The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner Page A

darkness than Clumly’s wife would have been. Slowly, she led them through the dining room to the kitchen and out to the back porch.
    “He must have found the hammer out there in the garage,” she said. “This is where he knocked out the pane of glass and reached in to unlock the door.” There was plywood where the pane had been. The door was nailed shut. “We have a man who comes by to mow lawn for us. We had him nail the door, just to be on the safe side.”
    “Good idea,” Clumly said politely.
    “He’s a queer,” she said. Clumly glanced at her, startled, and could not tell whether or not she meant what he supposed. She said, “But he’s a good worker. We’re glad to have him.”
    Boyle stood gazing morosely into the overgrown garden, holding the flower box under his arm. The old woman, shaking like a leaf all over, noticed the direction of his gaze. “It used to be a beautiful garden. Father started it seventy years ago, and we tried to keep it up, as long as we could. But now it’s gone back to Nature, as you see.” She spoke the word Nature with hostility, as though for her it were a familiar and tolerable evil. The marble birdbath lay on its side, the base cracked, grass growing out of the opening obscenely. The brick wall at the rear of the garden hung thick with what seemed to be poison ivy—it was hard to be sure in the failing light. The tulip tree in the center of the garden was dead as a doornail, and roses overran the brick paths at liberty, with branches like the limbs of trees. In the high grass to the right of the porch, an ice-box lay on its side, with the door secured by an old rusty chain.
    “He went through there,” she said. She pointed to a hole yawning in the back right corner of the brick wall.
    “Very helpful,” Clumly said soberly. “This has all been very helpful.”
    She looked up at him earnestly, dim eyes loose in the dark, sunken sockets. “I hope you’ll catch him, Mr. Cooper, and bring back some of our things. You’ll want that hammer, I imagine, for the fingerprints.”
    “Yes indeed, we certainly will.”
    She turned back to the kitchen and brought it, still wrapped in the handkerchief, from the cupboard.
    She said, “We’ve always been good citizens, Mr. Cooper. We don’t like to trouble the police over nothing.”
    “I understand that,” Clumly said. “This is a serious matter, as you know,”
    She was looking at him again, searching for something, or expecting something, he couldn’t make out quite what. “That’s what I said to Editha,” she whispered.
    “Boyle?” Clumly said.
    The thief turned away from his gloomy inspection of the garden and came into the kitchen.
    “You must go now, yes,” Miss Octave said. “Thank you, thank you.” She was looking at the flower box Boyle carried. She pulled her gaze away and started through the dining room toward the parlor. They inched along behind her.
    “Say good-bye, Editha,” she whispered.
    In the deepening darkness there was only a vague glow of white now where Miss Editha sat. She did not answer.
    “You’d vow she was dead,” Miss Octave said.
    “Yakety yakety yakety,” Miss Editha whispered.
    Miss Octave ignored it. “Think what a man like that must have in store for him,” she said. “It’s my belief the Lord is not as merciful as some people suppose, especially thieves. You try to lay a little pittance by, you put your money in the bank or you lend it out at a fair rate of interest, you build up a position of authority in the community, and along comes some ugly little wretch—” Her throat convulsed. “If thieves go to Heaven, then we’d be better off with no God at all. That’s the truth.”
    Clumly patted her arm. It was dry as paper and hot as the center of a compost pile. At the front door Miss Octave whispered slyly, “Are the flowers for us, Mr. Cooper?”
    Police Chief Clumly took the box from Boyle with a sigh and gave it to her.
    “God bless you,” she whispered. She