“It’s about islands,” he said, and that was all he told her.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel would find him gazing at her sometimes, just gazing, and he would smile when he saw that she had noticed. She asked him on one such occasion what he was thinking, and he replied, “About you. I’m thinking about you.” He said it with guilelessness, with a sort of innocence, and she felt something happen within her, some suffusion of warmth, that made her want to hold him, there and then, hold him to her.
He stayed for days at a stretch, going back to his flat in Saxe-Coburg Street only to pick up the mail and find things, a bassoon reed, a page of his composition which he had scribbled and left somewhere, a book he was reading. For much of the time they were alone, but once they invited friends round for a dinner at which they sat out until midnight, under a sky which was dark, but only just, dotted with faint stars. They talked, united in a common feeling of contentment and peace, and then sat silently, with neither saying anything for a long time, each looking up at the sky, alone in his or her private musing.
Isabel bumped into Cat in Bruntsfield, in the post office. It was an awkward meeting; Cat was polite but seemed embarrassed, and Isabel’s efforts at a normal conversation were too studied to be anything but stiff. They parted after a few minutes, nothing resolved. Isabel asked herself whether she should try another apology, but decided again that there was nothing for her to apologise for. It was taking a long time, but Cat would come round eventually. She almost told Jamie about it, but stopped herself because it occurred to her that he might interpret Cat’s jealousy as a sign that she wanted him back, which Isabel knew was not the case.
Then came the letter from Mimi. They were back in Dallas, and she complained about the heat. Joe had gone to a legal history conference in Denver. It was cooler there, he had told her, T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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and she wondered whether she should have gone too. Then: Something bad happened here a couple of days ago. Tom Bruce, who entertained us all, had a fire at his place near Tyler. He has a house there, and he goes there for weekends now and then. It went up pretty quickly, I’m afraid. He was in it at the time.
Isabel strained to make out Mimi’s handwriting. A word had been smudged, but the rest of the sentence was clear.
In spite of that . . . he managed to escape out a window.
The front door had been locked by somebody who had a key. He said that he didn’t bother to lock up at night. But the fire people thought that he had probably done so and had forgotten. I’ve done that myself, haven’t you? Forgotten whether or not I’ve locked something. But I imagine that somebody else might have had a key.
Tom was all right, apart from having breathed in smoke, which made them keep him in hospital for a night.
Hank and Barb Lischer saw him. They said that he was pretty shocked, but otherwise none the worse for it all. It’s not a very nice story, bearing in mind that the fire chief in Tyler says that the fire was deliberately started. He’s ada-mant about it. Apparently they can tell if gas has been used, and they said it had. So who did it?
Mimi then wrote, and underlined, We know, of course. She understood, and shared, Isabel’s liking for crosswords, and wrote, Take the saint from German anxiety, that is.
Isabel smiled at the clue, which was hardly a revelation. She would be more direct, though, and called Mimi immediately.
“I’ve had your letter,” she said. “That fire: you know, I know—do you think Tom knows?”
“He’s not stupid,” said Mimi. “I imagine he does.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“But are you sure?”
“No,” said Mimi. “I’m not.”
“Sometimes when things concern us intimately, we don’t see the obvious.”
“We don’t,” said Mimi. “Often we don’t.”
There was silence as each waited for the other to say something. It was Isabel who spoke. “Go and ask him if he’s done something about his will,” she said. “He said that he had made arrangements after the engagement.”
“He must have done something about that,” said Mimi.
“He has his advisers. I can’t imagine that sort of thing would be left.”
“But it can be,” Isabel protested. “You’re always hearing about people who don’t bring these things up to date. Then they die and their first wife gets everything and the second nothing.”
Mimi sounded doubtful. “But is it our business?”
“Yes,” said Isabel firmly. “It is. But, if you like, I’ll call him.
Just give me his number.”
“I’ll speak to him,” said Mimi.
“And tell him to tell Angie,” added Isabel.
“To tell her what?”
“To tell her that the provision he made has been unmade.
That’s very important.” She paused. “Of course it may have nothing to do with it. It may just be a settling of scores. She feels rejected. A fire might restore her amour propre. ”
“It’s unlikely that they will be able to prove anything,” said Mimi. “And anyway, even if he has an idea that it’s her, would he want to take matters further? Probably not.
“You may be right, though,” Mimi continued. “Anything else?”
T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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“Just an observation,” said Isabel. “A question for us. How wrong can you be?”
“Perhaps we should trust our intuitions,” said Mimi.
“Of course, there are other reasons for arson,” said Isabel, as an afterthought. “Especially in the country. Local issues. Local jealousies. Resentment over boundaries, trees, livestock. Anything.” One just could not tell. And until there was proof, nothing was clear, which was the way that so much of life was—vague, ambiguous, by no means as simple as we imagine it to be.
“And people set fire to their own property,” said Mimi.
“That’s very common, apparently. And not just for insurance purposes.”
Isabel said nothing. She remembered a conversation she had had with Tom on their walk up the hill, about something to do with a house not being in the right place. They had talked about it. But she could not remember exactly what had been said, and after puzzling for a few moments, she stopped thinking about it.
She rang off. In her mind there was a counting rhyme, one of those rhymes one learns as a child, and which stays in the mind for ever. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo: he lies, she lies, he lies, she lies, he lies . . . And the finger ended up pointing at the child who was in the wrong place when one finished counting. Liar!
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E
E
THE CONVERSATION with Mimi took place on a Monday; the next two days were days of activity and revelation. By Wednesday she knew that she had to talk to Jamie. He had gone to Glasgow to take part in a musical workshop organised by the chamber orchestra in which he occasionally played. That was due to finish on Friday afternoon and he would return, he said, on Saturday afternoon: there were friends he wanted to meet in Glasgow. Isabel said to him, “You don’t think that you would be able to come back for Friday evening? We could have dinner.”