"She died about ten years ago."
"And now he's retired? He doesn't do anything at all?"
"I suppose just looking after his money is a full-time job."
"April could have done that for him," Ransom said.
We crossed Waterloo Parade and walked another block in silence while Ransom thought about his wife.
After we crossed Balaclava Lane, the houses began to be slightly larger, set farther apart on larger lots. Between Berlin Avenue and Eastern Shore Drive, the value of the property increases with every block—walking eastward, we were moving toward John Ransom's childhood neighborhood.
Ransom's silence continued across Omdurman Road, Victoria Terrace, Salisbury Road. We reached the long street called The Sevens, where sprawling houses on vast lawns silently asserted that they were just as good as the houses one block farther east, on Eastern Shore Road. He stopped walking and wiped his forehead again. "When I was a kid, I walked all over this neighborhood. Now it seems so foreign to me. It's as if I never lived here at all."
"Aren't the same people basically still here?"
"Nope—my parents' generation died or moved to the west coast of Florida, and people my age all moved out to Riverwood. Even Brooks-Lowood moved, did you know that? Four years ago, they sold the plant and built a big Georgian campus out in Riverwood."
He looked around, and for a moment he seemed to be considering buying one of the big showy houses. "Most people like April, people with new money, they bought places out in Riverwood. She wouldn't hear of it. April liked being in the city—she liked being able to walk. She liked that little house of ours, and she liked it just where it is."
He was using the past tense, I noticed, and I felt a wave of pity for all he was going through.
"Sometimes," he said. "I get so discouraged."
We walked up the rest of the block and turned right onto Eastern Shore Drive. Mansions of every conceivable style lined both sides of the wide road. Huge brick piles with turrets and towers, half-timbered Tudor structures, Moorish fantasies, giant stone palaces with stained-glass windows—money expressing itself unselfconsciously and unfettered by taste. Competing with one another, the people who built these enormous structures had bought grandeur by the yard.
Eventually, I pointed out Tom Pasmore's house. It was on the west side of the drive, not the lake side, and dark green vines grew up the gray stone of its facade. As always in Lamont von Heilitz's day, the curtains were closed against the light.
We went up the walk to the front door, and I rang the bell. We waited for what seemed a long time. John Ransom gave me the look he'd give a student who did not hand in a paper on time. I pressed the bell again. Maybe twenty seconds passed.
"Are you sure His Lordship is up?"
"Hold on," I said. Inside the house, footsteps came toward the door.
After shooting me another critical glance, John pulled his damp handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the back of his neck and his forehead. The lock clicked. He squared his shoulders and worked his face into a pretty good imitation of a smile. The door swung open, and Tom Pasmore stood on the other side of the screen, blinking and smiling back. He was wearing a pale blue suit with a double-breasted vest still partially unbuttoned over a snowy white shirt and a dark blue silk tie. Comb marks separated his damp hair. He looked tired and a little out of focus.
11
Ransom said, "Hey, big fella!" His voice was too loud. "You had us worried!"
"Tim and John, what a pleasure," said Tom, He was fumbling with the buttons of the vest as his eyes traveled back and forth between us. "Isn't this something?" He pushed the screen door open, and John Ransom had to step backward to move around it. Still moving around the screen door on the expanse of the front step, Ransom stuck out his right hand. Tom took it and said, "Well, just imagine."
"It's been a long time," John Ransom said. "Too long."
"Come on in," Tom said, and dropped backward into the relative darkness of the house. I could smell traces of the soap and shampoo from his shower as I stepped into the house. Low lamps glowed here and there, on tables and on the walls. The familiar clutter filled the enormous room. I moved away from the door to let John Ransom come in.
"You're very good to agree to—" Ransom stopped talking as he finally saw what the ground floor of Tom Pasmore's house really looked like. He stood with his mouth open for a moment, then recovered himself. "To agree to see me. It means a lot to me, all the more since I gather from Tim that what you can tell me is, ah, rather on the personal side—"
He was still taking in the interior, which would have matched none of his expectations. Lamont von Heilitz, the previous owner of Tom's house, had turned most of the ground floor into a single enormous room filled with file cases, stacks of books and newspapers, tables strewn with the details of whatever murder was on his mind at the moment, and couches and chairs that seemed randomly placed. Tom Pasmore had changed the room very little. The curtains were still always drawn; old-fashioned upright lamps and green-shaded library lamps still burned here and there around the room, shedding warm illumination on the thousands of books ranged in dark wooden cases along the walls and on the dining table at the rear of the room. Tall stereo speakers stood against the walls, connected to shelves of complicated audio equipment. Compact discs leaned against one another like dominoes on half a dozen bookshelves, and hundreds of others had been stacked into tilting piles on the floor.
Tom said, "I know this place looks awfully confusing at first glance, but there is, I promise you, a comfortable place to sit down at the other end of the room." He gestured toward the confusion. "Shall we?"
John Ransom was still taking in the profusion of filing cabinets and office furniture. Tom struck off through the maze.
"Say, I know I haven't seen you since school," said John Ransom, "but I've been reading about you in the papers, and that was an amazing job you did on Whitney Walsh's murder. Amazing. You put it all together from here, huh?"
"Right in this house," Tom said. He motioned for us to sit on two couches placed at right angles to a glass coffee table stacked with books. An ice bucket, three glasses, a jug of water, and various bottles stood in the middle of the table. "Everything was right there in the newspapers. Anyone could have seen it, and sooner or later someone else would have."
"Yeah, but haven't you done the same thing lots of times?" John Ransom sat facing a paneled wall on which hung half a dozen paintings, and I took the couch on the left side of the table. Ransom was eyeing the bottles. Tom seated himself in a matching chair across the table from me.
"Now and then, I manage to point out something other people missed." Tom looked extremely uncomfortable. "John, I'm very sorry about what happened to your wife. What a terrible business. Have the police made any progress?"
"I wish I could say yes."
"How is your wife doing? Do you see signs of improvement?"
"No," Ransom said, staring at the ice bucket and the bottles.
"I'm so sorry." Tom paused. "You must be in the mood for a drink. Can I get anything for you?"
Ransom said he would take vodka on the rocks, and Tom leaned over the table and used silver tongs to drop ice cubes into a thick low glass before filling the glass nearly to the top with vodka. I was watching him act as if there was no more on his mind than making John Ransom comfortable, and I wondered if he would make a drink for himself. I knew, as Ransom did not, that Tom had been out of bed for no more than half an hour.
During the course of telephone conversations in the middle of the night that sometimes lasted for two and three hours, I had sometimes imagined that Tom Pasmore started drinking when he got out of bed and stopped only when he managed to get back into it. He was the loneliest person I had ever met.