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house was in the poorest section. It had been among the best homes in the twenties, I'd been told, but now its shutters had long ago fallen; its porch was listing; its paint was chipped and peeling, gray at dusk, although I could guess that it had once been brilliant white. Three stories: gables, chimneys, dormer windows, balconies. Nobody could afford to build so large a home these days, and no doubt it had required someone rich to build it then. A mansion in its dotage. Sad, I imagined the pride of those who had first owned it and their disappointment should they see what had happened to it. But they would all be dead now, so it didn't matter. All that mattered was the stench.
    I say we all went out. I mean my deputy, the doctor, and myself. We stood beside the police car, staring at the dark, silent, decrepit mansion. We saw the neighbors on the porches of the other ill-kept, once-great houses, silhouetted by the dying sunset. Then we held our breath and started toward the picket gate, which fell off in my hand. We moved up toward the front steps. The sidewalk was weed-cracked, the yard overgrown. We felt the cool air, almost misty, as the sun dipped below the horizon; and in the dark, our flashlights glaring, we climbed the cracked, creaking steps that led to the porch. We had to work around some broken boards on the porch. We stared down at a pile of newspapers. Then we squinted through the stained glass window, dusty and opaque, the darkness in there absolute. At last, I twisted the grip that rang the bell. The tone was flat, without enthusiasm. No echo or reverberation followed.
    No light came on. No weak footsteps shuffled near to let us in. I twisted at the bell again. We waited.
    "Now what?" The deputy looked nervous.
    "Give them time. They're old," I answered. "Or maybe they're not at home."
    "Just one," the doctor told me.
    "What?"
    "There's only one. Her name is Agnes. She's eighty at least."
    "Maybe she's sleeping."
    "You don't think so. Otherwise we wouldn't be here."
    I twisted the bell again. I hadn't lived in town for long. After too many years in the city, I'd brought my family to what I'd hoped was a better place, and as the new police chief, I was hardly eager to antagonize the townsfolk by disturbing an old woman.
    All the same, the stench was horrible. It made my stomach rise, my nostrils widen with disgust. The neighbors' phone calls had been so persistent that I couldn't ignore them.
    "All right, let's go in."
    I tried the knob. The door was locked. I pushed, and the door came open with a sound as if the jamb had been cardboard. No sharp crack, instead a rip, a tear, so soft, so effortless. The wood was rotten at my feet.
    "Is anybody here?" I called.
    No answer.
    So we looked at one another, and we stepped inside. The hall was dusty, the odor more intense.
    We flashed our lights. The living room, or what I guess had once been called the parlor, was beyond an oval entrance to our right. The room was filled with stacks of newspapers, from the floor to above my head. There was a makeshift corridor that we could walk through, but the newspapers towered on each side.
    "This could be it," I told the doctor. "Papers, wet and musty. If they moulded…"
    "You don't think so."
    We went through another oval doorway.
    "Anybody home?"
    I saw the grand piano, cobwebs glistening in my flashlight's glare. More newspapers towered around it.
    "Hoarding. Some old folks…" The deputy's voice quavered. Abruptly he coughed, gagging from the stench.
    "I guess we do it room by room," I told them.
    So we went up to the attic, starting downward, trying for some order, some sane balance. Newspapers, 1929 and 1936, each room devoted to a decade, 1942 and 1958. We found a bedroom on the second floor, and it at least was normal, if by that is meant no clutter and no useless objects. But the bedroom was from the twenties, or so I guessed. I have no eye for furniture. The canopy above the bed, the stained glass fixtures,