumed they must be of residents of Mellingham he didn't quite recognize.

The sight of them bothered Joe, for they were an odd assortment to leave lying around, as though Frome brought pictures home from the Arbella Society to identify, instead of working on them there, as other volunteers did. If he did do that, he hadn't got very far. There were no notes on the backs and no notes on scrap paper on the desk.

Joe checked the desk drawers, but these held leftover paper, apparently gathered to use as recycled notepaper, a few old pens (dried out), and a telephone book. Disappointed, he slid open the closet door; he found what he was looking for on the top shelf. He pulled down a box with several manila folders, marked "Important Papers," "Family Papers," and the like. In one he found Frome's last statement from his checking account, which showed a balance of over three thousand dollars. The figure was approximately the same in earlier statements; George Frome liked a large supply of ready cash. His bank books and other financial statements also showed a relatively high balance, providing Frome with a more than comfortable income, enough so that he could go on saving even after retirement. Certainly, in light of the other rooms, Frome had no use for the money he did have.

The chief put the papers back on the shelf and returned to the living room, self-conscious at the sound of his steps. It was a wonder the other tenants had never complained about the noise, unless George always wore rubber-soled shoes. Out of curiosity, Joe checked the bedroom closet again; he was right.

The apartment depressed Chief Silva. It wasn't just the thin film of dust over everything, except where George had walked or worked, though that disgusted Joe too, who saw no reason why a man couldn't do his own cleaning at least until he married. It was the deprivation of it all that bothered him most, a deprivation self-inflicted. Never before had Joe been in a place that so threw him back on himself, that made his feelings pulsate in him, made his views stand out with such contrast, like a black silhouette portrait cut swiftly but accurately. Life was to be enjoyed, the passions pursued, beauty embraced, not shunned. With the exception of his red bath towels, George Frome was a man who rejected life and all its sensuous pleasures. There was no fine cloth to feel beneath the palm of the hand as he sat reading in a comfortable chair, no fragrance of spices as he cooked, no smell of freshly cut grass drifting in through the window in the early morning, nothing soft or cool under the feet. George Frome was a man without senses.

Frome had made a meager life without cause, for no matter what his problems might have been, he had had a decent job with the state and had made decent money for years. But he certainly never spent any of it, as far as Joe could see. George Frome had lived a life from which all pleasure had been excised, focusing his attention on his work and then, after his retirement, on the Arbella Society. He had no close friends as far as the police knew, and no enemies, and yet he was dead.

The achingly spare living room was no fresher after the window had been open for almost an hour, but it still chilled Silva to be in it. A man who lived here, so dulled in his appetites, hardly seemed a likely candidate for murder, but Joe had long ago come to believe that those who circled around the core of their intended life, poking at it, thinking about it, never embracing it, were the true candidates for a tragic end. They sat on the periphery and drew or bent others to their ways, and one of those ways always included violence. George Frome died because he wouldn't live.

* * * * *

Silva wound his way up the steep hill, glad to leave Frome's apartment behind (he couldn't bring himself to think of it as a home, anyone's home); at the top he took a sharp left, then at the end, where four roads met, he turned right, driving past a vacant lot that had once been a high school, on to the next intersection, and another vacant lot above a playing field, where another high school, once an elementary school, had stood. Lingering near a pair of benches, half a dozen teenage boys jostled and boxed and razzed each other, calming down as three girls approached. The cluster of young people, moving together and apart, lengthened into the single bulging, curving line of an amoeba until a single couple split off and moved away to start over again the tension that holds them together and pushes them apart in undulating rhythms of energy. None of them signaled the fate that might leave him—or her—living the life of George Frome, but Joe knew it was there in one of them, fated like the color of one's eyes unless a sudden rush drove one to falsify fate, trick it, slip away while no one noticed. Their lives were shaped for them, just as the lives of their elders had been.

The twelve members of the board of the Arbella Society, all of whom attended the meeting on Thursday night, revolved in his head, along with the few others who had had opportunity to tamper with Frome's dinner, such as it was, thought Silva, who was a meat-and-potatoes man.

Silva drove past the mound that was all that remained of the old school, the grassy dirt falling away to a playing field, with a dozen benches dotting the gentle rise; he parked when he saw whom he expected to see. Bill, the treasurer of the Arbella Society, who was explaining to a young player why the last call was a strike instead of a ball, answered the chief's wave. Silva walked over to the group of parents, talking to each one; Gwen McDuffy sat off to the side on a bench watching the game, an informal affair begun by families who ate early and then rushed off to the playground. The rest of the players and their families would come later, closer to seven o'clock.

"Yours?" he said to Gwen McDuffy, nodding to the kids at play.

"Not all of them," she said. "Just two." She pointed a girl playing left field and a boy sitting on the bench for the other team.

"Nice-looking kids," he said.

"Thanks." She smiled and went back to watching. "How come you know so much about lace?"

"My sisters had to learn it," he said, "but only the youngest one has taken to it. All Portuguese girls learn it. She made a set of amostras for me, when she was learning." He stopped, at a loss to explain what he meant. "Amostra is a pattern, a square. Sort of like a small sampler." He was suddenly very aware of his accent, which emerged now only when he was speaking Portuguese or was with friends and family at home. It bothered him that it had appeared without any warning.

"Where are you from?" she asked, as though she could divine his thoughts and identify his most vulnerable spot.

"The Azores. Sao Miquel." He had worked for years to eliminate the sibilancy and the fullness of vowels that were obvious in Portuguese, qualities that gave density and weight to his English, a language that had always seemed thin to him. Even so, he wanted his English to sound American, but his words betrayed him.

"That's a beautiful word, amostra," she said. "And that was a lovely idea of your sister's. Do you still have it?"

"Oh yes. I keep it in my office. It's beautiful. She has excellent hands. She still has the graceful, delicate fingers of a child, though she's far from being a child now." He thought about the young woman who was the most beautiful of his four sisters.

"It's so unusual to meet a man who knows anything about needlework," Gwen said. "I never would have guessed what those pieces were yesterday if you hadn't said something. All I could tell was whether or not they were crocheted or lace; I wasn't even sure about whether they were machine made or handmade."

"How long do you do that sort of thing over there?" Silva said. "That close work can make for a long afternoon."

"I usually get there after lunch. Yesterday was a long day because there were a bunch of people coming through for tours and George, of course, wanting to show you around." She nodded to Silva as she said this. "Are there problems I don't know about?" she asked.

"Some. I should tell you," Silva said, realizing he was stuck now, "that we're looking into George Frome's death. It wasn't accidental, as we first thought."

"I see." Gwen looked down at the ground. The thought seemed to weigh on her rather than cause her pain. "I talked to Marian; she said he was just lying there. I guess we assumed he'd had a heart attack. The danger of assumptions." One side of the field erupted in squeals and yells, and both turned to the game.

"Which side is winning?" he asked. Gwen told him, and he said, "Your family wins either way." She laughed and nodded. They watched the ball game in silence for a few minutes, and then she looked over at him, her face a mixture of musing and watchfulness.

* * * * *

The news that George Frome had died of poisoning while carrying on secret and highly questionable dealings (as the grapevine reported) in the attic of Arbella House had captured the imagination of the people of Mellingham to the exclusion of everything else but the time of high tide (for beachgoers) and humidity (for tennis players), and a few other concerns too unimportant to list. Gossip centered around the dealings in the attic rather than the manner of death or the murderer, and Arbella House loomed ominously over the town, its board members and volunteers exuding an aura of mystery the closer they seemed to be to the center of the crime.

The average Mellite was wrong in almost every speculation except one—the eerie glint at the center of the crime. Marian Davis saw it, too, but she never considered for a moment that the townspeople saw her in its penumbra. George Frome's death was like a bizarre tale told for the benefit of visitors from out of state eager to imbibe a little of the eccentricity of New England. But it wasn't a story, and it wouldn't go away. This observation had been pushed on her repeatedly by her husband, Gordon, who urged her to set the murder aside until she had recovered her equilibrium and could look at it objectively; he recommended a vigorous hike at the Audubon Society. She declined, insisting she was too upset. In fact, so upset was Marian Davis that she refused even to ride over to the Audubon Society and merely sit in the car and listen to the birds while her husband hiked a nearby trail, forcing him to go alone. Marian sat pensively on the back terrace of their colonial home, blind to the bird feeders swinging under the weight of marauding squirrels. When she heard a car door slam, footsteps on the sidewalk leading to the driveway, Marian rose.

"I knew you'd be coming," she said to Chief Silva as soon as he drew close; she motioned him to another chair. A glass sat by a pitcher of iced tea, and Joe accepted her invitation to help himself. Watching the chief of police mix in sugar and crush a slice of lemon over his glass made him seem ordinary, unthreatening. Every action spoke of normality, of an evening with nothing more serious to discuss than the next local elections. It might have been the heat, the informality of his sitting back and complimenting her on the tea, or her own wish to be free of the tension within her—whatever her motive, she said, "I've been thinking about it all evening, ever since my neighbor called me during supper. I can't believe it. I mean, I believe it happened—you know what I mean. Gordon's gone for a walk. He thinks I'm taking it too hard. How should I take it? Right under my nose," she said more to herself than to him. "I was there all afternoon and all evening. And I never saw a thing." She stopped. "Chief, it must have been an accident."

"It wasn't. I think I can assure you of that." He listened to the litany of expressions used every day to aid the comprehension of the incomprehensible; her recitation had an automatic quality that put Silva on his guard. "I'm glad you were there all afternoon. Tell me about George Frome."

"George? Poor George. That poor, poor man. I can't believe it," she muttered to herself. Her reactions had a subdued, almost impersonal quality.

"Tell me when George came in. Do you remember?"

"Remember? How will I ever forget? He was there most of the morning. Then gone for lunch, then back at three with his supper. There until I left. Always the same. Poor George."

"I'm sorry if this is hard for you, Marian, but I do have to know." He spoke with the easy familiarity that was the first sign that he was studying her like a stranger, looking at facets of her personality he had neglected in the years he had known her. "What do you remember about yesterday? Tell me about the meeting."

"That meeting." She shook her head. "As bad as it was, it wasn't our worst; it was pretty much our usual meeting. Lots of arguments, the agenda out the window, no one in control, except maybe George." She stopped to think about this. "No, I think even George lost control this time." The exercise of thinking about the past as a visual experience seemed to calm her, freeing her to see it unemotionally, as though she were watching a movie rather than reliving a moment.

"What were the arguments about?"

"You, mostly." She smiled when she saw his reaction. He twisted around in his chair.

"Could you explain that?"

"George invited you to come to Arbella House and inspect our security, didn't he?" Silva nodded. "Well, he said at the meeting that our security was terrible. I don't know what you told him, but he hinted that our collections were just walking out the door." It was obvious she hadn't agreed with him. "Well, that got everyone upset, well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of us. Most of us, I'd say. George bossed us around over a lot of things but this was really the worst. It was tantamount to saying that we didn't know how to take care of things. And you know that's not going to go over well at the Arbella Society." Her mouth set in a disapproving line.

"People took it personally, did they?"

"I'll say. It completely derailed the meeting. We argued about it until after nine o'clock or so, at least until our usual ending time, and then we quit." She took another sip of her drink, and leaned back, stretching out her legs, her ankles almost as white as the canvas sun hat on her head. "I suppose that's a sign that it wasn't the absolute worst thing he could have done. We didn't come to blows. We noticed the time and stopped. Don't make too much of it. It happens every month. We never finish an agenda."

"So you think there was nothing unusual about your acrimonious evening," Silva said as much to himself as to her.

"We always argue in circles and then we quit and go home. That's not unusual. What was unusual, I suppose, were a few other things."

"Such as?" A part of him wanted to hurry the investigation along, to recapture the time that had slipped away since Frome had died, while he and everyone else thought the death a natural one. It was early in the investigation, perhaps, but late in the timing; if he'd had any idea earlier in the day that George Frome had been murdered, he probably wouldn't feel so pressed now.

"What else, what else? Let me see. Kelly Kuhn was talking about resigning; he was very jumpy, he always is, but this time he was really antsy. Catherine Rocklynd hurt her hand. We have to get new chairs and meet upstairs where there's more room. Edwin Bennett was distracted for the first part of the evening but he warmed up when the big fight broke out. I think that's about it. At least that's all I noticed." She crossed her legs, relaxed now that she was helping the chief find his way through the confusion that was the Arbella Society.

"What happened to Mrs. Rocklynd?" Silva asked.

"I don't know; she apparently hurt her hand, from the way she was massaging it. But she said it was okay. It didn't stop her from saying what she had to say during the rest of the meeting."

"What did people eat? Did you happen to notice?" Silva asked, changing directions.

"Food. Let me think. We all bring food at different times. I brought"—she stopped and stared at the chief—"I brought oatmeal cookies. But Kelly ate almost a whole plate himself. Everyone saw him." Marian grew defensive.

"I'm just collecting information at the moment. We're tracing the poison right now," Silva said, afraid her wild swings from meditative calm to rampant fear would thwart a useful review of the afternoon and evening. "My sergeant mentioned that your cookies had been found," Silva said.

"Don't waste your time on my cookies." She laughed. "George wouldn't have anything to do with them."

"Why not?" Silva not to tell her what had been found.

"George? He was a strict—I mean strict—vegetarian. He didn't approve of any processed foods either, especially something sweet like cookies made from bleached flour, refined sugar, and factory-dried raisins, among other things. He always made me feel so unhealthy, as though I ate french fries and greasy burgers all day." Marian wrinkled her nose as she recrossed her legs and sat up straight.

"Sounds like you knew him pretty well. Did you know he was about to come into possession of something he had wanted for a long time?"

"George? No. He didn't say anything about it last night. Are you sure about that? I'm sure he would have told me, or one of us." She looked worried. "Maybe he just didn't have time. It was a wild evening. What was it he was getting?"

"The log house Mrs. Rocklynd owns." Silva spoke calmly, but Marian gaped at him. "You doubt it?"

"I don't believe it for a minute. Catherine would never let that house go. Never. And even if she did, she wouldn't give it to him." Marian was adamant.

"I'm afraid it's true. He was all ready to buy it."

"But she loves that house. I know it's a mess, a falling-down, grungy mess, but it's the oldest house in town, and the only log house in the entire area. It's part of her family heritage. She'd never sell it. And if she did, she wouldn't sell it to George. If she were going to sell it to anyone, she'd give it to Edwin Bennett."

"So she might be willing to let it go," Silva said. "To Edwin Bennett. Do you mean she would actually give it to him, or sell it to him for a nominal price?"

"Well, moot point." Years of command behind the Arbella Society desk had left Marian unprepared to be contradicted or corrected; she struggled to accept Silva's challenge gracefully. "If she were going to sell it, I suppose she'd sell it to Edwin for a dollar. It's easier than a gift."

"You seem pretty sure of that," Silva said. "After all, if it's as old and as important as you suggest, she could get a lot more for it by putting it on the open market."

"Be serious, Joe." Marian smiled and shrugged, throwing off the formality of the Society secretary. "This is Catherine Rocklynd we're talking about. That house has been all over town. Every time her family bought more land and built a bigger house, they took that little cabin along with them. At first it was just a house, cheaper to move than building a new one, but then it got to be important to them. In the last century, when they bought that nice old house, they put the cabin out in the back. Now you're not going to tell me that anyone whose family goes to all that trouble to preserve that cabin is going to turn around and sell it just for a few dollars."

"If it's so important, then why is it in such disrepair?"

Marian had enough sense to see the flaw in her argument, but she didn't like it. "True, true." She shook her head and smiled at him piteously. "It's this way, Joe. Catherine is more Yankee than she wants to admit. Fixing it up would mean spending some of her own money on it, and that's something Catherine rarely does if she can avoid it. The talk is that she'll leave it to Edwin Bennett. He'll move into her house, sell his, and use the money to fix up the place, including the log house."

"So why did George tell his lawyer that he was getting the log cabin?" Silva asked. He still had trouble separating this colonial house of split logs and plaster from the cabins made of round logs he saw advertised for people who wanted to build inexpensive housing on their own land.

"He was making it up," Marian concluded confidently, then paused.

"Yes?" It was obvious she had remembered something.

"It's so far-fetched, Catherine selling the log house. I mean—maybe you're right." She drew away from him. "There was a letter. It came in today, for George; I opened it by mistake. It was from an architect who specializes in restoring colonial buildings. He was agreeing to work for George on something." Her own experience of the morning undermined her convictions. "I never would have believed it. If you'd told me Catherine was going to give George that house, for any amount of money, I wouldn't have believed it. Not for a minute."

* * * * *

Edwin Bennett never made a will. It didn't occurr to him because he had so little to call his own and no wife or children to leave it to. The death of his parents many years earlier had seemed almost anticlimactic, the physical end to an emotional and geographical distancing that had begun years ago, almost since he reached adulthood. They were good people, he reminded himself through the years; he had no grudge against them. People couldn't really help their feelings; we just have them and we have to accept them. His parents had theirs, and at least did him the courtesy of not hiding or denying them. They were never false to him. And so their death was a sadness but not the revelation of mortality, and the instigator of questioning, that the death of parents so often is. But the death of George Frome in the last twenty-four hours was—a revelation, a shock, an instigator. He was younger than Edwin, living the same kind of life.

The small, white clapboard house with a bow window in front and a mansard roof at the second floor had always seemed large to Edwin, at least when he was a child. From the side kitchen window he could look across the driveway into the neighbor's living room and watch the family in the evening, or he could run out back and find someone else at play nearby. But that wasn't really what made it seem large and open and greater than it was.

From his earliest years Edwin knew his aunt Catherine's home as his own. Since his parents had moved to Mellingham when he was barely two years old, he had always had a place at Aunt Catherine's. His parents went there for Sunday afternoons, an evening of games, or just a chat when they were driving by. He dropped in at his aunt's home as readily as he waved at his neighbors. He had not one home but two. Aunt Catherine's brief marriage to William Rocklynd during World War II, when she was in her thirties and Edwin was barely into his teens, hadn't changed anything between them. William went off to war and never came back, and he took on that romantic cast reserved for experiences agreeably set aside. Aunt Catherine kept a few pictures of him around but after a few years he was regularly mistaken for a cousin, later an uncle or someone's brother. Who he was faded; he became just one more face among the many encircled in brass or silver or polished pewter. Edwin came to think Aunt Catherine had married him not from any passion set loose by the war but from a simple desire not to go unwed all her life. After William's death, she went about her days freer, more confident, as though a difficult chapter in her life had been closed.

Now Edwin had the same feeling in his own life. George Frome had changed his perspective dramatically in the last twenty-four hours just by dying. Frome's death spoke of mortality, but not Edwin's. It spoke of Aunt Catherine's; it spoke of the death of a person who had been impervious to the buffeting, weighing, pulling of time. George had been like her and now he was gone. Someday Catherine Rocklynd would also die, and that would change him even more.

For all of his sixty-five years, even during his aunt's brief marriage, Edwin had considered himself her heir without ever having actually formulated it in those terms: it wasn't that he was covetous or greedy; he wasn't. He lived a life of modest tastes and though he longed sometimes for the freedom and wealth to travel, to be stretched by discovering other peoples living in other ways, he accepted graciously what life had given him. It had been Aunt Catherine, on the contrary, who had made it known to him that all her property would some day be his. At first she said no more than a mild order to take care of this telescope when it was his, or to oil the table when it was his. Eventually, he understood what she meant, and took especial interest in learning how certain pieces of furniture were cared for, how the old cameras worked, when rugs were cleaned and by whom. He had gained a lifetime of knowledge about his aunt's possessions, learning and filing and practicing as though the Tudor home far out on Main Street were a museum whose curator's job he was to accede to.

But he had been wrong, apparently, though how wrong he didn't know. At least part of Aunt Catherine's estate had been destined—however briefly—for George Frome, a rearrangement of life as he knew it that had the effect of revealing to him that he was not who he thought he was; he was not Edwin Bennett, he was merely some fellow who had imposed on a nice old lady who was too kind to admonish him openly. The drawing back was swift and liberating, as well as unjustified. Nevertheless, it prompted him to write his own will, if for no other purpose than to discover where else he had ties. The experience was enlightening, for he had few friends who seemed natural recipients of his accumulated wealth, such as it was. He liked many of the people he knew well enough to give them something, but he wondered how they might feel about receiving a major gift from him. Would they recognize at once the paltry emotional life he had lived, reaching into old age with no one to care for, no one for whom he might understandably want to share his life's gain? Or would he look ridiculous?

That last fear was the kicker. He wasn't sure where it had come from but for all his adult years it had confronted him at corners, outlined in black even seemingly simple choices, and sometimes made him hate himself. He relied on sheer, blind willpower to get himself past it at crucial moments. This might be one too. Nothing could be more ridiculous than an aging man desperate for friendship, except any man who thinks he can live on the edge of community, friendless, without consequences. The choice was easy for Edwin, though its execution might not be.

Edwin walked through the kitchen to the screened-in back porch and leaned against the inside railing. It was half an hour past first dark, the voices were beginning to sound secretive, private, as voices do at night. The wind had shifted not long ago, bringing cooler air from the ocean, along with the smell of salt spray. Too much of his life had been focused on another part of Mellingham, and not enough on his own part, for his parents' closeness to Aunt Catherine had taken him away from circles he might have been part of. They were still out there, revolving through the streets and lanes of the town, like interlocking gears, separate but meshing. Some he knew from the Arbella Society, some he saw at other local events. Many he could meet without any noticeable change in the pattern of his days, which was important to him. More than anything else, he wanted the security and stability of his life to remain the same while he inched his way into another world. He saw no contradiction in his desires. The only question that remained was, Was it too late?