Just one, but not for Armbruster’s elongated ears. The question was, of course, was I clever enough to suppress my own cleverness? Because, of course, the only reason for taking the job was to bask in the glorious proximity of Chatterton’s daughter.

SEVEN
CHATTERTON

I should have known there was something weird and tilted about Chatterton and anything he was involved with. But Valerie beckoned.

And so it was that on a dank, dark autumn day, before the hermetic snows of winter gripped the world and everything went bare and shriveled and icy, I sloshed through the melancholy leaves down the tree-lined corridor of Chatterton’s ancestral seat. This time there were no sweet muffled cries of “Love” and “Balls” to greet me, only the burned-out silence of the invisible sun as it dipped below the equator far away.

I hammered on the water-warped door. I’d be damned if I’d touch the bell hanging from the two frayed wires, not in this kind of wolf-weather.

From within came the irregular pad of galumphing footsteps, rather like those of a gorilla with corns.

The door groaned open, as if in pain, and Chatterton stood in the portal. His shag of linty hair hung round his face. The considerable nose protruded in my direction, as if he were sniffing me. He seemed ill-defined and slightly out of focus in that offensive bathrobe (his usual at-home vesture, I was to learn) that contained his nakedness. He managed a sour nod of welcome and stomped off, down the hallway, past a shadowy staircase. From somewhere high above in the house the thin, sharp notes of a fipple flute spilled down the steps. Was it my darling practicing demisemiquavers?

I followed Chatterton into a high-ceilinged room, darker than the entry and furnished with a lumpy couch, a straight-backed chair, and a scarred chess table. He closed the door behind us, snuffing out the sound of the flute as he would a candle.

An old-fashioned safe with a stolid hard look squatted in a corner. Thick and aggressively ominous, like a mugger in a black trench coat, it probably weighed more than a wrecking ball. By every law of Archimedes, the state of Maryland should have collapsed under its weight.

Built-in bookcases lined three walls from the peeled varnish of the parquet floor to the faded polychrome ceiling bloated with stucco relief—rosettes, garlands, foliage, fruit—all mildewed and decayed. The shelves were empty of books and unclotted by those sentimental little fragilities the acquisitive bourgeoisie sometimes substitute for them—Dresden shepherdesses, Steuben swans, stoneware urchins, polyester pussycats. Nothing destroyed the austere symmetry of those naked shelves except one battered tin container, about shoulder high, labeled

HEINZ’S PEARLS
KEYSTONE PICKLING & PRESERVING WORKS
PITTSBURGH, U.S.A.

Despite the frivolous ceiling, the room, all things considered, was as barren as a Trappist’s cell.