Hemlock and Roses

Chapter 3 Four Minutes

"Then Bill Hartley, across the hall, hears a thud at eleven thirty-six. Knocks, gets no answer, tries the door. Unlocked. Finds Crane at eleven-forty. Nobody passed him on the landing. Nobody passed Mrs. Pellman on the stairs."

"Then how did they leave?"

"Bedroom window. Fire escape. Latch was open. Forensics thought Crane left it that way."

"Crane locked his pill box by the day of the week, Morrow. He didn't leave windows open in October."

Morrow said nothing, which was how he agreed with her.

Iris closed her eyes and laid it out in the dark, piece by piece, the way her father had taught her to lay out an argument, every premise on the table before you let yourself touch the conclusion.

11:20. Elias leaves. Crane alive at the door.

11:28. Leather soles on the stairs. Unhurried.

Somewhere between, a kettle boils. Tea is poured. Drunk.

11:36. A thud.

11:40. A body.

"Four minutes," she said.

"What?"

She opened her eyes. "Between the thud and Hartley opening the door, there were four minutes. The killer had four minutes to get out before someone came in. Do you know what you'd do with four minutes, Morrow? You'd run. You'd go straight to that window."

"But he didn't."

"He washed a cup." She heard her own voice, very quiet. "He stood at the sink with a dead man behind him and washed his cup, and dried it, and put it in the rack the right way up. He spent his four minutes on that." She looked at the rain. "Someone who walks into a building like it's a church. Someone who doesn't panic. Someone who couldn't bear to leave a mess."

For a moment, something moved at the edge of her mind. A kitchen doorway. Warm water running over a pair of hands.

She set it down, very carefully, the way you set down a glass you suddenly realise is too hot.

"There's one more thing," Morrow said. "Crane's phone. One call after Vane left. Eleven twenty-four, two minutes long." He held out the sheet. "To Victor Ashby."

The name meant nothing to Morrow. It meant something to her.

"Ashby ran Linden Hall," Iris said. "He was the director when it burned."

"He was also the man who collected four million in insurance and built the new Ashby Centre on the same land." Morrow's eyebrows rose. "You knew that?"

"My father sat on the board," she said. "Years ago."

"So Crane calls Ashby four minutes after Vane leaves. Says what? 'I'm about to talk'?" Morrow was already turning, already reaching for his keys. "We bring Ashby in. Today."

"Wait." Iris looked at the address printed under the name. "Hollins Park."

"So?"

"Hollins Park is forty minutes from Crane's building. At night, in the rain, thirty-five at best. If Crane called Ashby at eleven twenty-four, Ashby couldn't have been on those stairs at eleven twenty-eight." She handed the paper back. "Victor Ashby isn't the second cup of tea."

Morrow stared at her.

"Then who the hell is?"

"Someone who was already close," Iris said. "Close enough to be there in eight minutes. Close enough to watch Elias Vane walk out of that building." The thought arrived cold and fully formed, and she made herself say it out loud. "Someone who was waiting outside."

She requested the Linden fire file at noon. It came up from the archive at three: two boxes, the cardboard soft with age, smelling of dust and something faintly burnt, though she knew that was her imagination.

She read it in an empty interview room with the door closed.

Fire originated in basement electrical room, approx. 23:52, 14 October. Cause: faulty wiring. Ruled accidental.

Deceased (3):

Daniel Vane, 22, cellist, Young Artists' Programme.

Samuel Ortiz, 58, night security.

Grace Liu, 34, lighting technician.

And then, typed and signed, the statement of the only witness.

I, Walter James Crane, stage manager, state that I completed the final walk-through of Linden Hall at 23:30. All performers and staff had departed with the exception of Mr. Ortiz, on duty, and Ms. Liu, who was completing a lighting inventory. I locked the main doors at 23:35 and left by the stage door.

Iris read it three times.

Then she turned to the coroner's page for Daniel Vane and read the line she had been looking for.

Body recovered from rehearsal room B, ground floor. Cello case beside the deceased.

Crane had sworn that at eleven-thirty, every performer had gone home.

Daniel Vane had died inside, beside his cello. So either Daniel had been hiding in the building when Crane did his walk-through, or he had come back in after the doors were locked. And Crane had locked the main doors himself. Which meant someone had let Daniel in, or someone had left a door open for someone else, and Daniel had walked through it.

Either way, Walter Crane's sworn statement was a lie.

He had lied for seven years. And on the night he decided to stop, someone had walked up his stairs like a man walking into church.

Iris sat back. The radiator ticked. Outside, the light was already going.

I was there that night, Professor. I saw more than one person go back inside.

She picked up the file and went to find him.

It was the third time she had walked into that room. She knew, now, the exact sound of the door: a sigh, a click. She knew the hum of the light. She knew the way he looked up when she came in, and she knew, which unsettled her more than anything, that she had been waiting all afternoon to see him do it.

He did it.

"You haven't slept," he said.

"Neither have you."

"I'm not the one who has to think clearly tomorrow."

She sat down and laid the fire report on the table between them, open to Crane's statement. She didn't say anything. She let him read.

She watched his eyes move down the page. When they reached All performers had departed, they stopped. His jaw tightened once, very slightly, the way a string tightens under a key.

"You knew he lied," Iris said.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you ever say so?"

"I did. Seven years ago. To the police, to the inquiry, to anyone who would listen." He pushed the page back towards her, gently, as if it were something that could still hurt. "I was twenty-four. I was the brother of a dead boy. I was angry and I was grieving and I was sure. Mr. Crane was a respected man with thirty years at the hall and no reason to lie." The corner of his mouth moved. "Who would you have believed, Professor?"

Iris had no answer to that. She found that she did not like having no answer.

"Tell me about that night," she said. "Not who. Just what you saw."

For a long moment, she thought he would refuse. Then he looked down at his hands, and began.

"I picked him up after the concert. I was always picking him up. He didn't drive; he said cars were too quiet, he couldn't hear the road." A breath. "It was raining. Like now. We were halfway home when he realised he'd left his cello in the rehearsal room. He'd taken it out of the case to show someone something, and then he'd been talking, and he forgot." Elias almost smiled. "He was always talking."

Iris didn't move.

"I was tired. I'd been working since six. I said it could wait until morning. He said the radiators in that room were broken and the cold would c***k the wood. So I turned the car around." His voice didn't change. Only his hands did. They were very still on the table now, too still, like hands that had learned what happens when they move. "It was eleven-forty when we got back. The main doors were locked. But the side door by the loading bay was open, propped with a fire extinguisher. Daniel said, 'See? Fate.' He was laughing. He said, 'Five minutes.' He ran in through the rain with his jacket over his head."

He stopped.

The light hummed.

"I told him five minutes," Elias said quietly. "I sat in the car with the engine running. I was annoyed with him. I remember that. I remember I was annoyed with him, and I put the radio on, and I watched the clock on the dashboard."

Iris realised her own hands were pressed flat on the table, as if bracing against something.

"At eleven forty-four, a car pulled up at the other end of the loading bay. Someone got out and went in through the same door. At eleven forty-seven, another person came out of the building, walking fast. Not running. Walking fast." His eyes were not on her. They were somewhere seven years away. "At eleven fifty-two, I saw the light. Orange, in the basement windows. I thought someone had turned a lamp on."

He swallowed.

"By the time I understood it wasn't a lamp, the whole ground floor was smoke. I got as far as the corridor. They pulled me out." He turned his left hand over on the table, palm up, and for the first time she saw the full length of the scar: not just across the back, but wrapping around the side, pale and shiny, the skin of a burn. "They told me afterwards it was too late from the moment it started. They said it as if that should help."

Iris did not trust herself to speak. She thought of a young man laughing in the rain with his jacket over his head. Five minutes. She thought of the tuning fork in his coat pocket, still warm. She looked at the scar on Elias's hand, and something in her chest gave way so quietly that she almost didn't notice.

"It wasn't your fault," she said.

He looked at her then, and his eyes were very tired, and very kind, and it was the kindness that undid her.

"You're very good at your job, Professor," he said softly. "But you don't believe that either. You never believe anything until you've proved it."

She looked away first. She was not used to looking away first.

When she spoke again, her voice was steady, because she made it steady. "The person who went in at eleven forty-four. Who was it?"

"Victor Ashby."

He said it at once, without hesitation. It was true; she could hear that it was true. But he said it fast, the way you hand someone the smaller of two parcels so that they won't ask about the larger one.

"And the person who came out at eleven forty-seven?"

Silence.

"Mr. Vane." She leaned forward. "Tomorrow at nine, the district attorney is going to charge you with murder. If you give me a name, I can stop it. If you don't, I'm not sure that I can."

"I know."

"Then why-"

"Because once a name is said, it can't be unsaid." His voice was very gentle. "Some people can survive the truth, Professor. Some people can't. I've had seven years to decide which kind this one is."

"That isn't your decision to make."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't. But it's the only one I have left."

She was in Morrow's car by six-fifteen. The wipers beat back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome set too slow.