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urgent. I make no claims about understanding Peter or what you might have suffered. The important thing is that I’m willing to help. I think you should take it for what it’s worth.”
    He was warming up now. Something told him that he had captured the right tone, and a sudden sense of pleasure surged through him, as though he had just managed to cross some internal border within himself.
    “You’re right,” said Virginia Stillman. “Of course you’re right.”
    The woman paused, took a deep breath, and then paused again, as if rehearsing in her mind the things she was about to say. Quinn noticed that her hands were clenched tightly around the arms of the chair.
    “I realize,” she went on, “that most of what Peter says is very confusing—especially the first time you hear him. I was standing in the next room listening to what he said to you. You mustn’t assume that Peter always tells the truth. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think he lies.”
    “You mean that I should believe some of the things he said and not believe others.”
    “That’s exactly what I mean.”
    “Your sexual habits, or lack of them, don’t concern me, Mrs. Stillman,” said Quinn. “Even if what Peter said is true, it makes no difference. In my line of work you tend to meet a little of everything, and if you don’t learn to suspend judgment, you’ll never get anywhere. I’m used to hearing people’s secrets, and I’m also used to keeping my mouth shut. If a fact has no direct bearing on a case, I have no use for it.”
    Mrs. Stillman blushed. “I just wanted you to know that what Peter said isn’t true.”
    Quinn shrugged, took out a cigarette, and lit it. “One way or the other,” he said, “it’s not important. What I’m interested in are the other things Peter said. I assume they’re true, and if they are, I’d like to hear what you have to say about them.”
    “Yes, they’re true.” Virginia Stillman released her grip on the chair and put her right hand under her chin. Pensive. As if searching for an attitude of unshakable honesty. “Peter has a child’s way of telling it. But what he said is true.”
    “Tell me something about the father. Anything you think is relevant.”
    “Peter’s father is a Boston Stillman. I’m sure you’ve heard of the family. There were several governors back in the nineteenth century, a number of Episcopal bishops, ambassadors, a Harvard president. At the same time, the family made a great deal of money in textiles, shipping, and God knows what else. The details are unimportant. Just so long as you have some idea of the background.
    “Peter’s father went to Harvard, like everyone else in the family. He studied philosophy and religion and by all accounts was quite brilliant. He wrote his thesis on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theological interpretations of the New World, and then he took a job in the religion department at Columbia. Not long after that, he married Peter’s mother. I don’t know much about her. From the photographs I’ve seen, she was very pretty. But delicate—a little like Peter, with those pale blue eyes and white skin. When Peter was born a few years later, the family was living in a large apartment on Riverside Drive. Stillman’s academic career was prospering. He rewrote his dissertation and turned it into a book—it did very well—and was made a full professor when he was thirty-four or thirty-five. Then Peter’s mother died. Everything about that death is unclear. Stillman claimed that she had died in her sleep, but the evidence seemed to point to suicide. Something to do with an overdose of pills, but of course nothing could be proved. There was even some talk that he had killed her. But those were just rumors, and nothing ever came of it. The whole affair was kept very quiet.
    “Peter was just two at the time, a perfectly normal child. After his wife’s death, Stillman apparently had little to do with him. A nurse was hired, and