John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

It went off smoothly, as he’d known it would. Boyle was no troublemaker. Too slick for that. He got out docilely, walked docilely to the counter with Clumly, waited docilely while the flowers — white roses — were wrapped and boxed. They cost seven dollars, and Boyle held the box while Clumly got out his billfold. The lady behind the counter worked hastily for once, almost gave him an extra two dollars change. Through all this, Boyle said nothing, showed no surprise. Clumly felt grateful. Good man, he thought. What turned a man like Boyle to a life of crime?

At last Boyle said, speaking for the first time, “Where we going?”

“You’ll find out,” Clumly said. He was always stern, on principle, with prisoners. Let them learn you were human and you could end up dead in some ditch.

He turned off Washington Avenue onto Ross.

“Old Dr. Adams’ place,” Clumly said crisply, pointing to the right. It was a high brick house set back off the street, with round-arched windows, great heavy dentils along the roof overhang, latticework arbors on either side. A house of the type that was common once in Western New York and can still be seen here and there in the country — the Hodge place, for instance, out on Putnam Settlement Road — solid, unspeakably dignified with its great blunt planes of chalky orange brick, its Victorian porches, its cupola: the most beautiful architecture in the world, symbolic of virtues no longer to be found. On the wide, unmowed lawns there were tamaracks over a hundred years old, and at the end of the driveway a morose brick garage. The thief bent forward, looking back at it as they passed.

“Right there’s the Richmond Library,” Clumly said. He pointed, then clutched the wheel again, slowing and turning into Woodworks’.

“Ugly,” Boyle observed. “The library.”

Clumly scowled on principle, though it was true.

They waited on the porch for a full twenty minutes, Clumly fanning himself with his hat, Boyle standing meekly with his shackled hands folded. Maybe they’re dead, Clumly thought. But they weren’t, he knew. He could see nothing through the stained-glass strips at the sides of the door. The porch sloped badly, but someone had recently been working on it There were new balusters on the railing, and one end of the porch had been jacked up and leveled. The house next door had a black and white sign standing out from the porch roof: SHADY REST. There was no more hint of life over there than here. He mopped his forehead and thought again of the flowers lying in the front seat. They’d be even hotter in the car than here. Should he bring them in with him? But he should have thought of it sooner. Octave Woodworth might appear at the door any minute now, and if she found only Boyle there, standing alone, in handcuffs, who knew? It might give her a heart attack.

“I should have brought in those flowers,” Clumly said. “They’ll wilt out there.”

Boyle nodded.

He tried again to see through the stained glass, but it was useless. “Should have had them delivered,” he said.

Again Boyle nodded. He indicated with both shackled hands the heavy bronze knocker on the Woodworths’ door, a lion’s head holding a serpent in its teeth.

“They’ve heard us all right,” Clumly said. Abruptly, before he knew he would do it, he said, “Wait here, Boyle,” and hurried back to the car. He unlocked it as quickly as possible, snatched up the flowers, locked the door again, and hurried back onto the porch. “There now,” he said. He was out of breath. Boyle nodded. They went on waiting. Clumly holding the flower box under his arm.

At last they heard the raiding of the chains as someone unfastened the safety latches. The main lock clicked, and the big door opened inward. “Who is it?” Octave Woodworth whispered. Her face showed the ravages of time, he saw. She looked like an old, old potato from under a sink.

“I’m Chief of Police Clumly,” Clumly said. “I’ve brought along someone we thought you might be able to identify.”

“Come right in,” she whispered. “Come in.”

It was the darkest entryway in the world. The walls were nearly black with age, and the full-length mirrors on each side of the door, set in oak-leaved frames that four strong men could not have carried, reflected only the dull gleams, here and there, of darkly stained wood. Clumly’s figure and Boyle’s, in those antique mirrors, were like two barn owls with glittering eyes. The old woman was like a raven returned from the dead. The old woman backed away from them slowly, no more than a faint silhouette in that smoky darkness. “Come with me,” she whispered. She maneuvered a turn, joints creaking and clicking, and, moving tortuously on her two heavy canes, led them toward a gloomy ten-foot-high oak door that opened off the hallway to the left. “We expected you sooner,” she whispered. The house smelled abandoned, full of the vague scents in an old empty cupboard.

“I’m sorry,” Clumly said craftily. “It’s been a difficult case.”

In the parlor there was more light. They hadn’t yet turned the lamps on, if they still worked, but the arched window facing to the east drew enough sun from the mostly shaded lawn to raise a glitter on the silver vases that once had held flowers, and to glint on the dim prisms of the lamps, the highly polished walnut of the mantelpiece, the ornate legs of tables and chairs. There was no hint of color anywhere. The gilt framework and the ruby glass on the lamps, the yellow-brown of the oval family portraits, the once blue or red of the velvet cushions on the rickety chairs had all sunk to black or dark gray. While Clumly introduced his prisoner to Miss Octave, the prisoner stood meekly squinting at the clutter of old china and silver on the piano table.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Miss Octave whispered.

From the darkest corner of the room came a harsher whisper. “He’s not the one.”

Clumly steered his prisoner toward the voice. Miss Editha Woodworth sat propped up, motionless, under a huge lugubrious oil painting of — if Clumly’s eyes did not deceive him — broken columns on a hillside, or possibly horses. She sat wrapped in black blankets, among black pillows. On her head, slightly askew, sat an old black wig. Her face shone out of the darkness like a moon.

“Miss Editha,” he said. “I’m glad to see you well.”

“I’m not well,” she whispered. “That man is not the one.”

Clumly pursed his lips. The parlor was as cool as a valley between rocks, and after all his sweating he was chilly. “That’s too bad,” he said. “We were afraid we might have gotten the wrong man.”

“Nincompoops,” she whispered. “If Agnes were here—” (That was the oldest of the sisters, dead now for years, reduced to legend. She’d committed suicide, people said.)

“We do our best, Miss Woodworth,” Clumly said.

“What?” she asked.

He realized he had fallen into whispering like one of themselves. “We do our best,” he said.

She said nothing more, utterly spent, it seemed. Perhaps she had fallen asleep. He couldn’t tell.

To everyone’s surprise, Boyle spoke. “You’re Miss Editha Woodworth?” he asked. “You write poems?”

“Why glory be!” Miss Octave whispered. “You’re acquainted with Editha’s verse?”

Boyle glanced uneasily at Clumly. “I’ve heard it mentioned,” he said. Then his face became blank. “That is,” he said, “no.”

“How interesting!” Miss Octave whispered.

“She’s a poet, all right,” Clumly said, bothered by the way Boyle seemed now to have withdrawn, aloof from their awkward little ring of conversation.

“A legislator for humanity,” Miss Octave said happily, a little like a tyrant. She tried to pursue the matter with Boyle, but it was useless. At last she said, “Well do sit down. It’s so seldom we get visitors here.” She inched over to a chair herself and lowered herself cautiously, then laid the two canes in her lap. Clumly nodded toward the settee and handed Boyle the flower box, to be rid of the embarrassment of carrying it himself. Boyle went over to the settee while Clumly seated himself tentatively on a high-backed rocker. It must be after five, he thought, but he could not risk the rudeness of a glance at his watch. The rocker was leather, as cold and smooth as the dirt inside a cave.