stains on his shirt, trying to think what to say.
“I don’t know,” she said at last.
Dyce looked at her sadly. “That’s no good, Helen. That’s not a good answer. Do you know why?”
Helen shook her head no.
“Because it assumes I’m an idiot.” He smiled broadly, as if appreciating the joke. “We both know I’m not an idiot, don’t we?”
Helen nodded agreement.
Dyce moved his hand and Helen winced, but he reached past her and switched on the lamp on her night table.
“Now, I want to try this again. I’ll ask you why the police are at my house, and you’ll tell me the truth this time, all right? But I want you to think about something else first.”
Dyce unscrewed the shade from the lamp and dropped it onto the floor. He held the naked bulb next to her cheek. She could feel the heat. From several inches it was no more than a comforting warmth.
“Have you ever burned your fingers on a light bulb? Of course you have. Do you remember how much that hurt? And that was when you could pull your fingers away immediately. Now suppose you couldn’t pull away and that pain just grew and grew and spread all over your face. Just think about that for a moment, Helen, and then tell me what’s going on.”
Dyce moved the lighted bulb closer to her face.
“Shhh. Not yet. Just think about this first.”
He moved the bulb closer still. She could hear a faint humming sound from the electrical element in the bulb.
When she began to tremble and tears welled in her eyes, Dyce spoke again in the same soothing tone.
“Tell me now, Helen. We’ll start with the police. Why are they at my house?”
After she told him everything she knew, he led her to the kitchen and selected her best knife. Dyce was disappointed in the selection.
“A good knife is an absolute essential for a good cook,” he said. He had placed her on a stool in the corner of the kitchen so she could not leave without passing him. As he rummaged through the knife drawer, Helen glanced out the window. If necessary she would throw the stool through the window to get attention, but there was nobody out there.
“What do you cut things with, for heaven’s sake? Do you do all your work with a paring knife?” He held one up contemptuously, then tossed it back in the drawer. “You couldn’t bone a chicken with that,” he said.
He settled at last on an old and long-neglected carving knife with a handle formed of antler. The blade was dull and specked with corrosion.
“You don’t even have a proper whetstone,” he complained.
“Please,” said Helen in a voice so low she could barely hear it herself.
“This is not the way to live. You’ve got to have more pride in yourself This lack of self-esteem…” He waved his arm to encompass the whole room. “Well, it’s pretty sadly reflected in this kitchen.”
“Please, don’t,” she said, louder this time.
Dyce was sharpening the knife on an emery wheel that was part of the electric can opener, shaking his head at the neglect of good steel. The grinding drowned Helen’s voice.
“If you ever lived on a farm you’d learn something about keeping your tools in good shape,” he said, testing the knife edge with his thumb.
“I’ll do anything, anything,” Helen said.
“Get me a paper towel,” he said. He put the can opener back in its place, handling it with some difficulty because of his injured arm.
She looked at him, not comprehending.
“A paper towel, Helen.”
She tore one from the roll and held it toward him. With startling suddenness and violence, Dyce slashed at it with the knife. The lower half of the towel drifted to the floor.
“Now that’s good steel,” he said.
Helen held both hands over her face, and the upper half of the paper towel protruded as if she were a toddler grasping her favorite blanket.
“Please, what?” he asked, annoyed.
“Don’t kill me.”
He seemed genuinely surprised. “I’m not going to kill you, Helen. Why on earth would I do that? I thought we’d take a ride to Bridgeport together.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to take your car and because I would have trouble driving with my arm like this.”
Helen nodded, understanding nothing.
“And Bridgeport because I understand there are people there who can provide me with documents. It’s awfully hard to get by in America without documents. Bridgeport has neighborhoods where people are not very particular. Do you see?”
Helen nodded again. “I see.”
“Shall we go?”
Helen moved slowly past him until he caught her arm. He held it gently, almost courtly as they walked onto the street. He did not explain the knife and Helen did not ask. She knew she would not like the answer.
He sat with the knife resting on the front seat by his left hand while she drove. Whenever they slowed down for traffic, he grasped the knife and held it close to her ribs, though when he spoke there was nothing in his voice to indicate the slightest concern, or, indeed, any change in their relationship. If anything, he was more talkative and friendlier than he had been before Helen discovered the skulls under his floorboards.
When they reached the thruway and headed toward Bridgeport, Dyce fell silent for a long while. Helen tried to think of nothing but the traffic and after a time the flow of the road lulled her into a form of forgetfulness. When he spoke again he startled her.
“You mustn’t be afraid of me,” he said. “You must obey me, but don’t be afraid.”
“All right,” said Helen, trying to control her breathing, which had started out of control at the sound of his voice.
“I didn’t put those bones under the floor,” he said, as if an afterthought. “You know that, don’t you?”
Helen swallowed. She did not know how to speak to him.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. A huge transport truck roared past them on the left, causing their car to shudder in its wake. “Someone else did that. The previous owner, probably.”
He glanced at Helen to see how the statement was taken. She nodded, fighting back tears. He returned to his study of the traffic in front of them. Dyce regarded the role of passenger as one of codriver.
“What did he say when you told him about the talcum powder?” Dyce asked. “I wonder what he thinks of me.”
He turned to face her on the seat, like a girlfriend settling in for a cozy chat.
“Did he think that was strange?”
Chapter 11
“ I always knew there was something wrong with Dyce,” Chaney said with considerable pride.
“What did you think was wrong with him?”
“An excess of ordinary. There’s such a thing as too common, you know. Or maybe you don’t know; you’re not an actuary. That’s one thing we look for, something that occurs too often. You might think that if sixty-three percent of the workers in a certain industry retire at age sixty-five, the national average, and die at the age of seventy-five point seven years of heart failure, also the national average, then that sets your average for that industry, but me, I look at that and say, hold it, what’s going on here, that’s way too average. Who are these
