“Is every man in this town afraid of her?” she asked.

Knowing that she was now definitely going beyond what those boys would accept quietly, I fairly pushed Miss Howard out the door and then on toward the buck-board, though she wasn’t very happy about it: she wasn’t a woman to back down in the face of male bullying or threats, and the behavior of the men in the bar had only made her more determined to stick around Stillwater and find something out. Because of that, we didn’t end up moving north and out of town again when we got back on our rig, but kept going south, until we rolled up to an old, run-down house. The place might have been yellow at some point in time, but now it was just a mass of dead climbing plants and peeling paint. The faint light of a lantern could be seen through one window, and once or twice the silhouette of a person passed in front of it.

“We going in?” I asked, hoping that maybe there was still some way Miss Howard would change her mind.

“Of course we’re going in,” she answered quietly. “I want to know what the hell happened here.”

Nodding in what you might call resignation, I got down off the buckboard, then followed Miss Howard past the broken-down little fence what ran around the overgrown front yard. We got to the front door, and Miss Howard was about to knock; then I made out something in the darkness away to the side of the house.

“Miss,” I said, nudging her with my elbow and then pointing. “Maybe you want to look over there…”

Turning, Miss Howard followed my finger to take in the sight of some black ruins in the lot next door. They were obviously the remains of another house, being as two crumbling chimneys stood at either end; and even by the faint light of the moon we could see a couple of cast-iron stoves and some bathroom fixtures-a tub and a sink-lying in the rubble. There were young trees and shrubs growing in the midst of it all, indicating that the fire what had destroyed the place hadn’t occurred any time recently.

All in all, the scene called to mind the old Hatch place in Ballston Spa very quickly.

“So…” Miss Howard whispered, taking a couple of steps away from the door and studying the grim wreckage. It seemed to me like we were both thinking the same thing: maybe those boys in the tavern had been right to be so fearful.

“Wouldn’t want to’ve been in that house,” I said quietly. “Fire like that’d be pretty tough to survive.”

“Impossible, I’d think,” Miss Howard answered, nodding.

But as it turned out, she was wrong: something had survived that fire. Not just something but someone-and we were about to meet her.

CHAPTER 36

All we ever saw of that dark little house on the south edge of Stillwater was the front hall and the sitting room; but the memory of those spaces is burned so deep in my brain that I could probably re-create them right down to the thousand tiny cracks that were spread out through the walls like so many dying blood vessels. For the purposes of this story, though, it’ll be enough to say that we were let into the place, after knocking, by an old Negro woman, who looked us over with an expression what said that they didn’t get many callers in that house, and that such a state of affairs suited them just fine.

“Hello,” Miss Howard said to the woman, as we stepped inside the door. “I know it’s late, but I was wondering if either Mr. or Mrs. Muhlenberg might be home?”

The old black lady gave my companion a hard, slightly shocked look. “Who are you?” she asked. But before Miss Howard could answer the question, she took care of it herself: “Must be strangers hereabouts-there ain’t no Mr. Muhlenberg. Hasn’t been these ten years or more.”

Miss Howard took in that information with a slightly embarrassed look, then said, “My name is Sara Howard, and this is”-pointing to me, she tried to find an explanation what would wash in the situation-“my driver. I’m working for the Saratoga County district attorney’s office, investigating a case that involves a woman who once lived in this town. Her name then was Libby Fraser. We were told that the Muhlenbergs had some contact with her-”

The old woman’s eyes went wide and she held up an arm, trying to herd us back outside. “No,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “Unh-unh! Are you crazy? Comin’ around here, askin’ questions about-you just get out!”

But before she could shoo us back into the night, a voice drifted out from the sitting room. “Who is it, Emmeline?” a woman asked, her voice cracking roughly. “I thought I heard someone say… Emmeline! Who is it?”

“Nothin’ but some lady askin’ questions, ma’am,” the old woman answered. “I’m sendin’ her away, though, don’t worry!”

“What kind of questions?” the voice answered-and as it did, I took note of what the Doctor would’ve called a paradoxical quality in the thing: the sound itself indicated someone of about the black woman’s age, but the tone and pacing of the words were very sharp, and seemed to come from someone much younger.

The woman at the door filled up with dread as she sighed and called out, “About Libby Fraser, ma’am.”

There was a long silence, and then the voice from the living room spoke much more quietly: “Yes. That’s what I thought I heard… Did she say she’s from the district attorney’s office?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then show her in, Emmeline. Show her in.” Reluctantly, the black woman stepped aside to let me and Miss Howard wander down the cavelike hall and into the sitting room.

You couldn’t have put a color to the cracked walls in that chamber, or to the patches of ancient paper what still clung to a few small spots on them. The furniture what was clustered around the heavy table that held the lamp was also in a state of decrepitude. The dim yellow light of the lamp’s small, smoky flame spread toward but not into the corners of the room; and it was in one of those corners that our “hostess” sat on a ratty old divan, a handmade comforter covering her legs and most of her body. She was holding an old fan in front of her face, slowly moving it to cool herself; at least, that was what I thought she was doing. And so far as it was possible to tell, there wasn’t another soul in the house.

“Mrs. Muhlenberg?” Miss Howard asked quietly, looking into the dark corner.

“I didn’t know,” the scratchy voice answered, that the district attorney had taken to employing women. Who are you?”

“My name is Sara Howard.”

The head behind the fan nodded. “And the boy?”

“My driver” Miss Howard said, smiling to me. “And my bodyguard.” She turned back to Mrs. Muhlenberg. “It seems I need one, in this town.”

The shadowy head just kept nodding. “You’re asking about Libby Fraser. She’s a dangerous subject…” In a sudden rush, Mrs. Muhlenberg took in a big gulp of air with a moan what would’ve raised the hackles on a dead man. “Please,” she went on after a few seconds, “sit…”

We found two straight-backed chairs that looked a little sturdier than the other items in the room, and tried to settle in.

“Mrs. Muhlenberg,” Miss Howard said. I confess that I’m a little puzzled. We-I-certainly didn’t come here looking for trouble. Or with the intention of offending anyone. But it seems that the mere mention of Libby Fraser’s name-”

“You saw what’s left of the house next door? Mrs. Muhlenberg cut in. “That used to be my house. My husband’s, actually. We lived there with our son. The people of this town don’t want to see their own places reduced to charred brick and ashes.”

Miss Howard absorbed that for a few seconds. “You mean-she did that? Libby Fraser?”

The head started to nod again. “Not that I could ever have proved it. Any more than I could’ve proved that she killed my child. She’s much too clever…”