Hannah got a cup out of Helen’s china cabinet and put the teakettle on for water. Helen kept a little box of teabags next to the chocolate Ovaltine in her pantry and Hannah got that out too. Hannah didn’t know if she wanted a cup of tea, but getting one was something to do. She wished she’d had the courage to go down to the Ararat this morning. She wished she knew what people were thinking. Most of all, she wished she knew if people were laughing at her. She wouldn’t blame them if they were. Paul Hazzard, for heaven’s sake. What had she been thinking of?
There was the scratchy sound of a key in a lock and then the whoosh of an opening door. Helen Tevorakian’s voice sailed through the apartment. “She’s around here someplace, Krekor,” Helen said. “The only thing I worry about is that she might be sleeping.”
The teakettle was spitting water and air. Hannah took it off the flame and poured boiling water into her teacup. She heard the front door close and said, “I’m not sleeping, Helen. I’m in here.”
“She’s in the kitchen,” Helen said irrelevantly. “Come this way, Krekor. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this apartment.”
Hannah didn’t know if Gregor had ever been in this apartment either, but it hardly seemed to matter. She turned off the stove and sat down in front of her tea. She put a single spare teaspoon of sugar in it and waited for them to come in. Only Gregor entered. He was wearing his heaviest long coat and his longest scarf. He looked cold.
“Where’s Helen?” she asked him.
“Helen’s gone off someplace to do her laundry. She’s trying to give us a little privacy.”
“Did you ask her to?”
“Yes.”
“Helen’s very good at taking directions. Do you remember? She used to get ribbons for it when we were all in school.”
“Mmm. I was just over at Father Tibor’s apartment. He wasn’t home.”
“He went to lunch with somebody. Some young woman. I heard Helen talking to Sheila Kashinian about it on the phone. He’ll be back around five-thirty or so. He promised.”
“Good.” Gregor unwound his scarf and draped it over the back of a chair. He took off his coat and threw that over the back of another chair. Hannah appraised him dispassionately. It was different for boys, she knew that. With girls, it was what you looked like and that was it. Unless you had a fairy godmother or the money for a good plastic surgeon, girls were born blessed or cursed. Boys could change everything with what they did. Gregor had not been considered especially attractive in grammar school or high school. As soon as he’d gone off to the University of Pennsylvania, all that had changed. As soon as he’d graduated, he’d become a catch. All the girls on Cavanaugh Street had wanted to go out with him.
Gregor sat down in the chair with the scarf on the back of it. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re staring at me. Do I have my shirt on inside out?”
“No, Krekor. I was just thinking about us. You and me and Lida and the rest of us. When we were in high school.”
“Were you? I try not to.”
“It’s all I seem to think about these days. Not just—not just since Paul died, you know, but from before. From when I first met him. It doesn’t seem possible that that was only a week ago.”
“I think I’ll get myself something to drink.”
Gregor got up, found hot water, found a cup, found a spoon, looked for coffee, and settled for one of the teabags instead. He put a cup of tea together and sat down again.
“Well,” he said. “Here we are. Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, Krekor. I am all right. Are the police going to arrest me?”
Gregor stirred uneasily. “I don’t know.”
“I keep expecting them to,” Hannah said. “It only makes sense. There I was, standing over the body with a smoking gun. So to speak.”
“Yes, I know, Hannah. But these things are more complicated than that.”
“And you know I didn’t kill him.”
“I believe you when you say you didn’t kill him.”
“Yes.” Hannah nodded. “There is a distinction there, and you ought to make it. But I didn’t kill him.”
Gregor took his teabag out of his cup, tasted the tea, made a face, and reached for the sugar. “Let’s start further back now, to about the time you ran upstairs. You ran upstairs because the things Candida DeWitt was saying made you upset—”
“I ran upstairs because the existence of Candida DeWitt made me look like a damn fool,” Hannah corrected him. “Excuse my language, Krekor, but I can’t help it. I am very good at self-delusion, but even I have to quit sometimes.”