The prettiness her old neighbors had mentioned was still visible in her round face, clean of makeup, beneath the thick cap of white hair. A streak of black ash smudged her chin. She wiped her hands on her jeans and stepped forward to take my hand in a light, firm handshake. "The whole thing was pretty scary, but we're doing all right."
A thin man with an angular face and a corona of graying hair came off the porch with a heap of folded clothes in his arms. He said he'd be right with us and went to the back of the Volvo and pushed the pile of clothes in next to the box.
John came up beside me, and Mrs. Sunchana turned with us to look at what had happened to her house. The explosion had knocked in the side of the kitchen, and the roof had collapsed into the fire. Roof tiles curled like leaves, and wooden spars jutted up through the mess. Charred furniture stood against the far wall of the blackened living room. A glittering chaos of shattered glass and china covered the tilted floor of the living room. The heavy, deathlike stench of burned fabric and wet ash came breathing out of the ruin.
"I hope we can save the sections of the house left standing," said Mr. Sunchana. He spoke with the same slight, lilting accent as his wife, but not as idiomatically. "What is your opinion?"
"I'd better explain myself," I said, and told them my name. "I left a note yesterday, saying that I wanted to talk to you about your old landlord on South Seventh Street, Bob Bandolier. I realize that this is a terrible time for you, but I'd appreciate any time you can give me."
Mr. Sunchana was shaking his head and walking away before I was halfway through this little speech, but his wife stayed with me to the end. "How do you know that we used to live in that house?"
"I talked to Frank and Hannah Belknap."
"Theresa," said her husband. He was standing in front of the ruined porch and the fire-blackened front door. He gestured at the rubble.
"I found your note when we came home, but it was after ten, and I thought it might be too late to call."
"I'd appreciate any help you can give me," I said. "I realize it's an imposition."
John was leaning against the hood of the Pontiac, staring at the destruction.
"We have so much to do," said her husband. "This is not important, talking about that person."
"Yesterday, someone followed me out here from Millhaven," I told her. "I just caught a glimpse of him. When I read about your house in the paper this morning, I wondered if the explosion was really accidental."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Sunchana came bristling back toward his wife and me. His hair looked like a wire brush, and red veins threaded the whites of his eyes. "Because you came here, someone did this terrible thing to us? It's ridiculous. Who would do that?"
His wife did not speak for a moment. Then she turned to her husband. "You said you wanted to take a break."
"Sir," David said, "we haven't seen or spoken to Mr. Bandolier in decades." He pushed his fingers through his hair, making it stand up even more stiffly.
His wife focused on me again. "Why are you so interested in him?"
"Do you remember the Blue Rose murders?" I asked. The irises snapped in her black eyes. "I was looking for information that had to do with those killings, and his name came up in connection with the St. Alwyn Hotel."
"You are—what? A policeman? A private detective?"
"I'm a writer," I said. "But this is a matter of personal interest to me. And to my friend too." I introduced John, and he moved forward to nod hello to the Sunchanas. They barely looked at him.
"Why is it personally interesting to you?"
I couldn't tell what was going on. Theresa and David Sunchana were both standing in front of me now, David with a sort of weary nervousness that suggested an unhappy foreknowledge of everything I was going to say to him. His wife looked like a bird dog on point.
Maybe David Sunchana knew what I was going to say, but I didn't. "A long time ago, I wrote a novel about the Blue Rose murders," I said. David looked away toward the house, and Theresa frowned. "I followed what I thought were the basic facts of the case, so I made the detective the murderer. I don't know if I ever really believed that, though. Then Mr. Ransom called me about a week ago, after his wife was nearly murdered by someone who wrote Blue Rose near her body."
"Ah," Theresa said. "I am so sorry, Mr. Ransom. I saw it in the papers. But didn't the Dragonette boy kill her?" She glanced at her husband, and his face tightened.
I explained about Walter Dragonette.
"We can't help you," David said. Frowning, Theresa turned to him and then back to me again. I still didn't know what was going on, but I knew that I had to say more.
"I had a private reason for trying to find out about the old Blue Rose murderer," I said. "I think he was the person who killed my sister. She was murdered five days before the first acknowledged victim, and in the same place."
John opened his mouth, then closed it, fast.
"There was a little girl," Theresa said. "Remember, David?"
He nodded.
"April Underhill," I said. "She was nine years old. I want to know who killed her."
"David, the little girl was his sister."
He muttered something that sounded like German played backward.
"Is there somewhere in Elm Hill where I could get you a cup of coffee?"
"There's a coffee shop in the town center," she said.
"David?"
He glanced at his watch, then dropped his hand and carefully, almost fearfully, inspected my face. "We must be back in an hour to meet the men from the company," he said. His wife touched his hand, and he gave her an almost infinitesimal nod.
"I will put my car in the garage," David said. "Theresa, will you please bring in the good lamp?"
I moved toward the lamp behind the Volvo, but he said, "Theresa will do it." He got into the car. Theresa smiled at me and went to pick up the lamp. He drove the station wagon into the wooden shell of the garage with excruciating slowness. She followed him in, set the lamp down in a corner, and went up beside the car. They whispered to one another before he got out of the car. As they came toward me, Theresa's eyes never left my face.
John opened the back door of the Pontiac for them. Before they got in, David took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the smudge from his wife's chin.
6
As if by arrangement, the Sunchanas did not mention either their former landlord or the Blue Rose murders while we were in the car. Theresa described how the policeman had miraculously walked into the smoke to carry them out through the bedroom window. "That man saved our lives, really he did, so David and I can't be too tragic about the house. Can we, David?"
She was their public voice, and he assented. "Of course we cannot be tragic."
"Then we'll live in a trailer while we build a new one. We'll put it on the front lawn, like gypsies."
"They'll love that, in Elm Hill," John said.
"Are you staying in a hotel?" I asked.
"We're with my sister. She and her husband moved to Elm Hill years before us—that's why we came here. When we bought our house, it was the only one on the street. There were fields all around us."
Other questions drew out the information that they had moved to Millhaven from Yugoslavia, where in the first days of their marriage they had rented out rooms in their house to tourists while David had gone to university. They had moved to America just before the war. David had trained as an accountant and eventually got a job with the Glax Corporation.
"The Glax Corporation?" I remembered Theresa's saying "the Dragonette boy." On our left, sunlight turned half the pond's surface to a still, rich gold. Mallards floated in pairs on the gilded water. "You must have known Walter Dragonette."