Stella came in from the dining room, gasped, and ran across the room to embrace him. 'I'm so sorry, Lewis,' she said. 'It's such a damn shame.'
'It's impossible,' said Lewis.
'That may be so, but it certainly was John who was taken to the county morgue this noon,' Sears said in a thick voice. 'Who's to say what is impossible? We've all been under a strain. I may go off the bridge tomorrow.' Stella gave Lewis an extra squeeze and went to sit beside Ricky on the Hawthorne's couch. The Italian coffee table in front of them looked the size of an ice rink.
'You need coffee,' Stella said, scrutinizing Lewis more carefully, and got up again to go into the kitchen.
'You'd think it impossible,' Sears went on, unruffled by the interruption, 'that three adult men like ourselves would have to huddle together for warmth, but here we are.'
Stella returned with coffee for all of them, and the desultory conversation ceased for a moment.
'We tried to reach you,' Ricky said.
'I was out for a drive.'
'It was John who wanted us to write to young Wanderley,' Ricky said after a moment.
'Write to whom?' Stella asked, not understanding. Sears and Ricky explained. 'Well, that's the craziest thing I ever heard,' she finally said. 'It's just like the three of you, to get all worked up and then ask someone else to solve your problems. I wouldn't have expected it from John.'
'He's supposed to be an expert, Stella,' Sears said in exasperation. 'As far as I'm concerned, John's suicide proves that we need him more than ever.'
'Well, when's he coming?'
'Don't know,' Sears admitted. He looked rumpled, a fat old turkey at the end of winter.
'If you ask me, what you ought to do is stop those Chowder Society meetings,' Stella told him. 'They're destructive. Ricky woke up screaming this morning- all three of you look like you've seen ghosts.'
Sears remained cool. 'Two of us saw John's body. That should be reason enough for looking a little out of sorts.'
'How did-' Lewis began, and then stopped.
'How did what?' demanded Sears.
'How did you happen to hire Eva Galli's niece as a secretary?'
'She asked for a job,' Sears said. 'We had some extra work.'
'Eva Galli?' asked Stella. 'Wasn't she that rich woman who came here, oh, a long time ago? I didn't know her very well; she was much older than I. Wasn't she going to marry someone? Then she just upped and left town.'
'She was going to marry Stringer Dedham,' Sears said impatiently.
'Oh yes, Stringer Dedham,' Stella remembered. 'My goodness, he was a handsome man. There was that awful accident-something at a farm.'
'He lost both arms in. a threshing machine,' Ricky said.
'Ugh. What a conversation. This must be like one of your meetings.'
All three men had been thinking the same thing.
'Who told you about Miss Mostyn?' asked Sears. 'Mrs. Quast must gossip overtime.'
'No, I met her. She was at Humphrey's Place with Jim Hardie. She introduced herself to me.'
The feeble conversation died again.
Sears asked Stella if there was any brandy in the house, and Stella said she'd get some for everybody and disappeared again into the kitchen.
Sears yanked savagely at his jacket, trying to make himself comfortable in the leather and metal chair. 'You took John home last night. Did he seem unusual in any way?'
Lewis shook his head. 'We didn't talk much. He said your story was good.'
'He didn't say any more than that?'
'He said he was cold.'
'Humph.'
Stella returned with a bottle of Remy Martin and three glasses on a tray. 'You should see yourselves. You look like three owls.'
They did not so much as nod.
'Gentlemen, I'll leave you with the brandy. I'm sure you have things you want to talk about.' Stella looked them over, autocratic and benign as a primary teacher, and then moved quickly out of the room without saying good-bye. Her disapproval stayed with them.
'She's upset,' Ricky said apologetically. 'Well, we all are. But Stella's more affected by this than she wants to show.' As if to make amends for his wife, Ricky leaned forward over the glass icerink table and poured a generous amount of cognac into each glass. 'I need this too. Lewis, I just don't understand what would make him do it. Why would John Jaffrey want to kill himself?'
'I don't know why,' said Lewis, taking one of the glasses. 'Maybe I'm glad I don't.'
'Talk sense for a change,' Sears growled. 'We're men, Lewis, not animals. We're not supposed to stay cowering in the darkness.' He too accepted a glass and sipped. 'As a species, we hunger for knowledge. For enlightenment.' His pale eyes angrily fixed on Lewis. 'Or perhaps I misunderstood you, and you did not actually intend to defend ignorance.'
'Overkill, Sears,' Ricky said.
'Less jargon, Ricky,' Sears retorted. ' 'Overkill,' indeed. That might impress Elmer Scales and his sheep, but it does not impress me.'
There was something about sheep-but Lewis had forgotten it. He said, 'I don't mean to defend ignorance, Sears. I just meant that-hell, I don't know anymore. I guess I meant that it might be too much to take.' What he did not articulate but was half aware of was the notion that he feared to peer too closely into the last moments of any suicide's life, be it friend or wife.
'Twaddle,' said Sears. 'I'd be relieved to learn that John was merely despairing. It's the other explanations that frighten me.'
Lewis said, 'I have the feeling that I'm sort of missing something,' and proved to Ricky for the thousandth time that he was not the dullard of Sears's imagination.
'Last night,' Ricky said, holding his glass with both hands and smiling fatalistically, 'after the other three of us had gone, Sears saw Fenny Bate on his staircase.'
'Christ.'
'That's enough,' Sears warned. 'Ricky, I forbid you to go into this. What our friend means, Lewis, is that I thought I saw him. I was badly frightened. It was an hallucination-a ha'nt, as they used to say in these parts.'
'Now you're arguing both ways,' Ricky pointed out. 'For my part, I'd be happy to think you're right. I don't want to see young Wanderley here. I think we might all be sorry, just about the time it's too late.'
'You misread me. I want him to come and say: give it up. My Uncle Edward died of smoking and excitement, John Jaffrey was unstable. That's the reason I agreed to John's suggestion. I say, let him come, and the sooner the better.'
Lewis said, 'If you feel that, I agree with you.'
'Is that fair to John?' Ricky asked.
'John's past being fair to,' Sears said. He finished the cognac in his glass and leaned forward to pour more from the bottle.
Sudden footsteps on the stairs made all three swivel their heads toward the entrance from the hall.
Turned that way in his chair, Lewis could see Ricky's front window, and he noticed with surprise that it had begun to snow again. Hundreds of big flakes hammered the black window.
Milly Sheehan came in, her hair all flattened on one side and all frowsy on the other. She was sausaged into one of Stella's old dressing gowns. 'I heard that, Sears James,' she said in a voice like the wail of an ambulance. 'You'll bully John even when he's dead.'
'Milly, I meant no disrespect,' Sears said. 'Shouldn't you-'
