Cornelius Halloway

Cornelius Halloway is 46 and for twenty-five years has counted the money his brother makes. He was born in Liverpool, the younger of two sons of a bankrupt shipowner, and learned early that his elder brother would be the face and he the figures. He joined the cotton firm at nineteen, as a copyist, rose to bookkeeper and today controls the records of the shipments arriving from New Orleans. He says his brother buys and he counts, and that it has always been that way between them, without resentment.

He lives alone in a dark brick house in a respectable, dull neighborhood, with a maid who comes in the morning and leaves at four. The parlor is too tidy to be used: a horsehair sofa, a bookcase of bound ledgers, a table clock he winds every night at ten and a polished brass inkwell, on which his finger has left, over the years, a dark mark. On Sundays he goes to church and then takes tea with a deaf aunt, who has never asked about his life.

He has thin brown hair combed back with brilliantine, long sideburns and the pale skin of someone who lives under lamplight. He wears small metal-rimmed glasses and a black mourning suit, with waistcoat and watch chain, and his fingers are stained with pen ink. He speaks softly and in an accountant's sentences, which close like summed columns. He is courteous, restrained and prone to small sighs, and talks to the detective with the deference of a man used to explaining accounts.

About the two weeks his brother was ill, his account is that of an anxious relative: his brother's stomach had burned since April 27, and Theodore was always a hypochondriac, who took any tonic he was sold. He looks after the books and the New Orleans shipments, as always. When he speaks of the firm his voice straightens; when he speaks of the illness, it weakens. He says he is in mourning and that, if he hears rumors about town, he gives credit to none.

Cornelius knows that the younger brother, who keeps the books and inherits the firm, is the kind of relative a detective notices. When the question reaches the inheritance, he smiles a little, takes off his glasses and answers that this should be asked of the will's lawyer. It may be the reserve of a discreet, bereaved man who doesn't like to speak of money in front of the dead. It may be someone who knows exactly what each column hides. The detective will have to decide which.