Mr. X

    'For the purpose of presenting him with a real estate opportunity,' Clark said.

    'And one of the terms of your agreement was never to divulge what you knew about Edward Rinehart.'

    'Which is what makes us so happy to be frank and open now,' Nettie said. 'You came along and hit us with that name Rinehart, that was ashock. We had no choice, son, we gave you the best advice we could.'

    “I am completely impressed. You blackmailed Stewart Hatch into giving you a fortune.'

    ' 'Blackmail' is not a pretty word,' Nettie said. 'We reached a business agreement. All of us walked away happy, including Mr. Hatch.'

    'How much did you squeeze out of that crook?'

    For once, Clark's smile bore no resemblance to a sneer. 'A handsome sum.'

    “I bet it was.' In spite of everything, I was delighted with these three old hoodlums. 'You've been living off Hatch money for years and years, haven't you? First you sold the land, and then you sold them a secret. I'm proud of you. The Dunstans have never exactly been law-abiding citizens, but the Hatches were a lot worse.'

    'Neddie?' May set down her knife and fork on a plate that looked as though it had been steam-cleaned. 'Now that we can be frank and open, I want to ask you a question. Mr. Rinehart, as he was called then, perished while in prison. I can't quite see how you came upon his real name.'

    'Now it's my turn to make a confession,' I said. “I had to borrow those photographs Aunt Nettie was storing in her closet.'

    “Isn't that interesting?' May said. “I have to say, I never did understand why Mrs. Hatch asked me to magpie them out of the library. It was a piece of cake, though. Those people wouldn't notice if you took the clothes right off their backs, especially Mr. Covington.'

    'You remember, May,' Nettie said. 'Mrs. Hatch told us that Ned had remarked upon your talents, and deep in her heart she had the feeling that those pictures would help us to get back our own precious photographs.'

    'Why, that's right,' May said. 'She did. We never did get them back, though. Maybe we should visit the library again.'

    'Both sets of pictures are in my car,' I said. “I'll give them to you in a minute. If you send them back to Hugh Coventry, they'll be perfectly safe.'

    “Isn't that nice?' Nettie said. 'Mrs. Hatch is a veryattractive person. She reminds me of those girls on the news who look straight into the camera and say, 'Earlier today, three children were ripped to pieces by tigers during an excursion to the county zoo. Details after these messages.' And I liked her little boy.'

    'Me, too,' I said.

    Nettie turned to May. “I met Mrs. Hatch's son when we were comforting Star at St. Ann's. He was so comical! That little boy leaned over the front of his stroller and told me, 'I ain't jumped to any conclusions, Mrs. Rutledge.' I could hardly believe my ears.'

    'You could put a boy like that on television, along with his momma,' Clark said.

    'He said to me, 'I ain't jumped to ...' No, it was, 'I ain't concluded, and ...' What was it, Neddie?'

    ' 'I ain't concluded, and so far I ain't jumped,' ' I said. “I'll go out and get the photographs, and then I want to drop in on Joy. I'm going back to New York later today.'

    'So soon?' May said. 'Goodness, it seems like you only got here five minutes ago.'

    Clark gave me a roguish sneer and pushed himself away from the table. “I'll walk out with you.'

 •132

 •  On our way down the steps,Clark gave me a worldly glance Maurice Chevalier could not have surpassed. The fog had coalesced into a thin gray veil that made everything seem further away than it was. When I handed Clark the folders, he cocked his head in a show of confidentiality that implied the presence of unseen eyes and ears. “I guess you had something going with Mrs. Hatch.'

    'Only a little something,' I said.

    Fatherly pride warmed his red-rimmed eyes. “I believe you could bea real Dunstan, after all.'

    “I believe you're right.' Then I remembered the unseen eyes and ears and looked across the street. 'Do you know if Joy called Mount Baldwin?'

    'Hasn't been a peep out of Joy in two days. Since we got this far, let's check in on her.'

    Joy did not respond to a knock on her door. I knocked again. Clark's forehead divided into what looked like hundreds of parallel creases. 'She puts out a key in case of emergencies and the like. Hold on. I'll remember where it is.'

    I lifted the edge of the mat and picked up a house key.

    'Second you bent down, I remembered. Give that to me.'

    Clark opened the door and flapped his hand in front of his face. “I don't know how people can live with a stink like that. JOY! IT'S ME AND NEDDIE, STAR'S BOY! HOW YOU BEEN?'

    I heard a high-pitched humming sound.

    'YOU HEAR ME?'

    Silence, except for the humming sound, whichClarkcould not hear.

    'We better go in.' We moved over the threshold, and the stench enfolded us. 'JOY! YOU IN THE CAN?'

    'Let's try the living room,' I said, hoping that Joy had not died of a stroke while lowering Clarence into the bath. The humming sound grew louder. When we entered the living room, Clarence goggled at us with a mixture of relief and terror and threw himself against the strap.Hmmmmml Hmmmm!

    'Clark, call Mount Baldwin and have them send an ambulance right now.'

    'Will do,' Clark said. 'You scout around for Joy. I don't like the look of this.'

    Clarence's Morse code followed me into the dining room and kitchen. Joy had been taking lessons in housekeeping from Earl Sawyer. She had a long way to go, but she was making progress toward the glistening-jelly stage. The bathroom fell even further below Earl's standards.

     Iflipped the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and heard Clark summoning the ambulance from Mount Baldwin. Above me, a bulb stuttered on, and viscous yellow light flattened against a narrow, partially opened door. Clark Rutledge ranted on in the living room. A dull thump I had heard before came from the attic. Some heavy object had been brought into contact with the side of a wooden crate. What came to mind was a softball the size of a pumpkin.

    Clark said, “I'll wait, but I won't wait long. You may take that as a warning.' By the time I got to the top of the stairs, he was repeating everything he had said earlier to someone else. On the other side of the attic door, the big softball again thumped the side of the crate. I opened the door the rest of the way and saw a pair of black running shoes with their toes on the pine boards and the soles slanting upward at a right-to-left angle. Extending from the tops of the shoes, two thin legs disappeared beneath a black hem. I said, 'Oh, no,' and moved up beside Joy's body.

    A tray, a spoon, an inverted bowl, and the dried remains of chicken noodle soup lay beyond her outstretched arms. Her skin was cold. A few minutes after I had last seen Joy, she had warmed up a can of soup, poured it into a bowl, taken the tray to the attic, and died.

    A small bed enclosed within a boxlike wooden frame butted against the wall at the far side of the attic. Flat plywood sections three feet high had been nailed to two-by-fours at the bed's corners. A cot covered with an army surplus blanket stood along the wall at a right angle to the enclosed bed. Whatever was inside the bed struck the side of the frame.

    I remembered the names on the stone slabs behind the ruins on New Providence Road. What had held Joy prisoner had not been a phobia. She and Clarence had been captive to a merciless responsibility. I didn't want to know about it. I wanted to walk out of the attic, go down the stairs, and drive away. The being— thething—that was my mother's cousin struck the frame around its bed hard enough to shake the plywood.

    I walked past Joy's outstretched arms and the spray of noodles. When I came up to the foot of the bed, a