Epilogue
Black to Move
In September the county took down the Annex.
They did it in a week. It was done by a crew of twelve men in orange hats, with a yellow machine that had a long steel arm and a ball. Daniel watched the last day from across the street, standing under a tree with a paper cup of coffee in his right hand. He had not meant to go. He had only been passing, in the car, on the way to the lawyer's, and he had found that he had turned the wheel.
It did not take long. The ball swung twice, and the front of the building opened like a book. The four pillars went down in a long slow bow. A cloud of white dust rolled across the street and settled on the cars. When it cleared, he could see right through the old limestone shell to the sky, and, for a moment, hanging on a bare wall on the second floor, a single square of green paint, where a door had been.
Then the arm came down again, and it was gone.
"Nothing's left," said a voice at his elbow.
It was Tom Rudd. He was in a brown sports coat that was too small for him, with his cap in his hand. He had lost weight. He stood with his big shoulders a little round, and his eyes on the heap.
"There's the forms," said Daniel.
"They kept the cabinet. It's in a, there's a museum. A little one, the county historical. They asked if they could have the table." Tom rubbed his jaw. "I said they could. I said I'd, I didn't mind. It's a very good table."
"Is it?"
"Solid oak. It's a pity to burn it."
They stood in silence. Down the street, a truck was reversing, with a slow beeping. The sun was out. It was a warm, bright, ordinary afternoon, and in the square a woman was selling flowers from a bucket.
"I went to see him," said Tom.
"Walter?"
"Last week. They've got him in the prison hospital. It's a, it's a clean place. He's got a window." He turned his cap round in his hands. "He was in bed. They'd, he's very thin. He had a, he's got the machine on all day now. But he knew me. He said, Mr. Rudd. How very kind."
"What did he say?"
"He asked after the girl." Tom looked at the ground. "He said, Is Miss Wells well? Has she been playing? I said I thought she'd taken second in the county. He said that was very satisfactory."
"He pleaded guilty."
"He did. To all of it. They didn't want to take it. The judge asked him three times." He gave a short, painful smile. "He said he'd rather it were on the record."
"I read it."
"Did you?"
"It's four hundred pages. Nobody's ever pleaded to so much." Daniel drank his coffee. It was cold. "He's not going to be tried. Is he. They said the doctors said."
"Five weeks, they gave him. In March. It's September."
"He's a stubborn man."
"Aye," said Tom. "He said that was what he kept coming back to. He said, Mr. Rudd, I find I should like to see the result."
"Which result?"
"Of Lowe. The hearing." Tom looked up. "It was yesterday. They said it out loud, in a courtroom. Innocent. They've a word for it. An exoneration."
"I was in the second row."
"I know. I saw you. So was I." He cleared his throat. "There was a lady, at the back, with an armful of yellow flowers. I thought it was the foster mother, Mrs. Quinn. She didn't speak to anyone."
"She spoke to me, afterward."
"Did she?"
"She said Ivy would have liked it to have been a nice day," said Daniel. "It was."
They watched the crew for a while. The ball swung again. Somewhere on the far side of the heap, a man shouted, and a wall came down, and a long gray plume of dust went up into the blue.
He lived, now, in a different house.
It was smaller. It had been the best that he could find on a probation officer's salary, which was what he was, in effect, for the next eighteen months. They had not sent him to prison. There had been a long hearing in June, in the glass courthouse, and a prosecutor named Fox who had stood up, with her gray hair and her tired face, and said that the county did not seek a custodial sentence. She had said it had considered the circumstances. She had said that the defendant had, at considerable cost to himself, provided the court with a full and voluntary account.
He had lost his job. He had not expected otherwise. A man who has made the front page for nine days does not go back to an insurance company that employs him to judge the truth. He worked now for a hardware store on the east side. He sold paint. He was good at it. People came in with a color on a scrap of cloth, and he looked at it, and could tell, almost at once, what they wanted. It was not always what they said.
The house was on a short street, with a plane tree. It had a porch. It had a light on the porch, over the door, a plain white one with a switch inside the hall, and every night, at nine, one or the other of them turned it on.
It was a game now. It had rules. If it was his night, he did it, and she turned it off at ten. If it was hers, she did it, and he turned it off at ten past. Neither of them had ever said what it was for. It was only that the light went on, and the light went off, and between the two there was a small, firm, mutual understanding that nobody would be left outside.
He came home that evening at six.
He parked in the drive. It was an old green car, a used one. He sat for a moment with his hand on the wheel, looking at the plane tree, and his left hand, in his lap, which had a glove on it. It was a soft leather one, with two empty fingers stuffed with wool. He had got used to it. He thought that he might, in time, forget.
On the mat, inside the door, there was a package.
It was a flat one, about the size of a board. It had been wrapped in brown paper, and tied with string, and the string was knotted in a neat, old-fashioned, upright knot. It had come, he saw, by a courier. There was a label. It was typed. There was no return address, only a small round stamp in the corner, a county one, with a number.
Marlow Correctional. Infirmary. Outgoing.
He stood still in the hall.
"What is it?" said June.
She had come down the stairs. She was in her school clothes, a gray skirt and a blue sweater, and she carried a book under one arm. She was thirteen now. She had grown two inches. She had stopped biting her braid in April, and had taken, since the summer, to wearing a pair of glasses that she said made her look like a lawyer. She stood on the bottom step, with her head on one side, and looked at the parcel in his hands.
"I don't know."
"Who's it from?"
"The hospital."
"What hospital?"
"The prison," said Daniel.
She did not say anything. She came down the last step, and across the hall, and stood at his elbow. She was silent. She had a way, these days, of standing very near, without touching, like a small tall shadow. It was one of the things that had changed. He had not been able to say what the others were.
"Open it," said June.
It was a board.
It was an old one, in dark wood, with a hinge down the middle and a brass clasp. He knew it at once, though he had never seen it. It had been played on, daily, for forty years. The squares were worn pale in the middle, and the edges polished to a soft gray, by the heel of a thumb. A little brass plate on the lid, no bigger than a stamp, was engraved in a neat small script.
M. Hale.
He opened the clasp.
Inside, in a lining of green baize, in two rows, lay thirty-two pieces. They were carved, white and black, in plain smooth wood. They were so old that the crowns had been rubbed down to small round stumps. In the front row, on the left, one of the white pawns stood a little apart from the rest. It had been taken out of its place and put down again two squares forward, in the middle of the board, alone.
"That's the opening," said June.
"Is it?"
"It's the king's pawn. It's what you play first." She put out her hand, and did not touch it. "It's what he did. In the, he told me. When he was, in the first thing. On the first night. He put it on your step."
"Yes."
"It's a gift."
"I suppose so."
"It's from Mrs. Hale's. It's her board. He's, Dad, he's given it to us."
"I think he's given it to you."
"It's the same thing."
There was a card.
It lay face up on the green baize, at the edge of the board, white, plain, small, written in a thin upright hand that he knew as well as his own. It was in ink. It had a date at the top, in the corner, in a firm quick script. It was dated the fourth of March. It was dated the day they took his daughter from school.
Mr. Wells.
If you are reading this, the hearing has been held and Mr. Lowe's name is clear. I wrote this in March. I have asked that it be posted on the day after, whatever has become of me. I am a man who likes to leave a record in order.
I owe you a debt, and I do not know how to pay it. I think I shall have to give you something I have not yet shown to anyone. It is the one part of the matter that I did not complete.
I have spent nine years learning who killed Emily Starr.
He stopped.
He read the line again. He stood in the hall of the small house, with the porch light not yet lit, and a paper in his hand, and felt the hair rise on his arms.
It was not hard. The state had not looked. They had been very sure. I read the files, and the lab reports, and the paint. It was a blue car with a dent in the wing. It was a good deal more common than anyone supposed. I found, in time, a second one, with a dent in the other wing, and a man, who had been drinking at the Starlight Lounge on Pike Road until eleven-thirty on the night in question, and who drove home by the shortest road.
I have not approached him. I was not hired to. I confess I was afraid that I would not stop at a question.
His name is Colin Aske. He lives at 40 Pike Road, within half a mile of the place. He is fifty-one. He is a respectable man. He has a wife, and he coaches a youth baseball team. He has never been asked a single question in his life.
You are, I think, the only living person who has read both files.
I do not ask you to do anything. I am only a court reporter. I find that the record is not complete, and that I will not be here to complete it. I leave it where I should wish a record to be left, in the hands of the person who is most likely to read it to the end.
The board is set.
It is the position after the first move. It is, as you will see, black to play.
W.H.
He did not move.
For a time, there was no sound in the hall but the tick of the old clock on the wall, and the soft whisper of June's breath, close beside his arm. He read the last lines again. He folded the card. He held it between two fingers, and his hand, steadily, trembled.
"Dad?" said June.
"Yes."
"What does it say?"
"It says there's a man," said Daniel. "It says there's one more."
"Who?"
"Someone who was never asked."
She was silent for a long time.
She did not seem frightened. She stood and looked at the board in the box, at the old worn squares, and the thirty-two pieces, and the single white pawn standing alone in the middle, with the shine on its head like a coin. She did not touch it. She had put her hands behind her back, like a child at a museum.
"Are we going to tell Detective Sosa?" she said.
"Yes."
"Today?"
"Tonight."
"Okay." She nodded, slowly. "That's what the rule says. The whole truth."
"That's what it says."
"Even the part that costs."
"Even that."
"Okay," said June.
She drew a breath. Then she did a thing which he remembered for the rest of his life. She took the little black pawn from the front row, the one on the king's side, and held it up to the light of the hall. She turned it, slowly, in her fingers. The crown was rubbed to a smooth, soft nub, and it was warm from the room.
She set it down on the board.
She put it exactly where it belonged, two squares in front of its own king, to meet the one that waited there. It made a small sound on the old wood. It was a very quiet one. It was the sound of a person taking a small step toward a door.
"I'll turn on the light," said Daniel.
"It's your night."
"Yes."
"I'll turn it off at ten."
"I know."
She smiled.
It was a very small smile, and rather tired, and unlike any he had seen. It came slowly, and stayed. It was Anna's. It was not like any smile he had ever been given by anyone who was not afraid. She stood in the hall in her glasses, with her braid over her shoulder, and her hand on the board, and she looked at him with perfect, patient, grave regard.
"Dad," she said.
"Yes?"
"Your move."