that broken foot of his, Roberta was probably trying to psychoanalyze their whole circle of friends as she always did, and she was sure by now Hugo Duarte had found a new girl to take to recitals and parties. The thought needled her for a second. Hugo was, truth be told, a good dancer and decent company during social functions.
As she descended the stairs she was amused by the thought of a party at High Place. No music, of course. The dancing would have to take place in silence, and everyone would be dressed in gray and black, as if attending a funeral.
The hallway that led to the library was profusely decorated with photographs of the Doyles rather than paintings, as was the case on the second floor. It was hard, however, to look at them because the hallway was kept in semi-darkness. She’d need to hold a flashlight or candle to them to see anything properly. Noemí had an idea. She walked into the library and the office and pulled the curtains aside. The light filtering out through the open doors of these rooms lit up a stretch of wall, providing her a chance to examine the images.
She looked at all those strange faces that seemed nevertheless familiar, echoes of Florence and Virgil and Francis. She recognized Alice, in a pose very similar to the one she sported in the portrait above Howard Doyle’s fireplace, and Howard himself, rendered young, his face devoid of wrinkles.
There was a woman, her hands tightly held in her lap, her light hair pinned up, who regarded Noemí with large eyes from her picture frame. She looked about Noemí’s age, and perhaps it was that, or the way her mouth was set so hard, somewhat between aggrieved and doleful, that made Noemí lean closer to the photograph, her fingers hovering above it.
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” Francis said as he approached her, a wooden box under one arm and a book under the other.
“No, not at all,” Noemí said. “Do you know who this is here?”
Francis looked at the picture she was examining. He cleared his throat. “That is…that was my cousin Ruth.”
“I’ve heard about her.”
Noemí had never seen the face of a killer; she wasn’t in the habit of perusing the newspapers for stories about criminals. She recalled what Virgil had said, about people being bound to their vices and how their faces reflected their nature. But the woman in the photograph seemed merely discontent, not murderous.
“What have you heard?” Francis asked.
“She killed several people, and herself.”
Noemí straightened herself up and turned to him. He placed the box on the floor, and his expression was distant.
“Her cousin, Michael.”
Francis pointed at a picture of a young man standing ramrod straight, the chain of a pocket watch glinting against his chest, his hair neatly parted, a pair of gloves in his left hand, his eyes rendered almost colorless in the sepia photograph.
Francis pointed at the photograph showing Alice, who looked like Agnes. “Her mother.”
His hand darted between two pictures, a woman with her light hair swept up and a man in a dark jacket. “Dorothy and Leland. Her aunt and uncle, my grandparents.”
He went quiet. There was nothing more to say; the litany of the dead had been recited. Michael and Alice, Dorothy, Leland, and Ruth, all of them resting in that elegant mausoleum, the coffins gathering cobwebs and dust. The thought of the party without music, the funerary clothes, now seemed extremely morbid and apt.
“Why did she do it?”
“I wasn’t born when it happened,” Francis said quickly, turning his head away.
“Yes, they must have told you something, there must have been—”
“I told you, I wasn’t even born then. Who knows? This place could drive anyone crazy,” he said angrily.
His voice sounded loud in this quiet space of faded wallpaper and gilded frames; it seemed to bounce off the walls and return to them, scraping their skin with its harshness, almost booming. It startled her, this acoustic effect, and it also seemed to affect him. He hunched his shoulders, shrank down, trying to make himself smaller.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t raise my voice like that. The sound carries here, and I’m being very rude.”
“No, I’m being rude. I can understand you wouldn’t want to talk about such a thing.”
“Another time, perhaps I might tell you about it,” he said.
His voice was now velvet soft and so was the silence that settled around them. She wondered if the gunshots had