Mystery

low and stepped hard on the accelerator. The Mercedes flew over the mud and stones of the road, and skidded to a stop behind the store. It seemed to Tom that only a second had passed since he had spoken. His stomach was still back on the road.

“That fast enough for you?” Sarah said.

The face of a little girl with braids and an open mouth popped into a window at the back of the building.

“Yep.”

“Now will you tell me what’s going on?”

“Listen,” he said.

In a few seconds they heard the clopping of hooves and the creaking of leather.

“Now watch the road,” Tom said, and nodded back toward the way they had come. For a long time, the sound of the horse and its carriage came nearer the shop; then the sound subtly changed, and began going away from them. After a minute or two, a pony trap appeared retreating down the track, driven by a man in a black coat and black Homburg hat.

“That’s Dr. Milton!” Sarah said. “What would he—”

A small scurrying shape hurtled around the side of the building and jumped into Sarah’s arms. When it stopped whirling and began licking Sarah’s face, Tom saw that it was Bingo.

She held the dog in both her arms and looked at Tom, amazed.

“I think Dr. Milton must have seen him somewhere near the hospital, recognized him, and decided to take him on his errand before bringing him back,” he said.

“His errand? In the old slave quarter?” Sarah lifted her chin away from Bingo’s tongue.

“He decided that he told me too much,” Tom said. “But now I know where Hattie Bascombe lives.”

Sarah deposited Bingo in the well behind the seats. “You mean, he came out here to tell her not to talk to you? To threaten her or something?”

“If I remember Hattie Bascombe right,” Tom said, “it’s not going to work.”

Sarah parked behind a pile of fresh horse droppings, and Tom got out of the car. “What if he was just calling on a patient?” she said. “Isn’t that at least a little bit possible?”

“Do you want to come with me and find out?”

Sarah gave him another long look, then patted Bingo on the head and said, “Stay here,” and got out of the car. She looked around at the rows of shacks, at the chain-link fence and the long expanse of garbage. Gulls circled and dove; a faint but definite odor of human excrement and rot came to them.

“Maybe I should have brought my gat after all,” Sarah said. “I’m afraid the rats will come out to get Bingo.” But she came around the front of the car to join him, and together they walked up on the porch. Tom knocked twice.

“Get away from here,” said a voice from within the shack. “Git! Had enough—don’t want any more of you.”

Sarah backed down off the porch and looked toward her car.

“Hattie—”

“You said it all! Now you want to say it all again?” They heard her moving slowly toward the door. In a quieter voice: “I looked at you thirty years, Boney, I don’t have to see you one day more.”

“Hattie, it’s not Boney,” Tom said.

“No? Then I guess it must be Santa Claus.”

“Open the door and find out.”

She cracked the door and peered out. Alert black eyes in a suspicious face took in Tom’s tall figure, then moved to Sarah. She opened the door a notch wider. Her white hair was skimmed back from her forehead, and the lines on her face that had seemed bitter now expressed a surprisingly youthful curiosity. “Well, you’re a big one anyhow, aren’t you? You people lost? How you know my name?” She looked hard at Tom, and her whole face softened. “Oh, my goodness.”

“I was hoping you would recognize me,” Tom said.

“If you hadn’t turned into a giant, I would’ve recognized you right away.”

Tom turned and introduced Sarah, who was lingering awkwardly in the little yard, her hands in the pockets of her shorts.

“Sarah Spence?” Hattie said. “Didn’t I hear from Nancy Vetiver, all that time ago, that you visited our boy here in the hospital?”

Tom laughed at her perfect recall, and Sarah said, “I guess you did. But how could you remember …?”

“I remember about everybody came to visit Tom Pasmore. I believe he was the most left-alone little boy I ever saw, all the time I worked at Shady Mount—you were, you know,” she said directly to Tom. “I hope you two fine young people didn’t plan on spending your whole visit here standing on my porch. You’ll come in, won’t you?”

Hattie smiled and stepped out to hold her door open, and Tom and Sarah went into the little interior.

“Oh, it’s so pretty,” Sarah said, a second before Tom could say the same thing. Threadbare but clean patterned rugs covered the floor, and every inch of the walls had been decorated with framed pictures of every kind—portraits and landscapes, photographs of children and animals and couples and houses. After a second, Tom saw that most of them had been clipped from magazines. Hattie had also framed postcards, newspaper articles, letters, hand-printed poems, and pages from books. She had brought the bent-back chairs and her table to a high shine which was increased by her brass lamps. Her bed was a burnished walnut platform softened by many pillows covered in fabrics; her table looked as though George Washington might have owned it. In one corner a huge birdcage held a stuffed hawk. The whole effect was of profusion and abundance. A dented kettle painted fire-engine red steamed on the gas hob beside the small white refrigerator against the back wall, covered like the others with photographs in frames. Tom saw Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and a self-portrait in a golden robe of Rembrandt that gazed out with the wisest and most disconcerting expression Tom had ever seen on any face.

“I do my best,” Hattie said. “I live next to the biggest furniture store in all Mill Walk, and I’m a little bit handy, you know. Seems like rich people would rather throw things away than give ’em away, lots of times. I even know the houses a lot of my things came from.”

“You got all this from the dump?” Sarah asked.

“You pick and choose, and you scrub and polish. People around here know I’m fond of pictures, and they bring me frames and such, when they find ’em.” The kettle began to whistle. “I was making a cup of tea for Boney, but he wouldn’t stay—just wanted to throw a scare into Hattie, was all he wanted. You two won’t be in such a rush, will you?”

“We’d love some tea, Hattie,” Tom said.

She poured the boiling water into a teapot and covered it. She brought three unmatched mugs from a little yellow cupboard to the table, a pint of milk, and sugar in a silver bowl. Then she sat beside them and began talking to Sarah about the original owners of some of her things while they waited for the tea to steep.

The big birdcage had been Arthur Thielman’s—or rather, Mrs. Arthur Thielman’s, the first Mrs. Arthur Thielman, and so had her brass lamps; some shoes and hats and other clothes had also been Mrs. Thielman’s, for after her death her husband had thrown out everything that had been hers. Her little old-fashioned desk where she kept her papers and the old leather couch had come from a famous gentleman named Lamont von Heilitz, who had got rid of nearly half his furniture when he had done something— Hattie didn’t know what—to his house. And the big gilded frame around that picture of Mr. Rembrandt—

“Mr. von Heilitz? Famous?” Sarah said, as if the name had just caught up with her. “He must be the most useless man ever born! He never even comes out of his house, he never sees anyone—how could he be famous?”

“You’re too young to know about him,” Hattie said. “I think our tea’s ready by now.” She began to pour for them. “And he comes out of his house now and again, I know—because he comes to see me.”

“He comes to see you?” Tom asked, now as surprised as Sarah.

“Some old patients come around now and again,” she said, smiling at him. “Mr. von Heilitz, he brought me some of his parents’ things himself, instead of tossing them on the dump and making me drag them home. He might look like an old fool to you, but to me he looks like that picture of Mr. Rembrandt up on my wall.” She sipped her