After the Fire (43 page)

“You haven't answered my other question. Why do you come to me?”

“I thought I answered it. Because I trust you.”

She sat up straighter and waited. There was silence in the room. He was looking at her without revealing any judgment or any feeling at all.

He has someone else by now, she thought, and I have become a curiosity. He was a stranger. The crisp speech, the formal posture with folded hands resting on the desk, the eyes that refused to meet hers, all these were strange.

She wanted suddenly to be out of the room, away from this unnatural atmosphere. But he was waiting for her to say something more, so as quickly and clearly as she could—for he tended to be impatient with long-winded descriptions—she related the events that disturbed her, the affair of the horse and the troubles with Arnie.

“Maybe there's no sense in all this,” she concluded. “Maybe I'm frightened about a burglar in the house when it's really just the wind rattling the window.”

Will was looking over her head at the opposite wall and did not answer. The ruddy color that had once so become him had bled away; in the dimming light of the late afternoon, he looked gray.

“I don't want to hurt this man who's been so good to me and my children,” she said. “Yet when a person acts so out of character—”

He interrupted. “I'll speak to someone. The man I have in mind is discreet, and no one will ever know that you were here. When I have something to report, I'll call you.”

Understanding that she was being dismissed, Hyacinth
rose and thanked him. The interview had been dignified and correct, as she had determined it would be. It had even been somewhat helpful, as she had hoped it would be. It had also been so cool that no witness would ever have guessed that this man and this woman had once loved each other.

Yet as she put her hand on the doorknob to leave him, she could not help but turn to ask, “And how have you been?”

“Getting along. And you?”

“Getting along. And thank you again.”

It began to snow. The slow, thick flakes of earliest spring made wet spots on Hyacinth's smart Libretti coat. From her equally smart red handbag, she drew a collapsible umbrella. Then she put on her sunglasses. Surely there was no glare coming out of the dark sky, so it was not for that reason; it was only to hide her eyes, which suddenly were overrun with tears.

The waiting time was wretched. Every day for the next week, Hyacinth fended off Arnie's insistent arguments and pleas as best she could. Every day she went through an argument with herself: Had she stirred up a hornet's nest? Or perhaps a nest in which there were no hornets, thus making herself more than ever into a foolish meddler? Not that it really mattered….

Francine, making her weekly telephone call, was evidently frustrated by Hyacinth's unwillingness to take her advice, because she had obviously decided to let the subject drop. And Hyacinth, when their rather timid conversations ended, was saddened, for the mother, the
good mother, had only been planning—mistakenly, as it happened—for the daughter's benefit.

At last, on the second Monday, there was a message:
“I now have a full report and can see you at my office tomorrow afternoon, or I can bring it to your house this evening, whichever you prefer. Will Miller.”

Will Miller,
instead of
Will
. As if, without the full name, I would not know who he was! A little thing like that speaks volumes. Expect nothing, it means; I am merely doing you a decent favor. Suddenly, she did not want to see him again, especially in that forbidding office. Let him come here then, to her own territory.

When she opened the door to him that evening, she felt the very air of his last departure there: the sound of the door's soft closing, and the silence afterward. She wondered what, or even whether, he too might be having any remembrance of that moment.

But he gave no sign of anything except businesslike efficiency. With his slight frown and his refusal of coffee, he made it clear that he was in a hurry.

“In this computer age,” he said, as he withdrew a notepad from his pocket, “you would expect to learn something in hours, but this business, as it turns out, became somewhat complicated. These are my personal notes. I definitely did not want to own anything in writing.”

With her hands clutched together in her lap and her nervous heart already racing, Hyacinth fastened her eyes on the paper from which Will read.

“I'm going to start in the middle,” he said, “beginning with the death of the horse. It happens that its death was
already under investigation before you came to me. Insurance companies are very suspicious when a valuable horse dies. There used to be too many cases like that. In fact, the moment you told me about the death, I thought of a case that happened in my home town where a prominent society leader—a very fine lady but not too fine to murder an animal for the insurance—well, no matter. But in recent years there have been very few such cases because people are afraid now. Some daring souls still try it, and sometimes it's successful. But then sometimes, other things happen. A righteous person finds out or suspects and goes to the authorities. At the same time, the partners in the conspiracy have a falling out, probably about splitting the money. And there you are. And then, then—”

She could not help but interrupt. “You can't mean Arnie?”

Will nodded. “Yes. I consulted a private investigator whom we employ, and I do mean Arnie. The clues were mainly the conflicting causes, one a broken leg and the other an internal rupture. The truth is that the horse was simply shot to death. The excuse that was officially given was the broken leg. But apparently there was a falling out, and somebody talked.”

Hyacinth gasped. “I can't believe Arnie would do anything like that! There was no cruelty in him, not at all. How could he—”

“Well, at least there was no pain, except for the insurance company,” Will said wryly. “Many a respected business finds it very convenient from time to time to have a fire sale. It's nothing new.”

“I can't believe it's Arnie,” she repeated. “It doesn't fit him.”

Will grimaced. “You can't always judge people by their outsides, can you? Are you feeling all right? You look faint.”

“Not faint. Just sick.”

“Are you sure you want to hear the rest? It's not a pretty story.”

“Go on,” she whispered.

“They have a lot of evidence; Arnie's signature on a falsified certificate, the man in Florida, probably the one who talked to your mother that day, and somebody else who went back twenty-five years to when Arnie Ritter was Jack Sloan.”

“They're both his name. Jack Arnold Ritter-Sloan was his name, but he hated it. He always said, ‘Hell, I'm no hoity-toity aristocrat who needs a double name.’ ”

“It seems to have come in handy for a while, though. He had a fire when he was a medical student in Texas, insured under the name of Sloan. It was a big fire, his whole apartment went up in flames, and he lost all of his valuables, rare books, very costly, or so he claimed. It looked suspicious at the time, but they could never prove it, so nothing happened.”

“Twenty-five years ago,” Hyacinth repeated in horror.
Had they not said he left Texas in a hurry?

“Yes, and but for this horse affair, nothing would be happening. Now it's all come to life.”

Neither spoke. Will seemed to be studying her now, and his scrutiny was so unbearable that she had to look away, down at her own feet.

“It's a terribly painful thing to be disillusioned when you thought you knew a person,” he remarked.

No doubt he meant that for her, but she let it pass, saying only that she wanted to thank him.

“I'm very, very grateful to you, more than I can say.”

He inclined his head in a formal acknowledgment. “I'm glad I was able to help. But it's all about to come out in the news pretty soon anyway.”

“What are we waiting for? The kids don't have to finish the last few weeks of school. Let's go now.”

“Arnie,” she said again. “I still don't understand. He was so kind, so loving to us all.”

“Tell that to the insurance company.” Will's tone was grim. “That man who died in the fire—”

“What!” cried Hyacinth. “What fire?”

“The medical building, Arnie's own building.”

“
He
burned it down? Arnie did it?”

“Indeed he did,” Will said, still grimly. “He's had to confess. I learned it this morning. Of course he didn't have a leg to stand on, what with the Texas affair and now the horse.”

As after long darkness a person's eyes are struck by a shaft of brilliant light, so now Hyacinth was pierced by pain. Her life, the life of these past years, went whirling, and seated there in her own room the very walls went whirling.

“My children!” she cried. “They took them away from me, and now—and now—I'll have them back—”

“What is all this? What are you talking about?”

She was unable to speak. She was too stunned to find words, and yet her thoughts were flashing.

Such relief! Such unspeakable relief! Emma and Jerry… And I'm not responsible, not even through the carelessness of a dropped cigarette… not responsible for anything…. I can explain it all to everybody, and most of all to Francine—poor Francine—she suffered—

Will was staring at her. And all at once, she saw that his cool, formal courtesy was nothing more than a defense. She saw his painful effort to contain his pain within himself. And bowing her head into her hands she broke into sobs.

The next instant brought Will to his knees before her. “What is it? For God's sake, tell me,” he cried, forcing her face up toward his own.

“You see—you see,” she stammered, “they thought I did it. That I burned down the office because I was in a rage about a woman, and Gerald found my things on the lawn, and it was a murder, you see, because the man, the poor fireman, died, and that's arson murder, a felony-murder, and I—I—”

“They thought it was
you
?”

“Yes, yes, they thought it was, and Gerald, he said—”

Will got up and took her into his arms, while she, with her head on his shoulder, cried out her story.

“Take your time, take your time,” he whispered, kissing her head, stroking and holding her. “Who dared to accuse you? Who dared?”

“Well, Gerald. I told you—”

“He ought to be drawn and quartered. Or is he insane?”

“No, no. He really believes that I did it.”

“Oh God in heaven, why didn't you tell me all this
before?” Will's cry was agonized. “Didn't you trust me? Why?”

“I was too afraid. I was terrified. They would say I had a motive, and I did have one. So I had no defense, did I? You don't know what fear like that can do to you. Every hour of every day, I thought of my children. And all the fear was locked up inside me, sealed like a vault in a bank. Sealed. I felt that if I talked about it, it would come true. You see how things do come out after twenty-five years, don't you?”

“But me! Me. You knew I loved you. I would have done anything—”

“I wanted to live with you, Will. But you wanted a wife. How could I do that to you? If all of a sudden I should be accused and very likely convicted—how could I do that to you?” she repeated. “You were, you are, a man rising in the world. To put you at risk to share my trouble—how could I?”

“Who gives a damn about rising? Do you really think that would have stopped me?”

“Are you saying you wouldn't have cared? Will, be truthful with me.”

“I have always been truthful with you, even about those half-baked pictures you used to paint. Yes, I would have been very worried, very worried for your sake. But that would never have kept me from taking you as my wife. You were, you are, for me as close to perfection as one can ever hope to find in this world.”

Perfection
. And quite still, Hyacinth felt his heart as it touched her own, the thumping beat upon the beat of her own.

“Did you ever think about me?” she murmured.

“Yes, the way one thinks sadly, while trying not to, of someone who has gone away or died.”

“I never went away, but there were plenty of times when I wished I would die.”

“But you came to me when you needed help.”

“I knew that if anything should be revealed about me, you wouldn't hurt me.”

“I didn't like Arnie, you know. I told you so. The only time I was with him, riding away from your house in the cab, I felt something concealed behind the friendly grin. It wasn't because I was jealous, although I admit I was. I simply didn't like him.”

“You don't know him, Will. He was—is—the kindest soul on earth, and I can't make any sense out of what he's done.”

“Contradictions. We all have them. Only his were extreme.”

“I pity him…. Of course I also despise him for letting me suffer as I have. I suppose that's my contradiction.”

After a long minute, Will spoke again. His voice was very soft and breaking. “I'm remembering the hammock and the crashing waves. Those nights keep coming back and back again.”

“Do you remember that day in the park when all of a sudden we looked at each other and both of us knew and neither of us said it?”

“And before that there was the day you dropped the bag of books on the sidewalk.”

“And I'm remembering—”

Will raised his hand. “Enough. Enough of remembering. We have lost time to make up for.” He was kissing her and now, at the same time, laughing a little. “Get up, so I can carry you inside.”

Y
es,” Gerald said, “you could have knocked me over with a feather. I'm still in shock.” Hyacinth had been bringing the last of the children's belongings down the stairs, when Gerald appeared. Having hoped to avoid him but caught now at the foot of the stairs, she stood there surrounded by boxes and bags.

“How a man as smart as Arnie is can mess up his life like this is beyond me. Who ever could have imagined the things he's done?”

And who could imagine that Gerald would be talking to her as naturally as if they were in the habit of holding daily conversations? Here in his tennis whites, cradling his racket and shaking his head in astonished disbelief, he continued his narration.