Mystery

“That’s him,” Tom said, and nearly knocked over his chair to get to the window.

An immensely fat woman carrying a load of washing on her head passed the pawnshop.

“Well, he’s not there now,” von Heilitz said.

Tom squinted at him. This close, von Heilitz smelled of soap and some more personal odor that was faintly like the scent of a freshly opened apple. The wrinkles at the side of his eyes were as deep as furrows.

“I saw him outside the hotel this morning.” Von Heilitz pushed himself back from the window. “Doesn’t have to mean anything. There are two hundred people in the St. Alwyn, and nearly all of them deserve to be followed.” He went back around the table, holding his sharp chin in his hand the way a child holds an ice cream cone. “Still, in the next couple of days we’d better go in and out through Sinbad’s Cavern.”

He fell into the other chair and placed his hand on the telephone, still clutching his chin. He looked up, said, “Hmm,” and let go of his chin to dial a number. “Hello, I’d like to speak to Mr. Thomas, please.… Hello, Mr. Thomas? This is Mr. Cooper at the central post office, I’m the sub-manager for your region? … I’d like to inquire if you and your members at the Founders Club feel that the service you’ve been getting from us is satisfactory … I’m happy to hear that. As you know, our delivery hours are varied from time to time, and I wondered, as you are certainly one of our priority districts, whether you felt the members had a preference … Well, Mr. Thomas, everybody on the island would prefer that, but morning delivery would compromise the same-day service we’re so proud of … I see. Well, I’ll speak to the route manager, see if we can shuffle things around a bit, and get your members’ mail to you closer to noon than four o’clock … Of course, Mr. Thomas. Goodbye.”

He hung up and looked across at Tom. “We really do have an extraordinary postal system, you know. It’s one of the best things about this island.” He uncoiled from the chair, went to the window and looked down at the sidewalk, and walked to the connecting door, rubbing his hands together. “I think we might get Andres to take a spin out to the Founders Club around three-thirty. Wouldn’t you like to see what happens when your grandfather reads his mail?”

Tom nodded cautiously.

“How do we get on the grounds without going past the guardhouse?

Von Heilitz pushed himself off the door frame and looked up in mock amazement. “Is it possible that you’ve never climbed a fence?”

Tom smiled at him, and said that he probably had, once or twice, in his childhood.

“Well, that’s a relief. Oh, I got something for you to read. Here.” He pulled the paperback out of his pocket and tossed it to Tom.

The cover illustration of The Divided Man, by Timothy Underhill, was a close-up of the face of a man who resembled a younger Victor Pasmore. He wore a grey hat and a trench coat with a turned-up collar, and deep shadow obliterated half his face.

“It’s the book I told you about—a way of seeing those Blue Rose murders. We’re going to be here for a long time, and I thought you’d like something to read, knowing you.”

Tom turned the book over to read the blurb, and von Heilitz stretched out on the sofa against the wall. His feet protruded far over the sofa’s armrest.

“I met Tim Underhill when he came to Mill Walk for a little while to do research for the book. He stayed here, in fact—a lot of that book is set in the St. Alwyn.”

Von Heilitz closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest. “When we get hungry, we’ll make some sandwiches.”

Tom moved to the bed, and began reading Timothy Underbill’s book. After thirty pages, he unlaced the sleek black shoes and dropped them on the floor; after seventy, he sat up and removed his jacket and vest and yanked down his necktie. Von Heilitz fell asleep on the sofa.

Tom had expected The Divided Man to be set on Mill Walk, but Underhill had located the murders in a gritty Midwestern industrial city of chain-link fences, inhuman winters, foundries, and a thousand bars. Its only real resemblance to Mill Walk was that the city’s wealthiest citizens lived on the far east side, in great houses built on a bluff above the shore of an enormous lake.