5

Plum Barrow Lane intersected Bayberry at a corner where a tall gray colonial that looked more like a law office than a house lorded it over the little saltbox across the street. What we had seen inside the tavern made Elm Hill ugly and threatening.

The houses with their nameplates, huge mailboxes, and neat lawns faced the narrow streets bluntly, like the tenements along Horatio Street. They might have been as empty as the tenements. The garage doors had been sealed tight to the asphalt driveways by remote control. Ours was the only car in sight. Ransom and I could have been the only people in Elm Hill. "Do you really know where you're going?" This, the first sentence Ransom had spoken since inviting me to waste his gasoline, was a grudging snarl directed to the side window. His entire upper body was twisted to rest his head on his right shoulder.

"This is their street," I said.

"Everything looks alike." He had transferred his anger to our surroundings. Of course, he was correct: all the streets in Elm Hill did look very much alike.

"I hate these brain-dead toytowns." A second later: "They put their names on those signs so they can come home to the right house at night." After another pause: "You know what I object to about all this? It's so tacky."

"I'll drive you home and come back by myself," I said, and he shut up.

From the end of the block, the house looked almost undamaged. A woman in jeans and a gray sweatshirt was shoving a cardboard box into the rear of an old blue Volvo station wagon drawn up onto the rutted tracks to the garage. A tall, curved lamp ending in a round white bubble stood on the grass behind her. Her short white hair gleamed in the sun.

I pulled the Pontiac onto the tracks and parked behind the Volvo. John pushed the Colt under his seat. The woman moved away from the station wagon and glanced at the house before coming toward us. When I got out of the car, she gave me a shy, almost rueful smile. She thought we were from the fire department or the insurance company, and she gestured at her house. "Well, there it is." A light, vaguely European accent tugged at her voice. "It wouldn't have been so bad, except the explosion buckled the floor all the way into the bedroom."

The prettiness her old neighbors had mentioned was still visible in her round face, clean of makeup, beneath the thick cap of white hair. A streak of black ash smudged her chin. She wiped her hands on her jeans and stepped forward to take my hand in a light, firm handshake. "The whole thing was pretty scary, but we're doing all right."

A thin man with an angular face and a corona of graying hair came off the porch with a heap of folded clothes in his arms. He said he'd be right with us and went to the back of the Volvo and pushed the pile of clothes in next to the box.

John came up beside me, and Mrs. Sunchana turned with us to look at what had happened to her house. The explosion had knocked in the side of the kitchen, and the roof had collapsed into the fire. Roof tiles curled like leaves, and wooden spars jutted up through the mess. Charred furniture stood against the far wall of the blackened living room. A glittering chaos of shattered glass and china covered the tilted floor of the living room. The heavy, deathlike stench of burned fabric and wet ash came breathing out of the ruin.

"I hope we can save the sections of the house left standing," said Mr. Sunchana. He spoke with the same slight, lilting accent as his wife, but not as idiomatically. "What is your opinion?"

"I'd better explain myself," I said, and told them my name. "I left a note yesterday, saying that I wanted to talk to you about your old landlord on South Seventh Street, Bob Bandolier. I realize that this is a terrible time for you, but I'd appreciate any time you can give me."

Mr. Sunchana was shaking his head and walking away before I was halfway through this little speech, but his wife stayed with me to the end. "How do you know that we used to live in that house?"

"I talked to Frank and Hannah Belknap."

"Theresa," said her husband. He was standing in front of the ruined porch and the fire-blackened front door. He gestured at the rubble.

"I found your note when we came home, but it was after ten, and I thought it might be too late to call."

"I'd appreciate any help you can give me," I said. "I realize it's an imposition."

John was leaning against the hood of the Pontiac, staring at the destruction.

"We have so much to do," said her husband. "This is not important, talking about that person."

"Yesterday, someone followed me out here from Millhaven," I told her. "I just caught a glimpse of him. When I read about your house in the paper this morning, I wondered if the explosion was really accidental."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Sunchana came bristling back toward his wife and me. His hair looked like a wire brush, and red veins threaded the whites of his eyes. "Because you came here, someone did this terrible thing to us? It's ridiculous. Who would do that?"

His wife did not speak for a moment. Then she turned to her husband. "You said you wanted to take a break."

"Sir," David said, "we haven't seen or spoken to Mr. Bandolier in decades." He pushed his fingers through his hair, making it stand up even more stiffly.

His wife focused on me again. "Why are you so interested in him?"

"Do you remember the Blue Rose murders?" I asked. The irises snapped in her black eyes. "I was looking for information that had to do with those killings, and his name came up in connection with the St. Alwyn Hotel."

"You are—what? A policeman? A private detective?"

"I'm a writer," I said. "But this is a matter of personal interest to me. And to my friend too." I introduced John, and he moved forward to nod hello to the Sunchanas. They barely looked at him.

"Why is it personally interesting to you?"

I couldn't tell what was going on. Theresa and David Sunchana were both standing in front of me now, David with a sort of weary nervousness that suggested an unhappy foreknowledge of everything I was going to say to him. His wife looked like a bird dog on point.

Maybe David Sunchana knew what I was going to say, but I didn't. "A long time ago, I wrote a novel about the Blue Rose murders," I said. David looked away toward the house, and Theresa frowned. "I followed what I thought were the basic facts of the case, so I made the detective the murderer. I don't know if I ever really believed that, though. Then Mr. Ransom called me about a week ago, after his wife was nearly murdered by someone who wrote Blue Rose near her body."

"Ah," Theresa said. "I am so sorry, Mr. Ransom. I saw it in the papers. But didn't the Dragonette boy kill her?" She glanced at her husband, and his face tightened.

I explained about Walter Dragonette.

"We can't help you," David said. Frowning, Theresa turned to him and then back to me again. I still didn't know what was going on, but I knew that I had to say more.

"I had a private reason for trying to find out about the old Blue Rose murderer," I said. "I think he was the person who killed my sister. She was murdered five days before the first acknowledged victim, and in the same place."

John opened his mouth, then closed it, fast.

"There was a little girl," Theresa said. "Remember, David?"

He nodded.

"April Underhill," I said. "She was nine years old. I want to know who killed her."

"David, the little girl was his sister."

He muttered something that sounded like German played backward.

"Is there somewhere in Elm Hill where I could get you a cup of coffee?"

"There's a coffee shop in the town center," she said.

"David?"

He glanced at his watch, then dropped his hand and carefully, almost fearfully, inspected my face. "We must be back in an hour to meet the men from the company," he said. His wife touched his hand, and he gave her an almost infinitesimal nod.

"I will put my car in the garage," David said. "Theresa, will you please bring in the good lamp?"

I moved toward the lamp behind the Volvo, but he said, "Theresa will do it." He got into the car. Theresa smiled at me and went to pick up the lamp. He drove the station wagon into the wooden shell of the garage with excruciating slowness. She followed him in, set the lamp down in a corner, and went up beside the car. They whispered to one another before he got out of the car. As they came toward me, Theresa's eyes never left my face.

John opened the back door of the Pontiac for them. Before they got in, David took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the smudge from his wife's chin.