The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [298]
“Yes, Mother,” Eli Franklin said, touching her elbow to quiet her down. “This is Miss Howard and Dr.—Kreizler, was it? And the boy is called—”
“Just Stevie’ll do,” I said, looking at the woman and getting a big smile in return.
“Oh, just Stevie, eh?” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek. “Well, that’s good enough—you’re a fine-looking boy!”
“They think maybe something we know about her past will help them locate Libby,” Eli Franklin went on.
Miss Howard nodded. “You see, she hasn’t contacted us in quite some time, either. Perhaps if we knew a little more of what her usual habits were—”
Mrs. Franklin nodded. “Hasn’t contacted you? Well, that doesn’t surprise me, either! I don’t know why that girl never could take care of the smallest details. We’ve gotten one or two little notes, over the years, but never so much as a single visit! She just dances through life, doing as she pleases. Ah, well, some people are that way, I suppose.” She pulled the picket gate open. “Please, please, come in and sit on the porch out back—we’ve screened it in, so you won’t have to fight off these terrible flies. What with all the moisture this summer, I’m afraid the insects have been positively thriving!” We started to follow her around the side of the house, none of us getting a word in. “Now, I’ve made lemonade and iced tea—I thought it would be too warm for anything else. There’s some gingerbread, too, and we might find something even sweeter for you, Stevie, if you crave sweets as much as my boys did! But as for Libby, I don’t know how much help I can be …” Moving onto the back porch of the house, we found that the big screen panels did in fact remove us from the annoying blackflies what had started to swarm in the afternoon sun, “It may be that you can tell me more, really. As I say, we haven’t even seen her in—how long has it been, Eli?”
Eli Franklin looked at Miss Howard what you might call pointedly. “Ten years,” he said.
“Ten?” his mother repeated. “That can’t be right. No, you must be mistaken, Eli, I can’t believe that even Libby, careless as she is, would go ten years without a visit! Has it really been that long? Well, sit down, sit down, everyone, and have something to drink!”
I took a seat in a big wicker chair, sighing a little to myself: getting information out of this biddy was going to be a job, all right.
“Thank you, Mrs. Franklin,” the Doctor said, taking a seat in another of the wicker chairs. “The afternoon is warm, and the drive was a long one.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Franklin answered, pouring out glasses of her cool refreshments and handing them around. “All the way from Ballston Spa! I must confess, I never would’ve guessed that Elspeth would be the center of so much attention.” In the words, and also in their tone, there was something what reminded me in a chilling way of the first time we’d ever heard Libby Hatch speak, outside her house on Bethune Street. “She was never the kind of girl that people took much interest in.” Eli Franklin shot Miss Howard a quick look again, asking her with his eyes not to bring up the things he’d mentioned the day before. “Her brothers were more outgoing, of course, more social—they got that from me, I suppose. But Elspeth was more like her father—a daydreamer, too busy in her own mind to ever be of much use, really.”
“I understand your husband is no longer with us,” Miss Howard said.
“No, bless his heart,” the woman answered, reaching around from the table to slip sprigs of fresh-cut mint into all our glasses and then passing around a plate of gingerbread. “He’s been gone almost five years, now. Poor George worked himself into the grave, keeping the farm going. He never was much good at it, really—if he hadn’t had the boys to help him … but they’re born workers, both of them. They get that from me, too,