Hudson opened his briefcase and took out a pad and pen. Clearly, he had read Eleanor Mintz incorrectly. Your honor, I’d like permission to treat Mrs. Mintz as a hostile witness, he thought as he decided on his first question. He could see that the woman would not suffer foolishness, and he didn’t want to give her reason to send him packing.

“Can you tell me what your relationship to John Steinbeck was?” he asked, feeling like the opposing attorney in a courtroom drama.

“I was his assistant of sorts after he returned to Pacific Grove in 1948,” said Eleanor. “He was researching what would come to be East of Eden. I was working at The Californian as a copygirl at the time. One day he came in looking for some back issues of the paper, and I was assigned to help him. I guess he took to me, and he asked if I would like to work for him on a part-time basis.”

Hudson, very much familiar with the writing of East of Eden, knew that Steinbeck had relied heavily on articles from The Californian for background information for his celebrated novel. He tried to imagine the stiff, reserved woman seated across from him handling those papers, clipping and organizing the materials for Steinbeck to look at later. Had she enjoyed it? Had she had any idea what she was helping to create? Or had it all just been, as she put it, a part-time job?

“How long did you work for him?” he asked her.

“Three years,” she answered instantly, offering no further information.

Hudson wrote this down, although he would never look at the notes again. He wanted Eleanor Mintz to think he was deeply interested in the details of her employment. When he looked at her face, however, he saw that she was as uninterested in them as he was. To her they were dry facts, presented to him like biscuits on a plate.

“Did you do anything besides help him with research?” he inquired, hoping for any little thing that would take their conversation in a new, more fertile, direction.

“I organized,” said Eleanor. “I was a very good organizer.”

Looking around the dust-free room, not a thing out of place, Hudson had no doubt that this was true. Most of the things in Eleanor Mintz’s house, he imagined, had not moved from their positions in half a century or more. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps somewhere she had the stuffed body of the man in the portrait, still dressed in his black suit, his moustache waxed and combed.

“He was very careless with his manuscripts,” Eleanor said, surprising him. She sounded exasperated, as if she were speaking about a particularly untidy child. “He could never remember where he’d put them,” she said.

“And you kept them organized?” asked Hudson.