However, he couldn’t be bothered changing his tyre now. Too hot. He walked out into the middle of the grass circle ringed by the drive and looked back at the Gage mansion.
It was an old solid-looking wood and brick plantation house, with none of the pseudo-Grecian elegance of those usually featured in tourist brochures or films about the Civil War. The ground floor was set on a semi-raised basement and was reached by wide steps which gave on to the two tiered encircling porch supported, on the ground floor, by double stuccoed-brick columns. The split-shingled pavilion roof, with a steep hip, formed a cover for the upper gallery, the roof slope supported here by unembellished wooden colonettes. Four small brick chimneys were grouped at the centre. It was a fine, nicely proportioned house, derived in the main from the French Colonial style, he saw. At some stage its woodwork had been painted green but wind, rain and time had rendered this down to a flaky lichenous mixture of sludge-greys and browns. It was in need of some care and attention, but had it been in the most gleaming pristine condition it could have done nothing to counteract the awful proximity of Freeborn’s mobile home, parked a mere six or seven yards from the front steps. The large number of dirty motor vehicles usually nosing at its sides didn’t help either. It was like some old broken-down sow giving suck to an assorted metallic farrow. Neglect and indifference were all it seemed to evoke; few traces of its romantic past lingered in the air.
The small park it was set in was better tended. The coarse tough grass had been cut back to ankle height. The scattered trees were tall and in fine leaf. From his bedroom window that morning he had looked out onto a garden at the back of the house, wild and overgrown and in riotous flower, the gravelled paths and their low box hedges almost obscured by the profusion and fecundity.
He walked round the side of the house. From here he could see the clapboard extension built onto the back which, he imagined, composed Alma-May’s annexe. He pushed open an askew wicker gate in the tangled hedge that marked the garden boundary and made his way with difficulty along a path to emerge at a small square of lawn. Here the grass was knee high and alive with butterflies. He picked a flower from a nearby shrub and smelt it. Sweet and musky: redolent of Shanda.
He looked up at the rear elevation of the house. A smaller set of steps led down from the porch to the garden. Because of the wide porch and gallery and the overhang of the roof it was hard to gain an accurate idea of the house’s size: just how many rooms it had and how they were laid out within the basic rectangle of the design. He started counting windows on the upper storey. Eight. He thought he saw someone move behind one of them but then he couldn’t be sure. A minute later he heard the sound of a car starting and then driving away. Shanda? Alma-May? Cora?
He went up the back steps and tried the back door. Locked. He followed the porch round to the front door. Some of the windows he passed were firmly shuttered and he wondered if the rooms behind them held the Gage collection.
He walked into the hall. The house was quiet and felt empty. He wandered around the ground floor, peering into rooms he hadn’t visited. There was a large dining room, a ‘den’ with a dust-mantled ping-pong table, another reception room with all the furniture shrouded in sheets, with the exception of a large grand piano. Such paintings as were on the walls were framed prints, family portraits or water-colours by patent amateurs.
He went quietly upstairs. He paused at the top checking for noise. Nothing. He put his hands in his pockets and hummed tunelessly to himself, wondering if he really should be prowling around in this way. To his right ran a corridor off which were Duane’s, Bryant’s and his rooms. He turned left. He opened a door and looked in. An utterly characterless bedroom with scattered clothes and an unmade bed. On a chest of drawers stood a sizeable component from an internal combustion engine. Beckman’s room? Other doors revealed a large walk-in closet heaped with folded sheets and towels, a bathroom and another room, entirely empty. The corridor led him round a corner. Two doors were set on either side of the passage which came to an end at a casement window overlooking the back garden.
He tried one door. It was locked. So too was the one adjacent. He tried a door on the other side. It swung open. The room was dark, the curtains were drawn, and no lights were on. He stood poised in the doorway for a moment, listening. Not a sound. He saw a small sitting room with some old leather armchairs. There was a strong smell of stale cigarette smoke. Were these Gage’s rooms? Or Beckman’s? Through ajar double doors in one wall he could make out a single bed. There was a gleaming aluminium stereo set placed on some shelves amidst a rubble of LPs, magazines, newspapers and stacks of books. Some pictures hung on the wall beyond them but the gloom was too intense to make them out. He walked carefully over to them, stepping round the piles of reading matter and scattered records.
He stopped suddenly. A small light glowed on the stereo’s console. The turntable was revolving. A record was playing soundlessly. He could feel the echo of his heart beat rebound from the roof of his mouth. His startled eyes followed a wire which led from the stereo set across the littered carpet and onto a divan tucked into a far corner of the room. Someone was lying on it.
“Who’s that?” a woman’s voice said. “Duane? Keep your fuckin’ hands off of my records.”
Thick-throated and trembling, Henderson stood to attention.
“Ah, no,” he said. The person lay on her back, as far as he could see, and had made no move to turn round.
Henderson began to talk. “Terribly sorry to wander in — name’s Dores actually looking for Mr Gage’s paintings, um…” He took a pace or two forward. He started explaining again. Now he could see that the person lying on the divan was a very small young woman — Cora Gage, doubtless. Henderson stopped talking because he realized she couldn’t hear him. She wore headphones and very dark round sunglasses. She sat up, removed her headphones and turned her sightless eyes in his direction.
“If you’re not Duane who the hell are you?” Her voice had the faintest of Southern accents. She expressed no surprise at a stranger walking, uninvited, into her room, her tone was weary and dry.
“The name’s Dores.” Henderson explained again who he was and why he’d made the mistake of coming in. He held out his hand then snatched it back, realizing she couldn’t see the proffered gesture. He could hardly say ‘shake’ like some cowboy in a saloon.
“He hangs his paintings in his own rooms,” she explained. “Across the corridor. But he keeps them locked up. So Freeborn and Beckman can’t get at them.”
“Ah.” This made no sense, but, then again, that was hardly surprising.
“Awe.” She imitated him. Henderson charitably ignored this. Blind people were preternaturally sensitive to noise, he knew; she was probably savouring the timbre of his voice, as if making some sort of a sonic filing card for her memory, as sighted people might make a note of a face or a view. She was wearing jeans and a man’s shirt. She swung her legs off the divan and sat on the edge. She was very small and thin, not much more than five feet, he guessed. She had a pale, sallow face and wispy untidy brown hair scraped into crude bangs on either side of her head. In the blurry light, with her round opaque lenses, she looked like some mutant night-creature, some lemur or potto.