The Snare

3. THE OLD MAN

3. THE OLD MAN Reunited after the Springland period, now it was Julia who was worrying to Martin. She was, for instance, in the habit of observing nearly a month of the year in remembrance of Maurice's father, the old man, Henri Devigny. Martin Parham had run into this habit many times, and each time his irritation with her for it increased. "This is too much," he used to think. She didn't want to see him or anybody else during this peculiar season. It irritated him more than any single thing she did. That he should come all the way down there only to be told she was observing the anniversary of the death of an old man not even her own kin. After all that he, Martin (living), had gone to the trouble of doing for her. It irritated him more than trying to get her to weed all the fairies out of her semi-Bohemian circles. "I can't," she said. "They grow in New Orleans same as Spanish moss. Anyway, if you get rid of them everybody just pairs off, so then pretty soon all you have is the country club and the church bazaar." This time, on the phone from the Mercedes garage, he blew up. "What the hell does he matter so much now for? Not even kin to you." And that made twice he'd turned the phrase (once in his mind, once out loud on the phone): "Not even kin." Thinking it again, hanging up the phone, refused admittance to her mourning presence, the words opened up their own latent contact to him for the first time. Why, that's just the point, he thought suddenly, and 183 184 T H E S N A R E was aware of the whirring about his ears, as though a swarm of mosquitoes and other, perhaps uglier, things with wings had risen from a carelessly opened box. Nervous and hot, he slammed up the phone and now having nowhere down there to go and amuse himself —how could he amuse himself when he was so mad at Julia?—he decided to get to the bottom of it. He took a cab to the Picayune office and asked for the file on Devigny. Which one? He didn't know. The first name escaped him. The one that died ten years ago. He got a handful of files instead of one. "If you go out in the other room you can smoke. Just sign for them here." He sat down at a comfortable blond wood table near a window with an ash tray beside him. He laid the files before him. He placed his cigarettes in a soft leather case close to his right hand, the silver cigarette lighter, an excellent German make, beside them. He wore a gold ring with a fraternity crest—SAE—on his right hand. The ash tray, aluminum dipped in bronze paint, did not please him. Arrogant he might be about his possessions —the minor tasteful swagger that money allowed a wellset brown-haired Mississippi boy to make was to his pleasure . Yet when he bent to the files, unwinding the strings that held the flaps in place, he felt like a college student again, about to learn a lesson. Only in one way he felt more than that. What was it, if not dread? Martin spent an absorbed two hours in the newspaper offices. He did not smoke once. What did he discover? A sensual face—powerful, lowering, withdrawn, observant —and a handful of facts. Henri Devigny. Born in Iberville Parish; died Audubon Place, New Orleans. Two marriages, one son. Minor political offices. Prominent in Comus. Campaigned in two mayoralty primaries, known as friend and supporter of the city and region. Knights of Columbus, landowner, publisher of regional books (folklore, myth, legends), president of wildlife conservation , arraigned once on suspicion of murder in the case of Elvira Nicolson, but never charged. . . . Elizabeth Spencer 185 And who was Elvira Nicolson? He searched again and found reference to a law suit. The Tulane Law Library might have other information, of course, the girl in the newspaper clipping library pointed out. Still, enough was on hand to get an idea. Elvira Nicolson: a Negro woman who distributed voodoo instruction manuals, some lurid sex literature, arrested, tried, convicted, and paroled, found stabbed to death in the entrance of a mock river...