II
Edith Nolan watched the cherries wobbling on Maud Welsh's hat as the woman perched in the witness chair, a sparrow ready for flight. T. J. Hunter purred and soothed. "Your occupation, Miss Welsh?"
"Guess you could say housekeeper." The voice was dry, brittle as the woman's skin. Merciless morning light played on Maud's wrinkles; bad judgment had tricked her into using dabs of make-up.
On her two visits to the Shanesville house, Edith had been aware of Maud as not much more than a background flutter and squeak; Callista had filled Edith in on the family history that explained her. Long ago, long before Herb Chalmers and Callista's mother were married and while Herb's father Malachi Chalmers was still alive, Cousin Maud had been asked to come and keep house. She stayed. Father Malachi had been a Full Professor, also a sort of fin de siècle Great Man who wrote a book (or something) and whose memory, Edith gathered, served as a squashy but invincible paperweight holding down the remainder of Herb's polite life. Maud Welsh had evidently done much to keep that memory functional. By the power of the meek, and because she was useful and a cousin, she just stayed, a small household tyrant given to vigorous church attendance and good works, enlarging on the time when the Professor was alive as a golden age to keep his degenerate son in line, dusting and sweeping intensely at unseasonable hours, putting up interminable preserves, and carrying on a picayune war with Victoria Chalmers, a war of sniffles and grievances which (Callista said) both of them enjoyed so much that there was never any serious question of sending Maud on her way. In the cellar, said Callista, there were five six-foot shelves of plum jam alone—Maud's atomic reserve. Anyhow, she raised quiet Presbyterian hell if any of it was used. And Callista in the studio had drawn a pen-and-ink of Maud lurking all alone underground in a desolated world, grown obese (in garments meant for a thin woman) on a thick diet of plum jam. Edith had said: "Oh, damn it, Cal, after all!" and kept the sketch.
"Where are you employed at present, Miss Welsh?"
"Well, see, I'm kin to—"
T. J. Hunter showed half-amused worry wrinkles. "Just my question, please. You know, limit your answers to the question."
"Oh, you did tell me that, didn't you? Well, I live in with the Chalmerses, I mean Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers of Shanesville."
"Doctor—that's an academic degree, isn't it?"
"Uh—oh yes. A Ph. D." Her voice made it an ailment.