“Oh, I agree thoroughly.” This was Dr. Fowler. “She’s undoubtedly deserving, but have you given a thought to skyrocketing real-estate prices, Bob? This place is worth a good deal. Your niece may not unnaturally—”
“It’s done.” Mr. Tomlinson, in one of his rare flashes of autocracy. “I’m only telling you so that you can certify, if it should ever become necessary, that it was done in my right mind. You would certify to that, I trust?”
Snort of laughter from Dr. Fowler. “No question about that. Now, let’s get the shirt off . .
Celia let herself out with a housebreaker’s stealth, waiting to ease the door shut until the voices had resumed again. Although her blood was hammering wildly in her head, some kind of automatic pilot observed coolly that she had better get to the library in half the usual time, so that she could find Mr. Tomlinson’s selections and return as punctually as though she had never made that trip back and never heard—never heard . . .
At the library desk, she almost stammered. She had been coming here for nearly a year, but suddenly the rental-book stand, the dry hush, the librarian’s earnest face (Mrs. Ohm, she was), the cut-out and pasted daisies surrounding a notice that there would be a children’s story hour on Saturday, the menacing little notice under glass about fines for book damage (dog bites were fifteen cents) seemed as alien as the features of a land visited in a dream.
(“This place is worth a good deal.”
“It’s done.”)
She tried to shake off the trancelike state as she returned at speed; for all she knew, Dr. Fowler might have powers of divination. But she took an objective view of 4 Stedman Circle—hers!—as she approached it, and was able, because of the oppressive, purple-clouded heat, to pass a handkerchief quite naturally over her forehead as she said in the study, “The book on falconry was out, sir, but I got everything else.”
“Thank you, Celia,” said Mr. Tomlinson in exactly his usual tone, and it would have needed preknowledge to detect a slightly more personal interest in Dr. Fowler’s bright gray eyes. Celia willed her own knowledge to erase itself, although it felt like a birthmark. She asked composedly if they would care for iced coffee or tea, was told no, and retreated to the kitchen.
Her kitchen, ultimately. Given a man of eighty-three, soon.
But, as though the mere revising of his will had lent him new vigor, Mr. Tomlinson throve. A footnote in his manuscript said that his mother had lived to be eighty-nine, his father ninety-two. Celia had read in a syndicated medical-advice column that, barring accident or acute infection, you were apt to live approximately as long as your parents.
Discontent came slowly at first, not assuaged by Dr. Fowler’s jocular, “Marvelous, isn’t he? He may bury us all,” and was followed by impatience. Celia was like a child who, discovering Christmas, starts to wonder, How many days? How many, indeed? Mr. Tomlinson began to seem to her like an hourglass with an obstacle in the middle, preventing the final flow.
Meanwhile, it was essential that there be no change in her own demeanor, although they would not be looking for one as she had presumably been at the library when that all-important conversation took place. Nevertheless, Celia was careful not to be sweeter tempered than usual with her employer, especially in the presence of Dr. Fowler. She watched her step on Mrs. Cannon’s rare visits, and her friendly fellow-employee relationship with Mrs. Meggs went unchanged.
As she would have no future use for, or need of, Willis Lambert, Celia set about discouraging him, but in Willis’s world this was a standard feminine ploy and his ardor redoubled. She breathed a sigh of relief when Temple Insurance dispatched him to their home office in Milwaukee for further training.
“We could be married first,” suggested Willis eagerly and covetously, “and I could send for you.”
“That wouldn’t be fair to you or the company,” said Celia firmly. “They think they’re getting a single man, you know,” and Willis gave her a last nudge with his elbow and was gone.
In her room at night she studied the real-estate columns in the evening paper, and on her day off she went to look at some of the houses that seemed to resemble 4 Stedman Circle in size, neighborhood, and facilities. She discovered that, with the commercial area gnawing steadily away at the fringes of the good residential area, Mr. Tomlinson’s back garden was a considerable asset. She finally arrived at an approximate figure of fifty-five thousand dollars.
Eventually. And if Mr. Tomlinson did not change his mind for some reason. As he had the invincible stubbornness which often accompanies a mild disposition, conventionality seemed to pose the worst threat, although he had certainly been unconventional enough in the matter of Mrs. Ellwell. That lady’s demise appeared to have put blinders on Mrs. Cannon; she made her duty visits to her uncle, and no more.
At eight thirty on the morning of June fourteenth, having finished her own breakfast of boiled egg and dry toast and coffee, Celia began the preparation of Mr. Tomlinson’s oatmeal. He was as severe about the easy five-minute kind as he was about tea bags, and she had put on the kettle for the scalding of the teapot and was placing his egg on the counter when she heard her name called once more in that distant and terrified way.
She did not run, this time. She steadied the egg in its precipitate roll (no point in having to clean that up, when the frantic summons would turn out as it had before) and lodged it securely behind the readied cup and saucer. Then she mounted the stairs and went into Mr. Tomlinson’s bedroom, hearing “Celia!” in a diminishing voice three more times on the way. She did not answer.
The door to the forbidden balcony stood wide, moving
