Places in the Dark Page 6

  “Did she?” I asked. “Take something from his house?”

  “Yes,” Brady said. “A little porcelain figure. Ed had scores of them. She took one of a little girl with long, blond hair.”

  It rose into my mind exactly as I’d seen it, illuminated by a single candle. “Naked. Sitting on a rock,” I said. “With her legs drawn up.”

  “So you’ve seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t much of anything. Just a little china figure. Cheap, not worth much. But that’s the one she chose.”

  It had rested on the bureau in her bedroom, and other than her clothes and the leather suitcase she’d packed them in, she’d taken nothing else from the cottage on the day she fled.

  “She never asked for anything else?”

  “Nothing,” Brady said. “I always got the feeling that Dora didn’t want very much from life.”

  In my mind, I saw her on the bank of Fox Creek, bending over to dip her fingers in the swirling water, a strange delight in her eyes, small and fierce and frail, like something lifted on the tiniest wings.

  “And I certainly never thought she was the sort of woman who’d take advantage of an old man.” Brady considered his next words carefully. “I have some evidence of that.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That she cared for Ed. That it wasn’t just some sort of act.” He leaned back in his chair. “One evening, I dropped by Ed’s house just after work. This was a few days before he died. He was sitting in the front parlor, in his wheelchair, dressed up, like he was going to church or a wedding. He even had a tie on. Looked handsome.” He’d chosen the wrong word, and corrected himself. “Well, not handsome. You couldn’t look handsome in Ed’s condition. But he looked calm. Not mad at the world, the way he usually did.”

  When he arrived, Brady told me, Dora had been seated on a chair beside Mr. Dillard, a book open in her lap.

  “After a while, she went to the kitchen and brought out a cake she’d made. She’d cut Ed’s piece into small squares.” He studied me closely, seemingly determined to prove his point. “And she got down on her knees, Cal. She got down on her knees and fed cake to that pitiful old man.” He waited for the image to sink in, then added, “She was good to Ed. That’s my point, of course. Very good to him. Because she cared about him. Not to get something for herself. And she read to him hour upon hour.”

  I remembered her in my study, her face in the firelight, the way her hands caressed the book she’d taken from the shelf, then later, in her cottage, the book I’d found open on the small table by the window, the stark lines she’d underscored.

  Brady gave his final word on the subject. “Dora was good to Ed, Cal. From the moment she started working for him until the night he died.”

  The night he died.

  I remembered that night well, the sound of a Christmas bell somewhere as I knocked at the door and waited, then a hand parting the white lace curtains, after that a woman’s face, beautiful and still, her green eyes peering catlike from the darkened house.

  Chapter Six

  Ed Dillard’s house was set far back from Maple Street. It was the only one that bore no sign of the Christmas holidays, no candles in the windows, no gleaming tree, nor any obvious sign that the house was occupied at all.

  Then I saw a woman in a second-floor window, her arms held stiffly at her sides so that she looked as if she’d been placed there, like one of those stone figures that the ancients used to guard the portals of their souls.

  She’d come downstairs by the time I reached the door. When she parted the curtains, I saw only her face, white and luminous, a cameo pinned to black velvet. Then she opened the door and a slant of light fell over her, slicing her in two, casting her eyes in deep shadow but bathing everything else in a treacherous yellow light.

  “Sheriff Pritchart said you called,” I explained. “He’s got a pretty bad cold, and his deputy’s gone to Portland. So he asked me to come over.” I took off my hat. “Cal Chase. I work in the district attorney’s office.”

  She stepped back. “Please come in,” she said.

  I had seen Dora before, on that morning as she passed by Ollie’s Barber Shop. But I’d never seen her close up. Now I noticed that she’d cut her hair short and without regard to style. I noticed other things as well. That her skirt fell to her ankles, her sleeves to her wrists, as if her body were a thing she sought utterly to conceal.

  “Mr. Dillard is upstairs,” she said.

  He lay in his bed, eyes closed, a blanket drawn over him and tucked just beneath his chin. The pillow his head rested upon looked newly fluffed, the case crisp and white. A water glass rested in a silver tray on a table beside his bed, along with a blue china cup, half filled with tea. A white candle burned fitfully in a crystal holder; a single red rose, fresh and impossibly fragrant, had been placed in the small vase that stood beside it.

  I glanced at the rocking chair on the other side of the bed. A book lay upturned on its seat, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses beside it. The House of the Seven Gables. I’d read it in high school, remembered well how the old man had died, his eyes wide, frantic, glaring, his mouth spitting blood.

  By all appearances Ed Dillard had died the way people wanted to, peacefully in his sleep. I doubted that he’d actually gone that way, of course. I’d had enough experience with death by then to know that people died like old cars, shaking and clattering, spewing fluids, gases. I suddenly remembered my mother as I’d found her in the cottage, alive but barely, sprawled across the floor, her nightgown sticky with sweat and urine. My old anger leaped up in me again, like a cat in wait. When I glanced toward Dora, I saw something move across her features, swift as a shadow. I felt that she’d seen the very image that had darted through my mind, had sensed how quickly grief turned to rage in me.

  “Mr. Dillard seems to have gone peacefully,” I said as I pulled out my notebook. “I just have to ask a few questions,” I explained.

  She gave a quick nod.

  “Were you with Mr. Dillard when he died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember about what time he passed away?”

  “Shortly after nine o’clock.”

  “And he died right here? In his bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has anybody been in the room since then?”

  “No.”

  “Has he been moved?”

  “I washed him and changed his clothes. Should I not have done that?”

  “No, no, that’s fine,” I assured her. “Nothing to worry about.” I glanced at my notebook, writing nothing. “Just for the record, what was your relationship to Mr. Dillard?”

  “I was his housekeeper.”

  “Live-in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if he had any relatives? People who should be contacted?”

  “He never mentioned anyone.”

  “And your name is?”

  Her arms drew upward protectively, as if against invisible fingers unbuttoning her blouse. “Dora March,” she replied evenly.

  I closed the notebook. “Well, that’s all I need to know at the moment. I’ll have to send Dr. Bradshaw over. He’s the county coroner. Do you want me to call him now?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I used the phone downstairs, a wooden one that hung on the wall. Dora stood a few feet away, beside a lamp with a bloodred shade, listening silently as I made the arrangements.

  “The doctor will be by in just a few minutes,” I told her as I hung up the phone.

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry about Mr. Dillard,” I added.

  “Thank you.”

  She walked me to the door.

  I stepped out onto the porch. “Well, good night, Miss March.”

  “Good night, Mr. Chase.”

  I was back in my office, sleeplessly toiling at some nondescript prosecution, when Doc Bradshaw came by an hour later. He was an old man, careless in his dress, with a rumpled hat, and
a day or two’s growth of gray stubble. One leg was shorter than the other, so that when he walked his left shoulder rode a good two inches higher than the right. It gave him a mangled appearance, like a bicycle that had been run over then crudely hammered back into shape.

  “Here’s the death certificate,” he said. He slid a single sheet of paper onto my desk.

  I picked it up and began to glance over it. “Anything I need to tell Hap?”

  Doc Bradshaw lowered himself with a sigh into the chair opposite my desk. He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a shot of whiskey, would you, Cal?”

  “I don’t keep it in my office.”

  “Because it’s against the rules?”

  “Because it’s too tempting.” I glanced at the bottom of the page. “Natural causes. You have any reason to doubt that?”

  Doc Bradshaw chuckled. “You looking for trouble, Cal? Not enough felonious activity in Port Alma for you?” He laughed again. “No, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Old men die, that’s the long and short of it.” He bent forward, massaged his knees, then sat back with a soft groan. “Poor old Ed. Not a person in the world to shed a tear for him.”

  “Except that woman,” I said, surprising myself as I said it.

  “Think they were close?” Doc Bradshaw asked.

  “She seemed to care about him.”

  Bradshaw glanced toward the window. “I guess she’ll be leaving Port Alma.”

  “Why’s that?”

  His eyes returned to me. “Probably have to. I don’t know of any other old man who could afford to hire a live-in housekeeper. Not in times like these.”

  I put the report in a folder and shoved it in my desk. “She’ll find something else to do.”

  “Maybe so,” Doc Bradshaw said. He grabbed his knees and drew himself to his feet. “You ought to give her a call, Cal.”

  “Give who a call?”

  “That young woman who was taking care of Ed. You know, there’s not that many single women left in Port Alma.” He smiled slyly. “He who hesitates is lost.”

  Doc Bradshaw was right, of course, but I hesitated nonetheless. The following morning new cases were on my desk, people mistreating each other in the customary ways, mostly by breaching contracts involving money or the heart. Sheriff Pritchart came by to pick up Doc Bradshaw’s report. He asked if everything had appeared “normal” at Ed Dillard’s house. I told him that it had, and gave the whole incident no further thought.

  Then, two days later, the day after Christmas, I noticed a brief piece about Ed Dillard in the Sentinel. I knew Billy had written it, for it bore the mark of my brother’s style, the distinctive romantic wistfulness that also marked his mind. He wrote of the old man’s struggle against poverty, all he’d had to overcome, the devotion he’d shown during his wife’s long sickness, the fortitude with which he’d later borne his own ill fortune. “The grace of Ed Dillard’s life came to resemble the roses he tended in the garden beside his house,” my brother wrote, “all the more beautiful for thorns.”

  I visited my brother the following afternoon. For the last few years we’d made it our business to have lunch with our father each Sunday. After my mother left him, moved into the cottage on Fox Creek, he’d gone through a period of pronounced withdrawal. He’d briefly considered returning to the paper, then just as abruptly dropped the idea, deciding to act only as an “adviser.” This had meant little more than his depending upon his old friend, Sheriff Pritchart, to alert him about any newsworthy events in the county. For the rest, my father pretty much remained secluded in the house on Union Road, reading his cherished books and picking out the melody lines of the few pieces of sheet music my mother had left with the piano.

  On that particular Sunday, he’d seemed somewhat more animated, telling stories from his early days at the Sentinel, the past, as always, considerably more alive than the present, while the future seemed hardly to exist for him at all, a land across the river, still and windless, already locked in death.

  After lunch, we settled in my father’s parlor. It was a blustery day, with dark clouds rolling in from the north. Beyond the rattling windows, winds gusted suddenly, then settled no less abruptly, like horses whipped then brought to heel.

  My father handed out cigars, then took his place in the rocker beside the door. Billy leaned against the brick mantel, restless as ever, while I took my usual place on the leather sofa.

  My father took a quick draw on his cigar. “Anything new at the paper, William?”

  Billy shook his head, then slumped into the chair opposite me and folded one long leg over the other, bouncing his foot rhythmically, like someone keeping time to a song no one else could hear.

  “Well, there must be some news,” I said.

  “Not really. Things are pretty quiet.”

  My father turned to me. “And in the legal profession, what news?”

  “Not much there either.”

  “All right, then,” my father said. He drew a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Let’s begin Four Lines.”

  Four Lines was an idea my mother had come up with years before, when Billy and I were boys. After Sunday lunch, each member of the family had to recite four lines from some work of literature. Each recitation was to be carefully chosen for its beauty or its wisdom. Ideally it would reflect either our current mood or some problem that had arisen in our lives, one for which we were seeking a solution. In continuing the activity after my mother deserted him, my father no doubt hoped that it would encourage my brother and me to discuss our deepest hopes and fears with him. Four Lines had not achieved that end, but he’d continued to believe that one day it might.

  We went in order of seniority that afternoon, as always. I don’t remember what my father recited, but he was inclined toward aphorisms, particularly when neatly housed in heroic couplets, so it was more than likely something from Pope or Dryden. For my part, I’d quickly thumbed through Bartlett’s Quotations an hour or so before and located a few lines about the law. I recited them without enthusiasm, then nodded to Billy for the last recitation of the day.

  “Your turn,” I said.

  My father drew in a somewhat impatient breath, already suspecting that he would not much care for Billy’s choice. “Your brother had rather cut grass with a mustache trimmer than read anything other than that romantic drivel his mother pushes on him,” he’d grumbled years before as the two of us sat in his study, gravely pondering Euripides, while Billy frolicked in the yard, tumbling madly, hand over hand. It was a judgment he’d never changed, although I think my mother’s departure had greatly challenged it, suggested that he might have learned something from the poets she’d cherished, their ardent songs of love.

  “So, William, what do you have for us?” he asked now.

  The rhythmic motion of my brother’s feet stopped suddenly. He smiled softly, fiddled unnecessarily with the right cuff of his shirt, then rose, his eyes quite still, his voice very nearly solemn as he recited.

  The desire of the moth for the star.

  Of the day for the morrow.

  The yearning for something afar

  From the sphere of our sorrow.

  When he finished, he sat down and fixed his gaze on the hearth. A soft golden light danced in his face, an effect that gave him an exposed and vulnerable look, something I’d never seen before.

  “Who’s the poet?” my father asked.

  “Shelley.”

  “Your mother’s favorite,” my father said. “No wonder. She was always looking for something afar.”

  Billy nodded. “Still is, I suppose,” he said softly.

  I looked at him intently. “Are you?” I asked.

  His eyes drifted over to me. “Maybe,” he said with a quiet, strangely somber smile.

  Two weeks would pass before I put it together, the quotation he’d chosen, the pensive mood with which he’d offered it. Two weeks before I learned that in fact he had found that afar t
hing he’d spoken of that afternoon.

  And that her name was Dora March.

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  In the days immediately following my brother’s murder, Sheriff T. R. Pritchart made every effort to find Dora March. He traced every lead, talked to everyone who might have known anything about where she’d gone. From me he learned that the ring we’d found beside Billy’s body was my mother’s. From Betty Gaines he discovered that a car had been parked on the road behind Dora’s house not long before Billy’s death. She’d also heard a voice coming from Dora’s house, a male voice, Betty insisted, though she could not be sure it was Billy’s. Rushing through the rain, skirting along the edge of the lawn, she’d been able to make out only a little of what she’d heard.

  Four lines:

  I don’t believe it.

  It’s not true.

  It can’t be true.

  It’s you!

  As to Dora’s whereabouts, Henry Mason, an employee at the Sentinel, turned out to be the best witness. He’d seen Dora that day walking on the road that led to Royston, he told T.R. She’d been carrying a suitcase and headed toward the concrete pillar that marked the stopping place of the Portland bus. It had been raining, he said, and so he’d stopped, picked her up, and driven her to the bus station in Port Alma. She’d looked very tense, according to Henry, but she’d given no explanation as to why she was leaving town. From the look on her face, he’d gotten the idea that something had happened, the sudden illness of a relative, perhaps, or some other distressing news that had abruptly called her away. He’d asked her where she was going. She’d replied only, “Away for a while,” so that Henry had fully expected her to return to Port Alma in a few days, had not in the least guessed that she was “on the run.” He’d dropped her off at the bus station at “somewhere around three” in the afternoon, he told Pritchart, and had then driven directly home.