Fletch walked back toward Flynn.
“This murder, has something to do with me.”
“That’s your reaction, is it? Sit down, Grover. Clever man, this Mister Fletcher. It’s only taken him twenty-four hours to catch on.”
“You’ve done some wonderful work,” said Fletch.
Flynn said, “Oh, my god. Now it’s innocent flattery.”
“What am I going to do?”
“You might try confessing, you blithering idiot!”
“I would, Inspector, I would.” Fletch paced the room. “I still don’t think it’s personal.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“I don’t think the person who killed Ruth Fryer knows me personally.”
“If you’re saying you were framed, Mister Fletcher, you’ve already told us you know no one in town.”
“I didn’t say I don’t know anybody in the world. Lots of people hate me.”
“More every minute,” said Flynn. “Take Grover there, for example.”
“Everybody in Italy knew my plans. Everyone in Cagna, everyone in Rome, everyone in Livorno. The Homeswap people in London. I began making these plans three weeks ago. I wrote old buddies in California saying I would try to get out there while I was in the country. I wrote people in Seattle, Washington.”
“All right, Mister Fletcher, we’ll put the rest of the world in prison and leave you free.”
“But that’s not what I’m saying, Inspector. I don’t think this is a personal frame. Some sort of an accident happened. I happened to be the next guy in this room after a murder.”
“Oh, boyoboyoboy. Like a French philosopher thirty, years after he’s born he decides he might be involved with the world.”
Fletch said, “You guys want to join me for dinner?”
“Dinner! The man’s crazy, Grover. As a matter of fact, Mister Fletcher, we were both thinking of asking you to join us.”
“I don’t care,” Fletch said. “Either way. You know the city.”
“Well, the truth is,” Flynn said to the air, “to this minute the man hasn’t acted involved in this ease. He’s acted as innocent as a reliable witness. He still does. That’s the biggest puzzle of all. What are we going to do with him, Grover?”
“Lock him up.”
“A very succinct man, this Grover.”
“Charge him.”
“You know the man can afford to hire fancy lawyers, detectives, make bail, protest all over the press, get postponements, appeal, and appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.”
“Lock him up, Frank.”
“No.” Flynn stood up. “The man didn’t leave town yesterday. He didn’t leave town today, One may presume he won’t leave town tomorrow.”
“He’ll leave town tomorrow, Inspector.”
“Life is simpler this way. We haven’t got this man far enough in a corner yet. Although I thought we did.”
“What more evidence do we need?”
“I’m not sure. We have pounds of it. I had a hat when I came in. Oh, there it is. It’s not polite to talk in front of a man as if, he were dead, Grover.”
In the hall, Flynn settled the hat on his small head.
“I’m going to get another scolding, Mister Fletcher, I’m sure, an the way home. Maybe Grover can convince me you’re guilty. So far you haven’t. Good night.”
Ten
As it was late (and as Fletch had just discovered he was apparently invisible in a restaurant, anyway) he did not go out to dinner. Tiredly, he searched the kitchen cupboards and came up with a can of hash.
The telephone rang three times while he fed himself.
The first, while he was working the can opener, was a cable from Cagna.
“Connors nice hurt man. Nothing new on father. Much love—Andy.”
So Connors was in Italy. Nice, hurt at this moment were irrelevant. He was definitely in Italy.
The second call came before Fletch put the frying pan onto the burner.
“Is this really the hot-shot journalistic-wizard, cogent writer
“Jack!” The voice of his old boss, his city editor when he worked in Chicago, Jack Saunders, was too familiar to Fletch ever to confuse with any other voice in the world. For more than a year he had had to listen to that voice, on and off the telephone, for hours at a time. “Where are you?”
“So you’ve been passing yourself off as Peter Fletcher, eh? I just found an identity-correction advisory from the Boston Police Department on my desk.”
“In Chicago?”
“No, sir. Right here in Beantown. You are talking, to the night city editor of the
“You left the
“If I had realized that murder story involved the great I. M. Fletcher I never would have put it on page seven.”
“Page five.”
“I would have run it front page with photos linking you and the murdered girl indelibly in the public mind.”
“Thanks a lot. So I do know someone in Boston.”
“What?”
“How come you left the
“Boston offered more money. Of course, they didn’t tell me it costs a lot more to live here in Boston, Taxachusetts. And after you left the
“Yeah, sure.”
“You made me look real good. Hey, you went a job?”
“Not at the moment. How are Daphne and the kids?”
“Still Daphne and the kids—face powder and peanut butter. Why do you think I work nights?”
Fletch had never known why Jack had remained married. He didn’t even like to look at his wife. He considered his kids a big noise.
“Hey, Fletch, they going to indict you?”
“Probably. Who’s this Flynn character?”
“You got Frank Flynn? You’re in luck. That’s, why you’re not in the slammer already.”
“I know.”
“They call him Reluctant Flynn. He’s very slow to make an arrest. But he’s never made a mistake. If he arrests you, boy, you know you’ve had it.”
“What’s some b.g. on him?”
“Don’t have much. He showed up here in Boston about a year and a half ago, which is very unusual. Cops hardly ever change cities, as you know. I don’t even know where he came from. He bas the rank of Inspector. Family man. Musical. He plays the violin or something.”
“He’s good, uh?”
“Cracked about a dozen major cases since he’s been here. He’s even reopened cases people never expected
