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first, he thought that. Later, he learned they were symptoms of a deeper and more dangerous malady.”
    “Are you all right?” she asked. His color was bad, and he was trembling.
    “I'm fine,” he croaked. But he had begun, ever so silently, to weep, tears glistening on his leathery cheeks…

Chapter 4
    Although grief-stricken by the memory of that long-ago tragedy, Jacob Matherly did not seem in danger of becoming overexcited by it as he had earlier in the day. She felt there was little chance that he would aggravate his angina, and she decided to let him go on with it, in his good time, until she had-at last, at last! -heard the story of Christmas Eve, the story which seemed to bind this entire household under a black and unbreakable spell.
    Just when he was beginning to find an end to the store of tears in himself, just when Elaine thought that he might now continue and unburden himself, thereby enlightening her, a knock came at the door. She answered it, reluctantly, and found Jerry standing there, like a bird in human clothes, sharp and frail, quivering slightly.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “The police,” Jerry said.
    She supposed they had had to be called, though she had never given it a thought until now.
    “They would like to talk with you, downstairs,” Jerry said.
    “I don't know anything about it,” she said.
    “They're talking to everyone.”
    She sighed. “Very well. I'll put Mr. Matherly back to bed and be down in a few moments.”
    Jerry nodded and hurried down the corridor towards the stairs, his spindly legs like the legs of a crab or insect
    “I guess you heard,” she said, closing the door and turning back to old Jacob Matherly.
    The tears were gone altogether, and his stony composure had taken over once more. He said, “If they want to talk to me, they'll have to come up here.”
    “We'll fix it so that you don't have to talk to them,” she said. She got another sedative from the medicine chest, poured a glass of cold water from the ice-filled pitcher next to his bed, and watched him take the tablet.
    “Thank you,” he said. “I had enough of policemen the last time, enough of their snide remarks, their brutal questioning. I think, sometimes, that the police can be nastier with the rich than with the poor. They let their envy push them a little further than it should.”
    “You sleep now,” she said.
    “I'll try.”
    He closed his eyes and folded his hands across his chest as she turned out the lights. She looked quickly away from him, for he had looked, in that instant, like a corpse in the casket, ready for the funeral.
    In the hall, she found that someone had turned the light out. A blanket of shadows had been thrown over the length of the corridor until, by the head of the stairs, thin light filtered up from below. And voices. Voices wafted to her as well, distant and rumbling, the words they spoke indistinguishable. They could have been ghosts, moaning in the walls as easily as people engaged in normal conversation.
    She went down the steps, making a conscious effort to slow the beat of her heart. Foolish fears. Childish fears. “Elaine,” she chided herself, “you're becoming as rococo as this house, as silly as Dennis Matherly.”
    Nevertheless, when she reached the bottom of the stairs and old Jerry stepped out of an alcove to escort her to the police, she was so startled that she leaped and gave a tiny yelp of fear. He took her hand and patted it and told her he knew how she felt and that he was sorry to have frightened her.
    She followed him to the den, through the door into a bright pool of yellow light, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the change. She saw that they were all there: Lee, Dennis and Gordon, Paul Honneker. There were also two policemen, a tall, broad-shouldered man about forty years old who was introduced as Captain Rand-and a shorter, darker, quicker detective named Holcombe who looked-if one were used to old movies on television-more like a villain than the upholder of