Two days after that, Wilcox’s wife came to see them: Ra Bharré. She asked them to call her Brenda. A blonde, she was small but plump as a bun. She seemed so much younger than Wilcox that at first Gavein assumed she was his daughter.
“Don’t apologize, Dave. Everyone makes that mistake. Harry aged a lot on the force. He wasn’t cut out for it, but if a person spends his whole life daydreaming, that’s how he ends up. As a kid, Harry wanted to be a private eye, like in the movies. What did he become? A cop on the beat.”
Wilcox’s first name was Hvar, the word for a dwarf shrub, remarkably resistant to cold and wind and growing in the north of Lavath. The plant was a symbol of endurance and strength of character. Brenda had changed the name in the Davabel manner.
“You’re surprised by our difference in age?”
“Yes.” There was no point denying it.
“Our story is so romantic. A teenage girl watches a program one day about the dangerous work the police do. It shows a policeman in a hospital bed, hit by a stray bullet. That seems so noble to her, she writes a letter. Receiving an answer, she pays a visit to the hospital. Here I am thirty years later.”
“Ours is less romantic,” Ra Mahleiné said. “Four years separated us, and we compensated for that by my taking a prison ship. A kind of personal victory over time. The two of us. Or a personal defeat,” she added grimly.
“You had the courage to go by prison ship?”
“No one told me it would be a prison ship.” The few thin scars on her face turned red.
“True. It’s not generally known. Harry knew things like that, but he was a cop. I did without him, pined for ten years in Lavath rather than travel with compensation to remove the age difference. My best ten years. And then meeting the old Harry, that was awful. I hadn’t found anyone else in that time,” she said lightly, “so I came to him. He had waited for me.”
All three of them knew what a married person remaining in Lavath had to do.
“I didn’t even have the chance, you know,… on that boat,” said Ra Mahleiné. “But how did you get around the difference in category?” To change the embarrassing subject.
“I was too young to pay attention to that in Lavath. And here? I don’t even think Harry was aware he got a three.”
“You came to see me, Brenda?” said Gavein. He was put off by her breezy tone. He had some idea of the lengths Harry must have gone to to secure for her the rights of a legal wife.
“Yes. It’s about Harry and that book. He doesn’t wash. He sits up all night. He thinks of nothing else. He doesn’t even know I’m there. All he does is read. What’s in the book?”
Gavein shrugged. “He won’t give it to me, though he promised he would.”
“If only he’d read on. But he seems to always open to the same place, the beginning. I don’t want him going nuts.”
“He said something once. That the book was active, not passive, that it changed each time. That’s why he reads it in a circle. He keeps going back to page one, experimenting.”
“He told me that too. But sometimes I think it’s the book that’s experimenting. Is this a kind of insanity?”
“I don’t know. You might want to talk to a psychiatrist. Insanity has a chemical basis. If they give him the right pill, that might stop the problem.” Gavein led Brenda to the door.
“Maybe you could take the book away from him, play the bad boss,” Ra Mahleiné suggested after Brenda left.
Gavein nodded. It was not a bad idea.
They were silent. The blue eyes she raised from her knitting were filled with warmth. “Don’t be stiff with me. I didn’t really mean what I said, about not having the chance. She was expecting something like that. She wanted to hear that other women would have done the same. She was lying, of course: she had to marry another man when her husband left.”
“When you said good-bye to me at the airport, my little manul, you gave me a look that reminded me of a look I got from a girl once. I was young, in school. I said no to her. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
“If you hadn’t rejected the first girl,” Ra Mahleiné pointed out, “then the second would never have been able to give you that look. Ah, I see,” she added, understanding, “you only said that to get back at me. It was a jab.”
“A jab for a jab. But that wasn’t what I intended to say.”
“I’ll have to practice making looks in a mirror,” she said. “The first look, hopelessly infatuated teenager. No, the second, because some hussy stole the first look before we met. She was also a blonde? No doubt, because you’re a one-color man.” And she gave him a look that made him melt.
“Yes, also a blonde. I should have been born earlier. That would have made things simpler.”
“You’re joking. Then I wouldn’t have given you the time of day. Even now, sometimes, you seem…” She laughed to herself. “I grew up, Gavein, I matured. That’s the price of our staying together.”
“You were grown up already in Lavath. And I knew you were smarter than me. My only advantage was experience. Now I have no advantage. Some tea?”
“Herbal. But cover it with a saucer, so it steeps.”
“What kind?”
“How about St. John’s wort?” She lowered her head over her work.
He put the tea ball into the glass.
She liked her tea bitter, her herbs bitter. He liked to sit in the chair next to hers and be idle with her.
32
For the next two days Wilcox did not come to work. Prying the book from his hands turned out to be harder than they thought. Laila’s condition worsened; the infection spread, and she developed a high fever. Fatima spent day after day at her bedside.
A gentleman in a gray jacket and velveteen trousers paid a visit to the Throzzes. He was Captain Frank Medved, Tobiany’s superior. Gavein imagined that this policeman would be from the same mold as the other, a giant with a bucket head and fleshy ears. Nothing of the sort: Medved was shorter than Gavein and had a pale, sensitive face.
He sat cross-legged on the rug because the Throzzes as yet had no desk, and he needed to use his laptop.
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions in the matter of Tonescu.”
“I thought everything about that had been answered.”
“Yes and no. We determined that Haifan indeed committed the murders.”
“So?” asked Ra Mahleiné. That she had not offered coffee meant that Medved was not welcome. But only Gavein read this signal.
“I’d like to speak with you also, ma’am, but later,” said the policeman.
“My wife and I are both at a loss,” said Gavein. “If it’s known who committed the murders, then what is the problem?”
“The problem is motive, and the circumstances. Some things remain unclear. I’m counting on your cooperation.”
“I know little.”
“Please tell me, in detail, everything that happened—from the moment you rented a room at the Eislers.”
“Ah! So that’s what this is about.” Gavein broke into a laugh.
There was no chance now that Ra Mahleiné would offer Medved coffee.
“Edda told you her stupid theory of Death stalking her house. Her idea of me as Death’s pointing finger. And you believed her?”
“It’s my job, you know, to check out stupid theories. Tell me everything. I’ll take notes.” He nodded at the keyboard. “This is not an interrogation, merely an interview, which means, say whatever occurs to you and with as many facts as you can supply.”