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    Not a Creature Was Stirring
    Not a Creature Was Stirring
    Not a Creature Was Stirring
    Ebook463 pages6 hours

    Not a Creature Was Stirring

    By Jane Haddam

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Edgar Award Finalist: The patriarch of a wealthy, notoriously unpleasant Philadelphia family is murdered, and a former FBI agent must figure out whodunit.
     The Hannaford who made the family fortune called himself a tycoon. The newspapers called him a robber baron. Since the days of Robert Hannaford I, the family has infested Philadelphia society like a disease. The current Hannafords are a clan of embezzlers, gamblers, and fantasy novelists. This Christmas, they have money in their bank accounts, crime in their blood, and murder on their minds. Gregor Demarkian is their reluctant guest. A former FBI agent who quit the agency after his wife’s death, he is invited by the Hannaford patriarch to come for dinner at the family mansion. Demarkain arrives just in time to find his host bludgeoned to death in his study and his investigation will lead him to the Hannafords, a family of cold-blooded killers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateMar 5, 2013
    ISBN9781453293133
    Not a Creature Was Stirring
    Author

    Jane Haddam

    Jane Haddam (1951–2019) was an American author of mysteries. Born Orania Papazoglou, she worked as a college professor and magazine editor before publishing her Edgar Award–nominated first novel, Sweet, Savage Death, in 1984. This mystery introduced Patience McKenna, a sleuthing scribe who would go on to appear in four more books, including Wicked, Loving Murder (1985) and Rich, Radiant Slaughter (1988).   Not a Creature Was Stirring (1990) introduced Haddam’s best-known character, former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian. The series spans more than twenty novels, many of them holiday-themed, including Murder Superior (1993), Fountain of Death (1995), and Wanting Sheila Dead (2005). Haddam’s later novels include Blood in the Water (2012) and Hearts of Sand (2013).

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    Reviews for Not a Creature Was Stirring

    3.5/5

    109 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      First mystery in the Gregor DeMarkean series by Jane Haddam and the first book of hers I have read. I enjoyed the story which in addition to solving murders added a cast of characters from Gregor's Armenian neighborhood. I found it captured my attention throughout and I was surprised at the ending. The first person to be killed was the aging father of 7 children, all adults and dysfunctional in their own ways. My only criticism is that it was hard for me to keep track of who was who until their stories were more developed.
    • 4/5
      Gregor Demarkian, former FBI agent who retired after the death of his wife, is invited to dinner at the home of Robert Hannaford. The Hannaford family originally made it's money in railroads but the current Hannafords are comprised of mostly disreputable losers who are being investigated for a variety of reasons. Robert Hannaford is also a cruel and vicious man.

      Upon his arrival at the Hannaford family estate, Engine House, Gregor finds that Robert has been bludgeoned to death. The only people in the house are Mrs. Hannaford, dying from complications of multiple sclerosis and their seven dysfunctional adult children. Before long there are two more murders. There are a number of interesting subplots, including at least one for each of Hannaford's seven children.

      Before Gregor retired he was the former head of the FBI Behavioral Sciences Department and as he starts to recover from his wife's death he's at loose ends. Soon Gregor is asked to act as a consultant to the police who are investigating the murders and begins to come alive again.

      Gregor lives in the Armenian neighborhood of Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia. In a parallel plotline, his parish priest, Father Tibor, has asked him to help locate neighbor Donna Moradanyan's boyfriend who disappeared when Donna became pregnant.

      The mystery is well written and the characters are richly textured. I think this first book in the series shows some real potential. The author has introduced some characters that will obviously be regulars in future books and I would definitely read the next one.
    • 4/5
      I think that I have read this before though it didn't seem familiar to me. If so, it is not surprising that I guessed who the murderer was (based solely on personality, not clues) - I may have subconsciously remembered. I love the Armenian-American background; as I grew up in a town with a lot of Armenians, many aspects of this background remind me of my hometown.
    • 4/5
      Widower and retired FBI agent Gregor Demarkian has moved back to the Armenian neighborhood in Philadelphia where he spent his childhood. Just before Christmas, a local Armenian priest asks Gregor for a favor. Gregor is to go to Engine House, the Bryn Mawr mansion of the Hannaford family, as a dinner guest. In return, Mr. Hannaford will give Gregor a briefcase containing $100,000, destined for the Armenian church. Hannaford arrives to find a murder scene. Robert Hannaford is dead, and the murderer must have been someone inside the house. The pool of suspects is limited to Hannaford's seven children, all of whom he hated and who hated their father in return. The local police hire Gregor as a consultant. Solving the case becomes increasingly urgent and the pool of suspects narrower as more murders occur.I enjoyed this first-in-series mystery. The holiday setting in a mansion with a limited number of suspects is similar to the vintage country house murder mysteries that are always a favorite with me. The cultural setting in Philadelphia's Armenian community is also appealing. I look forward to reading additional books in this series.
    • 4/5
      Liked this book a lot. I will definitely continue with this series!
    • 4/5
      Well written. Look to read well from Jane Haddam.
    • 3/5
      Gregor Demarkian is ex-FBI. He lives somewhere in the Philadelphia area. His priest asks him to attend a dinner at the large country estate of a wealthy man. The priest has been promised a large donation if he can get Mr. Demarkian to attend. When he arrives, the estate is a crime scene, and Demarkian encounters an investigating officer that is not his favorite. However, the police need his help on this one, and as the death toll mounts, his ability to make sense of things becomes invaluable. Although this book has a Christmas setting, it is one which could be read any time of the year as Christmas is very marginal to the plot. It's a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I found the plot seemed to drag in a place or two, but overall I continued to care about the outcome and kept plugging away. As far as the family members are concerned, the only one that was likeable in any manner was the sister who wrote novels. It was a nice start to a series. I have the second one already on hand to read next year.
    • 3/5
      I liked the characters and the story. There were a few logical mistakes that distracted me but I will try the next book in the series.
    • 3/5
      Gregor Demarkian, a retired FBI agent, moves back to his hometown after the death of his wife and his friend, the Armenian parish priest, asks a favor of him. The priest was promised $100,000 for the church if he would get Gregor to attend Christmas Eve dinner at the estate of a very wealthy man. How can Gregor refuse. He is picked up by limo and on arrival the coroner's van is parked by the front door. Gregor is sucked into the police investigation of the murder noticing things missed by the police.
    • 5/5
      I started with the latest book in this series, Living Witness, which I really liked. So I am starting to read the series in order.Not a Creature was Stirring introduces retired FBI profiler Gregor Demarkian, a 3rd generation Armenian American. His beloved wife died two years ago, and he retired to take care of her. Now he has moved back into his old Armenian neighborhood. The new priest passes on a strange invitation. A very rich man of an old Main Line family offers the priest $100,000 if Demarkian will come to dinner at his mansion, the Engine House, on Christmas Eve. Gregor agrees, but arrives to find that the rich man, Robert Hannaford, had been murdered and the money, if it existed, is gone. Because security is so tight in and out of the estate, it had to be a member of Hannaford's family, his wife or one of the seven grown children, or a servant.Haddam in this first book in the series is already a remarkably sure writer, with a great plot and excellent characters. I'm anxious now to read more in the series.
    • 3/5
      Gregor Demarkian is retired from the FBI, and is a bit bored & a little restless. His priest, Father Tibor, tells him that the church will receive quite a large donation if Tibor can get Gregor to go to Engine House for dinner, on the Main Line in Bryn Mawr, on Christmas day. It seems that the head of the Hannaford household, Mr. Robert Hannaford, has some problem he wants Gregor to solve, and considering the amount of the donation, it seems to be pretty serious. How could Gregor say no? However, upon his arrival, Gregor finds the family patriarch dead, and there are a houseful of suspects. When that murder goes unsolved, there is another. First in a series of holiday-themed mystery novels, Not a Creature Was Stirring is pretty good. I thought I had figured out the who of the whodunit part only to find that I was completely wrong. I liked Gregor's character and I liked the people in his Armenian neighborhood who look out for him. I'll look forward to reading more in this series at some point. Recommended for people who enjoy both cozy mysteries and country-house type murders.
    • 4/5
      Gregor Demarkian, a retired FBI agent and recent widower, returns to the Armenian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia where he grew up. In order to help out his parish priest, he agrees to meet with an eccentric zillionaire who lives on the tony Main Line. Demarkian arrives to find the man murdered, at a time when all his children have come home for their dying mother's last Christmas. Most of the children have something to hide and a plausible motive for the murder. Gregor assists the police captain investigating the murder, and two more deaths occur in the family before the murderer is identified.Ms. Haddam does a nice job of portraying the Armenian-American neighborhood to which Gregor has returned, and of contrasting it with the Main Line family, without beating us over the head with the comparison. There are several characters, including the priest, the downstairs neighbor, andthe nosy neighborhood gossip, who are well drawn and will appear in many of the subsequent Demarkian mysteries. We just begin to get to know Gregor himself in this novel. Ms. Haddam seems concerned primarily with introducing us to Gregor the logical thinker, his native community, and his approach to solving crimes. His is a cerebral approach, not terribly action-oriented. These books are for those who prefer thoughtful analysis to action heroes. We'll learn more about Gregor and others in the many sequels. One character in particular is obviously going to make a lot of appearances.
    • 4/5
      The first in the Gregor Demarkian series. Demarkian, a retired FBI profiler, returns to Philadelphia to Cavanaugh Street, the heart of the Armenian-American community. Through a request of his parish priest, the intense Father Tibor, he becomes involved in the investigation of 3 murders of a wealthy Main Line Philadelphia family that take place over the Christmas holidays. The plot is well done as is the characterization. We get a view of the life style and atttitudes of the very rich as well as that of the Armenian-American community. The ethnic background is very well integrated into the story, and makes it that much more interesting. Not a heavy duty plot but well worth reading. Looking forward to the rest of the series. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating and charming. The two best things for a mystery to be. Read it!
    • 3/5
      This is the first mystery in the Gregor Demarkian (retired FBI agent) holiday series. Demarkian is invited to Christmas Dinner by multi-millionaire Robert Hannaford. The seven adult Hannaford children are also coming home for the holiday. But just before Demarkian arrives, his host is found murdered in his study. Who did it? Why? The plot is somewhat plodding, and the characters not sufficiently fleshed out, but I see promise, and I think Demarkian is a hero I could come to care about. So, I’m rounding up my 2.5** to 3***
    • 4/5
      A retired FBI detective is offered $100,000 in cash by a wealthy eccentric to attend a Christmas Eve dinner at his country house outside Philadelphia. The detective arrives just as the man's battered body is discovered in his study. The detective, Gregor Demarkian is a credible stand-in for Hercule Poirot in this Agatha Christie like whodunnit. It's well-constructed with plenty of character development of the pool of suspects, the man's seven children. His invalid wife can be included too as a remote possibility. The local police call on Gregor's expertise as the mystery deepens with the suspicious deaths of two of the children. There's a real puzzle for Gregor to solve, which he does, and all is revealed in a dramatic conclusion.Gregor's Armenia roots play a large part of his story. After the death of his wife from a lingering illness, he moved back to the Philadelphia Armenian neighbourhood where he grew up. There he is surrounded by a cast of oddball characters which support his sleuthing activity. An interesting side story about a young woman in the community is a good sidebar to the murder mystery.This is the first book in a long series of Gregor Demarkian crime novels. Written in 1993 it shows its age, but the story is not stale. A good read which sets the stage for the rest of the series.
    • 5/5
      Gregor Demarkian doesn’t know what he is going to do with the rest of his life. He had been the Director of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI until he had retired to take care of his wife, Elizabeth, as she inched her way through the process of dying with cancer. His first decision is to leave the Washington area and return to Philadelphia, to the street and neighborhood where he grew up. Even all these years later, Cavanaugh Street is still an Armenian enclave although now it is an enclave with money. Cavanaugh Street bears no sign of the poverty that defined it so many years ago. Gregor does know that he needs to find something to do, something to make him want to get out of bed in the morning. Gregor is bored.Father Tibor Kasparian, an Armenian Orthodox priest and a former resident of a Russian gulag, is his rescuer. Tibor invites Gregor to his home and shows him a brief case filled with $100,000.00 in cash. Robert Hannaford is the fifth generation of Hannafords who had made their money in the railroads, steel, and just about everything else. Robert is confined to a wheelchair after an accident. His body may have limitations but his mind does not. Another part of Robert Hannaford that has no limitations is the depths of his cruelty. He has seven children and he hates them all. They return the sentiment. Hannaford is used to getting what he wants by buying it. He decides to buy Gregor by using Tibor. Hannaford hadscome to Tibor with the money, telling him that if Tibor can get Gregor to come to his house for dinner on Christmas Eve, Tibor can keep the money for the church’s charities.Gregor agrees, primarily out of curiousity. When he arrives at Engine House, named for the families association with the railroad, it is to discover that Robert Hannaford has been murdered. The suspects: all of Hannaford’s children. Myra married money but isn’t satisfied because she doesn’t have any of her own. Bobby, the heir, is involved in insider trading. Anne Marie manages Engine House and devotes most of her time to her mother, Cordelia, who is dying from a form of multiple sclerosis. Christopher is a poet and a DJ in California; he is a gambler and he owes the wrong people $75,000.00. Teddy has difficulty walking and must wear a leg brace since an accident crippled him. He is a professor at a very small college where he is about to lose his job for plagiarizing his students’ work and for sexual harassment. Bennis is a highly successful writer of fantasy novels and a millionaire in her own right. Emma, the youngest, is an actress and the child least damaged by her father’s pathologies.Heading the investigation in Bryn Mawr is John Henry Newman Jackman, a student of Gregor’s. He is aware of all the pitfalls that a case involving the very rich presents. He is willing to have Gregor act as a consultant and Gregor is happy to be back in harness. Jackman knows all about Gregor’s theory of “internal consistency” and as more people die Jackman acknowledges that the theory does apply. “Simplicity. Somewhere, in all of this mess of motives and secrets and plots, there was a perfectly straightforward course of action, a person who killed or tried to kill, over and over again, always in much the same way. And that meant there was also a perfectly straightforward reason for it all.” The killer had a plan and a goal that made perfect sense.NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING is a story that takes place at Christmas. It is not a Christmas story. It is the first book in the twenty-five book Gregor Demarkian series. While it isn’t necessary to read the books in order of publication, it does help to keep the large cast of characters sorted. Cavanaugh Street and its residents are characters in all the stories.The first books in the series are centered on holidays then the author takes a wider view and gets Gregor further away from Cavanaugh Street. The books are consistently good. The characters are woven into each story and as the series progress their relationships do as well. Haddam does not write graphic violence. Her descriptions of the murders in each story are brief; violence is described but as if at a distance. I have read the series and I have enjoyed all of the books.Toward the end of the book the author provides this exchange between John Henry Newman Jackman and Gregor Demarkian. “…Jackman didn’t see him do it. He was too busy looking at the chandelier. “I read a murder mystery once where someone got killed with one of those,” Jackman said. “it was held up with a chain and the chain had been cut through, and just at the right moment—” “Do you think that’s really possible?” Gregor said. “Hell no. But things don’t have to be possible in murder mysteries. They just have to be weird.”

    Book preview

    Not a Creature Was Stirring - Jane Haddam

    Not a Creature Was Stirring

    A Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mystery

    Jane Haddam

    Contents

    Prologue

    One

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    Part One

    One

    1

    2

    3

    Two

    1

    2

    Three

    1

    2

    3

    4

    Four

    1

    2

    Five

    1

    2

    3

    4

    Six

    1

    Part Two

    One

    1

    2

    Two

    1

    2

    Three

    1

    2

    3

    Four

    1

    2

    Five

    1

    2

    3

    Six

    1

    2

    3

    Seven

    1

    2

    Part Three

    One

    1

    2

    3

    Two

    1

    2

    Three

    1

    2

    3

    Four

    1

    2

    3

    Five

    1

    2

    3

    4

    Six

    1

    2

    Seven

    1

    2

    3

    Eight

    1

    Part Four

    One

    1

    2

    Two

    1

    2

    Three

    1

    2

    Four

    1

    2

    Five

    1

    2

    Six

    1

    Epilogue

    1

    2

    3

    Preview: Act of Darkness

    PROLOGUE

    THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1

    THE TELEPHONE CALLS

    ONE

    1

    LISTEN, MYRA SAID, AS soon as the phone was picked up, without waiting to find out who had answered it. I’ve had a phone call from Bobby. Something’s screwy up at the House.

    There was a tiered set of wire baskets hanging from a hook in the kitchen ceiling, filled with boxes of Celestial Seasonings teas. Emma Hannaford took out the Morning Thunder and put it on the counter. Myra, for God’s sake. Emma kept in touch with only one of her sisters, and only because she and Bennis had always been close. She didn’t hear from the rest of the brood from one year to the next, and she thought that was just fine. Still, when she did hear from them, the one who called was always Myra. Myra was a combination gossip service and witch. She knew things about people they didn’t know themselves (usually because they weren’t true). She also knew things about people they’d never told anyone, which was—well, weird. Emma dumped a tea bag into the bottom of her best oversize ceramic mug, the one with I CAN BEAT THE WORLD in big red letters on both sides of it, and took the kettle off the stove. If she’d been asked to name the one thing she was least able to deal with after a day like today, she would have had to say Myra. If she’d been asked to name the second thing, she would have had to say a double dose of Morning Thunder (caffeine overload guaranteed) at eight o’clock in the evening.

    Emma? Myra said. Emma, are you there?

    Yes, Myra. I’m here.

    Well, good. For a minute there, I thought you were being raped or robbed or something and I had the mugger.

    Emma let that one pass. One of Myra’s major monologues, ever since Emma had graduated from Bennington and moved to New York, had to do with how long it would take before Emma got herself killed. Useless to explain to Myra that the Upper West Side, especially this part of it, was probably safer than Vermont had ever been. Useless to explain anything to Myra, really, because Myra only listened when she thought she was getting important information. The fact that her youngest sister was living in one of the fanciest neighborhoods in Manhattan was not important information.

    Emma picked up her tea and the phone and went into the main part of the apartment. It was a room approximately ten by ten feet and, aside from the kitchen (which was an alcove) and the bathroom, it was the only room in the place. At $900 a month, in this neighborhood, it was even a bargain. One of the things Emma had decided when she moved to the city five years ago was that she was going to get along on her own money. Bennis was making a mint and Myra had married a rich husband and the boys had those trust funds, but she was going to have to make her own way eventually. Now she was settled and (she thought) comfortable. She never gave a thought to the fact that she’d grown up in a forty-room house. Or that her bedroom at home was three times the size of this apartment.

    She sat down on the couch and stretched her legs, good dancer’s legs that wouldn’t be so good if she kept cutting class the way she had tonight. Emma Hannaford had good dancer’s legs and a good dancer’s body, even though she wasn’t a dancer, and wild black hair that was a throwback to the first Robert Hannaford, the one whose portrait was on the wall above the mantel in the main library back at Engine House. Engine House was what Robert Hannaford had called the place he’d built in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, after the railroads had made him rich. The first Robert Hannaford had been like that.

    The fifth Robert Hannaford, otherwise known as Daddy, wasn’t like that at all.

    Emma?

    I’m still here, Myra.

    I saw that commercial of yours. The one where you get the cereal all over your hair? I thought it was silly.

    It paid a lot of money. And it pays residuals.

    Well, I suppose you need money. I just don’t understand why you don’t marry it, like everybody else.

    Emma let that one pass, too. Myra had married money, but Bennis had made hers, and the boys had been handed theirs courtesy of Daddy. Anne Marie had simply sidestepped the whole question. Anne Marie still lived at Engine House, like some kind of post-debutante twit.

    Also, Emma had a fair idea how Myra felt, under all the verbiage and sisterly concern, about being married to Dickie Van Damm.

    Emma took a sip of tea and tucked her legs under her. Is this about something in particular, or did you just call?

    Of course I didn’t just call, Myra said. There is something screwy up at the House.

    Myra, there’s always something screwy up at the House. Our father is a fruitcake. He gets to be more of a fruitcake every year. What else is new?

    "Emma, listen. Bobby called me. Mother was in the hospital—now, don’t jump to conclusions. She’s out again now. But from what Bobby’s been telling me, things are very strange. She stays in her room all the time and Anne Marie won’t let anyone see her and Daddy’s going crazy. He’s doing things. Financially."

    Emma stared into her tea. Mother sick. Mother in the hospital. It was like seeing those pictures of baby seals dead on the ice. It made Emma feel sick and numb and very, very frightened.

    Myra? she said. What was Mother in the hospital with?

    I’m not sure.

    Don’t you think you ought to find out? That’s the important thing. Daddy can’t really do anything, financially or otherwise. He’s in that wheelchair. And he took care of the money years ago.

    Bobby’s worried, Myra said stubbornly.

    Bobby’s always worried, Emma said. That’s what he does with his life. What does Anne Marie say?

    Myra paused so long, Emma thought she’d hung up. When her voice came back, it sounded strangled.

    Anne Marie, she said, is hysterical. You know Anne Marie.

    Actually, Emma didn’t know Anne Marie. There was fifteen years’ difference between them and an even wider gulf in personality. Emma did whatever came into her head. Anne Marie thought things through and found some reason not to do them.

    Emma, Myra said. You know Bobby. He’s not an alarmist. If he says something’s wrong, something’s wrong.

    Maybe, Emma said, but he’s an old lady about money. And there’s nothing to worry about. The money’s all locked up. Daddy did it himself.

    Emma waited for Myra to say it was all her, Emma’s, fault. Instead, Myra said, Emma, I really think we all ought to go out there.

    Emma paused with her mug of tea halfway to her lips. She had heard that tone in Myra’s voice only once or twice before. Mostly, Myra was harmless, but there were times. … Emma put her mug back on the floor, feeling distinctly uneasy. She thought of her family as a collection of benign kooks. Too much money over too many generations had left them a little addled, but in pleasant, amusing ways. Of course, there was nothing pleasant about Daddy. He was a nasty, vindictive old man. But—

    But. When Myra got started—and praise God in Heaven it didn’t happen often—things could get damn near lethal.

    Myra, Emma said carefully, I don’t think—

    Oh, Myra said, you never do. But I do. And I think we ought to go up there. For Christmas.

    Daddy will throw us out, Emma said.

    No, he won’t. You know how Mother is about Christmas. We could go up Christmas Eve and stay till New Year’s. By then we’d have everything straightened out.

    Maybe Daddy doesn’t want everything straightened out.

    Daddy doesn’t know what he wants. If he did, he wouldn’t have done all that about the money. Now, Emma, I don’t want any arguments. Just be on the five-seventeen when it gets to Bryn Mawr December twenty-third. I’ll pick you up at the station.

    Myra—

    Bring woolies. It gets cold up there this time of year.

    Emma stared into the phone and sighed. It was infuriating. No matter what she did, they always got to her. Family, home, position, security, money—she hated to admit it, but the thought of going home for Christmas had improved her mood enormously. Even after all that terrible stuff about Mother.

    Even after Myra had made her think about the money.

    Emma stretched out on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Large rooms. Fireplaces. Mattresses and box springs. Four-hundred-dollar down comforters. Oh, Lord.

    She felt about as independent as a baby kangaroo.

    2

    When Bennis Hannaford hung up on her sister Myra, she was thinking not about what Myra had said (Myra never made any sense), but about the phone call she’d had only half an hour earlier, the one from the nut. She put her hand to the back of her head and released her black wiry hair from its barrette. Through an accident of genetics, she had all the really good Hannaford features and none of the bad ones. Her bones were fine and fragile. Her eyes were large and widely spaced and almost a deep purple. Her cheekbones were high and her cheeks just a little hollow. She was a beautiful woman, and she knew it.

    The nut on the phone had given her a flawless description of her living room as it had existed six months ago, which meant he was one of the people who had attended the fantasy fan convention in Chicago last June. That meant he could be either harmless or not, depending. Depending on where he was. Depending on his psychiatric history. Depending…

    Bennis brushed it off, irritated. The way she reacted to these calls always made her feel like a hypochondriacal old maid. And it was so asinine. This idiot hadn’t been in her apartment. If he had, he’d know it had been redecorated. Still…

    She headed for the living room, down the long hall bracketed by built-in bookshelves holding only the books she had written. One shelf was given over to copies of Chronicles of Zed and Zedalia, her second novel and the first fantasy ever to make The New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list. She prodded Michael Peteris with her toe as she passed his place on her Persian rug and dropped down on a green plush Louis XVI chair she’d bought because it went with the room. That was before she realized nothing would ever go with this room, because it had been built at a time when people who knew nothing about history were trying to invent it.

    Michael, she said, tell me what to do about the nut.

    Michael turned over and put his hands behind his head. If he hadn’t been as tall and broad as he was, he would have been ugly. He looked, as Bennis explained to Emma when Emma asked, very Greek.

    What you’re going to do about the nut, he said calmly, is what you always do about the nuts. Call Jack Donovan down at the station. Get a tap put on your phone. Then—

    I’m tired of this, Michael. I really am. I want to be Stephen King and not have to go to conventions. I want—

    From what you tell me, Stephen King does go to conventions. And if you’re tired of this, move.

    Oh, hush, Bennis said.

    Michael shrugged and turned away. This was an argument he had no interest in repeating. Of course she should move. She’d known that the first time a nut called—the one who said he’d put a rogue troll in her underwear drawer—even before she’d asked him and he’d told her.

    Who else was on the phone? Michael said. I heard it ring twice.

    What? Bennis said. Oh. That was my sister.

    Emma, Myra, or Anne Marie?

    Myra.

    You are going to be in a bad mood tonight. Oh, well. What did she want?

    What? Bennis said again. I’m sorry. My mind’s wandering. It was, too. She was thinking about Daddy. She shook it out of her head and said, Myra. Well, she wanted me to come home for Christmas. For the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s.

    But that’s wonderful, Michael said. You call Jack. You get the tap put on the phone. Then you pack up and go to Sewickley, or wherever.

    Wayne. That’s not what she wants me to do. She wants me to go out to Engine House. My mother just got out of the hospital.

    Michael sat up. Do you realize what you just did? You told me about the nut first.

    And that shocks you, Bennis said.

    It would shock anybody.

    Not if they grew up at Engine House. Bennis stood, went to the drinks cabinet, and fished her cigarettes out from behind the gin. So much for cutting down on smoking by keeping your cigarettes in an inconvenient place. When she got a real nicotine fit, there was no such thing as an inconvenient place.

    She went back to the chair, lit up, and said, Besides, this isn’t exactly news. I’ve been living with this thing of Mother’s for a long time.

    How long?

    Fifteen years.

    What’s she got?

    Some kind of multiple sclerosis. I don’t understand it exactly. She’s been in and out of hospitals for years.

    Michael blew a stream of air into the room, like a pregnant woman hyperventilating to take her mind off labor. Jesus God, he said. And half of you live out of town. What are you people, anyway?

    Down dirty furious at my father, for one thing, Bennis said. Besides, I don’t think the rest of them know. I mean, Anne Marie knows. That’s why she’s never left home. Daddy knows, because he’d have to. I know because I was home once when she had one of those attacks. She considered it. Bobby might know. I’m not sure.

    You mean your mother hasn’t told anybody?

    Of course not. She wouldn’t want to be an object of pity.

    Michael shot her a look that said this attitude made no sense to him at all, and Bennis shrugged. Of course it didn’t. He came from an absurdly extended family, full of immigrant great-aunts and just-off-the-boat quasi uncles, people who stuck together because they were trying to get someplace. He would never understand how the Main Line worked.

    Bennis stretched her legs, crossed her feet at the ankles, and said, The thing is, no matter how much I love my mother, a week at home with Daddy would just about kill me. That old son of a—never mind. If you could come with me—

    I can’t. I’ve got the Andrekowicz thing.

    Bennis made a face. She didn’t want to hear about the Andrekowicz thing. Bodies in pieces all over the South Side. Well, there you are. I don’t want to see my father, and no matter what Myra says, he doesn’t want to see me. He only talks to Bobby and Anne Marie because he has to. He wrote the rest of us off years ago.

    That’s a hell of a thing to say about an old man in a wheelchair.

    The old man in the wheelchair is going to last another twenty years, Bennis said. A lot longer than Mother. And he deserves it less.

    Which is supposed to mean what?

    Which is supposed to mean I think I’ll go call my brother Chris. Myra must have called him. Maybe he got more out of her than I did.

    I like your brother Chris, Michael said. Only don’t tell him I always think his poems are jokes. He gets weird about it.

    Bennis hauled herself out of her chair and headed back toward the bedroom and the phone.

    3

    When the light went off on his console for the third time in fifteen minutes, Chris Hannaford told his listeners (all 226 of them) not to forget to boycott grapes, started a Grateful Dead record, took off his sweatband, and dropped the sweatband over his light. A little later, he would read some of his poetry, and that would be nice, but what he wasn’t going to do any more was answer the phone. Oh, no. First he’d been stuck with his sister Myra, which was a little like accidentally ingesting a triple dose of Benzedrine. Then—

    He felt his stomach start to cramp and leaned over, counting until it went away. He was losing his nerve. He was coming apart. And that second phone call hadn’t helped.

    They were going to kill him.

    The Dead record was winding to an end. He got another from the stack and flipped it on without introduction. The masses never minded getting their music straight. Mostly he wouldn’t oblige them, of course. Just because the idiots wanted to pretend that literature began with Paul McCartney and ended with Bruce Springsteen didn’t mean he had to agree with them. He’d won four dozen awards for his poetry, been published in everything from The Atlantic to The New Kionossa Review, and was (if he had to say it himself) the driving force in the survival of poetry in post-Reagan America. Actually, someone else had said it for him, in The Yale Review. A friend who still lived in New Haven had sent him the article. He’d been embarrassed as hell at first, but after he’d thought about it he’d realized it was nothing but the truth. Who else was there?

    His stomach cramped up again, and he forgot all about it.

    They were going to kill him. They had practically said so when they called. How in the name of God had he got himself involved with these people? What was he—aside from the driving force, etc.—but an ex-preppie Yale boy with a little family money and even fewer brains? He must have been tripping.

    Except that he didn’t trip. He didn’t do much of anything but smoke marijuana, write poetry, show up for work—and gamble. When he put it like that, it made him want to laugh. Gambling was what got people in trouble in thirties detective novels. Getting in hock to mob-connected bookies was a hard-boiled private-eye cliché. That kind of thing didn’t happen to people in real life. It didn’t exist in real life.

    (We don’t hear from you in four days, we’re gonna take your thumb.)

    He nipped the second record for a third, still not able to talk. The spasms were so bad, he had to put his head between his knees to keep from vomiting. That comic-opera voice on the phone, for God’s sake. The thought of his thumb (right or left?) lying on the pavement in Santa Clara in a mess of blood and pulp. Four days.

    He felt the sweat break out on his forehead and knew he was going to be better. The sweat always hit him just before and after these attacks. He sat up, waited for the record to finish, and said,

    "That was the Dead times three, ladies and gentlemen. ‘Truckin,’ ‘Sugar Magnolia,’ and ‘Uncle John’s Band.’ Give me a minute here, we’re going to have a Chris Hannaford special. An uninterrupted album. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band."

    He chose it because it was sitting right there on top of his stack. He spun it onto the turntable, nipped off his mike, and sat back, a tall, cadaverous, long-limbed man with the trademark Hannaford hair and a face that had seen too many bars, too many late nights and too much trouble. Now that the attack was over, he could think.

    Myra was out there somewhere, getting a bug in her ass about dear old Daddy. Myra always had a bug in her ass about something. That was her thing. Just like being a first-class son-of-a-whore was Daddy’s thing.

    Just like gambling was his thing.

    He thought about calling Bennis and decided against it. She’d got him out of the hole that first time without asking questions. She’d get him out of this one the same way. He wasn’t going to ask her. In direct contradiction to the way he lived and the things he said when he had anyone but Bennis for an audience, Chris had a streak of moralism in him. Bennis would let him bleed her forever. For precisely that reason, he couldn’t go to her. After all, he was the one with the nice little chunk of family money. Bennis had what she made and nothing more.

    (We’re gonna take your thumb.)

    They were going to take his thumb. Yes, they were. And after they took his thumb they were going to take the rest of him, piece by piece, because this time he was in for $75,000 and there was no way he could pay it. Not now, not tomorrow, not two days from tomorrow. What the hell had he bet in on, anyway?

    Did they know about Engine House? Probably. But he knew his father. Engine House was a fortress. Daddy was the ultimate paranoid.

    He rubbed his hands against his face and went back to trying to think.

    4

    You must understand, the chairman of the English department was saying, no matter how liberal the times have become, we cannot, in cases like this, ignore the traditional consequences. The chairman of the English department looked like a fish wearing a toupee. At least, he looked that way to Teddy Hannaford, and Teddy had always prided himself on his powers of observation and his ear for a good metaphor. Simile. Whatever. The chairman of the English department was a turd, and all Teddy wanted on earth was not to have to listen to him.

    Unfortunately, at the moment he had no choice. He sat awkwardly in the chairman’s visitor’s chair, his right leg in its brace as stiff as a length of hardwood, thinking they could have saved half an hour if the chairman had just fired him outright. Instead, the fish was making a speech. And a banal one at that.

    Teddy started to put a hand to his head and stopped himself. Unlike everybody else in the family, he had not been born with hair that flourished under any and all conditions. He was going bald at the top and thinning in every other place. It was not something he could think about with charity. They, after all, were just fine—Bennis and Emma and Bobby and Chris and even Anne Marie. He never counted Myra, because Myra was a housewife. Nobody took housewives seriously. But the rest of them—. Emma was young and pretty. Chris was screwing every blonde in Southern California. Anne Marie was always in the society magazines. Bobby had been given the biggest chunk of money. And then there was Bennis.

    Sometimes, when he went into the Waldenbooks in Kennebunk and saw all those ridiculous books taking up more shelf space than Dreiser, he wanted to scream. Bennis had been the pain of his life for as long as he could remember. Here she was again, making idiots of them all with stories about unicorns and knights in shining armor. They even carried her trash in the college bookstore. And The New York Times Magazine had done a silly article called The New Face of Fantasy Fiction and put Bennis right on the cover.

    No matter what the chairman of the English department said this interview was about, it was really about Bennis. Teddy knew. He also knew it was Bennis’s fault his leg was in a brace and his knee wouldn’t bend. He hadn’t figured out how that worked—Bennis had been in Paris the day Daddy had taken him for a ride and tried to kill him—but he was sure he would be able to unravel it if he put his mind to it.

    The fish squirmed in his chair, cleared his throat, and tried a smile. There is also, he said, the question of your alleged motive in this, uh, action.

    Motive? Teddy could practically feel the antennae rise up out of his head, like the retractable ears on a Martian in a fifties alien invasion movie.

    Miss Carpenter, the chairman said, "claims you made this suggestion to her as the means by which she could receive credit on a paper you were writing for NEJLA with research you had used from her final project in Victorian Authors."

    NEJLA was the New England Journal of Literary Arts. What the fool was trying to say was that Susan Carpenter claimed Teddy had told her she’d have to sleep with him if she wanted her name on the article he was submitting to NEJLA on women in the Victorian novel. Where the fish had it wrong was in that bit about using some of Miss Carpenter’s research. He had not used some of Miss Carpenter’s research. He had stolen her paper outright.

    He hadn’t told Susan she’d have to sleep with him if she wanted her credit, either. He might have implied it, but he hadn’t said it. He never made promises he had no intention of keeping.

    Miss Carpenter, the fish was saying, has submitted to us a photocopy of this—

    Teddy closed his eyes. A photocopy. Yes, he’d been waiting for a photocopy. After all, Susan Carpenter wasn’t the first. She wasn’t even the twentieth.

    Professor Hannaford, the chairman said solemnly.

    Teddy looked up quickly. He had broken out in a cold sweat.

    You understand, he said, that every professor has this problem from time to time with students, especially female students, who think they haven’t received the grade they, uh, deserved.

    It comes up, the chairman agreed, and then spoiled it by saying, rarely.

    Yes, Teddy said. Well. Rarely or not, it comes up. If you’ve read Miss Carpenter’s paper—

    I have not.

    "Well, read it. You’ll see it’s nothing NEJLA would be interested in. Miss Carpenter’s, ah, communications skills are not of the highest. As for research—"

    Yes?

    There isn’t any, Teddy said. It was an exposition. Textual analysis.

    And Miss Carpenter’s analytical skills are not of the highest?

    They’re nonexistent.

    Ah. The chairman sat back and folded his hands over his stomach. He no longer looked like a fish. He looked like a pregnant frog.

    I see, he was saying. This should be relatively easy to clear up. We have Miss Carpenter’s paper. We have your article—has it been published yet?

    No, Teddy said, knowing this was the worst luck of all. It’s due in their spring issue.

    I see. Do you have a copy?

    Of course.

    Fine, then. We’ll have both the paper and the article. We’ll have copies made before the hearing. Then, at the hearing—

    What hearing?

    The departmental hearing, the chairman said. There’ll have to be one. If the charges had any merit, there’d have to be a hearing in the Faculty Senate as well, but as you’ve assured me— The chairman didn’t look assured. He looked, in fact, rather smug. Teddy was suddenly sure the chairman had known about his papers for years.

    Just then, the buzzer went off on the chairman’s phone. The chairman picked up, grunted a few times, and then hung up again.

    That was Miss Holcomb in the office, he said. It’s a Mrs. Richard Van Damm. She says she’s your sister. She says it’s urgent.

    The chairman looked as if he thought Teddy had fixed this up just to escape from the interview, but Teddy didn’t care. Myra, of all people. Bless her malicious little heart. Myra could make an emergency out of a lost earring, but Teddy wasn’t going to tell the chairman that.

    After all, for the moment, she was his salvation.

    5

    When the phone rang, Bobby Hannaford was sitting on the king-size bed in the second-floor master suite of his $1.5-million house in Chestnut Hill, trying to extract forty-two $100 bills from the waistband of his boxer shorts. It would have been easier if he hadn’t been so edgy, but he was always edgy on the days he saw McAdam. When the bell went off, he jumped half a foot in the air, scattering bills everywhere. He had to get down on his hands and knees to rescue the two that blew under the night table. When he got up, he was breathing heavily, and he still had money in his underwear. He snatched at the receiver with all the good humor he could muster, which was none at all.

    Bobby? Bobby, I know it’s probably a bad time, but I’ve got to talk to you.

    Bobby paused in his struggles with elasticized 100 percent cotton. He’d know that voice anywhere. When he died and went to Hell, it would be waiting for him in the fiery pit, right along with Donald McAdam.

    Shit, he said, extracting another $600 from his shorts. He didn’t need Myra.

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