Animal Appetite

is missing from the library and from Buttonwoods, too,” I said. “It’s a privately printed book about Hannah: And One Fought Back. The author taught at Haverhill High School. Lewis Clark. He died in World War Two.” With no pun intended, I said, “For the moment, I seem to have hit a dead end.”
    Janet promised to ask around to see whether she could locate a copy.
    On the way back to Cambridge, I belatedly realized that Janet and I hadn’t discussed a stud fee. Rather, I hadn’t raised the matter, but had assumed that, as usual, I’d go along with whatever Janet decreed. I knew the pedigrees of Janet’s dogs all the way back to Rowdy of Nome, the first AKC-registered Alaskan malamute. For the first time, I wondered about Janet’s own ancestry. I knew as little about her family tree as I’d ever known or cared about my own. Switzer was Janet’s married name. I didn’t know her maiden name. She grew up in Haverhill. So did her parents. Her grandparents? Great-grandparents? And on back? Hannah and Thomas Duston had had thirteen children. If I recalled correctly, nine had survived to adulthood and married. In the gift shop at Buttonwoods, I’d seen numerous pamphlets about the genealogy of the Duston family. I’d paid no attention. Only now did it cross my mind that Janet might well be one of Hannah’s descendants. In certain respects, she was, I thought, exactly the type.
     

Seventeen

     
    I’m seldom invited to tea by anyone at all, never mind by a Harvard professor emeritus. Although I felt certain that the unpretentious Professor Foley wouldn’t object to my usual garb—T-shirt, sweatshirt, jeans, running shoes—I felt compelled to costume myself for the occasion. At the back of my closet, I located a blue corduroy Laura Ashley pinafore and a simple white blouse with ruffles at the neck and sleeves. I wore dark stockings and flats. For the first time since last winter, I removed my good navy wool coat from its dry cleaner’s bag. Just before leaving the house, I went over myself with one of those red velvet clothes brushes that actually do a half-decent job of removing dog hair. With a steno pad and pens stashed in my purse, I set off on foot down Appleton, turned right onto Huron, and then made my way against the cold December wind up Fayerweather Street toward Governor Weld’s house. The route was familiar. The ladylike attire was not. Slapping the sidewalk, my leather-soled flats sounded like someone else’s shoes. I may have paused here and there at Rowdy’s and Kimi’s favorite trees and utility poles to wait for invisible dogs.
    Professor Foley’s house proved to be an immense Victorian I’d admired on previous walks. It was painted a soft, inviting shade of yellow, with shutters and trim in rich cream. A row of solar-powered lamps illuminated the path from the sidewalk to the house. The grass had been cut short for the winter, and the wide flower beds that ran up to the sidewalk and circled the property in gentle curves had been put to bed under cozy-looking blankets of salt-marsh hay. Along the front of the house, little wooden structures protected the foundation evergreens from snow and ice that would cascade from the steep roof. The massive front door was deep green. The electric light mounted above it was on. On the brick stoop by the door, a big pot of pale pink chrysanthemums had toppled over in the wind. Still encased in plastic, the New York Times and the Boston Globe lay on a long, wide jute mat. A sheaf of magazines, letters, and junk mail protruded from the brass mail slot. The windows at the front of the house were dark.
    I pushed the doorbell and heard distant chimes. No lights came on. No footsteps approached. No voice called out. I rang the bell again. This was Friday, I reminded myself. I checked my watch: ten after four. To avoid seeming gauche, I’d tried to arrive a few minutes late. Mounted on the door was an old-fashioned door knocker, a brass lion’s head that I’d assumed to be mainly decorative. I pounded hard. Then I again rang the bell.
    Elderly people who live alone, I reflected, sometimes establish a sort of home-within-a-home at the back of the house. Perhaps Professor Foley didn’t use the front rooms of this gigantic place, but denned up in the kitchen or a breakfast room, and took it for granted that visitors would seek him out in the part of the house where he really lived. The explanation felt far-fetched. I pursued it nonetheless. I