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Late afternoon, just after four o'clock. Wish had left, saying
on his way out that he was going to do a bit on his own special
project on his way home. I was curious, of course, to know what his
special project was; nevertheless I did not ask. I had a strong
hunch it had something to do with those graves, which I had not
liked at all, and if that were the case I did not want to know.

I roamed through my side of the house, at first idly and then
with the dawning realization that I was looking at my space through
my father's eyes-or as near to that as possible. His visit,
coinciding with my birthday, was just a little more than a week
off.

The entire downstairs, the office suite, Father could not help
but approve. He would not expect the mahogany-paneled solemnity of
his own offices at the bank. Nor even, I daresay, the elegance of
his library and study in our own Boston house. Our three rooms
here, including Michael's minuscule study, were tastefully
furnished and as filled with light as any space can be in this city
of ever changing moods and fogs. The kitchen he would ignore as not
being his domain, therefore not a place about which he felt
entitled to render an opinion.

With an increasingly heavy heart and a sheen of apprehension
appearing on my skin, I climbed the stairs to my private rooms on
the second and third floors. The wall along the stair needed
pictures-paintings, or at least photographs. But art takes both
time and money to acquire; one cannot (if one has any sense of
taste at all) just put up any old thing, buy old paintings out of
the barrel at the junk shop, which was about all I could afford for
now, and in the foreseeable future.

My own sitting room had a nice Chinese rug on the floor, a sort
of house-warming gift from my friend Meiling Li, who is Chinese and
a special student at Stanford. This rug had a border pattern in a
subdued apricot shade, a central sort of mandala predominantly of
the same shade, and a background field of ivory with tiny apricot,
brown, and green flowers woven into it. Father would like the
rug-even Augusta would have to like that rug, as it was very
fine-but he would look around and think, if not say, "And where is
the rest of your furniture, Fremont?" No, he wouldn't, he'd say,
"And where is the rest of your furniture,
Caroline?"

I found myself resenting that mightily, though he was not even
here yet, and even though I knew I could hardly be certain what
he'd think.

"Oh yes, I can!" I said softly but intensely, leaning in the
sitting-room doorway, heartsick. I loved my father dearly, and he
would never understand, never appreciate how long it had taken me
to trust that the J&K Agency could provide me with
income-producing work, work which would enable me to support myself
as I'd done with my typewriting service that first glorious and
strange year in San Francisco. He couldn't know that only recently
had I dared spend a substantial portion of my little remaining
hoard of money for the two chairs the room did hold. These were a
pair of velvet-upholstered wing-back chairs in a rich butterscotch
shade, one with a matching footstool. I had been so proud of
purchasing those two chairs, yet now I saw that to Father they
would look like nothing. Perhaps even worse than nothing.

"It's not much, by damn, but it's mine
¹
." I yelled
the words out into the room, knowing that when Father was present I
should have to swallow them, and I heard the echoes of my voice
bounce off the walls, break into fragments, and quiver at last to
rest in the invisible air. Then step by step I forced myself
through the rest of the apartment, noting with a merciless eye how
shabby the remainder of my furniture was, looking like castoffs
because for the most part that is what they were. The maids in our
Boston house had had better-looking bedrooms than mine-at least if
you considered only the furniture.

Palm of my hand flat against the silken coolness of the spread
on my bed, I smoothed it, caressed it, and let my eyes roam over
the mementos that made the room special: the postcards tucked
around the edge of the mirror over my dresser; a tastefully mounted
collection of casual photos taken by Michael in Carmel of all our
zany friends there, who were in some sort of costume often as not;
tied round one of the bedposts, a shining teal-blue ribbon with a
single golden thread running through it, which had been wrapped
about the stems of the first bouquet of flowers Michael-then
Archer-ever gave me. Then I sat on the bed, pushed back against the
headboard, and let it all wash over me: How much happiness I had
felt in this bedroom with its shabby furniture (but, admittedly, a
good mattress), and quite soon I didn't give a fig about what
Father thought any more.

I did miss Michael though, a great deal. The house seemed so
empty. And to think I'd be without him for two whole weeks, such an
awfully long time.

A brisk walk before supper, I decided, would be just the thing.
And if I should just happen to walk by Frances's house, I might be
able to see if anything were going on. Her house was, after all,
right on the way to several other places, such as the little branch
library . . . well, to be perfectly honest it wasn't on the way to
the library at all, but if one were fond of loops as a walking
pattern . . . and I really should go to the library before it
closed for the night, as that librarian was keeping her eye out for
me for materials having to do with Ingrid Swann.

So it was that I found myself, at an hour when most people are
sitting ensconced in their homes with their children crawling all
over them, walking briskly down the hill toward Broadway. The
McFadden mansion, when I sighted it, was blazing with electric
lights; and when I passed it, I felt as if every window were an eye
looking at me, watching me suspiciously, curiously, and with a good
deal of caution. "Go away!" the house said. "Don't bother me! Be
gone, Fremont Joo-o-o-nes. . . ."

I, however, am stubborn and pigheaded, and do not take it
lightly that a house may be ordering me about. So I stood my ground
and became rooted in place on the sidewalk looking up at it.
Something was going on in that house that was not the usual sort of
thing. I was absolutely sure of it, yet I could not for the life of
me see or hear anything beyond those great, thick walls.

Leaving the sidewalk, I walked around to the side where
Frances's favorite door was indeed open. It stood ajar by one or
two inches. I feared Patrick Rule would be inside, up those stairs,
and I was in an agony of wanting to know. I leaned toward the
opening, my already keen hearing sharpened to its highest pitch,
and listened: a humming, buzzing of conversation, probably in the
kitchen, was all I heard. Not a single individual word had been
discernible. Nor any one voice recognizable.

Should I go in? Go up those stairs, burst in on them in
Frances's rooms, warn them? Say something like,
Patrick and
Frances, be lovers if you must, pupil and teacher if you will
(after all, hadn't I done the same with Michael?),
but for
heaven's sake, Not So Near the Dinner Hour
¹
.
And not
in her own house where her husband could come in at any moment.

I placed one foot on the threshold. I told myself I had my own
key to this door still; Frances wouldn't have given it to me if she
didn't want me to use it. I smelled the loamy odors of the garden
room, or flower room, or whatever it was that Frances had called it
. . . and then, Crash! Someone had dropped something in the
kitchen, a load of crockery by the sound of it.

Whatever had I been thinking of? I came to my senses and
fled.

I had collected every newspaper article to appear so far in
connection with Ingrid Swann's death, and the following morning sat
reading them at my desk. Wish was late; I didn't mind. As far as I
knew he didn't have a case, so it didn't really matter; and it had
been days and days since a single client had come to our door. We
were still in that stage of having to go out and drum up business
for ourselves.

With a thrill I realized, just looking at all this publicity for
the famous Ingrid Swann, that the investigation I was conducting on
behalf of Patrick Rule could make the reputation of the J&K
Agency. If I could find the killer when the police couldn't, and
somehow let the press in on it . . . Oh, I could just see the
headlines! For here, every photograph of Ingrid was accompanied by
a banner two inches high. And of course every paper had a
photograph, because Ingrid Swann had been a beautiful woman.
Extraordinarily beautiful. Even the harshness of newsprint could
not dim the effect of that face.

She had a neck like her name, like a swan, made to appear all
the more delicate by the bouffant Gibson-girl style of her hair,
which apparently had been palest blond in shade. As each newspaper
had a slightly different photo, it was possible to regard this dead
woman from straight on, in three-quarter profile, and in one demure
complete profile with head and eyes cast down at an angle. The
nose, the cheeks, the perfect rosebud of her mouth all seemed as
perfect in proportion and line as those of a Greek statue.

No, I thought with a frown, that was not a good comparison, for
the Greeks made statues of heroic size, whereas Ingrid's features
were delicate. More like an Italian Renaissance statue, a little
Donatello perhaps-though if I remembered my art from Wellesley,
Donatello had mostly sculpted boys. That looked like girls.

I mentally shook myself to stop my mind wandering, got up from
my desk, and let my body wander back to the kitchen for another cup
of coffee. I got this way in the mornings with no one to keep me
focused. I had become dependent on Michael, I realized, to talk to
me until I was well awake, to help me ease into the day . . . and
now he was not here.

"Ridiculous!" I scoffed aloud. I hadn't needed anybody to get me
going in the mornings before, I had always done it by myself just
fine, thank you, for years. Yet I stood staring out the small
window over the kitchen sink while the coffee warmed-it would be
bitter, too strong, I'd cooked it too long-and thought of nothing
except how hard it was for me to think of anything or anyone except
Michael. How I wished I'd acted more wisely, listened to his
counsel] How I wished I had not driven him away.

That was what I'd done, wasn't it? My vaunted independence had
driven him away many days before the time we'd agreed he should be
gone. I wanted him back, wanted to say I was sorry . . . but it was
too late. The damage had been done.

Just then the coffee flared up and boiled over. Before I could
snatch it off the fire, the hot black liquid had filled the room
with the acrid stench of burned brew. "Botheration!" I said, and
set about cleaning it up.

I never did get that cup of coffee drunk, for when I returned
with it to my desk, the little bell let out its silvery peal along
with the opening of the front door. And A Disaster walked into the
office on Divisadero Street.

FREMONT, may I introduce my mother, Edna Stephenson? Mom, this
is Fremont Jones, one of the owners of the J&K Agency."

"Howd'ja do," Edna said, while I said simultaneously: "How do
you do, Mrs. Stephenson."

Then she said, "Best start out calling me Edna." This rather
unusual request was punctuated by one sharp nod of her head, more
like a jerk, setting asway the one forlorn flower that hung from
her bonnet rim. She was a short, almost round woman whose physical
appearance could not possibly have contrasted more with her son's.
Either Wish must resemble his father, or they had found him under a
bush, where he had been abandoned by some tall, thin person.

With a sinking feeling that only increased as Edna toddled into
the room, I soon realized why she had phrased her request that way.
I raised my eyebrows at Wish in mute supplication, but he just
smiled. A benevolent, almost beatific, typically Wish smile that
was completely maddening in the circumstances.

"This is your office?" Edna said, going from one desk to the
other. She had a pattery sort of walk, with an occasional lurch to
one side or the other, like a toddler uncertain on its feet.

Assuming the question to be rhetorical, I did not reply. Instead
I folded my arms, tapped my foot beneath my skirt where no one
could see, and waited for an explanation.

Wish walked around behind me without a word, took his mother by
the elbow, and gently steered her to his own desk. "This is my
desk, where I work, Mama."

"Nize," Edna said, touching the desk. Then, looking Wish up and
down as if to establish the connection between son and desk, she
touched it again. The seating arrangement appeared to have been
given her blessing.

"Fremont, Mama would like to try the receptionist job for a few
days."

I said noncommittally, "I see."