“She told me that you visited her, and that there was nothing I might do to stop you.”

Leon stirred in his chair, then leaned forward with decision, clasping his hands together, elbows on his knees. “I am not a boy for you to make uneasy with your suggestive rhetoric. And we are both too old to play at cat and mouse. I have, I may as well say, long been certain that you killed her. I had been with her too the day she died. We talked as we sometimes did in those days; and I know that she was not thinking of killing herself!”

“If you are, as you say, certain that murder and not suicide was done, why did you not accuse me?”

Leon leaned back in his chair to study the man’s face. “I could not have proven it.”

Roscoe nodded reasonably. “Intimacy with Negroes so often stops short of the law.” He nodded again, as if in sympathy with Leon’s discretion. “It was a worthless life she had, except to bear two sons of mine, one of whom survives—and will, to say the least of it, continue to survive.”

“I understand,” Leon said, “that you have done well in various business ventures.”

“That is so. But the thing I wanted most I did not get. You know what that was.”

“You wanted Beulah Land,” Leon said.

“I wanted Beulah Land,” Roscoe agreed. “I didn’t get it, but my son will.”

Leon cut short an exclamation and tried to curb his anger before he spoke again. “You had better go because I feel like killing you.”

“You won’t do that, and I won’t go until I have said all that I came to say.”

“I’ll have you thrown out, old as you are, unless you go now.”

“You would have it done, but you would not soil your hands by doing it yourself. Although other parts of your body you have not been so nice as to keep unsoiled by contact with black flesh.”

His face burning with embarrassment and rage, Leon still managed to speak in a voice that was almost normal. “Say quickly what you came for and go.”

Roscoe paused to consider. “We have not done with Clovis. I wonder if what she declared was true?” Leon waited. “That she had told you I was responsible for the fire that very nearly ruined you.”

“She told me. And that you killed the watchman.”

“He was of no account.”

“Nevertheless, his death makes you twice a murderer, at least.”

“But only of Negroes, and they do not really count, do they?” The sarcasm of his tone was deliberate and taunting.

“You move with the times, I see, in matters of conscience. You did not always, I believe, disapprove of slave holding.”