I nodded. Like me, John had been impressed by Michael Hogan.
"And last, what is it, seven? Seven. He could find out all about April and her condition from his mother's old pal Betty Grable at the hospital."
"I think it was Mary Graebel, different spelling," I said. "And you're right, he did find out April was at Shady Mount. When I came down in the elevator with Fontaine this morning, an old lady working behind the counter almost passed out when she saw us. I bet that was Mary Graebel."
"She knew she helped kill April," John said. "The cow couldn't keep her mouth shut."
"She thought she helped her old friend's son kill April. That's different."
"What makes you so sure he didn't?"
"Dragonette claimed that he couldn't remember anything he had done to that cop in April's room, Mangelotti. He overheard Fontaine joking that Mangelotti was dead—so he claimed that he had murdered him. Then Fontaine said he was exaggerating, so Dragonette said he was exaggerating, too!"
"He's playing mind games," John said.
"He didn't know what happened to Mangelotti. Also, he had no idea that April had been killed until he heard it over the police radio. That was the point that always bothered me."
"Why would he confess if he didn't do it? That still doesn't make sense."
"Maybe you didn't notice, but Walter Dragonette is not the most sensible man in the world."
Ransom leaned forward and stared down at the floor for a time, considering what I had been saying. "So there's another guy out there."
I saw a mental picture of those drawings where the eye wanders over the leaves of an oak tree until the dagger leaps out of concealment, and the brickwork on the side of a house reveals a running man, a trumpet, an open door.
"You and your brainstorms." He shook his head, now almost smiling. "I'm going to have to live with the repercussions of shoving that reporter around."
"What do you think they'll be?"
He shifted one of the stacks of novels sideways half an inch, back a quarter-inch. "I suppose my neighbors are more convinced than ever that I killed my wife."
"Did you, John?" I asked him. "This is just between you and me."
"You're asking me if I killed April?"
His face heated as before, but without the violence I had seen in him just before he had gone after Geoffrey Bough. He stared at me, trying to look intimidating. "Is this something Tom Pasmore asked you to say?"
I shook my head.
"The answer is no. If you ask me that once more, I'll throw you out of this house. Are you satisfied?"
"I had to ask," I said.
2
For the next two days, John Ransom and I watched the city fall apart on local television. When we were inside his house, we ignored the knot of reporters, varying from a steady core of three to a rumbling mob of fifteen, occupying his front lawn. We also ignored their efforts to lure us outside. They rang the bell at regular intervals, pressed their faces against the windows, yelled his name or mine with doglike repetitiveness… Every hour or so, either John or I would get up from the day's fifth, sixth, or fifteenth contemplation of the names and faces of the victims to check the enemy through the narrow window slits on either side of the door. It felt like a medieval siege, plus telephones.
We ate lunch in front of the set; we ate dinner in front of the set.
Someone banged imperiously on the front door. Someone else fingered open the mail slot and yelled, "Timothy Underhill! Who killed April Ransom?"
"Who killed Laura Palmer?" muttered Ransom, mostly to himself.
This was on the day, Saturday, that Arkham's dean of humanities had left a message on the answering machine that Arkham's trustees, board of visitors, and alumni society had registered separate complaints about the televised language and behavior of the religion department's Professor Ransom. Would Professor Ransom please offer some assurance that all legal matters would be concluded by the beginning of the fall term? And it followed our struggles back and forth through the mob on our way to Trott Brothers Funeral Parlor.
So he wasn't doing too badly, considering everything. The worst aspect of our experience at Trott Brothers had been the manner of Joyce "Just call me Joyce" Trott Brophy, the daughter and only child of the single remaining Mr. Trott. Just Call Me Joyce made the reporters seem genteel. Obese and hugely pregnant, professionally oblivious to grief, she had long ago decided that the best way to meet the stricken people life brought her way was with the resolute self-involvement she would have called "common sense."
"We're doing a beautiful job on your little lady, Mr. Ransom, you're going to say she looks as beautiful as she did on her wedding day. This here coffin is the one I'm recommending to you for display purposes during the service, we can talk about the urn later, we got some real beauties, but look here at this satin, plump and firm and shiny as you can get it—be the perfect frame around a pretty picture, if you don't mind my saying so. You wouldn't believe the pains I get carrying this baby back and forth around this showroom, boy, if Walter Dragonette showed up here he'd get two for the price of one, that'd give my daddy the job of his life, wouldn't it, by golly, that's gas this time. You ever get those real bad gas pains? I better sit down here while you and your friend talk things over, just don't pay any attention to me, Lord, I heard everything anyhow, people hardly know what they're saying when they come in here."
We had at least two hours of Just Call Me Joyce, which demonstrated once again that when endured long enough, even the really horrible can become boring. In that time John rented the "display" coffin, ordered the funeral announcements and the obituary notice, booked time at the crematorium, bought an urn and a slot in a mausoleum, secured the "Chapel of Rest" and the services of a nondenominational minister for the memorial service, hired a car for the procession to the mausoleum, ordered flowers, commissioned makeup and a hairdo for the departed, bought an organist and an organ and ninety minutes' worth of recorded classical music, and wrote a check for something like ten thousand dollars. "Well, I sure do like a man who knows what he wants," said Just Call Me Joyce. "Some of these folks, they come in here and dicker like they thought they could take it with them when they go. Let me tell you, I been there, and they can't."
"You've been there?" I asked.
"Everything that happens to you after you're dead, I been there for it," she said. "And anything you want to know about, I can tell you about it."
"I guess we can go home now," Ransom said.
Early in the evening, Ransom was seated in the darkening room, staring at its one bright spot, the screen, which once again gave a view of the chanting crowd at Armory Place. I thought about Just Call Me Joyce and her baby. Someday the child would take over the funeral home. I saw this child as a man in his mid-forties, grinning broadly and pressing the flesh, slamming widowers on the back, breaking the ice with an anecdote about trout fishing, Lordy that was the biggest ole fish anybody ever pulled out of that river, oof, there goes my sciatica again, just give me a minute here, folks.
A door in my mind clicked open and let in a flood of light, and without saying anything to Ransom, I went back upstairs to my room and filled about fifteen sheets of the legal pad I had remembered at the last minute to slip into my carry-on bag. All by itself, my book had taken another stride forward.