“Did you see it? Did you see me hit him?” Van Alt’s face was white with anger.
“No,” Hunter replied. “I didn’t actually see you. But it’s obvious. He was going to cause you to lose your job. You did follow him to the spot where the crime was committed, and you did have a weapon in your hand.”
“Van Alt, you do admit, don’t you,” Rogers asked, “that there was a struggle? Be careful how you answer. Look at this.” Rogers set on the table a small beige-colored button to which a short length of colorless plastic-covered wire was attached.
“This is your hearing aid, Van Alt. You don’t wear it in the daytime when it can be readily seen. I submit that you and Beasley had a struggle and that this got torn loose. When you examined his body that morning, you found something under Beasley’s head, something you pushed down into the sand.”
Van Alt did not look at the tiny device, as though refusing to acknowledge its existence.
“O.K. I punched — or I tried to punch — Beasley. He was going to cost me my job. Who wants a tour director who can’t hear, even if he is the best tour director in Egypt? But Beasley was a lot more experienced in physical encounters than I am.”
“Then you were wearing—”
“My hearing aid. Yes. It was pulled loose. I did feel it under his head. I did try to cover it with sand.” Van Alt leaped to his feet and swore, bending across the table and shouting into Rogers’ face. “You don’t laugh at people who have lost their sight, do you? Then is there something amusing about people who can’t hear?”
He regained control of himself and sank back into his chair. “I admit that Beasley and I had a brief tussle. But I never hit him with that.” He glanced at Hunter’s fly whisk. “Nor with anything else. And nobody can prove I did.”
“That’s right,” Rogers said. “Nobody can prove you did. May I have that envelope I asked you to bring?”
Van Alt passed him the airlines envelope from which Rogers withdrew the red-edged label bearing the warning: “You will die for the Arena.” Using a paper napkin to avoid smudging the lettering, he smoothed the fragile bit of paper on the table.
“Now may I have your book, Mr. Trewin?”
With a shrug, Trewin passed The Anatomy of Melancholy across the table to him. Rogers opened the front cover of the book and laid it beside the warning message.
Pasted inside the front cover was Trewin’s bookplate, a red-edged label identical with that which Beasley had scraped from his mirror, and bearing in similar, precise, draftsmanlike lettering the words: “This book is the property of Thomas Trewin.”
The three looked at Trewin, expecting him to dismiss the similarity between the warning label and his homemade bookplate by pointing out that red-edged labels were used by the millions, that draftsmen’s lettering was so uniform as to be untraceable to an individual. But Trewin only gave a slight twist to his thin lips, and his dour self-effacing gloom changed to a brooding menace.
“Do you want to explain this to us, Mr. Trewin?” Rogers asked.
“So you’re the one,” Van Alt said. “You killed him.”
“Beasley was going to die,” Trewin said grimly. “I wanted him to know it.”
“I’m a product of the Depression,” Trewin began. “After high school I couldn’t go on to study to be an architect as I’d always hoped. I got a job, after eighteen months of looking — a job driving a tank truck delivering acid to chemical plants. Then the war came and I was in the Army engineers. Specifications, design, and so forth. Anyway, I liked it because I was building something. When I got out, I sold building materials. I was a terrible salesman but there was such a demand I became good enough to open my own business and hire salesmen. It was a successful operation but I didn’t really like it. It was as close, however, as I was ever going to get to being an architect, to building.
“My sister’s husband died suddenly, leaving her with a ten-year-old daughter, Eve. I had designed and built myself a house, where I lived alone, so I asked my sister and Eve to come and live with me. Eve was like a daughter to me — I loved her dearly.”
Trewin stopped and stared out of the dimness of the lounge at the glaring sand on the other side of the river.
“We all got along well together and the time drifted by. In no time, it seemed, Eve had become a lovely young woman, ready to go off to the university. She was an excellent student. When she was completing her sophomore year she told us that she had decided to go to the architectural school. I was extremely pleased and did everything I could, encouraging her, helping with expenses. I never once mentioned how tough I thought it would be for a woman architect in what is still, in my opinion, a hide-bound profession.
“When Eve came home for Christmas during her last year in architectural school, she announced that she had been offered a job with Rock, Gibbings, and Elston, one of the big architectural firms in the city. We were overjoyed and it appeared that my ambitions were being realized through Eve. I think that Christmas was the happiest of our lives. I know it was our last happy one.
“It had snowed all day, then thawed, and after that we had a quick freeze. On top of it there came a long, heavy rain. Eve had been seeing a young man who was home on vacation from college and that night they went to a basketball game in the city. During the game, the roof of the sports arena collapsed and seven people were killed. Eve was one of them.
“I can t describe how shattered our lives were, the sudden pointlessness of everything. I had not realized how much of my old ambition had been transferred to Eve.
“My sister and I went through the motions of daily living, but the light had gone out of our lives. Then, about a year later, my sister received a letter. Here, let me show you.”
Trewin took out a much-handled piece of paper, held together at the folds with tape, and handed it to Rogers.
Room 404
Valley Hospital
Dear Mrs. Strong:
Would it be possible for you to come to the hospital to see me? I am told that I have only a short time left and there is something on my conscience I must ask your forgiveness for, if forgiveness is possible after what I have done.
Very truly yours,
Rogers set the letter on the table and whispered to Van Alt, who looked at him doubtfully, shrugged, and left the lounge.
“Neither of us had heard of this man,” Trewin said, “but we decided I should visit him and see what he wanted...”
He had expected, Trewin explained, to find a man on his deathbed. Instead, Brennan was sitting at the window of the dim hospital room in the early winter twilight, his eyes sunken and troubled and his lips purple, waiting.
“There is something I must explain to Mrs. Strong,” Brennan said when Trewin explained who he was. “I’m trying to explain it to all of them. I don’t have much time left. And there are others on the list. That list. That dreadful list.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Trewin said. “What list?”
“It was in the papers. I can see it every time I close my eyes. ‘Albert Casseres, 19; Donald McFall, 28—’ ”
“Those are the names of the others who died when the arena roof collapsed,” Trewin broke in.
“ ‘—J. Oliver, 26; Arlene Romero, 21—’ ”
Brennan’s voice had dropped to a monotone. His eyes closed.
“ ‘—Brian Smith, 16; Robert Smith, 14; Eve Strong, 23.’ ”
Brennan opened his eyes, looked briefly and hopelessly at Trewin, and shifted his gaze back to the window as though unable to face his visitor with what he was about to say.