“How goes the firm, Victor?”

“We’re still around.”

“Good for you. Surviving is always nine-tenths of the battle.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it’s that last tenth that’s killing me.”

“Yes,” said Whit, “the final bit always proves to be the devil.”

I had never been in Whit’s house before – we didn’t socialize in different circles, more like different planets – and so, as we proceeded through the house at Whit’s typically brisk pace, I swiveled my head to take a gander. Whitney Robinson was always full of life, he was still, but there was something aged and forlorn about the interior of his home. It was furnished as one would expect of a Robinson manse, old American chairs, French divans, urns, the odd baroque piece up against the wall, but the house looked like it had been set up decades ago and not touched since. The walls were dingy, the fabric dull and faded, the carpets threadbare. There was a thick scent of must, and something else, too, something out of place. It smelled strangely medicinal, like an old hospital where doctors in dark suits sawed at gangrenous legs as blood spurted onto their shirtsleeves. When we passed a doorway, I glanced in and spied, through a dark dining room, another room, and in that room the corner of a hospital bed, a nurse in white leaning over it, a rigid figure rocking back and forth under the sheets.

“Through here,” said Whit, opening one of a pair of French doors leading to a stone terrace at the rear of the house. The lemonade pitcher was sweating on a round table, green-striped cushions rested on the seats of wrought-iron chairs, birds twittered about us. We sat, he poured, the lemonade was sour enough to pucker my cheeks.

“You’re wincing,” said Whit. “Not enough sugar?”

“No, it’s perfect,” I said when my face and jaw had recovered from sour shock. “I’m just having problems with a tooth.”

“That explains the swollen cheek.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Oh, yes. You should have that looked after.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I should.”

“I wanted to thank you for the note about my wife, Victor. It was very kind of you.”

“She was quite a woman, had to have been to put up with you for forty years.”

“You have no idea,” said Whit.

“I couldn’t help but notice the hospital bed.”

“My daughter lives with me. That she is still alive is a miracle, but she is very ill and needs constant care. It has been hard since my wife’s death, but one manages, and after a while, dealing with adversity becomes less a struggle than a habit.”

“You were always your best under pressure.”

“I used to think so. But now, Victor, while I might have time to putter and reminisce, you are quite the busy man these days. So?”

“François Dubé.”

Whit turned his head away from me for a moment, turned toward an expanse of grass that led to a dense wall of rhododendron. It seemed, if only for an instant, that he spied something lurking behind the greenery and among the thick woody stalks.

“Whit?” I said. “Are you okay?”

His head snapped back in my direction. “Yes? Oh, my. Sorry, Victor. What do they call those, ‘senior moments’? When you get to my age, sometimes the memories seem more real than the reality. François Dubé, you say?”

“He was a client, I believe.”

“Yes, he was. Sad story, really. What’s this about?”

“He wants me to ask for a new trial. I’m trying to figure out if there is anything there.”

“I wouldn’t think so, though I wish him all the luck.”

“What was the story?”

“He was in the middle of an ugly divorce. There was a daughter involved, custody was at issue. It was a pity, the whole thing. They made such a beautiful couple, but that might have been the problem, don’t you think?”

“Fortunately, I’ve never had to suffer the torments. So the divorce was getting out of hand?”

“Charges flying back and forth like eggs on hell night, splattering everyone who got close. But this one had a particularly ugly edge. He accused her of rampant drug use, argued she was an unfit mother. She claimed that he had sexually abused their daughter.”

“A pleasant time for all.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately, such accusations were a common tactic for a while back there. Things were getting very heated, all of it reaching a fever pitch, when they found the wife dead. Shot through the neck, blood everywhere. A brutal crime.”

“Who was the lead detective?”

“Torricelli.”

“That lunkhead?”

“He searched François’s apartment and found the murder weapon rolled up in a shirt covered with her blood.”

“Convenient,” I said.

“Certainly was. And of course François’s fingerprints were all over the crime scene. It was grim for him from the start, yet I think I could have dealt with all that. As you know, there are always ways. But there was another most intriguing piece of evidence not found by Torricelli. In her death throes, the wife – her name was Leesa, I think – the wife grabbed something and clutched it in her hand. By the time they found her body, rigor mortis had set in. They had to pry her fingers back at the morgue. And there it was.”

“What?”

“I did everything I could to exclude it, called it unduly prejudicial, called it hearsay, everything. But Judge Armstrong let it in, found it to be a dying declaration, and that was the case right there.”

“What was it?”

“A picture she had kept, a picture from happier times, a picture of François.”

“Like a message from the dead.”

“That’s what the prosecutor argued. In fact, it was our estimable district attorney, trying her last case before she ran for the big seat. Oh, she had a grand time marching back and forth in front of the jury with that creased and bloodied photograph. The jury returned in less than a day.”

“The newspaper accounts said there was a witness that put him at the scene.”

“Yes, a young man. He testified he had seen François leaving the apartment building on the night of the murder.”

“Any way to discredit him?”

“We asked for everything the state had on him, and nothing came up. But I don’t think he had much impact. He wasn’t the real problem.”

“Then what was?”

“Besides the photograph? There were no other suspects. There was no one else who would have done it. There was no robbery, there was no rape, there was no string of burglaries in the neighborhood. Whatever I argued about the evidence being weak, or planted, or explainable, there was no other theory of the murder I could put forward that would have been believed. It became a reasonable-doubt case, and those are very hard, especially when you have a message from the dead.”

“I can imagine. What was he like, your client?”

“Have you met him?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know. Difficult, manipulative, arrogant. Very smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is, obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“If he was as smart as he thought he was, he would never have gotten caught. Why are you taking his case anyway?”

“He’s paying me,” I said.

“Of course, what better reason is there? I’m sure you two will work fine together, though I wouldn’t start racking up the billables until the money is in the bank. After the trial I ended up prosecuting his appeals pro bono. By then he had no funds left, as far as I could tell.”

That was interesting and disheartening both. How did François get the five hundred he had paid me for the meeting, and how was he going to get me my retainer? I hadn’t asked in the prison – he’d said he could pay me, so I just assumed he could – but as always, when it came to money, it was wrong to assume anything.

At that moment, still thinking about the money, I glanced behind me, to the rear of the stone house. Ivy was climbing the walls, digging into the crumbling mortar for purchase. And framed by a tiny square window was a face, long and pale, with a white nurse’s cap pinned atop its dark hair. The mouth was a thin, straight gash, the eyes were black and staring, staring at me. When I cocked my head out of curiosity, the face disappeared.