Free The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner Page A

“Who is it?” Octave Woodworth whispered. Her face showed the ravages of time, he saw. She looked like an old, old potato from under a sink.
    “I’m Chief of Police Clumly,” Clumly said. “I’ve brought along someone we thought you might be able to identify.”
    “Come right in,” she whispered. “Come in.”
    It was the darkest entryway in the world. The walls were nearly black with age, and the full-length mirrors on each side of the door, set in oak-leaved frames that four strong men could not have carried, reflected only the dull gleams, here and there, of darkly stained wood. Clumly’s figure and Boyle’s, in those antique mirrors, were like two barn owls with glittering eyes. The old woman was like a raven returned from the dead. The old woman backed away from them slowly, no more than a faint silhouette in that smoky darkness. “Come with me,” she whispered. She maneuvered a turn, joints creaking and clicking, and, moving tortuously on her two heavy canes, led them toward a gloomy ten-foot-high oak door that opened off the hallway to the left. “We expected you sooner,” she whispered. The house smelled abandoned, full of the vague scents in an old empty cupboard.
    “I’m sorry,” Clumly said craftily. “It’s been a difficult case.”
    In the parlor there was more light. They hadn’t yet turned the lamps on, if they still worked, but the arched window facing to the east drew enough sun from the mostly shaded lawn to raise a glitter on the silver vases that once had held flowers, and to glint on the dim prisms of the lamps, the highly polished walnut of the mantelpiece, the ornate legs of tables and chairs. There was no hint of color anywhere. The gilt framework and the ruby glass on the lamps, the yellow-brown of the oval family portraits, the once blue or red of the velvet cushions on the rickety chairs had all sunk to black or dark gray. While Clumly introduced his prisoner to Miss Octave, the prisoner stood meekly squinting at the clutter of old china and silver on the piano table.
    “I’m pleased to meet you,” Miss Octave whispered.
    From the darkest corner of the room came a harsher whisper. “He’s not the one.”
    Clumly steered his prisoner toward the voice. Miss Editha Woodworth sat propped up, motionless, under a huge lugubrious oil painting of—if Clumly’s eyes did not deceive him—broken columns on a hillside, or possibly horses. She sat wrapped in black blankets, among black pillows. On her head, slightly askew, sat an old black wig. Her face shone out of the darkness like a moon.
    “Miss Editha,” he said. “I’m glad to see you well.”
    “I’m not well,” she whispered. “That man is not the one.”
    Clumly pursed his lips. The parlor was as cool as a valley between rocks, and after all his sweating he was chilly. “That’s too bad,” he said. “We were afraid we might have gotten the wrong man.”
    “Nincompoops,” she whispered. “If Agnes were here—” (That was the oldest of the sisters, dead now for years, reduced to legend. She’d committed suicide, people said.)
    “We do our best, Miss Woodworth,” Clumly said.
    “What?” she asked.
    He realized he had fallen into whispering like one of themselves. “We do our best,” he said.
    She said nothing more, utterly spent, it seemed. Perhaps she had fallen asleep. He couldn’t tell.
    To everyone’s surprise, Boyle spoke. “You’re Miss Editha Woodworth?” he asked. “You write poems?”
    “Why glory be!” Miss Octave whispered. “You’re acquainted with Editha’s verse?”
    Boyle glanced uneasily at Clumly. “I’ve heard it mentioned,” he said. Then his face became blank. “That is,” he said, “no.”
    “How interesting!” Miss Octave whispered.
    “She’s a poet, all right,” Clumly said, bothered by the way Boyle seemed now to have withdrawn, aloof from their awkward little ring of conversation.
    “A legislator for humanity,” Miss Octave said happily, a little like a