Page 39 of The Furies

“None taken. Anyway, it’d be hypocritical of me, seeing as how I left the gun on the console table inside the door. It’s still within reach. You got some ID?”

I walked to the porch and showed her my license.

“It looks real,” she said.

“I hope so. It took me hours to make.”

She took another puff on the vape pen, and her reserve diminished.

“I suppose you’d better come in,” she said. “Time will tell if I can help you after all.”

3

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

—Iris Murdoch, Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues

CHAPTER XLVII

Egon Towle’s sister was named Eleanor, because, she said, her family had a preference for names beginning with the letter “E.” There was no particular reason for this beyond eccentricity, which, as she noted, also began with an “E.”

Eleanor Towle apologized for the condition of her home as she led me to the kitchen, although it struck me as perfectly neat and clean, if resolutely old-fashioned, right down to the Howdy Doody apron. She offered me coffee, and I made a point of never refusing coffee or tea in these situations, because it helped to establish some small bond of intimacy and informality. Declining often rendered an interview subject less likely to open up, although one had to be careful with alcohol. Then again, Eleanor Towle could have suggested a cup of arsenic and I’d have taken her up on it. Just because one accepted didn’t mean one had to drink. There was a moral in there somewhere.

Only when the coffee was in front of me, served in a small, delicate cup, did I ask why she had a gun on her console table.

“Why does any woman keep a gun?” she said. “For protection.”

“Did you have someone specific in mind?”

“I might.” Her eyes roved over my upper body. “Do you carry a gun?”

“On occasion.”

“Now?”

“No. If you think I’m likely to need one, I can go get it from the car.”

“So I could have shot you, and there wouldn’t have been a thing you could have done about it?”

She seemed to find the idea amusing, which was more than I did.

“By the time someone starts shooting at you,” I said, “it’s generally too late to do very much beyond ducking, bleeding, or dying. Then again, arriving on a stranger’s doorstep with a gun in hand sends out the wrong message. It’s a question of judgment.”

“Well, you called it right on this occasion.”

“I hope so. If you do decide to shoot me, I’ll be very disappointed.”

“If it comes to that, I’ll shoot to kill from behind. I wouldn’t want your last emotion to be disappointment.”

She raised her cup to her mouth, but didn’t sip from it, instead using the moment to embrace the opportunity to think before she spoke again. It gave me a chance to take her in. She radiated strength and sadness in more or less equal quantities. I thought she might be a hard woman to get to know, but an easy one to like once she’d decided to open up. I took in the kitchen, and the living room beyond. It didn’t feel as though she belonged here, because everything in sight seemed part of an older dispensation. If she’d asked me, I’d have advised her to clear the contents and start again with an empty shell; that, or sell up and move someplace else. Were she to stay, the house would trap her in its web, cocooning her in memories while the past sucked her dry.

“Décor not to your taste?” she said, when my gaze returned to her.

“I’d speculate that it’s not excessively to yours, either.”

“My, you’re honest.” She tapped her cup. The porcelain chimed like a bell. “Everything you see belonged to my mother. Whatever there is of mine is elsewhere, out of sight. I haven’t decided what to do with this house, but it won’t be my call alone.”

“Your brother?”

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