“I was, yes.”
“Well, I'll be da—Sorry, miss.”
“So you do remember it?”
“Yeah, and I'm sorry to tell you you're too late. I already gave it to him.”
“Gave what to whom?” It was an effort to speak over the sudden pounding of my heart, but I didn't know if it was excitement or apprehension.
“The insurance man.”
“Insurance—you mean the tall man with the hair going white?”
“Bad cough.”
“That's the one. What did he want?”
“Didn't want much of anything at first, just asked questions about the accident. But when I told him what I'd done, what I had, he got more interested in it than in his questions.”
“What you'd—” I drew a breath, let it out slowly, and began over again. “Mister—what is your name?”
“Hoffman,” he replied, automatically sticking out his filthy paw. Without hesitation I took it, and took also the grubby rag he handed me afterwards.
“Mary Russell,” I told him. “Might we sit for a moment?”
“Sure, over here.”
I did not look too closely at the condition of the bench he offered—they were, after all, merely clothes. “Mr Hoffman, could you tell me about the insurance man and what you gave him?”
“Fellow came by late Saturday afternoon, asking about that accident just like you did. At first I didn't have the faintest what he was talking about—it'd been ten years, after all—but then after I'd shook my head about a dozen times it was like it shook something loose in my skull and a little bell started to ring. Anyway, I was in the middle of saying No, I don't know anything, when it hit me, sort of like, ‘Oh,
“What was it?”
“Oh, right, you haven't seen it. It was part of the braking system of a 1914 Maxwell, almost as clean as when it came off the factory floor, except it had a slice halfway across it that sure as shooting wasn't put there by the factory, and it had broke the rest of the way.”
My face must have told him that, though I was a female, I understood not only what a brake rod was, but what a cut one meant. He nodded encouragingly, and told me a long and apologetic story about how his brother had seen that perfectly good chassis sitting there getting beaten by waves and decided that it might as well be salvaged for parts before the ocean took it. As they'd been dismantling it some months later, the remaining half of the brake rod came to light. His brother had found it, showed him what it had meant, and stuck it on the shelf.
“Why didn't you give it to the police?” I asked.
“We did,” he answered indignantly. “Next time the town cop come by, a day or two later, my brother and me showed it to him, told him where we'd got it. He was more interested in the fact that we'd helped ourselves to the car—as if there was anything left of it, it was less of a car than a heap of scrap. By the time he left, he was saying he'd have to ask his sergeant about charging Dick and me with theft. Had us a little worried, I won't lie. But nothing happened after that. And when nothing happened, I sure wasn't about to stick my neck out a second time and risk getting me and my brother arrested over something that had maybe or maybe not happened four months before. So we just left it on the shelf for safekeeping and shut up about it, and after a while I just plumb forgot.”
“Until the insurance man came asking.” Asking about that accident, not one of the previous December.
Hoffman nodded. “He sawed off the end and took it away with him. The end I had, anyway.”
“It was only half?”
“About eight inches of rod cut about three-quarters of the way through. The rest of the way it'd tore, like I told you. Our local Deadeye Dick said it was a piece of junk, that it broke in the wreck. But I know cars, and I know brake rods, and even when I was a kid I could see that it wasn't just a break that happened in going off the cliff. My brother was right—someone sawed nearly through it. Couldn't be no accident or flaw in the steel, and sure as hell —pardon, miss—wasn't from no scraping rock.”
“I believe you,” I told him. He settled back on the bench, his ten-year-old indignation soothed by my agreement. I continued. “Did you notice anything about the insurance man? I don't suppose he gave you his card?”
“Come to think of it, he did—should be near the register somewheres, that's where he found me.”
“Had you seen the—” I caught myself before I could reveal that I knew that the man had come in a hired bread van. “—the car he came in?”
“Wasn't a car, a white bakery delivery van, out of the city. Never seen it before.”
We talked a while longer, but he knew nothing else about the purported insurance man. I was about to thank him for his time and rejoin my companions when I realised that I'd been so distracted by his unexpected information about the insurance man and the brake line, I'd nearly forgotten the question that started it all.
“About the accident, ten years ago. Apart from the brake rod you found later, was there anything about the day itself that stuck in your mind?”
“Long time ago,” he said.
“Yes, I understand. Well, thank you—” I started to say, but he was not finished.
“. . . and you know how it's hard to be sure about details, when things happened, unless you pin them down at the time?”
“Yes?” I said by way of encouragement, settling down again on the hard seat.
“Well, after we found the brake rod—and remember, that was months later—end of December, first part of January—I got to thinking back. Like I said, I'd been the one patched the car's tyre, and when I heard a little later that it'd gone off the cliff just down the road, all I could think of was I hadn't fastened the wheel down strong enough and it fell off and I'd killed them. Can't tell you what a relief it was to see all four wheels still on the car— the rubber melted, of course, but there. So the day itself made what you might call an impression on me, you understand?”
I nodded encouragement.
“It's like there's a light on the day, and yeah, I forgot about it there for a while, but once I thought about it again, I could see a lot of details. Like those wheels, and where Dick stuck that hunk of rod, and that it was the afternoon a girl I was sweet on come by and brought me a cake she'd made, that kind of thing, you know?”
I nodded again, wondering where this tale was leading us.
“So, one of the things I remembered later, I'm pretty sure it was that same day, but if you told me it wasn't, I couldn't call you a liar, you know what I'm saying? But I think it was the same afternoon that the man with the scars was there.”
It was a good thing I was already seated; the
“Yeah, burn scars, all over his face. Not real heavy, you know, and his eyes and nose were okay. Just that the skin was funny-looking, all shiny.”
“And his eyebrows were gone.”
“Not completely, but they were kind of patchy, like his moustache. Even the front of the scalp was uneven, like. And they weren't pink, so they probably weren't new. I was sixteen then and the war had just started up so it was in all the papers, and when I saw him I wondered at first if he'd got them in the war, then realised it was probably just some kind of accident.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing, as far as I could see. I'd just finished putting the wheel on and noticed him standing about, and he was still there when I'd moved the car and helped another customer. So I mentioned it to my brother, thinking maybe the guy was looking to steal something. Dick laughed at me, said I'd been reading too many cheap stories, look at the guy, did he look like someone who needed to steal things? He went over and talked to him, turned out he was just waiting for a ride he'd set up. And his ride must've come, because he wasn't there next time I came out.”
“But you remembered the fellow, later.”
