While he was dressing in slacks, loafers, open shirt, sweater, and tweed jacket, he heard the door buzzers ring and presumed it was some enterprise of Mrs. Sawyer. She was trying to restock the kitchen shelves.
Coming down the corridor, then, he was surprised to see Inspector Flynn in the hall. His Irish knit sweater made his chest and shoulders look even more huge, his head even more minute.
“Ah!” Flynn grinned amiably. “I was hoping you’d be at home.”
He was carrying a package which was clearly a bottle of something.
“Where’s Grover?” Fletch asked, coming into the ball.
He took Flynn’s outstretched hand.
“I have some time of my own, you know,” Flynn said. “The department lets me off the leash sometimes on, the weekend. Had to come nearby—wanted to pick up a Schönberg score the store doesn’t have in yet—and happened to consider the City of Boston owes you a bottle of whiskey.”
He presented his package with the full joy of giving.
“That’s damned nice of you.”
It was twelve-year-old Pinch.
“Hope I’m not disturbing anything?”
“Oh, no. I was just going to see a couple of Alec Guinness pictures at the Exeter Street Theater. That’s nearby, isn’t it?”
“What a darling man! He’s Irish, you know. Most English people you think of with talent are.” He rubbed his hands together. “I thought it being a rainy Saturday afternoon, you might like to sit with me over a taste…?”
“I thought you never touch the stuff?”
“I never do. But, like work itself, I never mind watching another man partake.” He turned to Mrs. Sawyer. “I don’t suppose you keep a camomile tea?”
She said, “I think we’ve got Red Zinger.”
“Any herb tea will do. Perhaps you’d bring a glass, some ice and water into the study as well, for Mister Fletcher here.”
The thing seemed decided.
Flynn stepped into the den.
Fletch snapped on the lights and began to open the odd-shaped bottle.
Flynn rummaged around inside his sweater, having driven his hand through the neck of it, and pulled two sheets of folded paper from his shirt pocket.
“I was able to secure the complete passenger list for Flight 529 from Rome last Tuesday.” He handed It to Fletch, who put down the open bottle. “I wonder if you’d cast your eye along that and see if there are any names you know.”
“You think Ruth Fryer’s murder might have something to do with something I was doing in Rome, eh?”
“Mister Fletcher, you said yourself, people hate you all over the world. Surely one might spend an airfare to wreak your undoing.”
Most of the names on the list were Italian; most of the rest were Irish—modern-day pilgrims on a between Rome and America in search of spiritual solation or material attainment.
Flynn stood, hands in his pockets, chin back, the amiable grin still on his face.
“Supposing we were friends, Mister Fletcher,” he said. “What would I call you? Surely not Irwin Maurice. Are you used to the name Peter, yet? Or you down to calling yourself ‘Pete’?”
“Fletch,” Fletch said. “People call me Fletch.”
“Fletch, is it? Now that’s an impudent enough name. Couldn’t an Irish poet dance a Maypole playing with a name like that, though?”
“I recognize no one’s name on the list.”
Fletch handed it back to him. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“And I should call you Francis Xavier, right?”
“People call me Frank,” said Flynn. “Except my wife, who calls me Frannie. She has a kindlier, softer view of me.”
Mrs. Sawyer entered with a tray.
“I had the hot water on, anyway,” she said.
On the tray were an ice bucket, an empty glass, a water carafe, a teapot, cream, sugar, a cup, saucer, spoon.
“Ah, that’s lovely.” Flynn rubbed his hands again. “Tell me, Mrs. Sawyer, when you left here after cleaning up Monday night, was there water in the carafe in the living room next to the whiskey bottle?”
“No, sir. Of course, there wasn’t. That had been washed out, dried out, and stoppered.”
“I wouldn’t think so. Who’d leave water out to go stale, when it’s so easily replaceable? Was the whiskey bottle there when you left?”
“What whiskey bottle? Which whiskey bottle?”
“There was more than one?”
“There were a lot of bottles on that table. That was Mister Connors’ little bar. There were Scotch bottles, bourbon bottles, gin bottles, sherry and port decanters. Plenty of clean glasses.”
“What happened to them?”
“Mister Fletcher put them away. I found them all in a cupboard in the kitchen. I figured he couldn’t stand the sight of such things anymore than I can.”
Flynn looked his question at Fletch.
“No,” Fletch said. “I didn’t.”
“And,” Flynn asked Mrs. Sawyer, “I suppose you’ve been rummaging around in that cupboard, touching the bottles and thus obliterating any fingerprints which might have been on them?”
“Of course, I’ve been touching the bottles. I’ve been shoving them back and forth. They’ve been in the way of the sugar, salt, and pepper.”
“‘The sugar, salt, and pepper.’ A most active cupboard. No use,” said Flynn. “Thank you, Mrs. Sawyer.”
“You want anything else, you just let me know,” she said. “I’m so far behind in my own work, I have no hope of finishing, anyway.”
“Salt of the earth,” said Flynn, pouring out his tea. “Salt of the earth.” Across the hall, the kitchen door swung shut. “Of course it’s always the salt of the earth that destroys the evidence.”
They sat in, the red leather chairs, two men in sweaters, one in a jacket as well, one with a cup of tea, the other with a Scotch and water.
Through the light curtains of the long windows was a dark sky. Every few moments a gust of wind from the Boston Gardens splattered a sheet of rain against the windows.
From six storeys below they could hear the hiss of tires going along Beacon Street.
“A dark, gloomy day like this,” said Flynn, “reminds me of when I was in boy in Munich, growing up. Dark days, indeed.”
“Munich?”
“Let’s see. On a day like this, a rainy fall Saturday afternoon, I’d be obliged to be in the gymnasium—the real gymnasium, the sports place—doing pushups, scrambling up ropes, wrestling until the blood was ready to burst our heads.”
“You’re Irish.”
“That I am. Or we’d be out running miles in the wet, around the countryside, looking out for the little red markers, sweat and rain mixed on our faces, the air heavy in our lungs, the ground just turning hard beneath our feet. What a splendid way to bring a boy up. No doubt I owe my current hardy constitution to it.”
“To what?”
“I was a member of the Hitler Youth.”
“You what?”
“Ah, yes, laddy. A man is many things, in his past.”
“The Jugendfuehrer?”
“You’ve got it just right, laddy.”
“How is that possible?”
“As you’ve said yourself: Anything is possible. Is this whiskey all right?”
“Very good,” said Fletch.
“Not being a drinking man myself, I’m shy in making choices for others. I’m afraid it was the peculiar shape of the bottle that caught my eye.”
“It’s fine.”
“I don’t suppose one should buy the whiskey for the bottle?”
“One might as well.”
“For all you drink, you mean. I see you’re not a gulper.”
“Not in front of you anyway. How could Francis Xavier Flynn be a member of the Jugendfuehrer?”
“Now, haven’t I asked myself that same question a thousand times?”