What was wrong with Stephen Fowler? Why were Cochrane's internal alarms sounding? Instinct? Nerves? Or attraction to Laura?
Out of curiosity, he ran Fowler’s name through the United States Passport Bureau on Monday morning and Laura’s through the Bureau of Immigration. Then he caught the one o'clock train north. Liberty Circle was worth a second look.
Laura found Bill Cochrane meandering along the side of St. Paul's. He had been waiting to be spotted, and sight him she did as she walked back to the rectory from town. She walked to him and smiled.
'Back again?' she asked.
'Hello, Mrs. Fowler,' he said, having seen her the second she appeared at the roadside. 'Hope your husband won't mind. I thought I'd take a second look at things. Paths to the woods through the churchyard.'
'Must be an important case,' she said.
'Any murder is important,' he answered swiftly, wondering how lame he sounded. 'How's your husband?'
'Away again,' she said. 'Visiting a parish in Connecticut, I think.'
'You think?'
The vagueness of her response surprised her when he called attention to it. 'I know,' she said with an effacing smile. She walked with him until they came to the front door of St. Paul's. It was late afternoon now and the sky was darkening. 'Wait here,' she said.
She walked inside the church as Bill Cochrane stood outside. Then two small outside lights went on and another set illuminated the steeple. Laura reappeared. 'The duties of the parson's wife,' she said. 'Lighting the steeple when he's out of town.'
He smiled. 'Short hours, no heavy lifting. Not bad duties, wouldn't you say?'
'Find anything?' she asked, suddenly quite serious. She motioned to the woods. The murder continued to disturb her.
'No,' he said.
'Would you tell me if you had?'
'Maybe.'
She smiled again. 'Is it considered a bribe to brew a cup of tea for an F.B.I. agent?' she inquired. 'It's chilly out here. Interested?'
He was. He followed her to the rectory, wondering what kind of fool or madman Stephen Fowler was to so often leave alone a woman like Laura. He wondered if they were happily married. A small wave of depression touched him: he concluded that he had no reason to believe they were not.
*
She made Earl Grey in a blue and white porcelain pot that she had brought from England. They sat in the warm living room of the rectory and the tea was delicious, even though Bill Cochrane wasn't a tea drinker. She also served a plate of cookies, setting them on a table between them.
Laura sat on a sofa, her feet curled under her. Bill Cochrane sat in an armchair on the other side of the table. He tried to draw a sense of the Fowlers. Somehow he failed. See a woman in too bright a light and everything else is obscured, he reminded himself. He recalled that he was there, after all, on business.
But Laura was talking and he was listening. Somehow he had nudged the conversation to her past, and she told him about Wiltshire, her father, and Edward Shawcross. Then she told him about Lake Contontic, the ballroom, and the young Princeton graduate, Stephen Fowler, who liked to swim across the lake.
'And you've lived happily ever after?' he inquired.
She held his gaze for several long seconds. 'Why do you guess that?' she answered.
'Nice home. Attractive husband. Comfortable, secure life,' he said, probing.
She found herself telling the truth. 'It hasn't always been easy,' she said. 'Stephen is away too much. There are times when I've thought of…' Her voice trailed off into silence.
'Not divorce, surely,' he said.
'No,' she answered quickly. 'Returning home indefinitely,' she said. 'Until Stephen could decide whether he wants to be married to me.'
'Home to England?'
'Yes.'
And according to immigration records, you did, he thought, not saying it. For two and a half months this past summer. Just when some of the worst bombs were planted.
'And did you?' he asked, testing.
'June of this year,' she said. 'Until mid-August. I went to see my father in Salisbury.'
'A pretty cathedral city if my fifth-grade geography still serves me,' he said.
'It serves you quite well. I’m impressed.”
'Did Stephen travel with you?'
'No, he did not.'
Cochrane sipped his tea. Laura refilled his cup when he set it down. He waited for her to speak.
'Stephen was here in America,' she said. 'We weren't getting along. I thought some time away from each other might help.'
'Did it?'
She found herself answering defensively. 'Yes,' she said firmly. 'I think it did.' Then she turned the questions back on him.
'And what about you?' she asked. 'You should be ashamed,' she said with mock severity, 'turning your federal interrogation techniques upon an innocent Englishwoman. What about you, Mr. Cochrane? Happily married, I suppose, with a beautiful wife from a patrician American family. You have two little ones, a boy and a girl at a manageable interval, and a lovely home outside Washington, D.C.'
He shook his head. 'I have a three-room apartment in Baltimore when I'm not on an assignment. Right now I'm lodged in a crumbling old wooden structure in Georgetown. No children. I'm widowed,' he said.
There was a heavy pause.
'Oh, I am sorry,' said Laura, feeling inordinately clumsy. 'I did not meant to-'
'It's all right,' he said. 'It was several years ago. But you were almost right. She was a very pretty woman from an old Virginia family. We had grown up together.'
'What was her name?'
'Heather.'
'A pretty name,' she said. 'I can remember when my mother died,' she said after a pause. 'Death creates such a horrible void. It's so difficult to fill it.'
'One can't fill it,' he answered. 'One can only get on with the rest of one's life. Sometimes you have to go in new directions. I would never have joined the F.B.I., for example, if my wife hadn't been killed in a car accident. I needed new challenges. New scenery. New faces. Does that make sense?'
Laura nodded. 'There's only one thing that doesn't make sense about you so far, Mr. Cochrane.'
'Which is that?'
'Why you're testing me. Lying, actually.'
'Lying? About what?'
'You're investigating Stephen,' she said. 'You came here ostensibly to investigate a murder. But a murder is a state crime, as you yourself said. And you've even come back for a second look. Or, should I say, a second snoop. What are you looking for, Mr. Cochrane? Be as honest as you can with me. Maybe I could even help you.'
He studied her and was struck by the manner in which he had foolishly both underestimated her and talked too much. He reached for a cookie as she silently held him in view. Every bit of his training dictated that he stay with his cover story. But then there was instinct. That, and the most enticing brown eyes that had ever drawn a bead on him.
'I'm waiting,' Laura said.
'Everything I've told you is true.'
'Of course it is,' she answered. She folded her arms and waited. “But there’s more, isn’t there?”
It was a decision based on instinct and hunch, just as trusting Otto Mauer had been.
'I'm looking for a spy,' Bill Cochrane said. 'A murderer and a spy. Same man. And I'm drawing close.'
