Alice had been watching through the living room window and when she saw Warren’s car pull into the drive next door, she slipped on a light cardigan, took a small basket from the kitchen hook, and slipped out into the night. This was what she’d come to, stalking her new neighbor, pretending that she’d just come out to check something in the garden.
Everything was in a state of change. A light breeze rippled through the flower beds and over the surface of her ponds. The light from the house illuminated a single yellow leaf helicoptering through the air and falling at her feet. Fall was coming. She hurried to the gate and went though it in a businesslike way, as though she were on a vital mission. She looked up and tried to put on a surprised look when she saw him, his face in half-shadow, his shoulders low and dejected.
“Hello, Mr. Warren,” she said. “I was just coming out to check on some fungus I saw on this apple tree.” She gestured toward the tree at the side of the garden. Its branches overhung the garden fence.
“I have some news for you,” he said seriously, but with a little bit of a twinkle that made her think maybe he knew she’d been waiting for him to pull up.
“Oh?”
“We’ve solved your mystery of the missing rifle cartridges.”
“Really?”
“Yes, there is a man who’s been, well, sleeping rough on Agony Hill and he’s admitted to stealing the cartridges from the store, along with some food items, and to accidentally setting the fire at the cabin up there, the one that belongs to the people from Boston. I’m not sure how we’ll be handling him, but he’ll have to make restitution. He’s not a bad sort really, New Yorker, came up to live at that place, Brook’s End, got himself into a fix. He fought with Jeffrey Sawyer, and took off into the woods.” Alice watched him while he talked. When he said the word woods, his eye twitched, as though he had a traumatic association.
“What will happen to him?” Alice asked.
“Oh, we’ll let him go tomorrow. If he can find a way to make it right with the Collers and the owners of the cabin, then I don’t think he’ll be charged.” He sighed.
Alice smiled. “I think, Mr. Warren,” she said carefully, “that you have made an excellent choice. If he makes restitution, that is. Justice so often depends upon … proportionality, doesn’t it? Law enforcement is most effective and, um, authoritative, when citizens believe that the punishment fits the crime. I’ve seen it many times.”
“Yes,” he said, frowning a little. “Well, I knew you were worried about the young man at the store, so I wanted to be sure to let you know.” He tucked the paper bag he carried under one arm and kept moving.
“Would you like something to eat, Mr. Warren? I don’t have much for my supper, only some cold salmon and cucumber salad, but I’d be very happy to share with you. You look exhausted.”
He studied her for a moment, as though he were considering. “Do you know?” he said. “I am exhausted, but I actually feel like cooking. It’s a hobby of mine. Do you mind if I shift your invitation around and invite you to join me? I’m not a bad cook and I find it, well, rejuvenating.”
She smiled at him. It was a sincere invitation. “I’d be delighted,” she said.
“Good. Let me just wash and get things started and then perhaps you could come over in thirty minutes or so?”
She said that would be lovely and went to change, getting out a bottle of Montepulciano that she had been given by an old friend from the intelligence services, a friend who had access to excellent Italian wines.
By the time she knocked on his back door at eight o’clock, there was a delightful smell of tomatoes and garlic and herbs emanating from the kitchen. Italy, she thought. He’s conjured Italy for me.
“Detective Warren,” she said. “You do surprise. A policeman and an obviously skilled chef, all in one. Imagine that!”
He laughed. “Well, you haven’t tasted it yet.” But he inclined his head and said, “My late wife, Maria, her family was from Sicily and her mother is perhaps the most gifted cook I have ever come across. Maria didn’t like to cook very much—no way she could measure up, you see—but she taught me the basics and I found I quite enjoyed it. It’s a … an approach, I think, more than a specific technique. Good ingredients, of course.” He winked. “And please just call me Warren. Everyone does.”
Alice allowed him to open the wine and took a glass from him. “My husband and I spent a year living in Rome, after the war, of course. We ate so many wonderful meals.” They talked about Rome while he cooked. He had visited there, it turned out, with his parents when he was sixteen. When he mentioned his parents, there was a reticence, a resistance that she assumed was related to their disapproval of his marriage. But perhaps it was something else, his choice of career, his unwillingness to join the family business. There were so many reasons that people became estranged from their families. Alice had seen most of them.
The breeze picked up, swirling through the windows of the kitchen, and the wine did its work. Alice found that it was pleasant chatting with her neighbor about travel and about the past. They talked about Rome and Paris and she felt relief seep into her bones. It could be proven now that Richie was not a thief after all. Mr. Coller would have to apologize and if Richie and Lizzie were going to be married, well, it wasn’t a bad way to start off a marriage, was it? With one’s father-in-law feeling guilty and beholden? Bob would have to give Richie a raise. When Lizzie and Richie had decided things, well, Bob would have to give them his blessing now. Yes, Warren would go down and talk to the Collers first thing tomorrow morning and everything would be put to rights. She was sure of it.
Warren took four pieces of chicken from the refrigerator and seared the skin until it had been rendered into goldenness. Shallots went into the pan, and some wine and fresh herbs, and he fussed over it and then he tipped them out onto simple white plates he took from the cupboard and smothered them in the tomato sauce, adding a chiffonade of basil at the end. They ate at the kitchen table, chatting companionably. The chicken, as she’d known it would be, was excellent. He made strong coffee when they were done, with no discussion of whether it would ruin anyone’s sleep.
“This Brook’s End,” he asked her as they drank their coffee. “What do you know of them?”
“Oh, Jeffrey Sawyer,” she said. “Well, he’s an interesting case. He came up about fifteen years ago and bought that farm. Got it very cheap. I believe Hugh Weber provided the funds. People weren’t sure at first what he meant to do with it. He wanted to farm, you see. He had an idea about communal living, everyone contributing to the greater good. Like Hugh, he’d read Helen and Scott Nearing’s book. He thought he’d invented something new, but of course there isn’t anything new about it.”
“No love lost between him and Hugh Weber,” Warren said. Alice thought it was more studied than he meant it to sound. He wanted to see if she had any information about the feud between the two men.
“No, you’d expect it, wouldn’t you? Two very similar personalities,” she said carefully. “They might as well have been brothers, though Hugh had a cruel streak that I don’t think Sawyer has.”
He looked up in surprise.
“I expect you’ll be closing the Weber case now,” she said casually. “Won’t it be a relief?”
Those brown eyes snapped to hers. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, this fellow, the New Yorker, he’s changed things, hasn’t he?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs. Bellows. This man—his name is Isaac Rosen—there’s nothing to suggest that he killed Hugh Weber.”
“Of course not,” Alice said, trying not to say too much, but trying to say enough. “But perhaps … well, I sensed you had come to some sort of conclusion.”
He looked genuinely shocked. Perhaps she’d misjudged things. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “We’re still investigating.”
“Yes.” She took a long sip of her coffee. “Mr. Warren, the other night you guessed that my husband had an … official role in Cairo during the war, a role beyond that of … well, of what we told people he was doing there. You were, of course, correct. My husband was an intelligence officer. I knew some of what he did, but of course there was much of it that was beyond my understanding.”
He nodded and she went on. “I haven’t told many people, but my husband was surely murdered, in the course of his work. There was a different story of course, heart failure while on a business trip. You understand? That was what they told me, but I knew.”
Warren’s eyes widened. “When was this?” he asked after a moment. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved away the sympathy. “It was ten years ago now, under circumstances that were … murky. He was in Berlin. I will perhaps never know the truth. I don’t know exactly why I’m telling you this, except to tell you that it is possible to live quite well and quite happily with, well, I suppose with ambiguity, is what I am trying to tell you. I miss my husband but knowing exactly how he died and who killed him would be … an unproductive obsession. Do you see?”
He did not see, she thought. But he said, “Yes, Mrs. Bellows. I’m so very sorry.”
“I’m past that part of it,” she said, annoyed. He wasn’t getting the meaning of her words at all. “That’s not what I meant.”
He studied her for a moment. “I understand,” he said. “Let me ask you something. This man, Samuel Armstrong, who was killed in an apparent burglary in May. Did you know him? Had you ever met him?”
Alice made a conscious effort to keep her face composed. “No, Mr. Warren. I never met him. He had only just bought the house, you see, when he was killed.”
“That’s what’s so strange to me. If he didn’t know anyone, if he had no connections, then why was he here?”
She stood, leaving her coffee cup on the table. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Mr. Warren. Now, it’s been a lovely evening. I should be going.”
He still seemed confused, but he smiled and inclined his head in thanks for the compliment. “Good night,” she said, and hurried out, wanting to leave him with his thoughts, and made her way back to the quiet house. She was not often lonely, but something about the encounter had left her a bit bereft. She went into her sitting room and sat in her chair, thinking, and then put on the radio and worked on her current needlepoint, finishing the lower-right quadrant, green stitches describing the paths of a geometric garden. This one had a labyrinth at the center and she let herself travel its paths to the center.
She was not surprised when twenty minutes later she saw the lights go out in the house next door. Warren’s headlights swept across the fence and the car reversed and headed off in the direction of Agony Hill.