“The nurse seems competent. He looks physically fit. He thought I was

his wife. He clung to me and called me `Deenie.’ I always admired himthat was hard.”

Ms. Graham’s hands shook as she picked up her cup. Coffee slopped over the edge and onto her aqua silk skirt. “So clumsy,” she murmured. “The thought of Calvin with his wits wandering is truly unsettling. Send Lisa to me on your way out, young woman.”

My exit cue. I didn’t need to summon Lisa: the maid continued to hover within earshot. As I let myself out, I could hear her clucking soothingly to Geraldine Graham, mother calming infant. The smell on Mr. Bayard’s clothes, urine and talc, came back over me in a shuddering wave. That we all come to this, no matter how far or fast we run, we come to this, not away from it.

CHAPTER 20

Lair of a Star Chamber Man

The emotions of the afternoon left me limp. I didn’t go to my car, but walked aimlessly along the paths that wound through Anodyne Park. Night had fallen while I was in with Geraldine, but the paths were well dotted with fake gas lamps and I found my way easily. Not that I exactly knew what my way was, right now.

It was that time of evening when people were out with their dogs, or heading over to the bar on the shopping strip for a drink. I thought about following a dour couple into the bar, but I’d had too much company the last few hours. I kept walking.

I was too tired to try to make sense of everything I’d heard this afternoon, but the image of Geraldine and her mother kept floating in my mind, Geraldine’s futile rebellions culminating in her unhappy marriage. Culminating, really, in her son Darraugh’s wintry personality. I imagined scenes at the breakfast table, Laura Drummond giving her son-in-law his coffee with a barbed comment on his character, Geraldine slamming out of the house to do-what? I couldn’t imagine her wasting time over bridge or shopping. I didn’t know how she’d spent the years from 1937 until her mother died.

Beyond the bar, the path made a gentle descent. By and by, I found myself going under Powell Road and rising again onto the Anodyne Park golf course. The course itself was dark, but the occasional lamppost let me see

the path. A late golfing foursome passed, going the other way in their cart. At the top of a rise, I came on the clubhouse, a well-lighted, sprawling building with a rack of golf carts at the far end and a couple of valets moving cars at the other. A wave of laughter rolled toward me. I shuddered away from the jollity.

I scrambled to the top of a hillock and lay on my back looking at the stars. The grass was velvety soft, but cold; it wasn’t long before I started shivering and sneezing. I sat up again and pulled out my cell phone. Maybe I could reach Domingo Rivas, the man who had looked after Olin Taverner. He didn’t have a listed number that I could find, but when I called the Anodyne Park management office and identified myself as a detective they were happy to give me his number: he lived with a married daughter in nearby Lyle.