The Red Fox

1

I was to learn that all the real secrets are buried and that only ghosts speak the truth. So it was fitting: even for me, all this began in a graveyard, among mysteries, memories, and lies.

That year, the twenty-eighth of October was cold and threatened rain, and as I walked away from the little frame church with Father Delaney, our breath misted in front of us. It was autumn; but autumn already cringed before winter. The three tall oaks that screened off the graveyard were stripped bare as old bones and the summer's grass had died down between the headstones, falling into the brown, tangled surf of a fossilized sea. We walked slowly, in silence. I came here only one day a year, but it was as if I'd never been away. Every step brought a rush of memory: the flick-flick of the old priest's heavy trousers as he walked beside me; the smell of wet leaves under our feet; a rusted iron cross glimpsed in the undergrowth: Jennifer, age three weeks, 1917. Year after year, none of this changed, and when we finally stopped before my father's stone, it could have been five years ago, or ten, or fifteen. All the old emotions welled up the shock, the grief, the fundamental disbelief but they were now so expected, so customary, that even their melancholy was comforting. Gently, I looked down at the slab of polished red granite, and the old priest murmured a prayer under his breath, saying the words in Latin as he knew my mother always liked. I bent forward. Half kneeling, I placed the usual bouquet of cornflowers against the smooth stone, then drew myself up and raised my eyes. My father's grave was right on the crest of the hill; from where I was standing, you could see for miles across a spur of the Tuscarora Mountains, northwest of Harris-burg, Pennsylvania. Low, gray clouds trailed tendrils of showers over the opposite ridge and now a few drops touched my face. The wind, suddenly gusting, bit at my cheek. I turned my head to one side.

Father Delaney ducked his head too. He must have been cold; he was wearing only his priest's black suit with a tartan scarf looped round his neck, as if wishing to cover his collar on this dubious ground. I had always liked him. He was in his sixties or early seventies: heavily built but stooped, with the sad, drooping face of an Irishman and the thick hands of a miner, which his father had been. After a moment, the decent interval, he said, "I'm glad you came, Robert. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure you would."

I looked at him, a little surprised. "Why is that, Father?"

"Oh, I always understood why your mother came, but I was never sure about you. What you thought about it. What your feelings were."

My mother had died the previous winter; for the first time I was making the annual trek by myself. Every year, for so many years, she had come out of love, devotion, and loyalty?and the desire, above everything else, to disprove the doubts I'd seen flicker in so many eyes. A hunting accident. Leastwise, that's what they're calling it? I don't care what anyone says, it's not right, letting them bury him here.? I'd always assumed that the priest had simply transferred these reasons to me, though he was right, they didn't apply. I had my own. I knew, after all, that everything my mother had refused to believe was perfectly true. My father had killed himself. For me, the only mystery was why.

Finally I said, "She loved him very deeply, Father. It's a shame we couldn't have buried her here."

"I'll miss her. Every fall, I looked forward to her visit." I glanced away, back toward the headstone. As a boy, it had frightened me, as though it was the single jaw of some great, terrible trap. Later it had seemed merely frustrating, a door that was locked, bolted, and barred no matter how hard I knocked, it never swung open. Now it was only a monument, but it occurred to me that its letters, so deeply carved in the granite, were gradually growing obscure, turning into a kind of hieroglyphics. My own mother was gone; now I was the only one left to decipher them.

Mitchell: never Mitch. Sven: after a great-grandfather, from Stockholm. Thorne: originally it had been Torne, the name of a river that runs down the border between Sweden and Finland. Soon enough, no one would know even these elementary facts. As though to confirm this, Father Delaney now asked, "Those cities? I was trying to remember why they were there."

"You remember, Father. He worked for the State Department. Those were the places he served."

"Ah, yes? and you were born in South Africa, weren't you?"

I nodded. I'd only lived there a year, though the fact had dogged me for the rest of my life: it's an inconvenient birth place for a journalist to have in his passport.

Father Delaney shifted his weight on his feet. "You were fourteen, weren't you, when your father died?"

"Yes. Almost fifteen."

His lips compressed and he shook his head. "That was too young, Robert. I still remember how you looked at the funeral, and then those first years when you came with your mother. You were always so stiff and silent. Sometimes I thought you must be terribly angry, and then I wondered if you weren't afraid, like someone who has a secret they're too frightened to tell."

I looked at him, startled. Did he know? Had he guessed that I knew for certain what everyone else only suspected? I turned away quickly, staring out at the valley. The rain had moved closer, wrapping itself around the hills and obscuring the landscape beyond. Below us, a hawk was quartering over a field. I watched him for a moment, but all at once the familiar shape of this day jarred by the old priest's hints I found myself looking straight into the past. Sunday, October 28, 1956. A cabin, not ten miles from where I stood now. My bedroom, cold and bare, the mattress stripped of its sheets. Myself, stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Beside me, strangely miniaturized voices emerge from the earphone of my transistor radio. I'm listening to the "Post-Game Show." The Giants have beaten the Eagles 20-3. Alex Webster gained so many yards; Frank Gifford caught so many passes? The voices drone on. I cease listening. This is the weekend when we're closing the cabin for the season and my mother has been moving around in the other room, cleaning, but now the screen door snaps shut as she steps outside. A moment later, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and sit up, an action which brings my eyes level with the window. It is now that I see my father. He is hurrying away from the cabin for one instant, I can believe he's walking up to the car but just as he enters the woods, I see the gun, his shotgun, the Remington Wingmaster 870 pump. And I know. In that instant, the tension I've felt both in him and in my mother all the previous week suddenly crystallizes. I know. My heart pounds. No one, under any circumstances, should take a gun into the woods without warning everyone else about what he's doing. It's his golden rule; he'd never break it himself?

"Robert?"

Gently, Father Delaney gripped my arm and brought me back to myself. I tried to smile. "I was just thinking, Father. Trying to remember what I'd felt then? I suppose you're right. I was angry. But I'm not sure I was afraid. If I was, perhaps it was because my mother felt it all so intensely."

"Yes, she did. But I'm thinking of you. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask something personal."

"Of course, Father."

"I could never say this when your mother was alive, for I know she wouldn't have wanted me to. And I hope she'll forgive me now, for presuming?" He hesitated, then looked up at my face. "When your father died, you knew there were all kinds of rumors?"

"Yes."

"You knew at the time? As a boy?"

"Yes, I knew."

He shook his head. "I should have said this years ago, but I'll say it now. Those rumors weren't true, Robert. I never knew your father well, but I knew him well enough. Believe me?they weren't true."

For a second, the briefest instant, we looked each other in the eye. Then I glanced away. But finally, in gratitude for everything this old man had given us over so many years, I managed the lie: "Thank you, Father. I know? I believe you."

For five minutes, as Father Delaney made his way back to the church, I stared into the valley.

Advancing like a heavy mist, the curtain of rain drew closer, until finally its outline was lost. Then I felt the first drops, cold and prickling, on my face. I looked down at the tombstone; in a second, as the rain grew heavier, it began to shine with a slick, velvety sheen. I wondered whether I'd kept its secret, wondered whether the old priest had believed his own words. It was hard to say. He was an old-fashioned Irishman who probably attached little importance to the literal truth and would let God take care of the dead while he concerned himself with the living. Long ago, I realized, he'd seen how troubled I'd been: now, he merely wanted to lay that trouble to rest. I only wished that he could: but what other people only suspected, I knew for certain and their dark imaginings were my clearest memories. Now, as the rain fell upon the cold stone of my father's grave, my mind again slid back to that day. Again, in horror, I watched my father disappear into the woods. Again, in terror, my heart began pounding. Again and again. I'd seen it all a thousand times, but nothing changed. There was still nothing to do but run. Running, running: but never quite fast enough. Finally, at the edge of the woods, I slumped to the ground. Before me lay a clearing, a patch of dried-up swamp filled with dead marsh grass and fern. Beyond this I could see a dirt road, and at the top of a hill, to the left, a blue Chevrolet sedan pulled onto the shoulder innocent images of fatality that would haunt me for years to come. Tears burned my eyes. My breath trembled in my chest. I look around desperately, but in this dead landscape nothing moved. Knowing my father had to be near, I tried to shout, but my strength no doubt like his was exhausted and not even the birds were disturbed by my cry. And then, with the great roar of the shot, the question exploded within me: Why? Why did you do it?

More than twenty years later, as I wrenched myself back to the present, I knew it was still the only question to ask.

Why?

I stared down at his headstone a door, locked and bolted, a tablet engraved with words in a language nobody spoke. Would I ever discover the answer? Did even he know what it was?

Just then the rain began falling in earnest, cold and driving; with a shiver, I turned up my collar. Still, even as it drenched me, I welcomed that storm. Let the dead bury the dead. The rain and the wind were alive, telling me that I had my own life to live. Once a year, I took a day off from that life to remind myself that somewhere inside I was still that boy in the woods, but now that day was over.

I took a step back, turned away. Head down, shoulders hunched, I made my way up the path toward the church.

2

As I said, everything began in that graveyard, but at the time I had no way of knowing this. October 28, that year, seemed no different from any other: an end, not the beginning of anything. Why had my father killed himself? As I got into my old green Volvo and lurched down the side road away from the church, the question seemed no nearer an answer than it had before. I told myself what I always did: let it lie, forget it, what else can you do?

But I could never forget, of course; not quite. And perhaps my mother's absence this year made it even more difficult. As the road twisted and turned through the tattered, autumn hills of Perry County, I could sense her beside me and hear her voice, low and murmuring, as she remembered him for, paradoxically, that was always her way of forgetting. She'd close her eyes and lean back on the seat, and slowly the stories would come out, but stories so carefully and formally elaborated that they only served to distance him from us, gradually turning him into a character in an old movie that flickers on and on through the late-show dawn. Long since, I'd learned all the scripts by heart; now, making my way back to the Interstate, I wondered which ones she might have selected this time around. My mother, une vraie frangaise, had first met my father when he'd been posted to Paris in 1938. So perhaps she might have recalled the crazy comedy about a bright young diplomat, speaking ludicrous Iowa French, who'd helped a manufacturer with some permits, received a dinner invitation in return, and then walked off with his daughter. Or she might have selected a melodrama Bergman and Bogart for she and my father had been falling in love just as Europe staggered toward war: drinking in the Cafe Flore as the Germans marched into Austria, huddling in my father's frigid apartment on Montparnasse as Chamberlain flew back from Munich, and joining the "phony war" crowds at the hit of the 1940 season, Maurice Chevalier's Paris Reste Paris. Decades later, that particular detail could still provoke my mother's bitterest laugh. "But we didn't see the joke any better than other people," she'd quickly add. "After the Communists made their deal with Hitler, it seemed there was nothing to believe in, not even war?" But of course the war came. They hurriedly married at the end of May, as the Germans raced toward the city. After that another favorite tale there was a classic chase sequence, for my father suddenly panicked. Fearing that his diplomatic status might not guarantee my mother's safety, he'd rushed her out of Paris when the British Embassy was evacuated in the first week of June. "Your father had his little English car and he steered it like a bicycle through all those refugees. I remember that we reached Bordeaux the day before Paris fell and listened to the broadcast on a portable radio. In those days, radios had very big batteries which gave off a peculiar smell when they grew warm for years afterwards, that smell haunted my dreams?"

The war, however, merely provided the most dramatic of her stories; there were plenty of others. My father's classic gaffe with Christian Herter? the incredible saga of their sea voyage to Capetown? a bizarre servant in Mexico City? Now, as the miles slipped by, I ran through them all; and, a little to my surprise, the process worked once again. I skirted Harrisburg, dawdled through Hagerstown, and finally, as Interstate 81 swung west, I could feel the mystery of my father's death begin to recede for another twelve months.

I arrived home shortly past noon.

For me, "home" is now Charlottesville, Virginia, a small Piedmont town about a hundred miles southwest of Washington: birthplace of Lewis and Clark, seat of the University of Virginia, discreetly Southern. As always, when I arrived, I couldn't quite believe that I'd actually settled there. Its population is only thirty-five thousand (swelled a trifle by the students), whereas I was brought up in a succession of world capitals, went to school in New York (Columbia), and spent most of my journalistic career in Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow?all large cities, whatever your ideological persuasion. Nonetheless, when I tired of the Betacam rat race and came home again, I found New York and L.A. unendurable in turn and decided to try someplace smaller. Charlottesville won out for two reasons: the University, with its excellent research facilities, and the town's proximity to Washington, where I have most of my contacts. Now, after three years, I fitted right in dreary proof that I was growing middle-aged, I suppose. But it's a town that lets you alone, and I was able to live the kind of life I wanted: work, small pleasures, quiet routines. Up at dawn, I usually wrote till noon, then strolled along to Mur-chie's a local landmark for the papers and cigarettes. For lunch, I normally indulged myself at the Mousetrap or one of the other student hangouts beer, sandwiches, an eyeful of coeds and finally, protected by an alcoholic haze, I'd dutifully continue on to the Alderman Library for last week's Izvestia and the penance of some academic prose. That afternoon, turning off Emmet Street, I picked all this up in the middle and dropped in at the Mousetrap, but then decided to skip the University there was no sense pretending I was going to get any work done today. Instead, I bought some food at the supermarket and headed straight home.

I live on Walsh Street, near the old black section of town, in a white frame house decorated with Victorian gingerbread. I left the Volvo in the lane, then staggered up the walk with the groceries, maneuvered through the front door, and went straight through to the kitchen. The house felt cold, so I laid a fire in the old wood stove (the size of a locomotive and almost as complicated), then made coffee and carried it into the living room.

Usually, the visit to my father's grave was just a day's excursion, but this time I'd worked it in as the last leg of a two-week trip to New York and Boston, so the room had a forlorn, abandoned air. Taking possession of the place again, I went around plumping cushions and opening curtains, put some Haydn on the stereo, and then slumped down on the sofa. Now the coffee table was directly in front of me, a large pile of mail strewn across it. And perhaps I was simply tired, or perhaps it was the peculiar quality of this day, but I saw nothing unusual in this and, almost absently, began sorting through the envelopes. Texaco wanted $58.93? Jimmy Swaggart devoutly prayed that I'd purchase a Bible, bound in Genuine Olive Wood, for a minimum donation of $25? There was a letter from my agent about the French rights to my second book, but we'd already covered that in New York, and then junk, oddments, more bills, and a whole slew of magazines: The Economist, The Spectator, Foreign Affairs, Slavic Review, The Journal of Soviet Studies, BBC Monitors Soviet Broadcasts, The Red Army Journal: Extracts and Commentaries? I finished my coffee and carried the whole mess into my workroom.

Like the workrooms of most men, I suppose, mine gives a fair portrait of its owner all the more so in my case, since I designed and built it myself. It's converted from an old screened porch running the full length of the house. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves cover the inside wall (two thousand volumes, mostly about the Soviet Union), and on the outside, under the windows, there's a maple counter that constitutes my principal workspace. The tools of my trade were scattered there in their usual disarray papers, drafts, offprints from journals, notes to myself (illegible), a couple of Uher tape recorders (one of which worked), an IBM Selectric, an old Underwood I'd been dragging around for years as a sort of lucky charm, and my latest toy, an IBM PC: 640K, Corona hard disk, C–Itoh printer? but perhaps you don't share the new electronic enthusiasms. In any case, as I say, these bits and pieces provide the surest clues to my character. They should tell you I'm something of a solitary: growing up as an "embassy brat," I learned to get by on my own, and then my father's death seemed to set me apart from everyone else. But I also like my comfort in my workroom, I'm never far from a comfortable chair and one of the reasons I left journalism was the sheer misery of it, the borrowed apartments, pool offices, endless fast food. And lastly, you should be able to guess that I love my work. In a sense, that's also connected to my father. He died in 1956, a year before Sputnik, and in the great panic that followed, my high school in Washington began offering courses in Russian. It was just what I needed something to lose myself in and soon I was totally enthralled by the language, the country, the people. It's a fascination I've never lost, and for most of my adult life I've earned my living, in one way or another, as a "Russian expert": as a journalist in Eastern Europe and Moscow, briefly (miserably) as a teacher, and now as a freelance writer. Even on that afternoon I couldn't resist, and flipped on my machine. It greeted me with the IBM beep, and then a page from my third book flickered into green, ghostly life. I read it through, even felt my brain stir a little, but I knew I was too tired to do anything useful, so I went back to the living room and read myself to sleep. When I awoke, it was after three and the phone was ringing.

Groggily, I staggered into my workroom to answer it and felt the usual chest-tightening sensation when the girl said, "Western Union."

"Yes?"

"We have a telegram for you, Mr. Thorne. The text reads:

May. May Brightman? even after all these years, hearing her name was like a blow to the pit of my stomach.

"Mr. Thorne, sir?"

It took me a moment to recover. I cleared my throat. "I'm here, operator. Could you tell me where that was sent from?"

"Yes, sir. The point of origin is Toronto, Canada."

She was Canadian, though I'd never known her to live there.

"And could you read back that number again?"

She did so, and I hung up.

May Brightman. I stood there, my hand on the phone. May? It had been a long time since I'd heard from her. Three years? Five? But of course she always did keep in touch? maybe a woman who rejects you can never quite leave you alone? Except that sounds bitter and that's not what I felt. Enough time had passed, God knows I was over her now? so there wasn't that pain. But there was still something else? a species of regret, a strange lack of completion. What had happened between us? Standing there, almost twenty years after the fact, I still didn't know. She'd loved me, she'd never denied it. But when I'd asked her to marry me (I was very young and sufficiently romantic to do the deed on a bench in Central Park, a cinematic mist in the air), she'd said yes right away, only to change her mind the next week with no clue as to why. Did she know herself? Maybe not. Maybe no woman, in her place, ever does. In any event, May Brightman had become another question I couldn't answer. Indeed, as I pulled myself together and went back into the living room, I thought how uncanny it was that she had called today, for there was another link to my father. I'd lived my life within the shadow cast by his death, and May had been my great attempt to step outside it. When she'd turned me down, I'd retreated again. If, to admit the truth, I was a lonely man today? albeit as comfortable with my loneliness as a fish is with the sea she was part of the reason. Not the first cause, but the second?

What could she want?

In the living room, whiskey in hand, I pondered the question. Working it out, I realized it had been five years since we'd last met. That had been in France, just around the time I'd left television. I'd been fairly hard up? somehow she'd known? and she'd offered me the use of her place near Sancerre while I finished my first book. This was typical of our contacts over the years. You couldn't say that we were now "just friends," for the original relationship had been too complicated and intense, and its ending too mysterious, to permit anything so neutral. Yet she did keep in touch, almost protectively perhaps she felt a shade guilty. I wondered, in fact, if that wasn't all she now wanted, just a word to know how I was keeping.

Except the telegram had said "urgent"? not a word you'd normally associate with her. When I'd first met her, in New York, she was studying the cello at Juilliard and one of her instructors had complained that she had a "lazy bow": which, in certain moods, was just what she was like, a soft note lazily drifting through a summer's afternoon. Since her father had money, she'd never worked, and so far as I knew she still lived alone? if she'd turned me down, I at least had the comfort of knowing she'd never accepted another. Maybe, because of that, she'd grown a trifle eccentric over the years, but she'd always had the calm, cool confidence of the rich and wasn't easily flustered. There was nothing "urgent" in her life whatsoever?in fact, the only time I'd seen her truly afraid was the one night when she'd tried to tell me why she'd decided not to go through with our engagement? but, almost twenty years later, that could hardly be the cause of her anxiety. What the hell. I put down the bourbon and picked up the phone.

She answered on the first ring as though she'd been sitting there waiting. And she was obviously very upset.

"Robert? Robert, thank God it's you."

"I'm sorry. I only got back this minute. Western Union just called."

"I've been phoning you? I phoned every day last week. I sent another telegram Wednesday?"

"I was in New York. What's the matter?"

She took a breath. "I'm sorry. I'm all right. It's my father. He's disappeared? I know it sounds insane, but he's vanished. He just went off no one's seen him."

I'd never met her father, but I knew he was important to her. In fact, I'd sometimes suspected that her refusing me had some connection with him, for her change of mind had taken place after she'd flown up to Toronto to see him to tell him the happy news, as I'd thought at the time.

"When did this happen?"

"Ten days ago. A week ago Saturday."

"You've told the police?"

"Yes. They? they were worried he might have been kidnapped, but there hasn't been a ransom note and now they say he's just gone off on his own and will turn up when he feels like it."

"Well? they're probably right. It's upsetting?"

"No. They're not right. He'd never go off without telling me." Her voice had exploded with anger the intensity of it was startling but then she caught herself and added, "Robert, I'm sorry to trouble you with this?"

"No, no. Of course not."

"Maybe I shouldn't have called."

"Of course you should have called. I'm just trying to think. What can I do?"

She hesitated. "There's one thing. I'm afraid. I'm afraid he's killed himself. I know all the reasons why you'll say he hasn't the police have already given them to me but I'm still afraid?"

Suicide. On this day, of all days, it wasn't a question I could easily dismiss. "Why do you think that?"

"I'd rather not say. Not on the phone."

"But you do have a reason? Something specific?"

"Yes."

"Have you told the police about it?"

"They don't think it means anything. That's why I called you. I need someone who can find things out for me. Someone who knows how to ask questions?"

"May, I'm not a policeman. I want?"

"But you're a journalist, Robert. You can get things out of bureaucrats."

I paused. Once upon a time I had been a journalist, but I'm not any longer. And I hate getting things out of bureaucrats. "What sort of things?"

"It's personal. I'd rather not say. Not till you get here."

"So you want me to come to Toronto?"

"Yes. I know you must be busy? but it won't take very long. I'm sure it won't take very long."

She was right; I was busy. The past two weeks had been a holiday, more or less, and I was anxious to get back to work. She said, "And of course I'll pay your way?"

"Don't be silly." I thought for a moment longer, but there really wasn't much choice. She was clearly upset, and even if I couldn't help her and I was certain I couldn't. I could at least hold her hand till her father showed up. "You're sure you can't tell me anything more?"

I heard her sigh. "You know I'm adopted?"

"Yes. I remember."

Remember: I could sense her falter as I said the word, as if she was uncertain about how much she could rely on the past we hadn't quite shared. But then she went on, "It has something to do with that. That's what I'd want you to find out about."

"All right."

"You'll come?"

"Of course. I can probably be there tomorrow."

A breath, all relief, fluttered down the line. "Thank you, Robert. Bless you. I'll meet you at the airport."

"No, no. That'll only get complicated. Just give me your address and I'll try to make it by early afternoon. And you try to relax."

So she told me where she lived, we said goodbye and hung up? and right away I knew that something was wrong.

It was an odd sensation. Strong. Definite. And yet unaccountable. For a moment, I thought it was just the call itself?a strange summons, under strange circumstances: fears about the suicide of a father on precisely this day. And given our past connection, any conversation was bound to be awkward.

But such feelings could hardly be the cause of the intense unease that now swept across me. May's request, by any standards, had been unusual, and if I'd had the faintest idea of where it was going to take me, I would have felt foreboding. But in fact that wasn't at all what I felt. It was a more particular sensation as if I was being watched, as if someone else was with me in the house? and then thinking this. I knew what it was.

On the phone, May had said she'd sent me two telegrams: the one I'd received today, but another last Wednesday when I'd been in New York. It hadn't been in my mail, I was certain, and now I checked again to be sure. It wasn't. Carefully, I played my arrival back through my mind. As I'd come in, I'd had a bag of groceries in each hand. To work the lock, I'd balanced one on my knee. And then I'd kicked the door shut behind me and gone straight through to the kitchen. From there the sequence was perfectly clear I'd carried my coffee into the living room, tidied up for a moment, and slumped down on the sofa. And that's when I'd discovered my mail: a great pile, two weeks' worth, scattered all over the coffee table? instead of lying in the hall, under the mail slot, where it ought to have been.

3

My father's grave? May's call? the little mystery of my mail? By the next morning, these seemed merely a coincidence, hardly worth troubling about. Besides, I was fully occupied with the mechanics of my departure, for Charlottesville isn't the easiest town to get out of. There's a local airport, but in the end it was simpler to drive to Washington, leave my car with a friend, and fly out of Dulles. This made me much later than I'd intended: it was after three as the 727 slid down from the bright fall sky and deposited me at Toronto International.

Like most Americans, I don't know Canada at all it's where the winter comes from and I hadn't been there in years, so the city struck me as a great deal bigger, richer, and noisier than I remembered. But I was still in North America; it was built out of concrete and neon, hype and nerve. On the radio, the helicopter "traffic eye" described the traffic jam we were caught in, from the front seat the cabbie explained why he preferred Orlando to St. Petersburg for his winter vacation, and beside me discarded and already starting to fade the Toronto Sun's "sunshine girl" burst innocently forth from her bikini. Looking out the window, I watched the cars, people, and money roll by.

May lived downtown, in an area the cabbie called Kensington Market. I had him drop me at the edge of it and walked a little, passing through crowded streets jammed with stalls selling everything from lobsters to African beads. This was obviously an old immigrant district. The Jews had gone decades ago, leaving behind a couple of restaurants and a boarded-up synagogue. Most of the shouting around me was in Portuguese and Italian, and even the Italians and the Portuguese, I suspected, were on their way out. On Spadina Avenue the faces were mostly yellow, and behind them, in turn, were fresh hordes, the most surprising of all: refugees from the suburbs, rich kids all stuffed with health food and pot. On May's street, the signs were everywhere: exotic plants dangling in windows, workmen off-loading drywall, young matrons pushing wicker prams down the street. Today, this was a slum-in-transition; five years from now, it would be a chic address for young marrieds which, it occurred to me, was just the sort of investment a rich man might make for his daughter.

I went up to the door and rang the bell.

No answer.

I waited a moment; then, setting down my bag, I walked around to the side of the house. There was a lane here, with an orange Volkswagen Beetle parked halfway up it the only car May ever drove and a board fence down one side. Peering over this, I could look into her garden. It was very long and narrow. A brick path ran down the middle of it and on either side of this, completely filling the space, grew shrub roses, a tangle of gray thorny canes, dabbed here and there with clusters of blood-red rose hips. It was now after four and the day was fading fast, but a patch of wan sunlight had found its way between the surrounding houses and sheds. Peering into this halo, I could see May halfway along the path, squatting with her back to me. Her long, reddish-blond hair cascaded over a blue wool poncho which, in turn, was worn over an ankle-length burgundy dress. Squatting as she was, she'd pushed the dress between her legs, making a basket of her lap, and was filling it with dead canes as she worked. Her secateurs snapped, then she duck-walked ahead. I was about to call out to her, but something held me back and I watched her in silence. May had always possessed a mysterious quality it had been part of her attraction and now, as I felt it touch me again, I thought I understood what it was. The garden, in this strange autumn light, was like an old photograph, faded, cracked, creased, all bent at the corners a long-ago photograph of girls in large bonnets whose eyes are forever lost in shadow as they squint into the sun. That was May's quality, I thought; she didn't quite belong to this time? But now she stood up. Holding her dress in front of her, she walked back down the path toward a weather-beaten shed at the back where she spilled the cuttings onto a compost heap. When she turned around, she saw me. A shadow, quizzical and anxious, fell across her face. But then she smiled. "Robert? Robert!"

"I just arrived. Should I go around to the front or can I get in here?"

Bustling forward, she showed me where two boards had been hinged to make a gate and I stepped into the garden; then she took both my hands in hers and we kissed? just a sociable brush of her lips on my cheek. But then, with a sigh that was almost a groan, she fell against me and I held her. "Thank God you've come," she whispered. "You're sure you don't mind? I was afraid?"

"Of course I don't mind."

With a shudder, she started to cry, pressing her face into my shoulder. I squeezed her against me, but it was odd holding her, I felt completely alone, as if there was something false in her tears. Then I understood: she was crying out of fear, not sorrow, and you can't comfort fear. I held her more tightly. "Don't worry," I whispered. "He'll be back. It'll come out all right."

Getting her breath, she eased away and tried to smile. "This is awful."

"No."

"Yes, it is. I think I brought you all the way up here just to be able to do that."

"A trip worth making, then."

She smiled again. "Thank you? for coming. For saying that."

I smiled. "I'll always come. You know that."

Did I mean this? In truth, I wasn't quite sure though I had come, after all. Maybe she had her doubts too, for she looked away almost shyly, then took my hand and led me up to the house. At the rear, looking onto the garden, was a breakfast room; beyond this lay a large, comfortable kitchen with a quarry-tile floor and old pine furniture. Sitting on the edge of a table, I watched her make coffee Colombian beans, Braun grinder, Melitta filter and was again struck by the sense of dislocation I'd felt in the garden. There, because the garden itself seemed out of time, she'd fitted right in; here, where everything was right up to date even the antique furniture? she seemed out of place. But each small gesture helped her get a grip on herself and finally she started to talk, small talk about getting the garden ready for winter, questions about my trip, Charlottesville, my writing. As best I could, I brought her up to date on my life and got the impression that her own hadn't much changed. She'd taken up the flute, was studying composition at the Toronto Conservatory of Music; she had her house, loved the garden, saw just a few friends. She'd moved to Toronto three years before, but still traveled a lot? As she went on, she became more composed, though nothing could hide the terrible anxiety she was feeling. More than was justified? Probably not her father had disappeared, after all. Yet something about her anxiety brought the question into my mind. Her face was haggard and etched with worry, and while the coffee dripped through, she excused herself and went off to the bathroom, looking a bit better when she came back? except in her eyes. For when the rest of her was calmer, you could see even better the quick, darting fear that lurked in them. But perhaps this wasn't really surprising I reminded myself that it had been going on for ten days. In any case, when we were sitting, and quiet, with second cups of coffee in front of us, I said, "Do you think you can tell me what happened?"

She lifted her cup, then set it down. "There's not much to tell. It was the police who found out, actually. On Saturday, around three in the morning, a squad car drove past my father's place and saw that the door was open? standing open. It almost looked deliberate, they said. One of the patrolmen rang the bell, but there was no answer, so he went inside. No one was there. They waited around, but after twenty minutes or so they sent in a report on their radio and locked the door. An hour later they came back but there was still no answer, so they sent another car in the morning. A neighbor gave them my name."

"This was Saturday? the eighteenth?"

She nodded. "But I suppose he left during the day, on Friday. I don't think it was Thursday because I spoke to him then."

"And nothing seemed wrong?"

"No, not really. It's hard to say? when you look back?"

"Yes. But once you knew, what happened then?"

"The police made their checks they were serious to begin with because they knew he was wealthy and I started calling his friends. But no one had seen him or heard from him. He wasn't in hospital, he wasn't dead in the morgue, he?"

Her voice trailed away. She'd been in control of herself, but all at once she was right on the edge. I tried to keep my tone neutral: "Were there no signs that he'd gone on a trip? Clothes missing? Luggage?"

"The police made me check but I couldn't be sure. The basement is full of old luggage he could have taken a couple of suitcases and I wouldn't know. I'm not really sure what clothes he owns."

"Does he drive a car?"

She nodded. "He doesn't use it much anymore, but it was in the garage the police said it probably hadn't been driven for weeks." She closed her eyes for a second. "I've been all through this, Robert. It's useless. There've been no strange withdrawals from his bank, American Express say he hasn't used his card? There's just no sign of him at all."

I leaned back, then pushed my chair away from the table; I suppose, knowing she wasn't going to like what I had to say next, I wanted to put a little distance between us. Then I went on, "All right, I accept that he's missing. At the very least, he's been damned inconsiderate? but then old men sometimes are, you know. What I don't see is suicide. He was wealthy. His health it was still good?"

"Yes."

"No one's found his body?"

"That doesn't mean anything."

"There's been no note?"

"But that doesn't mean anything either."

"Not definitely, I suppose? but it's hard to disprove a negative. Until he comes back, you have to say that suicide is a possibility, but it doesn't seem very likely."

She hesitated, glancing down, then looked up again. "I told you I had a reason."

"Yes. Something to do with your being adopted."

She began to speak but then stopped herself and reached out for her cigarettes. As she lit one, I watched her face. It was broad, girlishly freckled, with a slightly snub nose. In a way, she did look her age, but something was missing she was like a young girl who'd suddenly woken up to find she was forty; it was hard to account for the intervening years? or was that simply because I hadn't been part of them? Maybe; but then I thought it went further than that, for as she brought the cigarette up to her lips, I noticed that her hands displayed a similar sort of displacement. The wrists were thin, delicate, very long, like the wrists of some wistful Pre-Raphaelite maiden. But the fingers themselves belonged to a real country girl; they were practical and strong, bony, the nails now bitten down to the quick. Bloomsbury girl? hippie lady? princess? peasant? she was a little of each.

Now, guardedly, she said, "You knew I was adopted?"

"Yes."

"All right. I was adopted as an infant, in 1940. I was just a few months old. I only remember Harry? my father. I don't even remember his wife my legal mother because they separated just a year or so later. I stayed with him. He's the only family I've ever had. Or wanted." She looked up at me. "I didn't even know I was adopted till I was fourteen."

Harry Brightman. I remembered now that's what she always called him. Harry or Father. I looked at her. "Wasn't fourteen a little late to tell you?"

"It hadn't made any difference before. It didn't then. It didn't later? I think he might never have told me at all, but I asked him if I could meet my mother and he had to explain. We were in France for a holiday. I remember we were in Cannes, sitting in a cafe. You could see the ocean. I said that when we got home I'd like to meet my mother. I'd never asked before, and I suppose I only asked then because of my age, but that's when he told me. He said that he didn't even know where my mother was and that she wasn't my real mother anyway?I was adopted."

"And what did you feel?"

"I was dizzy for a second. That's all. Then everything settled back down. Nothing had changed. And once I knew my mother wasn't my mother, I had no desire to meet her." She hesitated, then continued. "But I don't want you to miss the point in all this. It didn't make any difference. It never has. On that day in Cannes, he told me everything I know about my adoption I was a baby, it happened in 1940, it took place in Halifax. But that's it. The subject had never been raised before, and hasn't been since? That is, until a few weeks ago."

"Then what happened?"

"Nothing really. But he started to talk about it. At first he was vague. Hints. Then he began asking if I didn't want to know where I came from?"

"And what did you say?"

"That I didn't. I'm not a child anymore it doesn't mean anything to me. Then he started to press didn't I want to know who my real father was??"

"And?"

"He's my real father. I don't want another one." She looked up at me. "But you see what I'm saying? Something about the whole subject was bothering him."

"Is that surprising, though? He's an elderly man. He probably won't live much longer. Perhaps he only wanted to give you one final chance?"

"It was more than that."

"All right. But why does any of this make you think he's killed himself?"

She flinched at the words, but held steady. "I'm not sure. But it could, couldn't it? What if my biological parents came back? Or?"

"Or what? What difference would it make? If you were a child if you'd just been adopted? yes, I could see it. But now? You'd all go out to lunch, shake hands, and that would be the end of it."

"Not necessarily. Say there'd been something wrong about the adoption, something illegal."

"Do you think there was?"

"No. But? people buy babies. Maybe?"

I waited, but she didn't say anything more. I thought over what she'd said. It sounded farfetched; but even if Harry had bought her, I didn't see who would care, forty years after the fact. I said, "Did you tell the police all this?"

She nodded. "They didn't think it was important. They're sure he wasn't being blackmailed, because of his bank records. They told me they'd look into it but I don't think they have."

"And you want me to?"

She looked me square in the eye. "Yes."

"So far as you know, this was the only strange element in your father's recent behavior."

"Yes. It's the only thing I can think of."

"All right, then, I'll do it. I don't promise much even if I do find out something, it probably won't be connected to your father's disappearance. But I'll try."

She smiled. "Bless you, Robert. I knew you would."

I squeezed her hand. "Remember: no promises."

She smiled and nodded. And then, after the strain of all this, I sensed a certain embarrassment come over her, so I said, "I just thought of something. I left my bag on your front porch."

She laughed. "Don't worry, the neighbors are honest. Go and get it, then I'll show you your room."

She led me up to a bedroom on the second floor, and after taking a shower, I stretched out on the bed and began to think? though more about May than her father. So far as he was concerned, I had few worries: Harry Brightman, I was willing to bet, was pursuing an old man's folly, chasing a woman whose existence he'd been too embarrassed to admit, especially to his daughter. May's adoption, the possibility of suicide, buying babies all that had nothing to do with it. The police, I suspected, had also reached this conclusion, and in fact I could see only one point contradicting it May's fear itself. She was genuinely upset, there was no doubt about that. And she wasn't the sort to cry wolf. On the contrary, self-sufficiency had always been one of her hallmarks, so that her call for help now was ample testimony to the devotion she felt toward her father. Should I be surprised at such feelings? Did I have a right to be? Hardly. If May was dominated by her father, in life, I had lived far more completely under the influence of my own father's death.

I lay still, listening. Beyond the window, the day was already darkening and sounds from the street were hushed and remote. The house was silent. I listened to it: like all silence, it had its own timbre, and this was gray, cold strained in some fashion?and as I tried to define what this quality was, my mind slipped back to the afternoon and the rose garden, all enclosed, with May's kneeling figure trapped in that high, wan halo of light. The silence of a nunnery? that's what now came into my mind, and I wondered whether that might be true, that some devotion I'd never known about had locked her away from me, that she'd used me to try to break its grip and failed, making her the victim in a tragedy that dwarfed my own. Or, on the other hand my mind now began racing maybe such thoughts were just pure projection; God knows I've been called a monk often enough, and more than one woman has complained that she felt, with me, that she was competing against some ghostly presence, all the more powerful for being invisible. Perhaps that was the answer, for now a memory came back. It was a memory of our last night, the last time we'd made love: May had returned from seeing her father but she still hadn't told me that she'd changed her mind. Her passion had been fierce that night, almost desperate. Later, I'd assumed that she was trying to console me, offering one final gift. Now I wondered. Might she not have been giving me a last chance to woo her away? Perhaps I'd been struggling that night with an invisible protagonist of my own May's father, and her love for him and when I'd lost, I'd lost for both of us?

But I stopped myself there this must be projection. Be? sides, it didn't make any difference. All of us ancient combatants or not were long dead. Today, I was merely a stand-in for that long-ago actor, and my role was a mere formality. Hold hands, murmur soothing words, wait for Harry to return with his tail between his legs. On which note I drifted off into sleep.

I didn't sleep long, but when I awoke it was completely dark outside my window. I pulled myself together and dressed. May was downstairs and smiled as I came into the room though I think we both felt a little awkward now. "I was wondering if you'd fallen asleep," she said.

"I did for a while. And I've woken up starving. Why don't we get something to eat?"

"I'll make something."

"Let's go out. On the way over here I thought I saw a Jewish restaurant. If they make a good borscht?"

We put on our coats. The night was cool, with a wind, but the restaurant was just around the corner. It was one of those old-fashioned Jewish restaurants with a counter at the front where ancient men drink tea with lemon, read The Jewish Forward, and pick their teeth. In back, there were cheap tables, chunky waitresses, and excellent food. I had decided I wasn't going to raise the one obvious subject, but then May herself brought it up. As I dunked a piece of potato into my soup, she said, "This is like Russian food, isn't it?"

"Some Jewish cooking is, but this is more Polish. Which has always struck me as funny the Russians and Poles are the most anti-Semitic people on earth, but they're all raised on good yiddisher food. Even the Germans are, a little."

"I remember Harry once saying something like that. He's German, you know. Brightman? Hellman. Heinrich Hell-man? He was born in Berlin. Both his parents died in the First World War and an uncle in Winnipeg adopted him the uncle changed the name."

"So your father was adopted himself, and then he adopted you?"

"I never thought of that. As I said, we never talked about it at all." For a second, her voice seemed to falter, but when she went on, her tone was normal again normal, but self-consciously so, as if she was deliberately trying to erase the desperation she'd shown me before. "I know that his uncle was married, but there were no other children. When he died, he left his fur business to my father. He moved it to Montreal and then expanded to Toronto."

"It seems a strange business to be in. But I suppose not in Canada."

May smiled. "I'm not much of a Canadian. When I was a little girl, he took me to Banff and I saw a bear through binoculars, but that's the closest I've ever been to the wilderness. Actually, you know, you'd enjoy talking to him. He always says that he made his real money out of Russia, not Canada he claims that Stalin made him a millionaire."

I swallowed cabbage roll. "I don't get it."

"Well, I'm not sure how true it is. But as well as manufacturing furs turning them into coats he had an import-export business. In the thirties, he brought in a lot of fur from the Soviet Union."

Once, in Leningrad, I'd gone to one of the fur auctions. It was enormous, with buyers from all over the world. I said, "Did he ever go there? To Russia?"

"Oh yes, several times. You really should talk to him. I know he got to meet one of the important Bolsheviks? not Lenin but? Zinoviev?"

"Yes." It made sense. Zinoviev, a close friend of Lenin's and the first head of the Comintern, had been relatively cosmopolitan and well-traveled qualities that would have made him interested in a foreign businessman intrepid enough to visit post-Revolutionary Russia. Of course, those same qualities had made him the first of the major Bolsheviks whom Stalin had purged. That had been in 1934, so presumably Bright-man had gone before then. "I'd love to talk to him," I said. "There aren't many witnesses from those days still around? and most of those who are don't like talking about it the subject only reveals their own ideological follies."

"Not Harry. He was only interested in money and made no bones about it? which he always claimed the Russians appreciated."

For the first time, I was feeling a glimmer of interest about this man, and suddenly an image of him flashed before my eyes. It had to be pure invention, since I'd never seen him, but it was very vivid just the same. A street market. Stalls. A big, bulky figure wrapped up in a long beaver coat and a large fur hat, his face turning away from me. I said, "I take it that his business was really his life."

She hesitated. "I'm not sure. But no, it wasn't. He sold out about fifteen years ago and he's been happy since. He travels a lot I get that from him. He loves art and collects it? linocuts, woodcuts, that sort of thing. And there's me. He's very devoted to me, he always has been. That's why I know?"

Up to this point, talking about her father objectively, she'd been under control; now her features started to crumple and she worked to get a grip on herself. As deftly as possible, I steered the conversation away. We finished eating, but when we were done it was still only ten. I didn't want to go back to the house, where we'd have to talk some more, so I suggested we walk; after my sleep, I wasn't tired anyway. May explained the city to me: the streets ran north-south, east-west on a grid. We headed up Spadina a broad, barren, windy street then turned east along Bloor. This was obviously a main drag; even in the cold, there were lots of people about, hurrying east toward the bright lights in the distance. That was Yonge Street, May said. Across the road, she pointed out some of the University of Toronto buildings, including the Conservatory of Music, all built in magnificent Victorian-Gothic granite. We continued along in silence, but as we came up to a corner, May pointed down a side street. "He lives just up there? Harry, I mean."

"Can we look?"

"All right. It's not far."

Almost at once, only a few blocks from the center of the city, we were in a solid old residential neighborhood. This was definitely not poverty row: the houses were large Edwardian structures, reposing on generous lawns in the shelter of huge maples and elms, while the curb was lined with BMWs, Mercedes, and good sensible Volvos. A man passed us, a tense smile on his face he was being tugged along by a pint-sized dachshund. After five minutes I wasn't sure where I was, but then May stopped under a streetlight and pointed across the road. "That's the house. Behind the fence."

The fence was low, wrought-iron, with a gate. A tall hedge grew behind it a black mass of shadow and an immense elm dominated the lawn. The house was dark, almost lost behind the tree, but was plainly very large: three stories plus a garret, with a jagged range of peaks, gables, and turrets running across its roof. It might have had an ominous, haunted-house look except for its substance; it was too solid for ghosts. May said, "It's too big for him. He's always saying so, but he can't bring himself to move."

"Can we go in?"

She looked nervous. "I'd rather not? I spent one night there, the first night, hoping he'd come back. But then I couldn't stand it. I was too frightened."

"Are you collecting his mail?"

"No? I suppose it still comes."

"Let me get it, then. Do you have a key?"

She didn't want me to; I could see that. But I just stood there, and after a moment she fished a key out of her purse and I crossed the road. The gate opened with a squeak and I went up a stone walk to the door. This was large, glossy black, and bore a knocker appropriate to a fur dealer a brass snowshoe rapped a fox on the nose. I fitted the key. It worked a dead-bolt lock; that is, you had to use the key to lock the door as well as open it. Conceivably this explained why the door had been found standing open on the night Brightman had disappeared: if he'd been in a hurry and slammed the door behind him, the bolt would have struck the doorframe, forcing the door to bounce back. Now I pushed it inward, plowing a fair heap of mail ahead of me into the entranceway. Then I stood a moment, inhaling that special smell of rich house: waxed wood, polish, wool carpet, cleanliness. I couldn't find a light switch, but after a moment my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I picked up his mail and stepped into a foyer. The hall ran straight on, with stairs to one side of it; two rooms, with sliding doors, led off to my immediate left and right. The doors on my left were partly open, so I stuck my head in, peering across a shadowy vista of furniture toward the dark glitter of glass-fronted cabinets. I stepped back. The kitchen, I guessed, was straight ahead, down the hall. It was very dark. The eerie stillness that settles in abandoned rooms had fallen over the place? and all at once something became real to me: Brightman was missing. I felt ahead to the stairs. There was a lamp on the newel post and I pulled it on, then started up, the banister guiding my hand, ankle-deep carpet cushioning each step. The landing was dark, the second-floor landing pitch black. But I groped ahead and almost immediately felt a doorframe. The door was open. I stepped into the room and punched on a light.

I had found my way to Brightman's library.

Or I suppose that's what he called it. It was very large, with a peculiar quality; heavy, old-fashioned, not quite North American. Dark oak paneling came up to your waist, the walls and ceiling were joined by elaborate moldings, and in the center was a large plaster medallion from which a chandelier hung. Despite its size, the room felt cramped, for it was jammed with books, cabinets, display cases, and the furniture was heavy: an elaborate desk stood just inside the door; oak chairs, covered in brocade, were grouped round the fireplace; and then a sofa and more chairs were ranged near the display cases at the back of the room. It was like a museum a room belonging to one of those nineteenth-century gentleman collectors with an interest in "natural history." The display cases, in fact, were filled with stuffed animals, each caught in a natural pose (a beaver, up on its hind legs, was chewing a twig gripped in its paws; a lynx padded furtively over a log), and this made the glassy glitter of their eyes all the more gruesome though I suppose such a collection was reasonable given Brightman's business. And yet this collection, I realized, was only an afterthought compared with the framed prints and engravings that occupied one whole side of the room. There were five rows of them, running from the wainscoting almost to the ceiling? they were filed on that wall, not displayed, and didn't invite you to look at them so much as count them? which I did: the total was 228 woodcuts, wood engravings, linocuts, lithographs, and monotypes. I don't know much about art, and I know virtually nothing about graphic art, but as I went down that wall I managed to recognize a few of the names: Kathe Kollwitz, Gaudier-Brzeska (three linocuts), Gertrude Hermes, Robert Gibbings, Rockwell Kent? All of them were modern, or at least of this century; all were black-and-white; and many had that heavy, dramatic quality you find in the propaganda art of the thirties: crude social symbolism, poverty, subjects taken from industry pitheads, gasworks, the complex of lines and shapes formed by cranes at a dockside. One, I saw, was by the Russian artist Vladimir Favorsky: cossacks, workers, soldiers, Lenin and Trotsky, their figures all pulled and stretched into a map of Russia during the Civil War of the twenties. Presumably, Brightman had picked it up while he was over there, but when I took it off the wall, I saw that it was from the 18th Venice Internationale in 1930. I replaced it and stepped back. And wondered.

In the restaurant, I'd had a first glimmer of interest in Brightman himself; now he seemed as fascinating a father as any orphan could wish for.

I stared about me. In the hall, I'd felt his absence; here, his presence pressed in from every direction. Almost in a trance, I made a second circuit of the room, ending by his desk, just inside the door. Though ornately carved, its top was scarred and it was clear that Brightman had actually worked here? there was a mug of pencils and pens, a stapler, a roll of tape, envelopes, bills. And there was also a photograph. It was small, four by six, in a plain wooden frame. Brightman. And my imaginings hadn't been so far wrong. He was a big man, heavy-set, with a broad chest sloping into a heavy belly. His face was broad and genial, his hair thick, though receding slightly from a high forehead. The photo had been taken outdoors: he was wearing a lumberjack shirt and his hands were thrust into tweed trousers. It struck me as a little peculiar, having a photograph of yourself on your desk, but when I picked it up, I saw its real value. On the back, penciled in a clumsy hand, were the words: Harry Brightman, taken by May Brightman with her own Brownie, Georgian Bay, Aug. 1, 1949.

I set the photograph back in its place. Harry Brightman, as May had seen him. But who was he? What sort of man had lived and breathed in this room? And why had he left it? For the first time, it occurred to me that the answer to this question might be more interesting than I'd assumed. But I wasn't going to answer it now, and May, I suspected, had started to worry. Taking a last glance over my shoulder, I pressed the wall switch, stepped into the doorway? and froze.

I stood utterly still. Before me, the hall was pitch black. But I knew I wasn't alone.

Steps, soft as breaths, were coming along the corridor. Toward me. Right past me. And then, for an instant, I saw a face?a face, a glint of red hair and with a wild glance that face looked right into my eyes: a face as thin as a weasel's and very pale.

And then it was gone.

My heart thumped thumped so hard it was all I could hear. I could scarcely breathe. I strained to listen. The carpet on the stairs was very thick, but I made out quick, padding steps? I waited for the sound of the door. But heard only silence?

A minute passed. He must have been on the third floor all the time. Not Brightman. Definitely not. But someone?

Cautiously, I edged into the hall. The stairway was black as a well, but then I reached the landing and the newel-post light glimmered up from below.

A step at a time, I went down. Then, three from the bottom, I stopped and listened again. Nothing. He must have gone? but if he hadn't, if he was waiting along the hall leading to the back of the house, I would be completely visible the moment I stepped off the staircase.

Gripping the banister, leaning forward, I pulled the chain switch on the newel post.

Red spots danced in front of my eyes. I waited, letting them fade, then stepped silently down the last couple of stairs, into the hall. Nothing moved. It took all my nerve, but I felt my way along, toward the back. There was a little light here, gray and filmy as fog, and after a moment a door loomed up in front of me. Beyond it lay the chill gloom of the kitchen. I waited, listening. The fridge coming on nearly made me jump out of my skin, but there was no one here, and when I checked the back door it seemed firmly locked. Quickly, I made my way back to the front. He'd either gone out this way or through the basement. I opened the door, stepped into the night?

But then stopped.

I looked over my shoulder, realizing I'd forgotten the dead bolt. Striking the doorframe, it had bounced the door open, and now it swung in the wind, creaking a little, just as it must have done on the night Harry Brightman had gone.

4

I didn't tell May.

She was already frightened and now that I suspected she had reason to be, there was no point in alarming her further. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the real importance of what had happened concerned me, not her. Up to this point, I'd been a rather reluctant good Samaritan. And of course that still might be my position, Brightman, after all, was a rich man, he lived in a rich neighborhood, and perhaps I'd only interrupted a burglar. On the other hand? It was this "other hand" that now gave me a twinge of guilt. If Brightman's disappearance was more than inconsiderate? if it had a darker side then conceivably his concern about May's adoption might be linked to it. I still didn't see how, but the next morning, really for the first time, I began taking the whole business seriously.

I worked fast. Once upon a time I'd been a fair reporter, and information had been my bread and butter. When you're just starting out, you obtain it by the exercise of certain skills? later on, you simply use contacts. That's what I needed now, and I began searching for them at the main branch of the Toronto Public Library, first with The New York Times Index, then in a microfilm reader. There I learned that adoption, if not exactly front-page news, had become something of a social issue in the late seventies. Procedures were being questioned; adopted children were demanding the right to know their "birth" parents; various organizations were agitating. I read through a dozen stories, mainly concerned with the United States, but one compared American practices with those in other countries, including Canada. I'd never heard of the writer, but of course I know a dozen people on the Times. Phoning from May's place, I quickly discovered that my man was now staffing at CBS and tracked him down there. As expected, he was happy to help now I was one of his contacts. To get his paragraph on Canada, he told me, he'd spoken with a woman at the Toronto Globe & Mail named Eileen Rogers. I called the Globe, and it was my lucky day: Miss Rogers knew my name, or pretended to, she'd done a three-part feature on "Adoption in Canada," and she didn't have a date for lunch. We went to a restaurant in a small hotel off Bloor Street, not far from where May and I had been walking the previous night. It was quiet, pleasant, elegant; a courtyard had been glassed in, and ad men and TV types padded their paunches and expense accounts as the pale October sun filtered down through the roof. Eileen Rogers fitted the place well enough. She was a real type the young, tough, ambitious lady reporter who'd worked her way up from the women's page to the political columns and was now scanning the wider horizon beyond. That horizon, I expected, extended south of the border, for she was curious about all those Canadians who've made it big in the American media Peter Jennings, Morley Safer, Robin MacNeil, a dozen others. I gave her some hints and names, but mostly, of course, she was earning the right to drop my name, which was fine, because in return she gave me a top-class briefing on Canadian adoption law and procedures. In Canada, she said, adoption was under provincial jurisdiction, just as, in the United States, the field belonged to the individual states. Most of the provinces (again, like most of the states) had established official or semi-official bodies to handle the whole business: they were usually styled Children's Aid Societies here, but differed little from the "adoption agencies" in the United States. She didn't think much of them on either side of the border.

"It's disgusting, actually. They have a sort of monopoly on infant misery and all they care about is maintaining their power. They've built up huge empires, bureaucracies, programs, funding from here, funding from there. Doing that series, I learned to loathe social workers."

I sipped white wine, forked salad. "How does all this affect me? if I'm trying to track down someone's parents?"

"Oh, you run right up against the basis of the whole system."

"Which is?"

"Secrecy. Absolute, sacrosanct, legalized secrecy. Once a mother signs over her baby she loses all rights to it and the kid loses all its rights as well. Neither of them can ever find out about the other. That's the basis of the Societies' power: they get complete control. It's all rationalized adoptive parents mustn't be haunted by the specter of the birth mother returning but it's all bullshit. They threw it out the window in the U.K. with no ill effects, and in some countries it's never been true. Finland, for instance."

According to her, if May had been adopted through a Children's Aid Society in her case, it would be the Society in the province of Nova Scotia there was only one way to find out who the birth mother was: an inside contact. She hinted that under the right circumstances she might be forthcoming, but I held off on that. Just possibly, there was another way. Most adoptions were handled by the Children's Aid Societies, but private adoptions, arranged through lawyers and doctors, still existed.

"The agencies hate them, of course, but lawyers make money from them also sacrosanct and in some cases they're just more convenient all round. It makes it easier for the rich to hide their kids' indiscretions, and then there's the sort of case where the parents are wiped out in a car crash and a relative picks up the children."

"So the lawyer would be the key, then?"

"Yeah. If you could get him to talk."

It was around three by the time I got back to May's house and told her the gist of what I'd found out.

"So it's going to be very hard," she said, "if I was adopted through one of these Societies?"

"Yes, but I think this girl knows some people inside the system, at least in Ontario. That would be a big help."

"You won't get in trouble?"

"Don't worry. It would be easier, though, if we knew whether or not you were adopted privately."

"All I know is what I told you. I was adopted in 1940, in Halifax."

"But your father must have a lawyer?"

"Of course. His name is Stewart Cadogan. I don't much like him."

"Do they go back that far, to 1940?"

"Probably. He's old enough."

"He'd probably know anyway. Phone him and find out. If he says you were adopted privately, make an appointment and we'll go see him."

We were in the kitchen again, drinking coffee. Now May glanced quickly down at the table. "If you don't mind if you need to see him I'd rather you went by yourself. As I say, I don't like him. We never get along."

Her fear I felt it flicker again. "May? you're sure that's everything you know you realize there's no point holding anything back?"

She reached up with both hands, combing her fingers back through her hair, but then she smiled and her voice was calm. "You have to understand, I don't care if you know. If there's something to know if he has something to tell you I don't mind your finding out. But / don't want to? not unless I absolutely have to."

"All right. But you may have to, whether you like it or not. You realize that?"

"I know. But I've lived all my life with one story and I'd prefer not to change it. Even if my adoption is connected to Harry's going away, I'd rather you take that connection to the police and let them find him. If it's possible? if you could do it like that."

I nodded, though I wasn't exactly happy about it. "I'll try? but you know, this lawyer may not be prepared to see me alone. Your adoption is confidential, privileged?"

"Don't worry. I'll fix it."

I waited in the kitchen while May used the phone in the hall. In tin minutes, she was back. "Good news. My adoption was private."

"But he won't talk about it?"

"Well, he didn't want to, but I persuaded him. My God he's officious I have to write a letter giving him formal instructions."

Stewart Cadogan, Q.C.; I was looking forward to meeting him. He'd agreed to see me that day, but not till six-thirty, and so I set off at dusk in May's Volkswagen, braving the city's traffic for the first time. It wasn't difficult. Toronto is a commercial town. At that hour, no one was making money in the great skyscrapers, but the crowds hadn't begun to spend it yet in the restaurants and bars, so the streets were gray, empty, forlorn. Cadogan's offices were on Victoria Street, just beyond Yonge. I parked, then walked a block to an old, red-brick house with stone steps, a columned porch, and a heavy oak door festooned with the appropriate plaque. Inside was a dim foyer and a desk for a porter; this gentleman, black-suited and very ancient, led me upstairs. Old, rich law firms can be very impressive, and Cadogan's fell into that category; padding along in the porter's dignified wake, I could almost hear the money rustling in their escrow accounts. I passed through a door into an outer office; a secretary, kept late for my benefit?and a trifle peevish took me over.

"You're Mr. Thorne?"

"That's right."

I would have put her age at sixty. She wore a navy suit with a white blouse, and the eyeglasses dangling round her neck bobbed with her goiter. She pressed an intercom. "A Mr. Thorne to see you, sir."

The indefinite article, somehow, made me feel less than reputable, but at least they hadn't kept me waiting, and as the secretary held the door, I stepped straight through into Cado gan's sanctum. It was large and gloomy. The rugs on the floor were probably Kashans, though a trifle threadbare, and the fire in the marble fireplace was blue, flickering coal the overall effect was one of wealth, but wealth that was practical, parsimonious, Scotch. Greeting me, Cadogan lifted himself out of a chair behind an old wood desk. He was very tall, somewhat stooped, with a large, bald head. His hands were also large, the knuckles bumpy and twisted. He could have been a school principal, a retired parson, or, indeed, just what he was. Accepting May's letter, he indicated a leather club chair by the corner of his desk. I sat, and watched him fish spectacles from the pocket of his suit coat. Fitting these to his nose, he began to read, frowning and suspicious. When he was finished, he laid the sheet of paper on his desk and pressed it flat with one of his huge bony hands. Then he glanced up at me.

"You'll not take this personally, Mr. Thorne, but you'll understand that I was reluctant to see you?"

"I gathered that, yes."

"You'll even admit, perhaps, that your situation is somewhat equivocal?"

"Yes, I suppose I would."

A smile flickered. "Then you'll be aware that mine must be too."

I said nothing. After a moment, he grunted which I took as a sign that he'd come to some provisionally favorable conclusion about me. He got to his feet. "It's after six. You'll take something to drink, Mr. Thorne?"

"Thank you, sir. That would be very pleasant."

He stepped around his desk to a lacquered cabinet near the fireplace. His suit was brown; for him, no doubt, an example of sartorial daring. It was several years out of date and, as with many old men, seemed to hang a little loosely on his large frame.

He took bottles and glasses out of the cabinet. "You're a young man and will prefer whiskey. I am old and must make do with sherry." This was a joke, so I smiled. But in fact he didn't look around to see what effect his remark might have had. I watched him pour. Naturally, there was no offer of water or ice. He brought me my glass, and I noticed that his hand, extending it, trembled slightly. I sipped. To my surprise, it was Canadian whiskey; I would have guessed Scotch. This must have shown on my face, for Cadogan smiled. "In this country, Mr. Thorne, we call it rye."

"It's very good, wherever you're from."

Perhaps he thought me incapable of normal civility, for he nodded a little, as if surprised. Then he settled himself behind his desk, his glass of sherry lost inside his vast hand. "As I understand it," he said, "you're trying to find Miss Bright-man's father."

"Not quite that. May thinks her adoption might have some connection to her father's disappearance and has asked me to look into it."

His eyes didn't leave mine, but his hand edged over his desk to a file that was lying there. "Adoption. A very private concern."

"Yes."

"Intimate business. Family business."

"I understand."

"You realize, I suppose, that I offered to tell Miss Brightman everything I know about the matter, but she asked me to tell only you?"

"Yes."

"She must trust you.".

"Yes, I think she does."

"Without wishing to give offense, Mr. Thorne, may I ask if you're absolutely certain that you understand what trust means in a matter like this?"

He had, mildly, given offense, and I didn't mind showing it. "I don't think you have to worry about that, Mr. Cadogan."

"Good. I shall cease doing so. But you also understand that I am under no obligation to tell you anything at all. May Brightman is my client, as well as her father, and she has an obvious interest in this. But these papers come from Harry Brightman's file, not hers. Only he, strictly speaking, can give you permission to read them."

"I'm sure that's true strictly speaking."

He shot me a glance. "As a lawyer, Mr. Thorne, I find nothing wrong with strict speaking."

I hesitated. I didn't want to argue with him. Besides, I knew that eventually he'd do as May's letter had instructed. I said, "Can I ask if you think there's some connection that is, between Brightman's disappearance and his daughter's adoption."

He frowned, irritated at this change of direction. But then he grunted again. "I don't say yes, Mr. Thorne? but I don't say no, either. In any case, I'd let you see these because I know that Harry Brightman would wish me to do as his daughter has asked? and because, as you will see, they contain very few secrets." Abruptly, before I could question this, he shoved the file across his desk. "You will know nothing about adoption law, but that is hardly necessary. May Brightman wasn't adopted under any statute that is in force today indeed, in 1940, the relevant law dated back to the twenties. It is a quirk in that law which gives her case a peculiar interest. You'll understand as you read."

Without saying anything, I opened the file. The first item was a carbon, on flimsy paper, of an old memo from "T. Tugwell" to "G.C." It summarized the Nova Scotia Adoption Act Chapter 139 of the Revised Statutes, 1923 and concentrated especially on the "consents" that had to be obtained before an adoption decree would be granted. Theoretically, these might include the consent of everyone from the child itself, if it was over fourteen, to the husband, if the person being adopted was a married woman, but they could also be waived under a variety of circumstances: if the person whose consent would normally be required was insane, was in a penitentiary, had neglected the child, or allowed it to be "charitably supported." Furthermore, the memo went on, if a person whose consent was normally required couldn't be found, the court could advertise for that person and then declare, if he or she still hadn't come forward, that consent was taken as given. Finally the memo concluded: "NO, the child's physical presence would not normally be required in court; and YES, our client would have to be married. This is not stated as an explicit provision of the law but in practice is almost always required."

Thanking God that I'd never been tempted by a legal career, I looked up at Cadogan. "I assume this was drafted after a request by Brightman?"

"Yes. It's not in the file. Probably he came into the office and spoke with my father personally."

I looked back to the top of the page. " 'G.C is your father?"

"Yes."

I turned back to the file. The next items were letters to Brightman, at a hotel in Halifax, more or less restating the memo, and a letter to a law firm in Halifax saying that he would approach them. Brightman had acknowledged this with a note, so for the first time I saw his signature broad, open, easy, in keeping with the face in the photograph.

Cadogan said, "You'll have noted that the important point is the requirement to advertise Section 4, Chapter 139. The paper used for such notices is normally the provincial government's journal of record, The Royal Gazette, and the next items in that file are tear sheets from it."

They were old and yellowed; as I took them up, the brittle paper flaked under my fingers. On this page were estate notices, appointments of Crown Attorneys, regulations concerning the blackout for this was 1940 and the Second World War was underway. In the middle of all this was the heading: Adoption Act; re Florence Esther Raines. Beneath it was printed:

Skipping down the page, I came to the petition itself:

I turned the page over; the last item in the file was the adoption order itself. I wasn't stunned by all this, but I was more than a little surprised, especially in light of what I'd been told about "secrecy" by my lady reporter that morning. I looked up at Cadogan. "So this means that May Brightman's adoption has always been public knowledge?"

"It was an exceptional case, of course. But the various suggestions she made on the phone blackmail and so forth? are out of the question. There have never been any secrets about her adoption and, as you see, it was all entirely legal."

"But not," I thought aloud, "entirely regular."

"How is that, Mr. Thorne?"

"I'm thinking of Brightman's marriage?" I flipped back through the file. "In this first memo, there's the clear implication that he wasn't married when the proceedings began. Your clerk stressed that he'd have to be. So it must have been a marriage of convenience, especially remembering that he divorced so soon afterwards."

Cadogan gave me a frosty smile. "Surely, Mr. Thorne, all marriages should be convenient. There's nothing illegal or even irregular about that."

But I wasn't going to be put off. "Still, it must normally work the other way round. That is, the desire to adopt a baby arises out of the marriage rather than preceding it."

"Perhaps that's so," he conceded. "But I suspect that Harry Brightman wasn't the first man to desire a child without having to put up with a wife. He was a wealthy man, even then. Like many wealthy men, he simply arranged matters to suit him."

Somehow, this rang a bell, and I had it? but not quite. Brightman, a wealthy man, wants a child. But not any child?this child. Instead of adopting in his own town, he travels all the way to Nova Scotia because? but then the thought slipped away. And I tried a different tack altogether. "I gather that you weren't a member of the firm when all this was happening?"

"Technically speaking, I was, but I had been seconded if you like to the Royal Canadian Air Force. This was 1940, remember. There was a war on. You people weren't in it, but we were."

There was a slight hint of disapproval in this, and I wondered what he would have said if he'd known that my father, at precisely that point, had been carrying on business as usual with the Germans in Paris.

I said, "So your personal knowledge of the matter is limited? It's all secondhand?"

"If you like. If that's material."

"I was just wondering if you ever talked to Brightman about it."

"Very little, and only much later. I handled the divorce? he had to tell me a little about it then."

"And when was that?"

"I think 1951 or '52. By that time, he had been living apart from his wife for many years."

"Could his wife have anything to do with this?"

"No."

"But you don't entirely rule out a connection between Brightman's disappearance and the adoption?"

Now, for the first time, Cadogan seemed uneasy. His eyes dropped. Then, with a fussy movement, he removed his spectacles and slipped them into his pocket. He said, "Mr. Thorne, when men say they wish to speak frankly, they usually intend to tell you a lie, but in fact I want you to know what's in my mind. That is difficult, however. I have been Harry Bright-man's lawyer for a very long time. He has less legal business today than formerly, but what there is I handle myself. And when he sold his business? a complex matter? I handled that.

Even going back further, he frequently called on my services. He manufactured and sold furs, but he also imported and exported them. Ocelots come from Argentina, jaguars from Brazil, there are problems selling mink in America? he was always having difficulties with permits and regulations of one sort or another. You understand?"

"Go on."

"All right. On the last occasion I saw him, our regular lunch, I sensed that something was different. I mean, I had the feeling that something was troubling him, something that lay beyond the normal bounds of our relationship. He mentioned a woman. It was clear that he meant a liaison, an infatuation in his past? but it was all very fleeting. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd normally have spoken about and you realize that it's not the sort of thing I'd normally speak of to you."

I nodded. Indeed, the difficulty he'd had in speaking at all made me sense that his feeling for Brightman was more "personal" than he'd let on. "I understand, sir. Did he mention a name?"

"Anna. He said, 'When I look back, Anna is my deepest regret.' We'd been talking about the past, the war. He'd had something to drink, perhaps more than he'd usually take. He spoke as if I knew what he was talking about."

"But you didn't?"

"No."

"And you didn't like to ask who this woman was?"

"It would have embarrassed us both."

"I see? But there are no Annas involved in any of this. The baby was called Elizabeth Ann?"

He lifted his hand from his desk in a dismissive gesture. "Does that make any difference? A nickname, a pet name?"

And now, at last, I had it. I could hear May's voice in my ear: He said he wanted to tell me who my real father was. But surely the usual focus of interest was the mother's identity? All of which must have shown on my face, for now Cadogan said, "I take it you've drawn the obvious conclusion, Mr. Thorne?"

"Yes, sir."

I had. May Brightman was Harry Brightman's natural child. In adopting her, he'd merely been adopting his own illegitimate daughter. I said, "Did you just reach this conclusion then, during that conversation?"

"No, it was a suspicion I'd held for a good many years."

"Had you ever tried to confirm it?"

"No. It was none of my business. Conceivably, I realized, it might have had some effect on his will, but I drafted it to take that into account." He hesitated a moment. "In that conversation, you see, I thought he was depressed, not quite himself, but there was nothing dramatic about it. I have no reason to suppose that it had anything to do with his going away. If he hadn't, I doubt that it would have stuck in my mind."

I nodded. The old man leaned back in his chair. Then, rather deliberately, he looked at his watch. "If you don't mind? I think I've told you all that I know."

"Yes, sir. And I thank you for doing so."

I rose. Cadogan didn't hold out his hand. I considered, then decided not to offer him mine. But as I turned to leave, he stopped me.

"Mr. Thorne? Earlier, I asked if you knew the meaning of trust. I hope you now understand why."

Would I tell her? That's what he was asking; but, right then, I couldn't have answered, so I merely nodded, turned, and went out the door. Outside, the porter was waiting and I followed him down the stairs and through the big oak doors to the street. The sidewalk was dark and deserted; a drizzle was falling. Standing there, I let it prickle, cold and sharp, on my face. I took a deep breath. Would I tell her? I really had no idea what to do. And all at once it must have been the rain?I was back in that graveyard where my father was buried and an uncanny sensation passed through me: an obscure, distressing feeling that I was not here by accident, that somehow Brightman's fate was intimately connected to my own. In a strange way, the story of May's origins was becoming my secret, and so, by a natural progression, was becoming allied to that other secret I held the truth about my father's suicide. No wonder I found it disturbing. But there was an assumption in this that I'd definitely keep back what I'd discovered. Should I? May's instructions had been clear enough: she didn't want to know unless it became absolutely necessary. Perhaps, given that, I had no right to tell her, for there was still no certainty that the adoption and Brightman's disappearance were connected. Why, given the facts, should he have fled? No doubt they would have upset May to some extent, but hardly as much as his abrupt departure had done; in the end, after all, the truth could only have served to draw them closer together.

What should I do?

As I walked along, a soft voice began whispering the answer: Let it alone, let it alone. But I suppose, even then, I knew that I wouldn't. Whether I liked it or not, this was my secret now?I'd found out something that no one had ever been intended to know, and there had to be more.

What was it?

As I reached the car, I remembered what the King of Hearts had told Alice: "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

For May Brightman, and perhaps for her father, the beginning lay in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the blitzkrieg spring of 1940.

5

When I was living in Moscow, the first "ordinary" Russian friend that I had was a man named Nikolai Morozov. He was an engineer who'd become a bureaucrat, but like many scientifically trained Russians, he fancied himself as a frustrated literary man. He loved poetry; above all, he loved Kipling. I'm not sure why. Kipling is frowned on in the Soviet Union ("an imperialist reactionary," etc., etc.), so perhaps he thought he was being daring. Or possibly — though Nikolai spoke English well — he found Kipling's straightforward rhythms and rhymes easy to enjoy. In any event, I once drove with him to Leningrad. We arrived early in the morning of a cool March day and a terrible fog had come up from the Neva, the Gulf of Finland, and the various other swamps and lagoons around which the city is built. Immediately, Nikolai began to declaim:

"Kipling," I mumbled, a little sleepless myself. "His famous poem about Petersburg."

"It is Kipling, yes, and it should have been his poem about Petersburg. But in truth it is about a place in Canada called Halifax, Nova Scotia."

This, until I arrived that morning at the end of October, was the sum total of my knowledge about Canada's famous eastern port, and though I wouldn't have sworn to the town's virginity, Kipling was dead right about the fog. Blindly, we descended through it, flaps down, wheels down, the whole plane feeling tentatively ahead for the first touch of the ground beneath the thick, ashen coils that swirled under us. Then, frighteningly close, it was there… and we glided onto a rain-slick runway with the gentleness that only cockpit computers and fervent prayer can bring.

I took a cab into the city. It was a small, Victorian garrison town mellowed by time and now softened by the fog and the rain: gray, narrow streets; weather-beaten clapboard houses; and that odor of salt, fish, and diesel oil that is common to ports the world over. My hotel, the Nova Scotian, was right downtown, and my room overlooked the harbor. Eating breakfast, I peered out the window while the persistent, mournful note of a foghorn shivered the glass. Though the fog was bad, it wasn't bad enough to close the port down. An Esso oil tender puttered back and forth several times, then a grain carrier, flying the Hammer and Sickle, inched its way up the channel, and finally, as I sipped my coffee, a warship nosed into view, gray as the fog, sullen and menacing as a shark. I guessed it was a destroyer, and the sight of it brought my mind back to business. May Brightman had been adopted in June 1940, the same month that France had fallen. The United States was still eighteen months away from war, but down in this harbor the first of the Atlantic convoys had been preparing to run the U-boats' gauntlet — as Edward R. Murrow would have put it.

I wondered if Harry Brightman had watched them. It was possible, though presumably he would have had other things on his mind. The woman he'd made pregnant, for example, Florence Raines. Or perhaps Charles Grainger, the doctor who'd taken possession of the child. Or possibly the child herself, the little girl he'd later called May. What should he do? How should he handle it? Forty years later, I began backtracking over his problem.

At this point, I still had no clear idea what I would find. I'd be disappointed if I found nothing at all, but then I wouldn't be completely surprised — a negative expectation that had been another reason why I'd finally decided to tell May nothing. Yet I was, I knew, playing a little game with myself. I was going to set aside all doubts and suspicions and play boy reporter. Forgetting what all this might mean, there was a technical problem and I was now going to solve it—che sard, sard.

I began by trying to find Florence Raines, a search that took me first to the telephone book — several listings for Raines, but no "F" — and then to the Provincial Building on Hollis Street, an old stone edifice that housed the registry of vital statistics. The clerks were patient and efficient; within an hour, I established three facts. First, Florence Esther Raines had been born in Springhill, a small mining town in the northwestern section of the province. Second, she had married one James Luton Murdoch, in Halifax, on March 22, 1943. And third, she had died, also in Halifax, on June 12, 1971.

It was around noon when I came up with this final fact, and of course it set me back on my heels. Florence had been the obvious candidate to relate the inside story of the adoption; if, in fact, there was anything connected with the adoption to cause Brightman to panic forty years later, she might well know what it was. But then I told myself that Florence Raines's death wasn't the end of the world and went back to the hotel and checked the phone book for Murdoch, her husband. But when I dialed, a female, youngish, told me he wasn't at home.

"Could you tell me when he'll be back?"

"Not till the end of the month. He's in Montreal, with his sister."

I was, I suspected, speaking with one of Florence's legitimate daughters — who probably knew nothing about her mother's youthful indiscretion, and wouldn't want to talk about it even if she did. "It's important that I get in touch with him. Could you give me this sister's address?"

She gave it to me, but for the moment I filed it under "last resort." I had one better hope: the doctor. He wasn't listed under "Physicians and Surgeons" but was still alive in the White Pages: Grainger, Charles F., M.D. I dialed the number and a woman — I would have guessed housekeeper — picked up the phone.

"Oh no, the doctor's not in, I'm afraid."

"Do you know when he'll return?"

"That's hard to say, sir. He says five but that's maybe six and more likely seven. It's Friday, you see. His day at the clinic."

So he still practiced. She gave me the clinic address and I went straight downstairs and into a cab. The rain was now falling more heavily. Veiled in Kipling's mist, the city slipped by, gray, old-fashioned, oddly appealing. Even out of sight of the water, you knew it was there by the steep tilt of the cross streets that led down to the harbor — an incline against which both pedestrians and buildings braced themselves. We crossed through the shopping district, which wasn't much, and gradually the streets grew scruffy. Shabby houses. Cheap shops. New York Cafes and Rainbow Grilles with narrow, dingy doors leading to the narrow, dingy rooms above. People scurried along the sidewalks with their heads down. White-bread faces. Draft-beer faces. Black faces… In fact, I suddenly realized that there were quite a few black faces, which surprised me enough to mention it to the driver.

"You American?" he replied.

"Uh-huh."

"Well, slaves used to come here, eh? To escape. The Underground Railway, they called it. This whole section of town was called Africville." After a moment, having imparted this lesson in local history, he added, "You know where this place is exactly?"

"Just that address."

He found it anyway, a small frame house on one of the meaner of these streets. There was a crudely lettered sign: Daly Street Community Clinic, but I would have recognized the place immediately without it, for versions of it exist all over the world: half-forgotten outposts of the sixties where a few hippies and radicals — like Japanese soldiers marooned on Pacific atolls — have rallied to make their last stand. I went up the walk and tried the door. It was open, its hinges loose — closing it behind me, I had to lift it back into place. I was in a shabby hall. There was a scent of poverty, masked by carbolic. Once, I suspected, the walls had been adorned with posters of Che, Stokely, and Ho; now there was a bulletin board with a mimeographed flyer advertising a lesbian dance and another promoting a meeting to protest cuts in welfare spending. I stuck my head through the doorway. A bespectacled girl with lanky brown hair was sitting behind a desk talking into the phone. "I know… I know… exactly… You just can't treat people like that… exactly. Just a sec." Resentfully, she looked up at me. "Yes?"

"I'd like to see Dr. Grainger."

"He's pretty busy right now."

"It isn't a medical problem. I just want to talk to him. Could you say it's about Harry Brightman?"

She looked dubious. "Harry Brightman?"

"That's right. I think he'll know the name if you mention it."

"Well… you'll still have to wait. Go down the hall, to your right."

Unenthusiastically, I followed her instructions and passed through an arch into a large, square room, no doubt the front parlor when the house had been lived in. The light was dim, but I told myself I was breathing the pure air of good works. Around the walls, perched on straight chairs, sat a variety of people, some young, some old, some white, some black, but all poor: street kids, an elderly woman with a shopping bag, a pregnant black lady… I took a chair beside the pregnant woman and asked, "Do you know Dr. Grainger?"

She looked at me suspiciously. "Sure, I know him."

"I've never been here before. Will we have to wait long?"

She paused before answering, perhaps listening to the girl in the office, who was still on the phone: "Exactly… exactly… You have to have that perspective…" At last, the black lady said, "It all depends. If you want to see him, you will. But there's another doctor here who'd be a bit quicker."

"But you think Dr. Grainger is better? You'd recommend him?"

Softening a little, she placed her hand on her belly. "Well, Dr. Charlie brought me into the world, he brought my mother into the world, so he might as well do the same for this one."

I smiled. "I guess he's been here a long time."

She nodded, tugging her raincoat more tightly about her. "As long as I can remember. My mother was born in 1933, so as far back as that." Then she frowned and looked about disapprovingly. "Of course, it wasn't always like this. I remember how it was when I was a little girl. He lived here then, you see. You went in a side door and then down to the basement. His surgery, he always called it, like they do in England."

"Dr. Charlie"… doctor to the poor, medical man with a social conscience. A strange friend for Brightman? This was an interesting question, and I pondered it, but it wasn't so interesting that I failed to notice the passage of time. That girl never seemed to get off the phone. One of the kids, a black with beads of sweat gleaming in his hair, began to shiver, and I wondered what he was on. I closed my eyes. I did Russian verb tenses, tried to think of the book I should have been working on. But at long last the girl from the office appeared in the doorway and looked toward me. "Could you come with me, please?"

I could, and did: along the hall, through a doorway, into the staff room — cheap chrome chair, dinette table, mugs turned upside down on a paper towel to dry. I was now at the rear of he house. The girl held a door open at the back of the room. "This is his study. Could you just wait here? He'll be down in a sec."

I stepped past her. Oddly, the room I entered immediately reminded me of Brightman's though it was almost exactly the opposite — very small, very dim, with a low, cramped feeling. In a way, it was more like my own workroom in Charlottesville, for it too was a winterized sun porch: the ceiling and walls were tongue-and-groove boards, and a pair of battered French doors gave onto a weedy, tangled garden. I listened as rain rushed off the roof and slapped at the leaves. Still, despite this, it was Brightman's room that I thought of. It was a retreat, in the same way, and overstuffed in the same way — though with books rather than pictures. Bookshelves were everywhere; brick-and-board shelves teetering against a wall, shelves made from old orange crates piled one on top of the other, even an old glass-fronted bookcase shoved into a corner. I've always snooped at other people's reading, and here you could hardly avoid it. There were some medical texts, as you might expect, a sagging shelf of journals and an old encyclopedia, but mostly there were paperbacks, rows of them, thousands. Many, I saw, were very old, with that peeling cellophane stuff they used to coat them with, and a lot were ancient Penguins from the days when they had uniform covers. Orange for novels. Blue for biographies. I pulled one out. The pages felt sugary under my fingers, like the pages of The Royal Gazette I'd handled in Cadogan's office. But then, I realized, many of these books were from precisely that era. You and the Refugee, a Penguin "Special"… What Hitler Wants by E. O. Lorimer… Germany Puts the Clock Bach "A New Edition with Additional Material Added April and August 1938." That had been precisely one year before the outbreak of war, two before May's adoption — so it was possible that Brightman might have stood here and seen this very book, newly purchased, on Grainger's desk. I poked along the shelf, my eye caught by a row of uniform red hardbacks. Pulling one down, I saw they were all Left Book Club editions from the thirties: The Coming Struggle for Power by John Strachey. Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. A Handbook of Marxism by Emile Burns… Once upon a time, it seemed, Dr. Charlie's do-gooding had possessed an edge: he'd had at least an intellectual interest in the Left.

But just then — I still had Strachey's book in my hand — he came into the room.

I smiled. It was hard to imagine this old gentleman as a rebel or protester of any kind. Dr. Charlie was very short, with a kindly, lined face and a shock of fine white hair that sprayed up from his head. Dressed in a white doctor's gown, he was the sort of elderly medical man who might have given sage advice to a young Dr. Kildare. He eyed me. "Now, then," he said, "you're not Harry Brightman."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. The young lady misheard me. I want to talk with you about Brightman but my name's Robert Thome."

"Charlie Grainger." He stuck out his hand — small, firm, warm. Then he grinned, "To tell you the truth, I'm relieved. If you had been Brightman, I would have been seeing a real ghost from the past." He pointed. "Have a seat. You should find a chair under those books."

He went around behind a desk in front of the French windows, where he too had to clear a space for himself. I said, "You like to read, Doctor."

"Well, what I really like is understanding… not that I claim to." He looked around the room. "In fact, all these books merely add up to three questions. Number one: 'Who benefits? Who profits?'"

"Lenin's question?"

"If you like. But lots of other people have asked it. Then comes 'Who rules the rulers?' which is the wise man's question, and finally 'What the hell will they do to us next?' which is my question."

I smiled. I wondered how old he was. Well over seventy, certainly. Now, settled behind his desk, he folded his hands in front of him and eyed me with a bright, questioning concern. I almost expected him to ask: What ails?

I said, "I assume you haven't seen Brightman lately?"

"I haven't heard his name in thirty years, Mr. Thorne. Maybe more. I'm surprised I recognized it… Funny, though. I did, right away."

"Well, he's missing. That's what I wanted to ask you about. Two weeks ago, he left his home, and no one's seen him since."

"That's too bad. I hope nothing's wrong. So… you're from the police?"

"No. I'm a friend of his daughter's. She asked me to help look for him."

He shrugged. "I don't know what to say. I certainly haven't laid eyes on him. You don't think he'd come here? You realize, I only knew him very briefly, and that was a long time ago."

"I understand. But part of the mystery around Brightman's disappearance is the motive. His health was good, he had money. In fact, in the weeks before he vanished, the only thing troubling him was his daughter's adoption. He seemed to want to tell her about it."

For a moment he looked uncomfortable, which was more or less what you'd expect. But then, recovering himself, he smiled. "It was all such a long time ago, Mr. Thorne."

"Yes."

"Did he tell her about it?"

"No."

"But you want to ask me about it?"

"Yes. But I don't want to put you on the spot. Let's say that I've read the petition, talked to Harry Brightman's lawyer about it, and have therefore drawn the obvious conclusion."

"Which is?"

"The child Brightman was adopting was his own illegitimate daughter."

There was a moment's silence, but finally Grainger gave a shrug and a little wave of his hand. "I probably shouldn't comment on that… but maybe it's a little late in the day to get sticky over ethics. Let's proceed as though your conclusion were true. What difference does it make? So far as I'm aware, there was nothing about the adoption to disturb anyone."

I said, "I'm not sure what difference it makes… or that it makes any at all. I suppose that's why I'm here. His daughter — her name is May — doesn't know the true story, but I'm sure — as you say — that it wouldn't disturb her. If anything, I think she'd be pleased…"

"Is she close to her father?"

"Very."

"Then you'd think she'd definitely be pleased. And why not tell her? As I remember him, Brightman wasn't the squeamish type — perhaps some people would feel a certain embarrassment about that sort of confession, but not enough to make them disappear. After all, his daughter is a grown woman now." He leaned back, hooking his arms behind the chair. "It sounds to me, Mr. Thorne, as if you're barking up the wrong tree."

"Well, probably I am… but there are still a couple of things that make me curious."

"Such as?"

"Think about what you just said, Doctor. Why not tell her? I'm sure that most adopted children are sometimes anxious about their status, their relationship with their adoptive parents. Brightman could have allayed all those anxieties. Yet he never did. Perhaps you wouldn't have told a young girl the full story, but, as you say, May is now a grown woman. But he never told her the truth. How come?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose there might be many reasons… perfectly innocent ones."

"Maybe. But you can take it a little further. May, you see, not only doesn't know the truth, she claims she doesn't want to — she's very clear about that. Even now — even though she's asked me to look into this for her — she'd rather I take what I find to the police without telling her about it. Don't you think that's a bit odd?"

He shook his head and smiled. "Nope. I'm really not following you, Mr. Thorne."

Actually, I was thinking aloud, and the more I did so, the clearer things seemed to become. "Brightman," I went on, "never told his daughter the truth even though the true story — on the face of it — would only bring them closer together. What's more — though I admit I'm guessing here — he somehow communicated to her the idea that she'd be better off not knowing what the true story was. You see? It implies that the 'true' story either may not be true or is incomplete. There has to be more."

His head tilted back as he thought, but then, with a shrug, "If there is anything more, Mr. Thorne, I don't think I know it."

His gaze met mine. Held it. In the end, it was my eyes that shifted away. It seemed pretty clear that he was telling the truth. Finally I said, "Can you tell me what Brightman was like at the time it all happened? Did he seem upset? How did you first meet him, for instance?"

"Oh, that was long before, in the late twenties or early thirties. He imported and exported furs, you know, and after Montreal closed down for the winter, he'd ship them through here. One of those times he fell ill and consulted me in the usual way. Did you know him at all?"

Did… but that was natural; he hadn't seen him in years.

I shook my head. "We've never met."

"He was a fascinating fellow, least he was then. He'd been to Russia early on and even claimed to know some of the big Russian leaders. In those days, I was a bit of a socialist, so that interested me. He played chess as well — one of my hobbies. When he came to town, I'd sometimes go to his hotel and have a few games. Beat him, mostly."

"You became friends, in fact?"

"I wouldn't say that. We knew each other. But I never saw him outside of Halifax."

"And what about the adoption itself? How did that come about?"

A moment's hesitation; then a shrug. "I suppose there's no harm telling you… In fact, there really isn't much to tell. He just appeared in my office one day and said he'd made a girl pregnant — a waitress, a girl in the hotel, something like that. He didn't want to marry her, but he wanted to see that the child was looked after. The question was, would I see the woman through her pregnancy and then arrange for the adoption? I agreed."

"Wasn't this a little unusual?"

"Of course. Let's say, Mr. Thorne, that I talked to Bright-man for a long time about it, then talked to the woman — also at length — and then I agreed."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything. But you did get to know the woman, Florence Raines?"

"Not really. She was a pretty blond thing, I remember. Healthy. Once the agreement was reached, I saw her in the usual way, then took the child after it was born. Beyond the medical necessities, I didn't get to know her at all." He leaned forward. "You understand, there was nothing improper about this. Even today, some girls prefer to give their babies up privately and have their doctors arrange it. Legally, it's perfectly normal… the only difficulty I can remember was that this woman disappeared without signing some papers, so some extra legal steps were necessary. I forget the details. In the end, it didn't make any difference."

"And you're sure that was the only difficulty? I'm trying to think of some problem then that might be coming back now."

Again, Grainger leaned back in his chair; then, leaning back even further, he reached into the side pocket of his medical gown, drawing out a package of cigarettes and a blue Bic lighter. He worked the lighter, then he rocked forward, his face turned down, in concentration, toward the orange flame. All of which was perfectly ordinary; yet, to my eyes, these gestures completely transformed him. For a second I wasn't sure why, but then it occurred to me that age is the greatest disguise of them all. Now, though he didn't look any younger than he had a moment ago, I realized that he hadn't always been old. I don't mean that the persona he'd presented up to this point had been false, but it had been a persona: a mask called "Dr. Charlie" which time, circumstance, and convenience had made him put on. The "real" person behind this mask was much more substantial; not merely a kindly old doctor, or a crackerbarrel philosopher, but a person — among other things — who'd once had a passionate relationship to all the books in this room.

Conceivably, he wasn't entirely unaware of the effect he'd created. As he exhaled, his eyes leveled with mine and he said, "Let's not mince words, Mr. Thorne. We both know that money changed hands. Naturally I had nothing to do with it, but Brightman was a wealthy man and I'm sure he made it worth her while. Why would Florence Raines have made difficulties? Remember, the world was very different then. Most girls in her position would have felt lucky to have a Harry Brightman looking after them."

I sat back. Dr. Charlie, indeed, was nobody's fool. And of course he was right. Besides, Florence Raines couldn't be making trouble today, since she was dead. Yet, more than ever, I sensed that trouble — of some sort, somewhere — existed. Brightman had never told May about the adoption. Why not — assuming the story was as straightforward as it seemed to be? And, also assuming that it was really that simple, why should Brightman have become so concerned about it today, and why would it make him panic and flee? Yet he had fled. And someone had been poking around in his house… even in mine — at the very moment when May had been trying to reach me. Outside, the rain kept driving down, and behind us, back in the clinic, a phone started ringing. I knew I should go: but I sat there in frustrated silence. And the frustration must have shown on my face, for the old doctor said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Thorne. I wish I could be more helpful but I don't really see how." Then, with a smile — the Dr. Charlie mask was back on — he added, "Of course, when you're as old as me, you sometimes don't know how much you've got in your head, so if you want to keep asking questions…"

The hint was perfectly reasonable. I smiled. "You've been very patient, Doctor. I shouldn't take any more of your time ¦. and despite what you say, you've been very helpful."

He nodded, and then, as I began to get up, he asked, "How do you go on from here?"

I shrugged. "Florence Raines married. She's dead herself but apparently her husband is still alive. And she had children. I can speak to them."

"You can hardly expect her children to know about this."

"No. But presumably the husband might."

His eyebrows lifted. "Even there you may be presuming too much. Most wives have a few secrets to keep from their husbands. Why would Florence Raines tell anyone what she had done? And you know — this is just something to think about— you might end up causing a great deal of pain for no reason."

I nodded; it was a valid point. "On the other hand," I said, "May Brightman is going through a great deal of pain for a very good reason — her father has vanished. And she's afraid he might have killed himself. At least Florence Raines is dead. No one can hurt her anymore."

"Perhaps. But why don't you think a bit, Mr. Thorne? I told you I didn't know Brightman well, and that's true. But I clearly knew him better than you do. If Harry Brightman didn't tell his daughter about the adoption, he probably had reasons, and good ones. And if Harry Brightman has chosen to disappear for a time, I suspect he knows what he's doing. I wouldn't tell you to mind your own business, Mr. Thorne… but you might give Harry a chance to mind his."

A nice speech, nicely delivered. I extended my hand. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll bear that in mind."

He came around his desk, and I followed him out through the staff room. We said goodbye in the hall. As he disappeared up some stairs, I hurried past the waiting room and the little room with the girl and the phone — the girl was still talking— and levered open the door. Outside, the rain was now falling in dense, slanting sheets. Not encouraging… but then I couldn't see much encouragement anywhere. Trudging unhappily up to Gottingen Street, where I found a cab back to the hotel — one small piece of luck — I began to consider my options. It wasn't a very long list. Florence's children were out; even if you discounted the ethical problem Grainger had raised, and even if she had told them her secret, it was unlikely that they knew the story in the kind of detail I needed. The lawyer Brightman had used for the petition — R. A. Powell— might know one or two things, but it would be impossible, coming straight in off the street, to get him to talk; I'd have to persuade Cadogan to lay the ground for me. Which left only one other choice: James Murdoch… and he was in Montreal. Should I go there? In the hotel room, toweling myself dry, I thought about what Grainger had said just as I was leaving. It made a lot of sense: and yet its effect on me was probably just the opposite of what he'd intended. More than ever, I was convinced that something was very, very wrong. Grainger had given me a much clearer picture of Brightman, at least as he'd been in the past; indeed, I could just imagine the young, progressive doctor — bookish, full of ideals — and the young businessman — well-traveled, with artistic interests — getting together for their chess games. But this was a far different image of Brightman from the one I'd been carrying around in my head. I'd begun with the assumption that Brightman, an old man, had fallen prey to an old man's folly: that his disappearance would have, if you like, some conventionally comic explanation. That assumption had been modified by my visit to his house, and now I discarded it altogether. Grainger, if only by that odd transformation I'd witnessed, had reminded me not to be fooled by appearances; and in his last little speech he'd done it again. If Harry Brightman has chosen to disappear for a time, I suspect he knows what he's doing. I wouldn't tell you to mind your own business, but you might give Harry a chance to mind his. But what was Brightman's business? And if it wasn't the business of an old man in his dotage, but that of a substantial, wealthy man who must possess some kind of courage and imagination — witness those early trips to Russia— why would he have botched it so badly? Because that's what must have happened. He would never, intentionally, have upset his daughter so seriously or created a situation in which the police — however unenthusiastically — were searching for him. Something must have gone wrong. But what? It was impossible to say… but the only clue, so far, was May's original one: the adoption. Which meant seeing James Murdoch. Which meant, in turn, my reserving a seat on the next morning's plane to Montreal.

It was about two-thirty now. Frustrated, feeling at loose ends, I phoned May. no answer. I had a coffee in the restaurant and read the history of the Sambro Light on the place mat. The rain was still teeming down. As I looked out the window, it was easy to decide not to go for a walk.

But then I had an idea; not exactly an inspiration, but it would keep me busy till tomorrow. As a little girl in Cannes, May had been briefly curious about the woman her mother had been; if I decided to tell her who her true father was — and I still hadn't made up my mind — that feeling would likely revive, and at least I could tell her where her mother was buried. Borrowing an umbrella from the doorman, I walked up to the main branch of the Public Library, where I obtained the Halifax Chronicle-Herald on microfilm. Florence Murdoch had died on June 12, 1971. It was a year much as I remembered, full of strikes, hijackings, Palestinians, and plummeting currencies. Among these events, her passing seemed decent, domestic, eminently respectable:

Murdoch, Florence Esther. On Monday, at home, in Halifax. Dearly beloved wife of James Murdoch, and dear mother to John, Devon, June, William and Susan. Service and interment from West Baptist United Church, Old Guysburough Road, Wednesday, June 16. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the church pastoral fund.

I read this through, noted the details; even noted that Florence had been involved in church affairs — the donations — and added the pastor to my list of people to speak with. But that was a long shot, and I had no intention of pursuing it then. Still, as I handed the microfilm back, it occurred to me that I might as well drive out there. I couldn't think of anything better to do, and I'd enjoy seeing more of Kipling's foggy city. Or country, as it turned out. Back at the hotel, the desk clerk showed me Old Guysburough Road on a map, and it was deep in the boondocks. This meant renting a car, but since you could do it from the hotel lobby, I decided to go on, and by four o'clock I'd set off. It was almost dark. Tacking against a modest rush hour, I made my way across town, my eyes shifting along the glistening path of the headlights. Suburbs, as uniform as exit signs, flickered by, and then scrub farms, and then scrub bush. On Old Guysburough Road, the landscape grew even more desolate — rocks, brush, little streams. Blind tracks led off to nowhere; I caught a glimpse of tar-paper shacks in the trees. And finally, coming over a rise, I spotted the church, propped against the side of a shallow valley. Along both sides of the road, fields had been cleared and there were several small houses set up on blocks, each with a stovepipe chimney for its space heater. A line of telephone poles wobbled into the distance, and by the ditch two children played in the rusted shell of a car. Over the entrance drive, a rickety trellis proudly proclaimed: West Baptist United Church.

I turned in, parking on a dirt lawn all churned up and rutted by the parishioners' pickups. No one seemed to be around; indeed, the church looked nearly abandoned. The cement steps leading up to the main doors were cracked and crumbling; rusted metal swings, on one side of the lawn, were tied back with a rusted chain; and a picnic table, missing one leg, had fallen onto its side.

The rain was pelting down, but I still had the doorman's umbrella; getting out, I hurriedly popped it open, then slammed the door shut behind me. I waited a second. No one appeared. I stepped forward, my feet squelching in the mud. A path led around the side of the church. It was very dark in the shadow of the building. Overhead, the rain drummed on the tin roof and water gushed from a drainpipe as I stepped around the corner. The path was graveled here, leading to a side door, but there was no sign of a light: apparently I'd have to give up on the pastor. I stayed on the path, however, for it now swung sharp right, cutting through an open field and then passing among stunted trees which seemed to be the remains of an orchard. The night and the rain pressed down; despite the umbrella, I began getting wet. Head down, I hurried on along through the trees. Beyond them was a fence, with a gate; beyond this, the graveyard and a long stretch of dark fields. Pushing the gate open, I stepped ahead. Now the path branched in a dozen directions, for the cemetery was informal, almost homey, the graves laid out haphazardly. There weren't very many, and most of the stones were modest: many were plain wooden crosses, some were cast from cement. Bending forward a little — the rain deftly trickling under my collar and down my neck — I passed among them. Florence Murdoch, nee Raines, was at the back. And though you could hardly call it pretentious, her stone was more substantial than most of the others — a piece of low, gray granite with a beveled edge and simple lettering:

"Home at Last"

In the rain and the gloom I stared down at it, just as I'd done in front of my father's grave only a few days before. Was that why I was here? It was hardly the time or place for self-analysis, though you had to wonder…

But then I peered harder.

For my father's grave, year after year, was mute, ignoring the questions I put to it — while Florence's, to my surprise, eloquently answered them all.

It was a fluke, of course, my being there. But then I would have found out eventually, either from James Murdoch when I'd spoken with him — the moment I laid eyes on him — or even from the preacher. But that wasn't necessary. For now, on one side of the stone, completely spoiling its dignity, I saw an oval, silvery protrusion about six inches long. To be charitable, it looked like a large locket; to be accurate, the hood ornament of a '55 Dodge. It had a hinged lid, like the metal flaps that cover outdoor electrical outlets, and I bent forward, half kneeling, to lift this up. Underneath was a smooth plastic, or porcelain, oval — again, vaguely reminiscent of a brooch — and on this, transferred by some new miracle of mortuary science, was a color photograph of the deceased.

I stared at it, and swore under my breath.

She was a pretty blond thing, I remember…

Well, not exactly.

Just possibly, Harry Brightman had been May's father — but Florence Raines, this very black woman, had never given birth to such a lily-white child.

6

I drew myself up and stepped back from the grave. Lifting my eyes, I watched the rain glitter against the gloom, beyond the low, crouched shadows of the headstones lay a sagging wire fence and then a muddy field, jagged with the broken stalks of last summer's corn. The fence grated and squeaked in the wind. From the field, alarmed at my presence, two old crows lurched into the air and clumsily lumbered into he dusk. They cawed twice, then disappeared.

I didn't move. For a moment I was too stunned to feel anything, even the rain. But as the numbness began to wear off, hat I felt was so strong that I shuddered. I felt fear — but not y own fear, someone else's. A long-buried odor was finding its way up from this grave. Now it was loose: the smell of fear that springs from mortal danger. I looked down at the headstone. Men hide many things, from treasure to shame, but their motive is always the same — fear of loss, fear of discovery, fear of treachery, but fear of some kind. And what I'd discovered today was proof that someone had once been terribly afraid. Just then I turned around. A light had come on at the side of the church. The side door swung open, a figure emerged. And in the spill of light from the door, I could see he was black. Of course. This was a black Baptist church, these mean concessions comprised some sort of black enclave, and here black Florence Raines had been brought to her grave. Bent over and clutching a plastic raincoat closed at the neck, this figure pulled the door shut behind him, then turned. At which point he saw me. All things considered — the gloom, the rain, my umbrella hoisted above the headstones — I suppose I made an arresting sight. And, indeed, he froze in his tracks. For a moment we stared at each other. Then, just as I expected him to shout, I shook my umbrella in acknowledgment and began walking toward him. He watched me every step of the way— through the gate, through the trees, up the path — but as I drew closer, and my respectability became a little more evident, I could see him relax. Gradually, his broad, chubby features assumed an expression, both solemn and welcoming, that would have told me he was a pastor even if I hadn't caught the white flash of a collar inside his coat.

"Good evening," I said.

He nodded. "May I be of assistance? Were you looking for a particular stone? It's quite dark…" He was a rotund little man, almost bald except for a few stiff curls of white hair over his ears. His expression, fixed and determined, both noted our difference in color and refused, resolutely, to raise it. His suspicions of me — so his expression seemed to say — had a completely different cause.

"Thank you, Reverend. I apologize. I'd intended to call, but there didn't seem to be a light."

"Oh no. That's perfectly all right. This is a public place, and you're entirely welcome. I only wondered… because of the hour, you see."

I nodded. He wasn't wearing a hat, and he had no umbrella, but I could sense that he would have refused any offer to shelter under my own.

I said, "I'm interested in a woman who's buried here, I believe a former parishioner. Her name was Florence Murdoch."

"Yes. She did attend here. A very fine woman. I only knew her in the last years of her life, but she was very devoted… to the church, to her family. Her husband still comes to us, as do two of her daughters… I take it you were a friend?"

"No. I never met her."

"Then I'm afraid I don't understand."

"It's confidential, Reverend. I'd like to tell you, but I shouldn't."

He stiffened, then frowned; and then this frown became more quizzical than angry. "Tell me," he said, "is it important — to this confidential matter — that Florence Murdoch be black?"

I hesitated. "She was, of course?"

"Of course."

"And why should that be important, Reverend?"

"I've no idea — but it was important to that other man."

"What other man?"

"He came to see me, about a week ago. And that's what he asked me — was Florence Murdoch black? He was… unpleasant about it. 'Black, like you,' he said. I told him, 'No; black like a Negro.' Which is the word I prefer… however old-fashioned it makes me."

His face turned up to me, almost challenging, while the ceaseless drum, splash, and drip of the rain filled up the silence. Another man, asking after Florence Raines. Brightman? "Was this was an older man… still vigorous, a big fellow, but—"

"No. He wasn't like that at all. This man was short, with red hair. I remember what he looked like."

I shook my head. "Then I don't know him."

Except I did… it was the red-haired ghost who'd flitted through Brightman's house while I was looking through his study.

"Well," the Reverend said, "let me tell you what I told him. Leave her alone. Let her rest in peace. If she sinned, her sins were paid for long ago."

"Reverend—"

But now he smiled and held up his smooth, pink palm. "Really, that is all I have to say. The church is closed, but if you wish…? No… Well then, I'll say good night." And he turned, his plastic raincoat stiffly rustling, and headed down the path.

Standing there, soaked despite my umbrella, I watched him go; and as he disappeared around the corner, that odor of ancient fear came back more strongly. Another man who knew Florence Murdoch's secret… or was it hers at all? Poor Florence: she'd presumably been a patient of eager, idealistic Dr. Charlie. Still standing there, getting soaked, I swore softly under my breath. How shrewdly the old man had lied. In journalism, you meet more than your share of professional liars, but I suppose nothing beats the inspired amateur. His cool had been breathtaking and I'd been taken in all the way. Let's not mince words, Mr. Thorne. We both know that money changed hands…

With another curse, I drew the umbrella tight against my head and slogged back to my car. It was full dark now; as I started the engine, the black night glimmered in the headlights and the rain flashed in the beams. There was no one about: the Reverend was gone, the road empty. Turning onto the highway, I put my foot down, impelled now by a sense of urgency that seemed fully justified by that odor of danger I couldn't dispel. I thought of May: she'd been afraid. Had she lied, like Grainger? And who was this other man burrowing into Florence Raines's past? Whatever I'd thought before, everything was different now; everything had changed before that black woman's grave.

It was five-thirty when I left the church, almost six-fifteen when I reached Grainger's place. He lived on a side street, in what seemed to be a university district. His own place was modest: two stories, clapboard siding, a porch with a lot of Victorian gingerbread. No lights. I parked on the other side of the street, then hauled out my trusty brolly and crossed over.

If anything, the rain was coming down harder, scratching the night with the grain of a very old photograph and spreading down the glistening street like fat in a pan. I ran up to the porch, my steps clumping. There was a fine bay window, its curtains drawn, but I could peer through a crack into a dark interior, lit only by the yellowish glow of a light on a side table. I felt sure he wasn't there, but knocked anyway, then rang the bell. Pressing my ear up to the glass, I listened to its buzz rattle in the emptiness within.

I went back to the car, dried my hands, lit up a cigarette.

Grainger wasn't here; so where could he be?

I worked it out. Despite his skill, he must have known, at the end, that I'd find out he was lying — because I'd told him

I intended speaking to Murdoch, and once I'd laid eyes on him, the truth would be obvious. Another small point: I hadn't mentioned the fact that Murdoch was in Montreal, so Grainger would have assumed I'd be seeing him almost at once; if he wanted to do something about it, he'd have to act fast. But what could he do? If he tried to run and hide, he couldn't expect to get very far; he was an old man, with a social position, and he would have made no preparations. He might try a friend's, a hotel, maybe a cottage, or even someplace more inaccessible; but it didn't make that much difference. I could go looking for him — but I could also just wait; eventually he'd have to come back. And I thought of that. Go back to hotel. Run a hot bath. Tomorrow, begin with the housekeeper… But I didn't like it. I could still taste that odor of fear in the back of my throat, and I didn't like the dark look of the house. So, though I didn't have much hope, I put the car into gear and headed back to the clinic: it was the only other place I could check right away. Slowly, I found my way through the maze of a strange city at night: one-way streets, illegal left turns, signs that were legible only once you were past them. Eventually, almost by accident, I found the right street. In the dark, and under two inches of water, it looked no better than it had this afternoon. Dirt lawns, fenced round with old pipe, were turning to mud, and the blue glow of TV sets seeped through dingy curtains. Pulling up in front of the clinic, I saw it was dark. I splashed up to the door. A sign, printed with Magic Marker, was pinned to it:

I knocked anyway — there was no buzzer of course. I rattled the knob… nothing. I didn't like it. Places like this stayed open till all hours, and even after it officially closed, there'd be endless meetings to plot the revolution's next phase and usually someone who'd bed down on the couch. I looked again at the sign: its very presence indicated that such an early closing was out of the ordinary.

Frustrated, I stood there for a moment. But then, remembering the pregnant black woman in the waiting room, I stepped off the porch and walked around to the lane. Halfway along it, under a little peaked roof, was a side entrance: Dr. Charlie's old "surgery." It didn't seem very likely, but I told myself it was possible — a cot, a hot plate, a tin of baked beans — and so I put my head down and ran up the drive. Sheltered as I was by the clinic and the building next door, the rain wasn't so bad. I came up to the entrance. It was dark as a well. Cement steps led down. Feeling forward, I went down them, plunging from the last into ankle-deep water. It was very dark, especially under the umbrella — but I was damned if I'd put it down — and I groped ahead to the door. Which was shut. Locked. Padlocked… and when I pulled at the hasp, I knew it hadn't been opened in years. I waded back toward the steps… but that's when I heard someone come down the drive.

I stood still.

Grainger? Sharp and grinding, the steps came on quicker. And though Grainger was a spry old party, such steps couldn't be his. I pressed against the wall, and eased the umbrella shut. Coming closer, the steps paused… and then came forward again. And then stopped — at the top of the stairs. I held my breath. A toe, pivoting, scraped along asphalt. A second later, I heard a little snick and a flashlight came on. A narrow beam darted down, into my well. Found the door. Steadied against the lock… then winked out. It had missed me because of the angle. And then, as a yellow blotch pulsed in front of my eyes, the steps went away.

I waited a second, not quite sure which way they'd gone.

Cautiously, I edged up the stairs.

Staying in a crouch as I drew level with the drive, I looked back toward the street, but both the drive and the sidewalk were empty.

I stepped up, turning round and looking toward the back of the house.

Behind me, a car passed in the street; overhead, beyond the rain and the sound of the city, I heard the drone of an airplane. I stared into the darkness. Shadow folded in upon shadow, the rain swirling the night into tunnels and gyres; but there was no sign of anyone. I listened. Tires hissed. The plane grumbled away. I stepped forward. Rain sounds filled my ears: the metallic drumming of the drops on the flashing of the roof, a plopping drip from the eaves, the staccato splashing on asphalt… I stopped. I'd now reached the back of the house, where I'd sat this afternoon, talking with Grainger. I waited and listened. A downpipe emptied here with a gush and there was the softer sound of the rain on the grass of the garden. I took a single step forward. Now I could see the yard, overgrown with bushes and weeds. At the back was a high wooden wall, the back wall of a neighbor's shed or garage. A spade leaned against this, and a tipped-up wheelbarrow and a bicycle with only one wheel… all these objects being clearly visible in the long, distorted oblong of yellowish light spilling out from the back of the house.

I took two quick steps into the yard.

The grass came up to my knees; at once, my pants were soaked through. But now I could see the French doors at the back of Grainger's study. One of them was ajar, and a man, in a tan raincoat, was bending over the desk where Grainger had sat… It took me about five seconds to decide that this figure wasn't Brightman himself, but that was four seconds too long, for now he turned and saw me. He hesitated; I didn't move. And then, quite calmly, he stepped through the doors. As he did so, his body turned to one side and the light fell on his face. I recognized him at once: it was the man I'd seen in Harry Brightman's hall, the other man who wanted to know if Florence Raines had been black. He had a thin face, his teeth were pushed forward in his mouth, and his brush-cut hair had a reddish tint. In Brightman's hall, I'd seen him for no more than a second or two, but I had absolutely no doubt — it was the same man.

Did he know me?

I wasn't sure. He had a good look at me as he came through those doors, but nothing moved in his eyes. Perhaps, to him, it didn't make any difference: for he had a gun in his hand, and guns don't encourage distinctions. I froze at the sight of it. For a second, that's all I could see, and all I could hear was the beat of my heart, now drumming so hard it drowned out the rain.

He stepped slowly toward me… he had to, because I was between him and the drive. And now, for an instant, his eyes met mine and I was sure he had no idea who I might be. Slowly, his shoulder brushing the back wall of the house, he edged past me. Then stopped. He was at the corner of the house; to go up the lane, he'd have to turn his back to me or walk backwards along it. He chose the former — I think he was going to run — but as he began turning, he slipped: with one foot in the muddy yard and the other on the asphalt, he did the splits between them.

He swore under his breath.

And I went for him then, two steps and a dive: a dive that took him down so easily that my momentum carried me right over the top of him. On my back, in the wet and the dark, I frantically clawed for his arm, his right hand, the one with the gun, desperately jerking it into the air before I realized the gun was long gone. Still hanging on to him, I scrambled up. He grunted, kicked… and then swung with his other hand, which now held a knife. Jerking his right arm, I whipped him away from me. He staggered, lunged; I whipped him round once again, and again — he was stumbling, trying to keep his feet under him — until finally, with a ripping sound, his raincoat came away in my hand. The sudden release of his weight sent me staggering backwards, the raincoat fluttering off in the dark. I fell to one knee. My breath burned in my throat, the cold rain trickled over my lips — and when I looked up, I saw he still had the knife in his hand.

Slowly, I got to my feet. Took a step back.

Useless. Because he'd only trap me in the yard…

But in fact he took a step sideways, to his right. Which I countered with an identical movement of my own. Then another. Two more — we were circling each other. He stopped. I stopped. I peered at his face through the darkness. His eyes darted about, looking away from me; and now, as he moved again, I realized he was edging toward his raincoat, which was spread, like Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak, across a puddle at the back of the drive. He was welcome to it — given his knife, I couldn't have stopped him in any case — and my only concern was to stay out of his way. So I took a step straight back… and my foot grated down on the gun.

I think he must have guessed, from the sound: for he stopped dead in his tracks and for a frozen instant we stared at each other; but then I bent over, scooped the gun up, and leveled it at him.

Flee a knife, charge a gun. … It sounds good, but when the barrel's pointed at you, discretion is the better part of valor sounds better. He took one last look toward the raincoat — I thought he still might lunge for it — and then jumped back into the darkness. Before I got my wits back, he'd ducked down the drive.

I lowered the gun. The rain fell, I could still hear that plane… and now it was over, the shock finally hit me: my heart started pounding as if I'd just run a mile. I waited a second, gathering myself together. Then, with my breath back, I stepped into the lane, picked up the raincoat, and stared out toward the street. With the wind, the rain, and the gleam of the streetlamps along the slick pavement, it was easy to imagine figures lying in ambush on either side of the drive. But after three soaking minutes, I was sure it was safe, and eased the hammer back on the pistol. I own a Smith & Wesson, but this was a Colt. The two makes are quite different, and I was very careful to make sure it didn't blow off my foot. Finally, when I was certain the safety was properly set, I slipped it into my pocket and then walked out to the street.

In both directions, as far as I could see in the blackness, it was empty.

I got into my car. Driving slowly up to the corner, I turned right, then cut back and forth for the next dozen blocks, but I saw nothing. Which was probably what I wanted to see.

When I finally parked, and lit up a cigarette, my hand was still shaking.

Now, sitting in the dark, with the windshield wipers frantically beating at the rain, I took a look at the raincoat — apparently the prize we'd been struggling over.

It was ripped at the shoulder, but otherwise intact. An Aquascutum, though manufactured in Canada. It had an inside pocket, like a suit coat, and this contained a Parker ballpoint pen and an empty Air Canada ticket folder. In the left side pocket I discovered $12.87 in Canadian notes and coins, a crumpled Kleenex, and a brown leather key case with three keys, one with a Hertz tag. This was fun, though not very informative, but as soon as I turned the coat over and searched the right pocket, I found something a great deal more interesting: a brown manila envelope which had obviously been taken from Grainger's desk. "Jenny" was scrawled across it, and it had already been torn open to reveal a regular letter-sized envelope inside. Clipped to this second envelope was a note:

I'd been right, then. Grainger had realized I was going to discover the truth and was trying to avoid me. But at the same time, it seemed, he was prepared to give me some sort of explanation, for when I tore the second envelope open, I found half a dozen foolscap sheets, handwritten, that were addressed to me. Looking about, making sure that the black, wet street was empty, I turned on the dome light and started to read:

The rain drummed on the roof of the car, the smoke from my cigarette curled back from the window, and with a soft, sibilant hiss, a car drifted by down the street… I lifted my eyes from Grainger's letter, and then, looking through my own ghostly reflection into the glittering nigfyt, I felt something like awe — an astonishment so complete that it left me dumbfounded. I'd never known anything like it. His story was extraordinary in itself, but the circumstances by which it had come into my hands — on this cold, rainy night; in this dark little city — seemed to lift it into the message-in-a-bottle category. Revolutionary Russia… Zinoviev, chief of the Comintern… a child snatched from the jaws of the Red Terror… even if it wasn't true, you couldn't ask for anything more melodramatic. Question: who was May Brightman? Answer: a fascinating political mystery.

I stubbed out my cigarette. Lit another. Put the car into gear. And then for ten minutes I simply drove around the dark streets. Did I believe it? Was this the truth, as Grainger knew it? And how much of this "truth" was a lie? Above all: who was the man in the alley?

Like waves on a beach, the questions began piling up and they were no easier to catch hold of than the surf. But as I made my way back to the hotel, I began to grasp a few things. I had a clearer picture of Grainger, to begin with. As he himself had said, the best lies contain some of the truth, and that went for the lies he'd told about his own past. He'd been "idealistic," all right, and definitely "a bit of a socialist": so idealistic, and so much a socialist — I was prepared to bet — that he'd been a member of the Communist Party with connections that went straight back to their embassy. Was that too big a leap? I didn't think so. Lots of Communists become kindly old men. And some coincidences are too great to ignore. Brightman, doing business with Russia… Grainger, the accidental "socialist" friend. No, it was too good to be true. The Russians, inevitably, would have been curious about Brightman — and they would have taken steps to satisfy their curiosity. Grainger was that step, and I had no doubts at all that the original meeting between the two men had been at his initiative. Indeed, it was even possible that Grainger stood at the center of all I'd discovered. He could have had the friend in Russia; Brightman could simply have been doing his bidding. Yet, at this point, I drew back: I wasn't prepared to cast Brightman in so minor a role — he'd adopted May, after all; he'd disappeared; these ghosts had come back to haunt him. As well, tilting the balance, there was one other thing…

Or perhaps it was two; or even three.

That evening, as I changed out of my soaking clothes, sipped a long whiskey, and watched the lights crawl back and forth over Halifax harbor, I kept coming back to them. May. She was number one. How much had she known? If she'd known nothing at all, then the last few days had been a proof of woman's intuition, par excellence. And I wasn't sure I believed it. Perhaps she hadn't known what I'd find, but she'd known I'd find something. She'd run me up the flagpole, then waited to see who'd salute. Why? Why not tell me the truth? But this led to problem number two: me. That incident with my mail was still working away at the back of my mind; I'd been involved, somehow, even before I'd known there was something to be involved with. But why was I involved? Why had May turned to me in the first place? Blessed as I am with a reasonable ego, it's probably not a question I would have troubled to ask except for another coincidence — but that was a big one: Russia. At first, Brightman's connection with the country had seemed a peripheral question, adding a dash of color to his character. But now it seemed central. And Russia was central to my life as well. I didn't need Grainger's little lectures about Zinoviev or the Purge Trials — those subjects were my bread and butter. Wasn't it passing strange that someone like myself should have stumbled into this peculiar eddy of Soviet history? But that raised point number three… because maybe this history wasn't so ancient. Sitting there, my feet up on the heater and the whiskey warming me inside, I played through that scene in the alley, and there were no doubts left. When the red-haired man had taken his tumble, he'd uttered a curse— a curse I'd recognized at once, but only because I'm fluent in Russian, moy tvoyou mat! being more or less their equivalent of "motherfucker." A Russian: a real, live Soviet Russian…

What was he doing?

What could he want?

Why would he care about Florence Raines, or what Harry Brightman had been up to in 1940?

Twice more, I read through Grainger's letter. Over and over, I kept asking the questions. By eleven-fifteen I hadn't found any answers. After that, it didn't seem to make any difference.

The phone rang.

It was May, about to go into hysterics.

They'd found her father, dead, in Detroit.