“You did something so he’d think you were Richard,” Harry said.
Reisden leaned back in his chair. “I told him he was wrong.”
Daugherty, Reisden, and Harry Boulding were conferring in Daugherty’s office. It was a measure of Bucky’s disgust with them that even Harry had been relegated here. The room was crowded with Knight family records and with its own furnishings, a desk of imposing bulk, cast down from a more imposing office, a fan because Daugherty’s office was hot, a lamp because it was dark. Daugherty’s one window looked out over a rear court.
For three days Reisden had played the role of Reisden unwillingly being Richard Knight. He had watched himself being polite to Gilbert Knight, to Harry, to Perdita, the fiancée. Roles and acting, in the long-ago time when he had done such things, usually had released him and given him his emotions. But not now. He was numb as if he were dead.
“You twisted him,” Harry said. “You did something!”
Reisden looked him up and down. “I told him I was not Richard,” he said levelly. “I told him I have not a single memory of being Richard. He said, ‘Good.’ I want to know what I did as much as you do.”
Harry turned and strode over to the other side of the room, his shoulders tight like a caged lion’s. Somewhere under that rage was the howl of a boy who was really not much loved. Harry had wanted Gilbert Knight to drop the idea of Richard; he had counted on it as much as Reisden himself had. Now Harry raged to keep his pride. Reisden understood, but he didn’t care much for Harry’s style.
“He said you recognized him,” Harry said.
“I didn’t bloody well recognize him, he looks like me and I wasn’t prepared for it. Take it as read that we didn’t want this to happen and we’re all terribly, terribly embarrassed. How shall we get out of it? Daugherty, what does Bucky say?”
“Bucky don’t know whether to spit nails or cry.”
“Show him your birth certificate,” Harry said. “Prove you’re not Richard.”
Reisden looked at Daugherty. “That won’t prove that Richard is dead.”
Daugherty nodded. “We got ourselves a Richard that wa’n’t no Richard, and Gilbert took him like a fish takes a hook, ’scuse me Reisden. Now Bucky wants enough proof to shake even Gilbert. He wants Richard dead on Gilbert’s doormat and tomorrow morning wouldn’t be too soon. What do you think, Reisden? What do you want to do?”
“I want to leave. But since we have the situation, we might do something useful with it.”
“What?” Harry asked.
Reisden lit a cigaret. Since I am not Richard, he thought, since I know that, there is nothing wrong with saying this. “Prove Richard is dead.”
“Ain’t I been working on that these past eighteen years?”
“Of course you have.” Reisden let the silence hang.
Daugherty sighed. “Well, I ain’t found him yet, have I?”
“He disappeared from the place up in New Hampshire— Matatonic. How thoroughly were you able to search there? Are there identifiable areas that were missed, for instance the cellars of houses? How thoroughly were you able to interview?”
Daugherty shook his head. “Early on, when Richard first disappeared, we were looking for a live kid, not a body. I weren’t real experienced, either, and I was headin’ the search. I got the cellars of houses—but like I say, I was lookin’ for him live.”
“How about the woods?”
“A lot of woods up there. We done some searching. It ain’t easy.”
Harry raised his head. “You mean you didn’t search everywhere?”
“Son, there’s thousands of acres.”
“You ought to search every one of them,” Harry said. “You could do it with Indian guides. They know the woods far better than the white man. This is important, Daugherty. This is about a lot of money. You don’t understand.”
When Harry left a few minutes later, Reisden and Daugherty looked at each other.
“‘They know the woods far better than the white man.’ Someday you’ll be working for him,” Reisden said.
Daugherty sighed and looked down at his square-toed shoes, slightly out of date. “Trouble is, he’s going to talk to Bucky and Bucky’ll think it’s a good idea.”
“Is it?”
“Not the whole woods. You find bodies uphill of where they disappeared if they went on their own, downhill if somebody carried ’em. Or by a stream. Streams draw ’em.”
Reisden thought. “Richard disappeared from a hotel. Who owns it?”
“We do.” Daugherty cleared his throat. “Owners sold out six, seven years ago. We bought it for Charlie’s Children’s Clinic. The kids come out to the country, stay at the hotel, swim in the lake. We done a search there, but I’d like to do more, maybe take up some of the concrete in the basement. I actually worked out a whole plan.”
“Tell me.”
Daugherty opened a drawer of his desk, took out two sheets of paper, and gave them to Reisden, who scanned them.
“This is good. Why not do it?”
“Who’s goin’ to tell me to? Or pay for it? Gilbert just got his Richard.”
Richard Knight was bones decomposing under a bush somewhere. And Richard was all he had. Richard was Reisden’s madness, working itself out.
“Richard will,” Reisden said.
“What say?”
“Were I Richard, I would be annoyed at how comfortable my loss of memory is for other people. For some reason, Gilbert Knight is very relieved that Richard doesn’t remember anything. Gilbert has apparently asked Charlie Adair not to tell me anything. Bucky told me today that he has the same instructions.”
“Bucky don’t know anything to tell, though. Leastways nothing he’s told me.”
“It doesn’t matter. Richard would be annoyed and inconveniently curious, if I were he. Look, Daugherty. For the time being, like it or not, we have got a Richard. Either I go away and try to ignore this, and get everlastingly disturbed by reporters—how shall I live it down, I wonder?—or I stay here and be useful. Is the Knights’ house in livable shape?”
“Sure, we kept it up. Ain’t been used since.”
“Very well, then. Like betrayed housemaids we shall take our sorrows to the country. We’ll live in the house where William Knight died, and from there, if we can, we shall find Richard. We mean to disgust Gilbert with the very idea of Richard. I cannot think of anything more effectively disgusting than rubbing his nose in Richard’s murder.
“And do remember there’s another factor.” Reisden paused, shamelessly for effect. “Whoever killed Richard knows I’m not him. I wonder whether we can stir him up?”
“Reisden, don’t joke about them things!”
“Not a joke. Someone killed Richard. Now Richard wants to know why.”