He scanned the paragraph until, without surprise, he came upon the name Elkanah Bent. He stopped reading and returned the paper with a trembling hand.
The woman held it a moment, then flung it away. Rationally, Dills knew he had little to fear from someone so old. And yet he was frightened.
It was partly the room — the candles in greasy pools of hot melted tallow — and partly the woman. Scarcely a hundred pounds, if that, and so ravaged by age and the unguessable emotions that had rioted in her sick mind all these years, she hardly looked human. She was more like a wax figure, a ghastly museum exhibit with a queer resemblance to her albino caretaker. She powdered her face, she powdered her hair, she powdered her hands, a thick layer of white dust. It formed a kind of crust beneath her livid old yellow eyes.
Time had worn away her eyebrows. The bony ridges pressed against her almost transparent skin, as if the skull sought a way into the light. Her hair, turned gray years ago, was whitened by the powder, which sifted down from her high-piled coiffure whenever she moved suddenly, as when she discarded the paper.
Far down on the river, a boat's bell tolled. Dills's attempt to summon resentment had altogether failed. The yellow eyes, unblinking, like the eyes of some armored lizard, reminded him of her mental condition. That he knew the history of nervous disorder running through her family did not make her any less intimidating. He wanted to flee.
"My son committed a hideous murder. Why?" "I don't know," Dills lied. "I don't know his connection with the victim. Probably an accidental choice." What was the point of trying to explain the vendetta against Hazard and Main? Dills had never been able to explain it to himself in any reasonable terms.
He licked his parched lips. A breeze passed over twisted lead strips that had once held stained glass and fluttered the candles. Somewhere under his feet, Dills heard the scurry of rats.
"You told me Elkanah was in Texas. I have letter after let —
"Madam, I wanted to spare you the painful truth."
Dry lips parted to reveal yellowed teeth. "You wanted to spare yourself loss of the stipend."
"No, no, that was not —" Dills gave it up. The mad old eyes, inquisitor's eyes, saw through his attempted deception. "Yes. I did."
She sighed, seeming to grow even smaller inside her heavy gray-silver dress. Patches of green mold showed on the lace hem, much of which had crumbled from rot. The low bodice hung out from her emaciated, heavily powdered breastbone.
With a quiver of her lips and a lift of one hairless brow, she said, "That is perhaps your first honest statement of the evening. You have cruelly deceived me, Dills. It was a condition of the stipend that you watch over Elkanah with utmost care."
The resentment burst out at last. "Which I did, until he made it impossible with his —" He choked back the word crazy. "His erratic behavior."
"But it was a primary condition of our arrangement."
"I would appreciate it if you would speak a little less unkindly," he said, testy. "I responded to your telegraph message out of consideration for you, and —"
"Out of fear," she spat. "Out of some imbecilic hope that you might keep the stipend." He stepped back; her yellow teeth were fully visible, like an enraged dog's. "Well, it's gone. The news article said my poor Elkanah killed some wretched woman, but no one knows why, or where he might be found, because he disappeared years ago. You knew that."
Somehow, though still frightened of her, Dills was experiencing a relief. Perhaps his nerves had been strained too far, could bear no more. "I did. I understand your anger."
"I loved him. I loved my son. I loved my poor Elkanah. Even when he was hundreds of miles from me, even when he was grown, and I had no idea of what he looked like, how his voice might sound —" She passed a hand in front of her face. Her fingers were almost hidden by dirt-encrusted rings of silver and gold, some with stones missing, it was a curious brushing motion, as if she were bothered by a cobweb he couldn't see. There were cobwebs in plenty elsewhere. All over the smashed spinning wheel, and in a gauzy weave under her chair.
"Well," the woman said, less rancorously, "I am glad of the truth at last. My son did not prosper in Texas, then."
"No. Never."
"Where is he hiding, Dills?"
Ah, a chance to wound her. Forcefully, he said, "I have not the slightest idea."
"How long have you not known?"
"Since shortly before the end of the war. He left the Union Army in disgrace." She flung back against the tall chair. "He deserted."
"Oh, God. My poor boy. My poor Elkanah."
She groped beneath her chair again, stirring cobwebs, which became attached to her fingers and hand. She drew into the light an old green wine bottle and a fine lead-glass goblet with a crack and a patina of dirt so thick that the goblet looked translucent. Into the glass she splashed some dark fluid, a port or sherry, perhaps, brown as coffee. He smelled only the rancid odor of spoiled wine.
She sipped without offering him any. Not that he would have touched the filthy stuff. "I should like to retire, madam. It was an exhausting trip."
The yellow eyes slipped across his face, and beyond. The dark brown fluid in the glass leaked from a corner of her mouth, running down her chin like a muddy river through snow. "You have no idea how I cared for him. How badly I wanted a decent life for him. All the more because he had such a terrible start."
What was she saving? The eyes sought his, almost pitiable in their sudden plea for understanding. "You know about my family, Mr. Dills."
"A little. By reputation only."
"There is a strain of mental instability. It runs back many generations, and has spread widely."
Even to the Executive Mansion, he thought. "It tainted my father. After my mother's death, when Heyward Starkwether began to pay court to me, my father grew jealous. I was his favorite child. Heyward proposed. When I told my father that I wanted to accept, it drove him to incredible rage. He had been drinking heavily. He was very powerful physically —"
Dills felt he was about to peer into some buried place, a place where something had been hidden, putrefying, for decades. He was gripped, perversely fascinated. Somewhere the rats shrieked, and there was another, lower sound, as of prey caught and hurt.
"Allow me to guess the rest, madam. Marriage was by then a necessity? You were already carrying Starkwether's child, later named Bent after the farm people who raised him. You revealed your condition to your father, and he beat you."
A vacant smile. Her right hand lolled over the carved chair arm. The filthy goblet slipped, fell, broke. She paid no attention. "Ah — ah. If it were only that simple. My father did use force the night I told him I wanted to marry. The rest of your chronology is out of order." He didn't understand. "Later, I wanted to do away with the unborn child. My father in one of his rages said he would kill me if I did. I was too terrified of him to attempt it. Together — his was the hand forcing mine, you see — we summoned Starkwether and convinced him of his responsibility. His guilt, if you will. I suspect he carried it until he died, poor wretched man."
Dills's hair crawled. Light was shining into the putrefying burial place.
"Are you saying you deceived Heyward Starkwether, madam?"
"Yes."
"My late client — Elkanah Bent's patron and declared father — had no connection with the boy?"
"Heyward supposed he was Elkanah's father. We convinced him of it."
"But he was not?"
"No."
"In other words, all those years, my client was coerced into helping and supporting —?"