Eight Perfect Murders(58)

By the time I was walking across Boston Common toward the South End, the temperature had dropped some more, and snow was beginning to stick to the paved pathways. I passed the frog pond, lit up and full of skaters, then walked down Tremont Street, over the Pike, and into the South End. Despite the weather, it was a Friday night and people were out in force, filling the restaurants and bars. The Murrays lived in a bow-fronted brick town house on a residential street. Their front door was painted a dark blue. I pushed the doorbell and heard chimed notes from inside.

“Thank you, Mal,” Tess said, as I handed her the bottle of wine, wishing I’d brought them something more interesting. “Come in, get warm. Brian’s upstairs making drinks.”

I walked up the narrow stairway, the walls adorned with framed covers from the Ellis Fitzgerald series. At the top of the stairs I turned and entered the large second-floor living room. Brian was standing and staring into the fireplace, where it looked as though a fire had just been lit. “Hey, Brian,” I said.

He turned. He was holding a glass of whiskey with his good hand. “What can I get you?” he said, and I told him I’d have whatever he was having. From a waist-high cabinet he poured whiskey from a cut-glass decanter into a lowball glass, added a small cube of ice from a bucket, and brought it over to me. On the coffee table between two sofas was a wooden block with cheese and crackers on it. We sat down, and he put down his drink in order to lean over to get himself a cracker.

“How’s the arm?” I said.

“If you live as long as me, it turns out you just get used to having two arms. It’s not so easy to lose one of them. Even temporarily.”

“Tess helps.”

“Well, yes, she does help, but she won’t let me forget that fact. No, I’m kidding. It’s nice to have her here. Tell me about the store. What’s selling?”

We talked shop for a while, then Tess came up the stairs and perched on the edge of the sofa that Brian sat on. She wore an apron and her face was red and shiny as though she’d been peering into cooking pots. The Murrays’ dog, a speckled hound called Humphrey, had followed Tess into the room, and after briefly sniffing at my outstretched hand, began nosing toward the cheese board.

“Humphrey,” Brian and Tess said at the same time, and he sat back on his haunches, his tail slapping the floor.

“What’s for dinner?” I said, and I studied the two of them as she replied. Tess’s eyes were bright, as though she was excited. Brian watched her the way he might watch a bartender, with slight disinterest, until, of course, you needed another drink.

“Have one more drink, the two of you, then come downstairs for dinner,” Tess said before she left. She squeezed my shoulder as she passed me on the way to the stairs, then slapped her thigh and Humphrey followed her out the door.

“I’ll get it,” I said and took Brian’s empty glass and mine to the liquor cabinet. I poured two fingers of scotch in his glass and a little less in mine. I added ice to each of our drinks then brought them back.

“I’ll break out the good stuff later,” Brian said. “I have a Talisker twenty-five-year-old around here somewhere.”

“Don’t waste it on me,” I said. “This tastes fine.”

“Well, we’re drinking midweek scotch and unless I’m mistaken, today is Friday, at least that’s what Tess said. I’ll break out something better later.”

“You ever thought of writing a book about drinking?” I said.

“My agent’s mentioned it to me a few times. Not because he thinks anyone’ll buy it, but because he thinks at least I might profit a little from the time I waste drinking the stuff.”

“Before I forget,” I said. “I just reread The Sticking Place.”

“What made you do that?” he said, but I could tell from his face that he was pleased.

“I was going through all my copies of your books, and I just cracked it open and began reading it. Didn’t stop until I finished.”

“Yeah, I think in retrospect that Ellis should have killed more people. I loved writing that book. You know, I still have readers who send me letters telling me that they pretend that book doesn’t exist. And I get letters telling me it’s the only good thing I ever wrote.”

“Well, can’t please everyone all the time.”

“That’s the truth. I remember when I wrote Sticking Place I showed it to my agent first. My agent back then. You remember Bob Drachman? He told me he couldn’t put it down, but that they’d never publish it. Ellis wasn’t a coldhearted killer, he said. You’ll lose half your readers. I told him I might lose half, but I’d get twice as many back. He asked for a second draft, one that wasn’t so brutal, so, of course, I added another murder.”

“Which one?” I said.

“I can’t remember. No, I do. I think it’s the guy she locks in the freezer and leaves there. Yeah, that was the one, because Bob admitted he liked that scene when he read the final book. Anyway, I told him to submit the manuscript or I’d look for another agent, and so he sent it in. They published it, and, guess what, the world kept turning.”

“And you probably doubled your readers.”

“I don’t know about that, but I didn’t lose many. And I picked up an Edgar, so there was that.”