I saw a shadow pass the window next door: Mr. Greenwald was watching. There wasn’t anything to watch, but old habits die hard. I gave him a wave and walked into his yard. His porch light came on and he stood for a moment watching me through the door glass. He didn’t seem to recognize me, but he opened the door anyway.
“I’m surprised it’s still available,” I said, gesturing to the house.
“If they don’t sell it soon it’ll start falling apart,” he said.
“Are they not taking care of it?”
He made a sour face and waved me away with his hand. “They take care of nothing. They care about nothing. All they want is money. And to play their silly games.”
“What games?”
‘The game of hating each other. Of beating each other. You never saw anything like it. They act like a pair of dogs with a scrap of meat thrown between them. It’s the worst case of jealousy I’ve ever seen. They don’t care anything about the house: they just want to make sure that if there’s one dollar left over, the other one doesn’t get it.“
“Do you know what they’re asking for it?”
“Are you interested?”
“I don’t know, I might be.”
“Come on inside; it’s too cold to stand talking like this.”
Inside, he offered me coffee, which I was happy to accept. We sat in friendly territory—in his kitchen, surrounded by books—and talked.
“They started at eighty,” he said. “That’s very reasonable for this place, even in these times, don’t you think?”
I did think, and I said so.
“When it didn’t sell, they came way down. I hear it’s sixty-five now and still no takers. I can’t understand that. I’d buy it myself if I had money to burn. I don’t know real estate but I know sixty-five for a place like this is nothing. Ten years ago Stan turned down an offer of a hundred and ten. But those were better times.”
“There are people who think better times are coming back.”
“Then those people could find worse things to do with their money. It’s what I’d do, if I were a young man like yourself. I’d buy it strictly as an investment. I’d make them an offer of forty-eight five.”
“They’d never take it.”
“They’ll take it. They just want to get rid of it. They’ve sold everything but the house and it’s hanging around their necks like a millstone. Those two never want to lay eyes on each other again, and this house is the only thing that ties them together. They’ll take it, Mr. Janeway. In fact, I think they’ll take less than that.”
“I didn’t think you remembered me.”
“I’ve got a good set of eyes and a good memory for a face.”
“If they’d take fifty I’d buy it in a heartbeat.”
“Try it on them. They’ll fall all over themselves taking it. You see if I’m not right. I’ve never seen anything like it. Such hate… such pure venom. So much energy wasted, just burnt up, on hate.”
“Where’d it get started?”
We looked at each other and I knew what I had begun to suspect: this old man had secrets that he hadn’t yet told anyone.
“Where’d it get started, Mr. Greenwald?”
“There are things I can’t talk about… matters of honor.”
“There are also three dead people. I understand about honor, sir, but somebody out there is killing people and I’m trying to stop them. It’s pretty hard if I’m only playing with half a deck.”
He seemed lost in thought. Then his eyes locked on mine and he said, “They are not actually brother and sister.” He got up, poured us more coffee, and returned the pot to the stove.
“How do you figure that?”
“It’s not something I figured; Stan told me. Val Mallard was an adopted child.”
“Well, that explains a few things.”
He nodded. “Stan’s brother Charles married a delicate woman. Physically delicate… you know, frail. It was thought she couldn’t have children, so they adopted the boy. Years later she became pregnant with Judith…a mid-life baby, a great surprise.”
“I’ll bet.”
“There didn’t have to be any great conflict with that. Sometimes those things work out fine, and Stan told me they really did try. Charles and his wife did everything possible to raise them equally, to play no favorites. But from the beginning there was anger, resentment, extreme jealousy.”
“A modern-day Cathy and Heathcliff,” I said.
“Except that love was at the bottom of it all in that story, and here you have just hate.”
“I thought something was out of whack when I questioned them. Judith said something—it didn’t make sense at the time and I let it get past me. Something like, ‘If you’re looking for all the living Ballards, I’m it.’ ”
“Yes. I don’t know what good it’ll do you…”
“It could be a motive for murder.”
“If they were going to murder anyone, it would be each other.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they enjoy the hate.”
“Now you’re talking in riddles.”
“You’ve got to allow for the quirks of human nature,” I said. “Maybe they like what’s going on between them. You know what I mean. The sweet sorrow, the hate that’s really love, the pull of opposites in a single emotion. Maybe they’d be lost without each other. This is the stuff Shakespeare wrote about, isn’t it? If you kill off a hate object, it’s over. So much better to do him in in other ways… to get the better of him in business, to rook him out of his eyeteeth… That you can savor all your life.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said, but I had a feeling he might believe it, deep in his gut.
“You still know something you’re not telling me,” I said.
“It’s nothing… harmless.”
“I think I’ll have to ask you to let me be the judge of that.”
He shook his head. “It’s just something Stan told me. It couldn’t have any bearing on this.”
“I think if Mr. Ballard were here, from what I know of him, he’d want you to tell me.”
“That may be, but he’s not here, and I can’t go back on him.”
“There are things that make no sense at all about this deal. The man had ten thousand books. I know he got them from the clubs; I’ve been through every statement going back almost fifty years. They’re legitimate, they’re in his name, they’re annotated in his hand. He writes in the margin when he received a book and when he read it. The books were appraised and the appraiser, who is a helluva respected authority, found nothing of value. And yet, in the last two days, two hundred books have turned up. They did not come from the clubs. They were fine first editions… very desirable, very valuable, worth maybe twenty-five thousand dollars. I don’t know where they could’ve come from but here in this house.”
“Unbelievable,” he said. “People really pay that much, just to own a first edition?”
“Sometimes more than that. Are you telling me, Mr. Green-wald, that neither you nor Mr. Ballard knew what first editions can be worth?”
“We never discussed money. In our generation money was a man’s private business. Besides, it’s so uninteresting. We didn’t care about money.”
“Somebody did. Were you here when the woman came to look at the books?”