“I realize that.”
“Do you also realize that the way the timing stacks up, at least from what I heard, you seem to have either stumbled on the corpse a second after Mrs. Krekorian turned Paul into one or else you turned Paul into a corpse a second before Mrs. Krekorian discovered him? That Demarkian man was doing timetables the whole time I was waiting for you, and I don’t blame him.”
Candida was serene. “There’s a flaw in the timetables. I was there when that Helen person came downstairs. I remember what she said.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the door to the bedroom was locked,” Candida said. “She didn’t see anybody or anything. She heard Hannah Krekorian crying and Paul pacing. But it could have been Hannah Krekorian pacing. It could have been anyone. She didn’t see anything.”
“Was somebody else missing from downstairs?”
“I don’t know. There were a lot of people there. Over a hundred, I think.”
“Did any of these hundred or so people besides you and Hannah Krekorian actually know Paul?”
“I don’t know the answer to that either, but I think it would be an interesting line of investigation. All those workshops and seminars and support group meetings. It’s always hard to say for certain that Paul didn’t know somebody. If you see what I mean.”
“Oh, I see. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m a little shook up, of course. I’ve never seen a dead body face-to-face before. When Jacqueline died, I was out of state. And there was all that blood. And Mrs. Krekorian was hysterical. I suppose you heard about the dagger.”
“I heard about it.”
“There wasn’t any blood on it the last time. It was absolutely clean. I wonder what this means.”
“I don’t know what it means.”
“I’m glad I went there,” Candida said. “I don’t care if it will get me in trouble. Paul didn’t care about that woman. He was using her in some way. Paul liked women young and pretty and thin as rails. I should know.”
“He could have matured in his old age,” Fred Scherrer said.
“He didn’t. He just ran out of money. That’s what this is going to turn out to be. Mrs. Krekorian is going to have some money.”
“My, you’re cynical. I don’t think I ever noticed that about you before.”
“I’m not cynical about everything,” Candida said. “I’m just cynical about Paul. And now that he’s dead, of course, it clears everything up. I know just what happened the last time.”
“What?”
Candida took her purse off the seat and put it on her lap. She opened it up and looked through it until she found a gold cigarette case and a gold Dunhill lighter.
“I smoke five cigarettes a year,” she told him, “always in moments of extreme stress. This stress seems to be extreme enough. What do you think?”
Fred Scherrer thought Candida DeWitt was a remarkable woman.
A remarkable woman.
3
Less than a minute after it happened, Lida Arkmanian’s mind was somewhere else, on another planet, in another dimension, lost in space. It was anywhere but there in the bed in the master bedroom of her own town house, lying stretched out against Christopher Hannaford’s side. It was doing anything but thinking about the way her body felt. Her body seemed to have parts she’d never expected the existence of. These parts were popping and shuddering and snapping like champagne inside a corked bottle. Lida thought about the tears on Hannah Krekorian’s face and about Candida DeWitt. She thought about the man she had been married to for thirty-two years, who had loved her without limit but who had not been able to make her feel like this. She thought there had to be something terribly wrong with her. She went to start all over again.
“I shouldn’t have given up cigarettes,” Christopher said out of the dark. “This is the perfect moment.” He began to stroke her hair, so gently she could barely feel it. “Lida?”
“What is it?”
“That’s never happened to you before.”
How could it be so cold under all these blankets? How could it be so cold? Lida pulled the quilt up to her chin. “Don’t be ridiculous, Christopher. I am—over fifty years old.”
“I don’t care if you’re over a hundred years old. That’s never happened to you before.”
Lida sat up. She had blankets all around her. It was dark. Nobody could see her. Why did she feel so exposed?
“All right,” she said. “Yes. That never happened to me before.”
Christopher put his hands behind his head and looked serious. “Did you like it?”