Confess, Fletch

Sylvia stood in, the doorway to the den.

“You’ll see who in the morning?”

At least she had not been listening on the extension.

“I have to see a man about a horse.”

“A Degas horse?”

“No, Sylvia. A pinto.”

“What is this, pinto horse. A painted horse, right?”

Now in a more kittenish manner, she sat in one of the leather chairs.

“What about my dinner?” she said.

“What about it?”

“No servants. Don’t you expect me to eat, Flesh? I am your guest!”

“Right,” Fletch said. “You’ve never tasted my cooking, have you?”

“You cook?”

“Like a dream.” He kissed the tips of his fingers and exploded them before his face. “Um! Better than the Ritz! Let’s see.” Thoughtfully, he paced the small room. “To begin with, a potage au cresson, yes? Timbales de foies de volaille. Good! Homard à l’americaine! Then, of course a fricassée de poulet à l’indienne, with pois frail en’braisage. What could be better! Eh? For dessert, charlotte Chantilly, aux framboises! Splendid!” He considered her anxiously. “Would that be all right, do you think? Countess?”

“It sounds all right.”.

“Of course, it will take me some time.”

“I’m used to eating late. I want to see these things you cook.”

“I’d offer you a drink, but of course, I never would before such a dinner. ”

“Of course not. I’ll take nothing to drink.”

“You sit right there. I’ll get busy in the kitchen.”

Briskly, Fletch crossed the reception hall and went through the swing door to the kitchen.

He also went through the kitchen, out its back door, and down the stairs to the alley.

He ran to the garage on River Street.

Not taking time to figure a new route to 60 Newbury Street, he drove down Beacon Street, past his own apartment. The two plainclothesmen in the parked car across from 152 Beacon Street looked like bags of laundry. But they had their eyes firmly on the front door of the apartment house. Fletch scratched his left temple while passing them.

He turned left on Arlington Street and right Newbury. Double parking outside a pharmacy, he ran in and ordered two sandwiches and some soft drinks to go. He also ordered two cups of coffee.

There was a place to park diagonally across the street from the Horan Gallery.

He turned off his lights and engine and settled down to wait.

It was then he realized he would need more than his suit jacket. He was cold.

Within twenty minutes the garage doors at 60 Newbury Street opened. Fletch saw the grille of a Rolls Royce with its headlights on.

The sixty-year-old houseman, or gallery assistant or whatever he was, closed he doors after the Rolls pulled out.

There was only one-way the Rolls could go on Newbury Street, it being a one-way west, and the car went west.

In the van Fletch followed Horan in the Rolls.

They went by several cross-streets. They went west to the end of Newbury Street.

After stopping at a red light, they crossed Massachusetts Avenue and dipped down a ramp onto the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension. And kept going west.

The Rolls proceeded at a stately fifty-five miles per hour. It went through a toll booth, making its proper genuflection to the exact change machine, and continued westward.

It curved right before the second toll both. “WESTON,” Fletch read, “128 NORTH/SOUTH.”

At the end of the off ramp, there was another toll booth.

In his own lane, Fletch caught up to Horan. He waited a moment before throwing change out the window, as if he were having trouble finding the exact change.

The Rolls preceded him onto the Weston Road.

After stopping at a light, the two vehicles veered right. The road from there curved and climbed gently, past woods, a golf course, well-spaced antique farmhouses, and more contemporary estate houses.

Fletch dared not let the Rolls’ tail lights get more than one hundred and fifty meters ahead of him.

Even that was almost too much, on that road.

After a curve the taillights were no longer ahead of him. Slowing imperceptibly, Fletch saw a car going through woods down a driveway to his left. The headlights were high and round, the shape of the car boxy, the taillights huge. It had to be the Rolls.

Fletch drove around the next curve And pulled over. He left his parking lights on.

He ran along the soft shoulder of the road back to the driveway he thought Horan had taken. The mailbox read, MILLER.

Lights in a house further down to his left went on.

The mailbox on that driveway read HORAN.

Stepping around in the dark, he explored the area across from the driveway.

There was a break in the stone wall, with a rusty chain across it. The wall was only two meters from the road.

Fletch returned to his truck and turned it around.

Before reversing, to put the back bumper of his truck against the chain, he turned out its headlights.

The chain snapped easily.

Crunching through brush, Fletch backed up, turned the wheel, and then drove forward to the wall.

Through a light screen of brush in front of him, had a perfect view of the Horan driveway.

In the silent dark, he had one sandwich and a cup of coffee.

He watched the lights go out in the Horan house. At a quarter to twelve all the lights were out in the neighbors’ house.

At one-thirty, Fletch walked up the shoulder Horan’s gravel driveway. Moonlight came and went through the clouds.

After a patch of woods, a lawn appeared to the left, in front of the house. It, had two levels. The upper level apparently was used as a patio. Under a green striped awning, white, wrought iron furniture remained outdoors in October.

The house was a rather imposing, three-storied structure. Its slate roof reflected moonlight.

Going around the right of the house, Fletch had to cross a patch of gravel. He took off his shoes to do so.

A garage was connected to the house.

Around the garage ran a dirt car track, to an unused, three-sided tractor shed. The extensive gardens at the back of the house had fallen into decay.

He examined the windows at the back of the house. All, including the windows in the kitchen door, were wired with a burglar alarm system.

Woods came up to the far side of the house.

Fletch returned to his van and had his second sandwich and the cold coffee.

By three-thirty he was cold enough to look in the back of the van for something to wrap around himself, although he was sure there was nothing there.

In fact, the painters had left a long piece of tarpaulin. The splattered paint on it was dry to the touch.

Returning to the driver’s seat, he wrapped the tarpaulin around him.

He was getting comfortably warm when dawn arrived.

Almost immediately, rain sounded against the truck’s roof. It obscured vision through the windshield.

Turning on the ignition, but not the engine, Fletch sent the wipers over the windshield every few minutes.

At a quarter past eight, he saw the grille of the Rolls-Royce in the driveway opposite.

It had been Fletch’s plan to pull the truck further back into the woods if he had forewarning of Horan’s departure. He had had none.

He hoped the combination of the rain and the screen of brush in front of him protected him somewhat from being seen.

The Rolls did not stop. It turned right, without hesitation, back the way it had come the night before.

After Horan went around the curve, Fletch extricated the truck from the bushes and followed him.

He followed him back to 60 Newbury Street.

Fletch was parked—halfway down the block—before the manservant opened the garage in response to Horan’s horn. The Rolls backed across the side walk into the garage.

It was ten minutes to nine, Saturday morning.

At nine-fifteen, Fletch drove to the pharmacy. There he bought a razor, a blade, and a can of shaving foam. He also bought a cup of tea to go.

In the truck he loosened his collar, threw out the tea bag, and, using the tarpaulin, as well as the razor, the blade, the shaving foam, and the tea, shaved himself.

At nine-thirty he rang the doorbell of the Horan Gallery.