A Stillness in Bethlehem(23)

“He looks so excited,” Gregor said.

Bennis shot him an exasperated look, then turned thoughtful and spun around, so that she was not only looking at Tibor but facing him directly. Gregor caught her expression at the exact moment when she began to realize it was true. When Tibor had first sat down, he had been shaky and ashen, much as he had been for the past two weeks. Mostly, he had seemed infinitely sad. It was a change in demeanor that had scared Gregor Demarkian to death, because Gregor Demarkian had seen it before, in legions of old people who had given up and decided it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to die. It wasn’t a decision that automatically accompanied old age. The man who owned the ground-floor apartment in Gregor’s four-story, four-apartment brownstone back on Cavanaugh Street was well into his eighties, and if there was one thing old George Tekemanian hadn’t done, it was give up. What frightened Gregor was that he’d never known anyone to look like that and stay alive for more than a few months. What frightened him more was that he didn’t understand why Tibor should look like that in the first place. Fatigue, the doctor kept telling him. The doctor was a nice Armenian boy from over in Ardmore and the son of a friend of Sheila Kashinian’s. He seemed competent enough, but Gregor didn’t trust him. Gregor hadn’t trusted doctors since his wife Elizabeth had died of cancer in terrible pain. Gregor had always been convinced that the pain could have been avoided, since the treatments that caused it were worthless anyway. As for Tibor, Gregor just didn’t know. Fatigue. Tibor certainly seemed fatigued. He seemed terminally fatigued.

All of a sudden, Tibor didn’t look fatigued at all. He had a newspaper folded open on his lap. He was jumping up and down in his country print-covered blue wing chair. His face was shiny bright. If Tibor’s eyes hadn’t been sparkling, Gregor would have thought he’d developed a fever.

Gregor moved up closer to Bennis and said into her ear, “Let’s both of us go over there and find out what’s going on.”

“I think we’d better,” Bennis agreed.

“I wonder what the newspaper is. Do you suppose he’s got hold of The Boston Globe?”

“Not if he’s looking that happy.”

Gregor decided not to pay attention to Bennis’s aspersions on the city of Boston—Bennis used to live there, and the experience did not seem to have left a good impression—and led the advance across the room to Tibor instead. By then, Tibor had gone from shining and sparkling to chuckling. He seemed entirely unaware of their approach. Then, at the last minute, when Gregor was just about to loom up at his side, Tibor looked up at both of them and smiled the widest smile they’d had out of him in two months.

“Krekor,” he said enthusiastically. “Bennis. This is wonderful. You must see what I have here.”

“We want to see what you have there,” Bennis said.

“Yes, yes.” Tibor began to unfold his paper, got tangled in it and then forced himself to be patient. Finally he got the paper into the shape he wanted it in and held it up. “It was lying right here on the coffee table, and I picked it up with no idea at all. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Bennis Hannaford might have thought it was wonderful. Gregor Demarkian definitely did not. The paper was the Bethlehem News and Mail, and the double-page inside spread Tibor had opened it to was headlined:

    THE DETECTIVE IN ACTION

    HOW THE ARMENIAN-AMERICAN HERCULE POIROT

    SOLVED THE CASE OF THE ARTFUL ARBITRAGUER

    (Part Two of a Three-Part Series)



Gregor Demarkian had been called “the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot” before. He had been called that by the Philadelphia Inquirer, People magazine and The CBS Evening News. He had even done something recently that might provide an excuse for this article, meaning investigate a murder on the Atlantic ocean that had rich people and expensive eccentricities in it. The problem was, it hadn’t been recently enough, and he hated articles like this one. He had expected to suffer through five days of bad playwriting and sentimental Christmas pageantry for the sake of his friend, Father Tibor Kasparian. He had not expected to have to suffer through the local newspaper’s latest idea for increasing their circulation.

It didn’t help any that Tibor had leaped to his feet and was bouncing up and down saying, “The paper only comes out once a week every Tuesday. This is last Tuesday’s paper, Bennis, and if this paper had come out every day like an ordinary paper, then I would have missed it. Wouldn’t that have been a shame?”





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