In the aftermath of the fire the whole landscape seemed black, skeletal, ghostly in smoke. The fence that had kept the Clinic children away from the road was twisted metal in blackened grass. The children touched the hot fence and stepped gingerly in the hot grass, feeling the crackling and pricking of the lawn that had been soft.
Everything smelled like caramel with a nauseating underodor of char. Perdita did not know how to deal with the change in her landmarks, fences that had melted, trees that had disappeared in an afternoon. She clung to Harry. But all the time she felt Richard’s arms around her. When the ladder had fallen she had screamed out so loud that she was hoarse afterward. She loved Harry, but Richard had been about to die.
“I saved you,” Harry said. “I brought the ladder.”
She said nothing for a moment, rationalizing that her throat still hurt. “Yes, that’s true.”
“I always do the right thing,” Harry said quietly, “and nobody ever gives me credit.”
T\vo months, a month ago, she would have said, “That’s right, poor Harry,” and she wouldn’t have done it out of loyalty to him but because it was true. And it was still true, but Harry didn’t have to say it. She broke into tears, she clutched at him, weeping in futility against his muscular arm. She didn’t want to find Harry imperfect.
“There, Pet, you’re just tired out,” Harry soothed her, and she took refuge in that, womanly and weak, and cried harder.
🙚🙚🙚
Reisden was unable to stop noticing Perdita.
It was a plague of noticing, of common unsensual things like the shape of her hands and her eyelids, the way she sat down at the piano bench or gestured or laughed. He could not be in a room with her without being drawn to her, his eyes and ears attached to her on short strings. It was a common malady among those who had gone through the fire. Reisden saw Mrs. Bartarin once on the street, the neighbor of little Nellie Yeo, whom Reisden and Perdita had got out of the house. “When I see Nellie now, I just go straight up to her and hug her. I’m so happy she’s alive,” Mrs. Bartarin had said, and hugged him. Reisden had no desire whatever to hug little Nellie Yeo. But he could have stood for hours with his arms around Perdita, learning how to believe that the world was not as fragile as it had seemed.
And so, perhaps because so, he went to see Mrs. Fen.
He actually had business with her. With Mrs. Fen’s barn had burned not only the Shakespeareans’ costumes but their rehearsal space. Bam space was at a premium this summer, and almost the only barn not in use was the Knights’. Perdita had asked Gilbert for it on the Shakespeareans’ behalf.
Anna Fen kept Richard Knight waiting twenty minutes, and came downstairs holding a hat, wearing casual white cotton, as if she had just been interrupted at her garden; but the dress was unrumpled and very attractive. He would have been flattered to be so dressed for, if she had dressed for him. She stood for a moment at the door, looking at him with the shadows of old thoughts in her eyes.
“Mrs. Fen?”
She sank down into a cushiony chair as if it had been her bed.
“Anna Fen,” she said; call me Anna, the tone of the throaty voice suggested. “Please sit down.”
He did so, and made the offer of the Knights’ barn, which she accepted. “You are so kind.” Her eyes looked up at him. You are so kind.
She served him tea. They sat on either end of the same long sofa. “My gardener says that you are putting on a search for yourself, Mr. Knight.”
He smiled. “I’m not Richard.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Much more extraordinary if I were, after all this time.”
She bit a cookie, looking over the edge of it at him. “You don’t remember me.”
“Another proof I could not possibly be Richard.” He wondered what precisely about her, and about Jay French, Richard was not supposed to remember.
“I didn’t know the Knights well,” Anna Fen continued. “William Knight wanted privacy. We could see Island Hill only from our wharf.”
“Did you ever visit the house?”
“I don’t think so,” she said after a hesitation.
“Did you know any of the household?” he asked quite bluntly, wondering what answer he would get.
“No. Of course not. They were a household of bachelors. They didn’t entertain.”
She got up and fiddled with some peacock feathers in a vase, looking at him all the time, wanting to see how she affected him. She kept her parlor feminine: a universal ruffle of flower-printed chintz, lacy furniture scarves and potpourri, frivolous and complicated. The couches were deep and covered with pillows.
“My late husband knew Jay French slightly, because of the suit.”
“Suit?”
“William Knight sued Michael over our dogs. They fouled his footpath. So he said.”
“Were you here the evening of the murders?”
“I was here by myself. Michael was away. I didn’t see anything or hear anything until the police came. It’s so long ago. I was very young.”
He phrased the next question carefully. “Were you in any way unsurprised at the murder?”
“I was very surprised,” she said sharply. This bit of the conversation was real, Reisden thought. “Jay was very fond of William Knight, very devoted to him. My husband always said so. I was very surprised that he could murder William.”
“Charlie Adair saw him doing it,” Reisden said.
“Come outside with me,” she said. She pushed open the French windows and they walked through her garden and down a short gravel path. They crossed the road and cut through a screen of trees to her dock. Her motorboat with the ruffled sunroof bobbed in the water by the dock, looking unused. She stood on the wharf and pointed across the water.
“Charlie saw someone. You can’t see much of Island Hill from the road. The woods are in the way.” She pointed in a swath along the edge of the lake. The ugly bulk of Island Hill was visible across the water. It was a bright day and the house was a white block against the green of the lawn. Jay French would have been a little figure from this distance.
“Charlie thinks it was Jay,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Who killed William, then?”
She shrugged. “Who killed Richard?” she asked. “Since you’re not Richard?”
“Then Jay didn’t do that either?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, and her eyes were shadowed again.
He watched her. She smiled and lowered her eyes. She leaned against the handrail of the dock, jiggling one knee under her thin cotton skirt. There was a little breeze blowing; it flattened her skirt against her thighs and long legs. Reisden smelled the heat of the lake water, waterweed, and Mrs. Fen’s mixed perfumes. Anna Fen had called Jay French repeatedly by his first name without remarking on it. “It’s warm,” she said.
“Very warm,” he said.
She looked up at him. “Come in the house. It’s cooler there.”
She was the sort of woman he knew all through. He would perform very well for her and she for him. Neither one of them would be disappointed, or very much surprised. It was far too much to say that he was bored before the thing started. Rather he was bored with himself in it. How much extra work would it be to get the information without the woman? He could see her when he needed to; she would be in the Knights’ barn every afternoon rehearsing Scenes from Shakespeare.
On the whole, he thought he would let himself be a little courted before he gave in.
He made decent excuses. She tossed her head and turned away down the path. “Come see me again,” she said.