He said, “Only thing I can tell you about her, it was one of those unbelievable situations. Or call it a complete switch from the way these things usually pan out, because when you marry the girl that your family selects and it’s more like a business merger than anything else, there ain’t much likelihood that you’ll get what you want in terms of companionship, and I don’t mean only in the bedroom. But lemme tell you—the nine years I lived with that woman were nine years of absolute delight. That woman was what you see when you look at one of them pictures by Raphael. I tell you, she was something exceptional in this world. So one summer, and this goes back twenty-three years, she’s got the children in the car, all four children. And they’re driving to the seashore. They’re on this road along the edge of an embankment high above a river—”

Carp closed his eyes for a moment. His face was placid as he went on. “There was only one witness. A farmer. And he said it was a hit-and-run situation. He couldn’t describe the truck, except that it was big and it was moving very fast. So they never got the truck driver. But here’s what the farmer saw—the truck came up behind the car, sideswiped the car and sent it crashing down the embankment into the river, into forty feet of water.”

“All five of them,” he said. “Down there in forty feet of water, and the car a chunk of twisted metal. A few days later the car was brought up and I saw what was in the car. They didn’t want me to look; but I insisted on looking, and then they hadda give me a sedative with a needle.”

Corey winced.

The little man said, “They wrote it off as an accident. But you know, I’ve always wondered about that. Of course, it could have been an accident, I mean there’s no way to prove it wasn’t. And also, at that time I was more or less out of my head and couldn’t offer an opinion. Yet later, years later I’d sometimes get to thinking about it. I’d try not to think about it, telling myself it was no use, because I’d never know for sure whether or not it was an accident.”

Corey grimaced puzzledly.

“So I didn’t know then and I don’t know now and I’ll never know,” Carp emphasized the uncertainty. “But this much I can tell you—if it wasn’t an accident, it was a professional knockoff job.”

“But why?”