Anne Nunley, it appeared, was an aggressive Christian mystic.
After she'd appeared at the door to greet us, and invited us in, Anne had begged us to be seated. Without asking us, she'd brought in a tray of coffee and cookies. It was about ten in the morning by then, and the day was much brighter than the preceding days had been. It was warmer, too, in the upper fifties. Sunshine poured through the old house's eastern-facing windows. I almost felt I could find a rock and bask like a lizard.
Tolliver and I eyed the laden tray Anne set on the coffee table before us, and I recognized this as sheer overachievement. Anne Nunley was determined to be the best widow in the world. And I also thought Anne Nunley was running on empty. Her husband's sudden and unexpected death had sparked a little explosion in her brain.
'Tell me, do you think Clyde's spirit is at the cemetery still?' she asked in a chatty way. 'I wanted him to be buried on campus; I think it's fitting. I've called the campus board that has St. Margaret's under its wing. I don't think I'm asking much, do you? He worked at Bingham for ten years, he died there, and he was practically almost buried there anyway!'
I blinked. 'His spirit is not at the cemetery,' I said, answering her original question. My simple statement was the springboard for a five-minute ramble on Anne's beliefs about life after death, the prevalence of ghosts in Irish folklore (no, I don't remember how that came into the conversation), and the absolute reality of a spirit world. I certainly wasn't going to argue the other way on that one.
Tolliver just sat and listened. Anne wasn't interested in him at all; she saw him as a shadow at my elbow.
'Clyde wasn't faithful to me at all,' Anne said, 'and I had a hard time dealing with that.'
Total disclosure seemed to be the order of the day. 'I'm sorry you had to endure that,' I said carefully.
'You know, men are just pigs,' she said. 'When I married him, I was sure everything would happen the way it was supposed to. We wouldn't have much money, because after all, being a college professor is not the most remunerative of occupations, but we would have lots of respect, because you have to be smart to be a college professor, right? And he had his doctorate. I thought I would have children, and they would get to go to Bingham free, and they would grow up and bring their children home; this house is so big.'
It was a big house, and decorated in just-turned-antique furniture I suspected had come from Anne Nunley's parents, or perhaps Clyde's. Everything was polished and neat, but not fanatically so. Everything was comfortable, and nothing was expensive. It was a good house in an old neighborhood with big trees that had lifted the sidewalks. The big hallway that we'd entered had two large open archways on either side; we'd gone right, into the living room. The other archway revealed another good-size room that appeared to be Clyde's home office.
'But the children didn't come, and Clyde didn't want to be tested, and there was nothing wrong with me. But he was seeing other women. Not students, you know, at least not while they were taking his classes. After they graduated, you know, he might see them.'
She explained this very carefully, as if the exact details were important to me.
'I understand,' I said. And I'd thought we would have trouble getting her to talk to us. The problem was going to be getting her to shut up.
'But of course, he never knew the little girl,' she said. 'His being in her grave is just a terrible… invasion. Is she still there?'
The sudden question took me by surprise. 'No,' I said. 'But the man in the grave, the original burial, is still there.'
'Oh, then our Lord wants you to lay him to rest,' she said.
'I believe that's true.'
'Why have you come to see me? Do you need me to be there when you do it?'
Since I had no idea what I could do about Josiah Pound-stone's ghost, or essence, or whatever you want to call it, I shook my head. 'No, but I did want to ask you about a few other things.'
She fixed her mad eyes on me. 'All right.'
I felt I was taking advantage of a woman who was not in her right mind. But here I was, and she was eager to talk.
'Did your husband see Felicia Hart or David Morgenstern, socially?'
'Yes, from time to time,' she said, in a surprisingly matter-of-fact way. 'And Clyde and Fred were on a committee together. Fred is active in alumni affairs, you know. His wife was, too, before she died.'
'She died of what?' The women in this family seemed to have extraordinarily bad luck. Joel's first wife had had cancer, his mother had Parkinson's, Tabitha had been abducted… it made you wonder about Felicia's and Diane's futures.
'She had a heart attack,' Anne said.
'That's awful,' I said. I really couldn't think of anything else to say.
'Yes,' she agreed. 'Poor woman. It happened when no one was home, about the time Tabitha was taken. She was gone when he found her. What a sad family.'
'Yes, it is.' Though this family seemed to have a lot of tragedy, in Mrs. Hart's case, maybe a heart attack was exactly what it had been, and nothing more sinister.
'Do you think Felicia was seeing your husband as a girlfriend?' Tolliver asked. He tried to keep his voice smooth and unobtrusive so he wouldn't stop the flow, but Anne gave him a sharp glance.
'He may have been,' she said, and now her voice was cold and hostile. 'But then again, he may not have been. He didn't tell me names, and I didn't want to know. Felicia was here a time or two for one of our parties. We used to give parties.'
That was too hard for me to imagine, Anne getting the house ready for a party, maybe wondering which of her husband's 'girlfriends' he would invite into their home. Clyde, I knew instinctively, would have been embarrassed by his wife's Christian religious paraphernalia, while Anne would never have considered taking it down for a party. I hoped for her sake that he had simply let it go without comment, but my slight knowledge of Clyde Nunley
