“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Mark said. “I haven’t talked to anybody yet.”
“Who found the body?”
“Margaret Anson did.” Mark nodded toward the house. “She’s the one who called the police department, anyway. That much, I have been able to figure out.”
“Interesting,” Gregor said.
There was a sound in the driveway and they saw Tom Royce and his people come in in an unmarked car. Tom looked harried. Gregor could imagine what the guards at the bottom of the drive had put him through, just to make sure he was a legitimate player. Royce got out from behind the wheel and opened the door in the back so that he could get his bag from the backseat. The rest of his people seemed to grow equipment like centipedes grow arms. None of them were wearing coats. Gregor thought they must all be freezing.
“Can we talk to Margaret Anson?” Gregor asked. “Is she still here? In the house?”
“I’ll check,” Stacey said.
He walked over to one of the uniformed state policemen standing near one of the house’s many back doors, spoke for a few moments, and then nodded. He came back to Mark and Gregor.
“She’s in the house. She’s not against making a report. She’s already talked to her attorney.”
“Already?” Mark asked.
“I guess you pay these guys eight hundred dollars an hour, they’ve got to do what you want them to do when you need them.”
Gregor went back over to the barn and looked inside again. Two of the bays were empty. One of them had probably held the BMW that Kayla Anson’s body had been found in. That had been impounded as evidence, Gregor knew. He wondered if the other bay was usually left empty for guests or if there was something else that belonged there, in the shop for repairs now or out in the hands of a housekeeper or a driver. The house looked big enough to require a staff, but Gregor had no idea if Margaret Anson kept one. He looked at the closer side wall to the garage and saw that there was a narrow window there. There was no counterpart to it on the far side wall, but down at that end, on the back wall, was an ordinary egress door. Gregor backed out away from the garage.
“We’re okay to go inside,” Mark Cashman said. “I’d like to do that if you don’t mind.”
Gregor didn’t mind. Stacey Spratz seemed to be in a hurry to see Margaret Anson, too. Gregor was interested in seeing her himself—if only to find out if he agreed with Bennis about her awfulness.
2
The inside of Margaret Anson’s house was a model of fidelity to historical period. All the furniture in the back hall through which Gregor, Mark, and Stacey passed on their way to the living room was antique, and good antique at that Unfortunately, the house itself was antique. If it had been a couple of years older, the ceilings would have been higher and the dimensions of the rooms more forgiving. Instead, in spite of its enormous size, the house felt cramped. Gregor felt downright claustrophobic. He was six feet, three inches tall. These rooms had not been made for him.
They passed into the front hall, and that was a little better. The stairwell gave the illusion of expansive height, at least for a few moments. There were glass doors that opened onto the living room. Gregor knew enough about architecture to know that they must have been added some time in the twentieth century. Women in Revolutionary War America did not want doors of any kind to their main reception rooms. He stopped to look at a pen-and-ink drawing in a small frame on the wall next to the front door. It was yellow with age under its glass, and it showed the devil prodding sinners into the flames of hell.
“Charming,” Gregor said.
Mark and Stacey ignored him. They were already through the glass doors into the living room. Margaret Anson was sitting on a long low couch upholstered in something murkily floral. Everything about this house was murky. It was as if Margaret Anson worshiped the darkness.
Margaret Anson herself was unexceptional—a woman in late middle age, with all the usual lines on her face and a body that was thin and wiry in the way bodies get after a lifetime of riding horses. There were probably two dozen women in Litchfield County who looked exactly like her.
Stacey and Mark were standing in the middle of the room, not quite sure what to do next. Margaret Anson wasn’t helping them. Gregor stepped to the front of the group.
“Mrs. Anson?” he said. “My name is Gregor Demarkian. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance.”
“I have been informed by my attorney,” Margaret Anson said, “that I do not have to answer any questions I do not want to answer, and I do not have to talk to any person not directly associated with the police department investigating this case. I do think that means I don’t have to talk to you, Mr. Demarkian.”