“Maybe not so buried,” I said. “Where do I talk to the grandmother? Old Mrs. Van Hoek?”
“She’s got a cottage on the Mayor’s place. What do you think she can tell you?”
“I’ll know when I ask her.”
“Take it easy, Fortune.”
“I always do, Lieutenant,” I said, and hung up.
I drove on to the Crawford mansion, parked up the road. The small cottage was in the rear among the trees, the rain dripping onto its roof. I knocked. The woman who opened the door after a time was tall, thin, white-haired, and dressed in a formal black dress without any decoration. The white hair was in a severe bun, and her long, thin face was severe too.
“Yes?” she said, and added, “You’re that detective.”
“Dan Fortune, Mrs. Van Hoek. Can we talk?”
“About what?”
The question wasn’t challenging, only neutral, implying that she had nothing to talk about. I saw that her severe manner was more disassociated than stern. The manner of someone who lived alone with her own slow thoughts.
“About Francesca and your husband,” I said.
“I never knew anything about Francesca. Mr. Van Hoek is dead,” she said, and turned away as if that settled it all.
I followed her into a small Victorian room that had an aura of timeless insulation. She sat down, as timeless as the room, and neither looked at me nor away from me. She didn’t seem surprised that I had not closed the door behind me and gone away, but her eyes seemed uninterested by me. I had an impression that we were both in the same room, but in different times, therefore invisible to each other.
“Your husband died suddenly,” I said.
She looked toward a window and the rain. “Mr. Van Hoek took many years to die.”
“He talked with Francesca just before he died,” I said.
The rain on the windows seemed to fascinate her. “I liked the rain as a girl. It was so warm in the attic of the big house where we played. That was before I met Mr. Van Hoek. Katje and the Mayor have the big house now. It’s not the same house, that was torn down years ago. I live here. As long as I live I have a home here. Katje is a good daughter.”
“Did Mr. Van Hoek tell Francesca about Katje’s first husband, Mrs. Van Hoek?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone, please.”
She sat in her chair as if she didn’t want to move, not ever, for fear of breaking time into small pieces, of losing her own image in the shattered mirror of time.
“Katje’s first husband was an Indian?”
“A nice boy. She brought him home twice. She was defiant, you see? He was a soldier, away from home. She had it annulled. The best way. The Mayor was better for the children.”
“You opposed the marriage? The Indian boy?”
“There were the children. He was a nice boy, but we couldn’t make her try. She knew what she wanted to do.”
“You wanted her to make the marriage work?”
“She knew better. You can see that. We have a fine home.”
“But he came back, the Indian. Made trouble?”
She moved her head in a sharp jerk. “Leave me alone, please. I don’t want to talk to you.”
I heard steps coming toward the cottage. At the window, I looked out and saw a small man with silver-gray hair coming toward the cottage under an umbrella. He walked stiffly, like a judge-or a senior lawyer. How did I know? I don’t know, but it was an impression, and his face was too young for his silver-gray hair and his manner. Prematurely gray.
I went back to Mrs. Van Hoek as the gray-haired man came into the cottage. He shook his umbrella outside, laid it just inside the door, turned, and came into the living room smiling and rubbing his hands against the October cold. He saw me.
“Who are you?”
“Dan Fortune, Mr.-?”
“Carter Vance. You’re the private detective? What the hell are you doing with Mrs. Van Hoek?”
His diction didn’t quite match his silver hair or his formal clothes. Neither did his age-about forty or so. As if he’d built a careful public image to hide himself.
“I’m talking with Mrs. Van Hoek,” I said.
The old woman said, “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You heard her,” Carter Vance said.
“Vance?” I said. “Mayor Crawford’s law partner, right? Head of the Crime Commission with Anthony Sasser. I’ll bet you turned up a lot about Abram Zaremba’s dealings.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Fortune,” Vance said.
“Sasser worked with Zaremba, right?”
“If you’re implying that Mr. Zaremba did anything illegal, be careful. We found no such situation. We did manage to clean up the streets of Dresden, though.”
“I’ll bet you really cracked down on pickpockets and welfare cheats. Two-bit hoodlums stay clear of Dresden, right? Honest citizens can make an honest dollar in peace and safety so they can pay their taxes for Abram Zaremba’s benefit.”
“Not all two-bit hoodlums stay clear of Dresden, it seems,” Vance said. “Mrs. Van-Hoek doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“I want to talk to her,” I said, and turned back to her. “If you could just tell me what your husband told Fran-”
“Fortune,” Vance said.
He had a gun. A blue Mauser automatic. He waved it toward the door.
“You better ask Martin Crawford anything you want to know.”
“You always carry a gun, Vance?” I said.
“I head a crime commission. I have the need. Now walk.”
I walked.
We walked, dripping rain, through the entry hall of the Crawford mansion. Martin Crawford sat in the living room reading the newspaper. He lumbered up when he saw us.
“Carter? What the devil-?” he said, looked at us both.
Vance said, “He was in the cottage, annoying the old lady with questions. He didn’t want to leave.”
Katje Crawford appeared from somewhere. “Put down that gun, Carter. Mr. Fortune is a detective.”
“A cheap snooper from New York,” Vance said. “I think we can charge him with trespassing. He refused to leave.”
“He just wants to help us, Carter,” Martin Crawford said.
“Help?” Vance said. He pocketed his gun, walked out to the glassed-in porch, began to pour himself a drink.
Katje Crawford came all the way into the living room. She wore a tweed skirt, a cashmere sweater, low shoes, and a golf glove on her right hand as if still hoping the rain would stop.
“Why did you want to talk to my mother?” she asked.
“To find out what your father told Francesca just before she left home,” I said.
“My father?”
“Told Francesca what, Fortune?” Martin Crawford asked.
Katje Crawford sat down. “I wasn’t aware that my father had seen Francesca before she left. He was very sick.”
“What do you think he told her, Fortune?” Crawford said.
“Something about her real father,” I said.
It didn’t exactly hit them like a bombshell, no. They had lived with it for a long time. But saying it out like that startled them. They had kept it so far hidden that it must have sounded almost strange to them said out loud. Carter Vance turned at the bar, looked at me and at them.
“So you know,” Martin Crawford said. “I suppose I knew you would. One tries hard to shelter a child. For Francesca it’s too late, but I had hoped to keep it from Felicia a bit longer. It’s not easy to be a stepfather, it changes a child’s relation to you. To me they’re my children, but I’ve always known they would see me differently if they knew the truth.”
I said, “Has Felicia come home?”
“No,” Crawford said.
There was a world of pain in the single word. Crawford had lost one daughter, or stepdaughter, and his voice said that he didn’t want to lose another.
Katje Crawford said, “You think my father told Francesca something about her real father, and that’s connected to her death somehow?”
“I don’t know what he told her, or what it means.”
She shook her head. “I can’t think what he could have said that would have any bearing, Mr. Fortune.”
“Can you tell me about it all?” I said.
Katje Crawford sat and thought for a time. Then she nodded slowly. “Very well, sit down, Mr. Fortune. I don’t see what good it can do, but I expect you’ll go on searching until you know the story.”