Mallory and Lucas disappeared among the dogwood trees that had become lumpish shadows, and with them gone I suddenly felt exposed standing before the window wall. I was a trespasser in this room, in this house. I backed away from the window between benches of African violets and brilliant gloxinias. The shadows of the trees seemed to swell, to press against the glass, hiding the world beyond, and a sensation of vertigo overcame me as the fluorescent lights went out. The living room lights went out. I reached for something to catch my balance and in the moment that I groped for the nearest bench I had the impression that the room was bare, there were no tables, no plants, no musty earth smells. Instead there was sawdust and raw wood. The room was unfinished and I was not alone. I took another step backward, looking right and left, searching for whoever was there with me. I could see no one in the darkness, but he was near, coming nearer.

  I backed away another step and a new surge of vertigo swept over me. There was no railing, nothing to stop me; I felt myself falling as he reached out, and now I could smell alcohol and cologne and wet wool. Desperately I swung around and grasped for something to hold on to, something to stop my fall.

  I was on my knees at the head of the curved staircase, holding on to the railing with both hands, blinking in the bright light. Once more the air was pungent with growing plants and soil; the lights were on as before and there was the lingering sunset beyond the glass wall.

  I shook my head and started down, holding tightly to the banister all the way. I was muttering to myself, something about drinks before dinner on an empty stomach, and fatigue, but at the bottom, I looked up one more time, and I knew I would not go up there again.

  There were two newcomers at dinner, Dr. Sizemore and Professor Hugh Froelich. Dr. Sizemore said How do you do, and then not another word. He is sixty at least, a gray man who picked at his food absently and looked at his watch a lot. Professor Froelich is in his thirties; he looks like an athlete: compact, muscular, and alert, a sprinter waiting for the starting whistle all the time. His tension is tiresome. Also at dinner I met Anita Mantessa who cooks and does the housework. She is a tall handsome woman with jet-black hair and ivory skin; her cooking is of master-chef quality. Dinner was buffet style. If you want anything, please ring, she said softly and vanished, into the kitchen presumably. The food was in casserole and chafing dishes; the salad on a bed of ice.

  “Without chemistry we’d all be dead,” Conrad was saying to Janet, evidently picking up an old argument.

  “Quicker than we’d be dead with it? He spends his time looking for better ways to kill plants,” Janet said to me.

  “Herbicides,” Conrad said tonelessly, the way he had told her to shut up earlier, in a dead voice that revealed nothing.

  Dr. Sizemore looked at his watch and pushed a piece of roast beef around on his plate. He looked at his watch again. The lights flickered several times during dinner, and that reassured me; more than likely they went out often here in the country. A brief outage had caught me in the plant room. Hugh Froelich was explaining the electroencephalograph to Mallory, who looked bored and tired. Lucas felt my thigh under the table, gave it a gentle squeeze, as if to say, Buck up, we won’t be here very long.

  I put my hand on his and for a moment we held hands under the table. As I caught Mallory’s glance I felt my cheeks grow hot; he smiled at me in a kind, very wise way. Married two years, I thought, and people still looked at us with that sympathetic and knowing expression. I pretended to be interested in Janet’s diatribe against chemicals. Conrad was deliberately ignoring her; she was furious and red-faced, hissing at him about poisons and selling out.

  “Ah, Janet…ah, everyone,” Dr. Sizemore said then, standing up. “It is eight-thirty, and I promised your father that he could visit with you for just a few minutes at this time.”

  The silence was prolonged and intense; no one moved.

  Dr. Sizemore looked unhappy with his chore and with the assembled members of the family. “He’s dying,” he said, “but you all know that. I beg of you, no shouting, no excitement, no arguments…”

  I found myself staring at them one after another. What kind of people were they that the doctor had to tell them not to yell at their dying father? None of them met my gaze; they didn’t see me at all. I reached for Lucas’s hand again, but he was unresponsive; not cold, simply absent.

  Dr. Sizemore took a deep breath. “Let’s get it over with,” he said and led the way from the room, through the wide hallway toward the back of the house. We turned down a narrower passage that followed the curved wall of the stairs, toward a room under the balcony, part of the new addition to the house. Dr. Sizemore said, “We moved him to the sunroom some time ago. It’s easy to get him outside to the garden from here. He likes that” He cleared his throat nervously and pushed open a door at the end of the hallway. We all followed him.

  Most of the room was in shadow. The south wall was closed off by drapes, and there were hanging baskets of plants from the inner edge of the drapes to about four feet inside the room: fuchsias, begonias, geraniums, spider plants, trailing orchids, plants I had never seen before. The furniture was wicker, with soft-colored cushions and covers; there was a hospital bed with two night-stands. A woman was standing by the bed.

  I hung back as the others moved together closer to the bed. I had not realized how very old he was; Lucas had told me he was in his eighties, but he looked more like a hundred, or two hundred: shriveled and brown, as if he had already started to mummify. Only his eyes were alive as they sought out each face in turn. His eyes seemed to be looking out through a layer of gauze. I felt a chill when his gaze found me and held, then moved on.

  I forced myself to stop looking at him and examined the woman instead. Greta? I had expected something else: a beautiful woman? a fortune hunter? what? I couldn’t say. She was plain, pleasant looking, intelligent looking. She could have been a nurse, I thought, and it occurred to me that perhaps she was the nurse, not Greta at all. But when I saw how her hand rested on his shoulder, I knew this was the fourth and last wife. She was fair, sturdily built, in her early forties and not trying to pretend she wasn’t. At the far side of the room someone stirred, and another figure took shape as a man moved into the lighted area of the bed.

  “Bill Strohm,” Mallory said without surprise. “You know Conrad. This is Lucas and his wife, Ginny. You remember Janet, of course.”

  “Of course,” Strohm said. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult evening for all of you, I’m sure. I have been ordered to play a tape for you at this time, and for that reason I have arranged those chairs in a comfortable way, I trust. If you will be seated. Dr. Sizemore, you’ve given your patient permission to participate in this event?”

  “Ah, yes,” Dr. Sizemore said miserably, denying the words even as he uttered them. His permission, I thought disdainfully. That old man had ordered him, just as he had ordered Strohm, just as he must order everyone who came into contact with him. At least Strohm was honest about it.

  As soon as we were seated in a circle around a glass-topped table, Bill Strohm again took charge. “I have here an affidavit attesting to the authenticity of the tape you will hear shortly. I have copies of the affidavit for each of you. The tape was made last March.”

  In the dim light it was easy to forget about Janet’s gross body; her face was lovely, shadowed, her eyes luminous. Conrad’s face was invisible; I could see only his silhouette against the background light. On the other side of Janet was Mallory, hard and tight looking. Lucas came next, and I, and then Bill Strohm. A seance, I thought with alarm. It was just like a seance, except that the body was still warm, very much present, and in command.

  In the center of the table was the tape recorder, a large professional-looking model. Bill Strohm flicked a switch, adjusted a dial, and sat back. There was a moment of whirring sound, followed by a thin, dry voice, like wind through loose sand.

  “I have asked you to come in order to explain the conditions of my will. I know the matter is of the utmost interest to each of you.” There was another moment of the background whirring; he continued by introducing Bill Strohm, his attorney. Strohm spoke briefly, identifying himself, giving the date and time of day. Dr. Sizemore was there; he spoke even more briefly, saying only that John Daniel Culbertson was of sound mind and in full possession of his faculties. I looked at Professor Hugh Froelich in surprise when his name was mentioned. He had been present also. Now he was standing apart from the group at the table, watching closely.

  Mr. Culbertson talked then about his investments; he planned to liquidate them during the coming months, he said, and while the resulting cash would be a sizeable sum, it was, of course, the land itself that would make up the bulk of his estate. He began to cough, and yelled hoarsely, “Turn that goddam thing—”

  More background noise, then he resumed. “One of you will inherit the farm, all of it in a piece. Which one will be determined by me, following a period of one week from the day of my burial. During that period each of you will remain here in my house. You will bring in no outsiders, nor will you spend a night away from the house. These are the people who will live here during this one-week period: Mallory, Conrad, Janet, Lucas, and his wife, if he wishes her to stay. Professor Hugh Froelich will be permitted to remain. Anita Mantessa will take care of the house and Carlos will manage the farm, as each has done for the past few years. No one else is permitted to live in the house during your period of bereavement.”

  I was looking at him on the bed; it had been raised to an almost sitting position. He was watching us intently, listening to the tape along with everyone else. He looked like a death’s head. He focused on me, and I felt impaled. I jerked my whole body around to break free of his gaze.

  “During this last visit, each of you will cooperate with Professor Froelich in order that he may record your electroencephalograms. One week from the day of my funeral, whenever it occurs, you will allow him to make a new EEG. The following day you will assemble here for the reading of my will. There is a certain test I’ve prepared for you that will be given on that day. No one, not even Bill Strohm, knows what it is. If one of you passes it, that one will be the legal heir to the real estate. You will share equally in the proceeds from the sale of my other assets. My wife, Greta, has already been provided for to our mutual satisfaction. It is agreed that the day following my death, she will depart and make no further claims on my estate.”

  Mallory jumped to his feet. He broke the circle, I thought wildly, terrified that something awful would happen.

  “This is crazy!” Mallory cried. “I’m going home!”

  “Sit down!” It was a whisper from the bed; the thin, dry voice had failed even more and was hardly audible.

  “Mallory,” Bill Strohm said, “please sit down and let’s finish this. I assure you, it’s all legal. You are free to leave, of course, but if you don’t agree to follow instructions, comply with your father’s wishes, you automatically exclude yourself from any future consideration in the inheritance of the land holdings.”

  Lucas caught Mallory’s arm and pulled him back to his chair. ’Take it easy,” he said. “Let’s hear it out.”

  There was very little more on the tape. There were instructions to the heirs to cooperate with Bill Strohm and follow his orders to the letter.

  Or be excommunicated, I thought.

  The whirring sound came back, and this time it was followed by Bill Strohm’s voice repeating the details of the taping, adding the exact length of the tape we had just heard. He turned the machine off.

  “Now get out!” whispered the dying man on the hospital bed. He closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he had died right then. Dr. Sizemore was on one side, Greta on the other, as if to protect him from his children.

  Mallory stood up so abruptly he overturned his chair. He didn’t stop, but left the room without a word. Janet went to the foot of the bed and stared at the old man; her back was to me. She followed Mallory. Conrad was at her side by the time they got to the door. Lucas had not moved yet. I started to walk to the door, expecting him to join me, but he continued to sit before the glass-topped table, staring at the tape recorder. I hesitated, and left alone. When I reached the living room, only Mallory was there.

  They went out for some fresh air, or something,” he said vaguely. “Sorry you walked into such a mess, Ginny. Tomorrow we’ll all go home and forget this. Okay?”

  I nodded, not believing any of it, not what I had just seen in the old man’s room, not what I was hearing then.

  “Why?” I asked, hardly even knowing what the question meant, how much I was asking him to explain.

  For a moment Mallory looked at me with an expression that reminded me of the look on my father’s face the day I told him I planned to get married. Hurt, vulnerable, aching in a mysterious way, that was what his look had made me think, that was what Mallory’s look made me think. He turned away without speaking, and from the doorway it was Lucas who answered.

  “He hates us because he knows we know he’s a wife killer,” he said. “All my life he’s been punishing me for knowing what he is. He wants to keep on after he dies, forever. And that goddamn psychologist is helping him!” Lucas looked pale and sick, the way he had looked when his fever broke when he had the flu. He sounded drunk. He was not looking at Mallory or me, but was watching the hallway. “Actually, he killed all his wives, until this one, didn’t he, Mallory?” Lucas glanced at his brother with a bitter expression. ’Tell her about Janet’s mother.”

  Mallory’ shrugged. “You’ll hear it sooner or later. Might as well be from one of the principals. Conrad and I heard the fight he had with Janet’s mother the night she died. They were at the top of the stairs to the balcony.” He nodded at the curved staircase, then turned his back on it. “We heard them. This part of the house wasn’t finished yet. We weren’t supposed to be in here. No one knew we had sneaked in. When she fell, she never uttered a sound. He had broken her neck before she went over.”

  I stared at him, afraid to look at the stairs, the balcony where I had smelled sawdust and new, raw wood. I could feel goosebumps on my arms and legs. “Didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked; my voice came out in a whisper.

  “I told,” he said. “No one believed me. He proved he wasn’t even home that night”

  I forced myself to look at Lucas by the hallway door, paying little attention to Mallory and me. He was listening, I thought waiting for someone, the doctor, the lawyer, or Froelich.

  “Lucas will have to tell you about his mother,” Mallory said. “We had all left by then, except him.” He went to the bar and poured himself a glass of bourbon. He didn’t bother with the ice this time.

  At that moment Hugh Froelich and Bill Strohm appeared in the doorway. Lucas leaped at Froelich and knocked him backward, fell to the floor with him. Strohm was too surprised to interfere for several seconds. By the time he reacted, Mallory was there pulling Lucas away.

  “You crazy son of a bitch!” he yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Ask him what he’s doing! What kind of game is this? What’s he doing here with all that crap about EEGs? Let him go to a loony bin to play his fucking head games.” Lucas was panting; his face was pale and shiny with sweat.

  I had known from the first that Lucas hated and feared psychologists and psychiatrists with such unyielding vehemence that I had always avoided any conversation about either, or their work. He had told me early in our relationship that psychiatrists had tried to get him to admit black was white, that they had almost destroyed him when he refused. Sometime, I had promised myself, sometime when everything had been smooth and calm for a long while, when we were both working happily, when we were healthy and relaxed and had no financial worries, sometime in a future that was dim and distant, I would find out exactly what had happened to him, what the psychiatrists had done, or what he thought they had tried to do. Sometime. During the two years of our marriage that time had not arrived.

  Sizemore came hurrying down the hall; he helped Froelich up. Automatically he looked at his eyes and felt his pulse.

  “I’m okay,” Froelich said irritably. “It’s okay. I don’t blame him. Forget it. I want a drink.” He pulled free of Sizemore and headed for the liquor.

  “Is there coffee?” Strohm asked. He saw it on another table and helped himself. “Mallory, I want to talk to all of you for just a minute. Where’s Janet and Conrad?”

  “Right here,” Conrad said. I hadn’t seen them enter and had no idea how long they had been back. Janet looked very frightened, Conrad bored and sleepy.

  “Right. This isn’t going to take long. Last winter your father had a heart attack, right? He thought he was dying and he was mad as hell. He can’t stand the idea of leaving the farm to any of you. He wants it to go when he goes I guess. Anyway, he already had a will, a perfectly ordinary will dividing everything among all of you, the farm incorporated. No favorites. He called me over; he wanted a new will, he said. Okay, I’m a lawyer and he*s a client. Period. I can advise him, but I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. I did advise him. Until I was blue in the face. And we ended up with this goddam foolishness. He had me research what he wanted done, to make sure it was legal and would hold up if any of you contests it. It’ll hold up. I wish to God I had been able to find a loophole. It’s his land. He can dictate the conditions of his will. So we play his game for seven days following the funeral. I just want to warn you that when he dies you’d better get back here. If you don’t play it his way, you’re out. You’ll get your share of the cash and not a cent more.”

  “What’s the test he’s rigged up for us?” Conrad asked.

  “I don’t know. In the office safe, we have his original will and a sealed envelope. There are copies of both in his safe here. I haven’t got a clue about what’s in the sealed envelope.”