Confess, Fletch

Twenty-nine

It was a dark brown, wooden Victorian house, three storeys under a slate roof, on the harborside, in Winthrop. It had a small front yard and cement steps leading up to a deep porch.

Looking between the houses, as he walked from where he had parked his car, Fletch saw their shallow backyards ended at a concrete seawall. Beyond was the cold, slate-gray, dirty water of Boston Harbor. The airport was a mile or two across the water.

On the porch, Fletch looked through the window, into the living room.

At the back of the room, four music stands were set up in a row. Behind them, to their right, was a baby grand piano, its lid piled with stacks of sheet music. A cello stood against the piano. The divan and chairs, coffee table, and carpet seemed incidental in the large, wainscoted room.

Two teenage boys who looked just alike, not only their blue jeans and cotton shirts, but in their slim builds and light coloring, were setting sheet music on the stands.

A jet, taking off from. the airport across the screamed overhead.

The storm door to Fletch’s right opened.

“Mister Fletcher?”

He had not rung the bell.

Flynn’s small face, at his great height, peered the corner at him.

“Hi,” Fletch said, backing away from the window he had been peering through. “How are you?”‘

I’m fine,“ Flynn said. ”Your police escort phoned to report you were approaching my house. They fear you threaten our well-being.“

“I do,” said Fletch, holding out a five-pound box. “I brought your family some chocolate.”

“How grand of you.” Flynn held the spring door open with his huge left arm and took the candy with his right had “Bribery, is it?”

“It occurred to me it was the City of Boston which owed me a bottle of whiskey—not the Flynn family.”

Flynn said, “Come in, Fletch.”

The vestibule was dark and scattered with a half-dozen pairs of rubbers. A baby carriage was parked at an odd angle.

Flynn led him into the living room.

Besides the boys in the room, one of whom now had a violin in his hands, there was a girl of about twelve, with full, curly blond hair and huge, blue saucer eyes. The color of her short, fluffy dress matched her eyes. The boys were about fifteen.

“Munchkin,” Flynn said. “This is Mister Fletcher, the murderer.” Flynn pointed off his children, “Randy, Todd, Jenny.”

Randy, bow and violin in one hand, extended his right. “How do you do, sir?”

As did his twin, Todd.

“Ach,” said Flynn. “My family gets to meet all sorts.”

A boy about nine years old entered. His hair was straight brown. Mostly he was glasses and freckles.

“This is Winny,” said Flynn.

Fletch shook hands with him.

“No Francis Xavier Flynn?”

“One’s enough,” said Flynn. “No bloody Irwin Maurice, either.”

Elizabeth Flynn entered through a door behind the piano.

Her light brown, straight hair fell to her shoulders. Her body, under her skirt and cardigan, was full and firm. Her unquestioning light blue eyes were deep-set over magnificent cheekbones. They were warm and humorous and loving.

“This is Fletch, Elsbeth. The murderer. I mentioned him.”

“How do you do?” She held his hand over the music stand. “You’d like some tea, I think.”

“I would.”

“He brought me some candy.” Flynn handed her box. “Better give him some tea.”

“How nice.” She looked at the box in her hands. “Perhaps for after supper?”

“We were about to have our musicale,” Flynn said. To the children, he said, “What is it today?”

“Eighteen—One.” Todd’s Adam’s apple seemed large for his sinewy neck, especially when he spoke. “F major.”

“Beethoven? We’re up to that, are we?”

Jenny said, “I am.”

“Sorry to wake you all up last night,” Fletch said.

Elizabeth had come in the other door with tea things.

“Come over and have a cuppa,” Flynn said

While Flynn and Fletch sat over their tea, Elizabeth at the piano helped the children tune their instruments. Todd had picked up a viola. Jenny had a less than full-sized violin.

Fletch spoke over the scrapings and plunks.

“Did you catch him?”

“Who?” Flynn poured a cup for Elizabeth as well.

“The arsonist.”

“Oh, yes,” said Flynn.

“Was it the gas station attendant?”

“It was a forty-three-year-old baker.”

“Not the gas station attendant?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Are you crushed?”

“Why was he burning down Charlestown?”

Flynn shrugged. “Jesus told him to. Or so he said.”

“But where did he get all the Astro gasoline containers?”

“He’d been saving up.”

Elizabeth was tuning his cello.

“Now, let’s see what this is all about.”

Leaving his cup drained behind him, Flynn sat behind his music stand.

“Elsbeth usually joins us at the piano,” he explained to Fletch, “but Beethoven didn’t consider her today.”

She came over to the divan and took her tea. The children were behind their music stands. The youngest, Winny, was the page-turner. “Remember to turn me first,” his father said. “I’ve got a memory like a bear’s mouth.”

They all straightened their backs, like flowers rising their stems in the morning sun.

“Con brio!” their father shouted, in a voice of pleasant threat.

They were off, bows indicating two dimensions in their coming and going, eyes intent upon the sheet music, Randy’s violin gracefully indicating, belatedly, a few notes Jenny skipped, her blue eyes getting more huge as, they traveled down the page, a few times losing her place altogether (when she had nothing to play, she sighed; then her tongue would sneak out and touch the tip of her nose), Winny back and forth behind them like a waiter, following his father’s score, turning his page first, then Jenny’s on perfect time (frequently a help to her finding her place and a cause of renewed, more confident playing), then Todd’s, then Randy’s, every five or six minutes a jet screeching by just five hundred meters above the house, deafening the players (drowned out, they sawed away apparently soundlessly), making them adjust their paces to each other once they could hear each other again, ever and always Flynn’s cello playing along, leading from behind (“Molto! Molto!” he shouted over the shrieking of a jet during the third section; he was enormous, delicate over his instrument), keeping the pace, somewhat, the tone, as well as it could be kept, Elizabeth sitting in the divan beside Fletch, ankles crossed, hands her lap, loving them all with her eyes.

Upstairs, a baby mewed.

They sat rigid in their slight curve, shoulders straight, chins tucked, the boys’ blue denim stretched over their slim thighs, sneakers angled on the floor like frogs’ feet, the sky through the windows behind them going down the scale of gray through dusk to dark, more lights coming on at the airport across the reflecting surface of the harbor. During the fourth section, Jenny was tired and not as practiced. Sighs became more frequent. The tongue crept out to the tip of her nose even when she should have been playing. Even Randy’s and Todd’s faces shone with perspiration.

Their hair matted on their foreheads identically. For a moment, Fletch looked at the chessmen set up on a board to his right. A game was in progress.

Jenny was vigorous in the last bars, practiced, allegro, and, finished a little before the others. She looked momentarily confused.

It was a wonderful forty minutes.

“Bravo!” Elizabeth said while she and Fletch applauded.

“Pretty good, Jenny,” Randy said, standing up. Without comment Flynn closed his sheet music and stood to lean his cello in the curve of the piano again.

“Da‘?” Todd said. “That should never have been in anything other than F major.”

“We all make mistakes,” said Flynn. “Even Beethoven. We all have our temporary madnesses.”

Elizabeth was hugging Jenny and complimenting Winny on his page-turning.

It was five-twenty.

“I expect we could find a drink for you, before supper,” Flynn said. “Elsbeth drinks sherry, and I suppose there’s some other stuff in the house.”

“I have to get to the airport,” Fletch said.

“Oh?” said Flynn. “Skipping town, finally?”

Conversation was suspended while a jet thundered overhead.

The room reeked with accomplishment as the kids moved about with their instruments. They bounced on the balls of their sneakered feet as only happy, accomplished children do.

“Andy’s arriving,” Fletch said finally. “Six-thirty.”

“Is she now? That’s nice.”

“You’ll stay for supper?” Elizabeth said, coming back to where Fletch was now standing.

“He’s picking up his girlfriend,” rolled Flynn. “At the airport. That will alarm your police escort, I’m sure. I’d better warn them you don’t mean to take flight, or they will tackle you at the information counter. They’ll watch you, all the same.”

“Bring her back with you,” Elizabeth said.

Fletch shook hands respectfully with the children.

“I like you,” Elizabeth said. “Frannie, this is no murderer.”

“That’s what all the women say,” Flynn said. “I haven’t convinced him yet, either.”

“His face was good while he listened.”

“As long as, he didn’t hum along,” Flynn said. “Tap his toes.”

They all laughed at Flynn as a jet whined in a holding pattern over their heads.

“Bring your girl back with you,” shouted Elizabeth. “We’ll wait supper for you!”

“Thanks anyway, said Fletch. ”Really, this has been a wonderful time for me.“

Flynn said, “We’d be glad to have you, Fletch.”

Fletch said, “I’d be glad to stay. May I come back sometime?”

“What’s your instrument?” Winny asked.

“The typewriter.”

“Percussion,” said Flynn.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “Leroy Anderson wrote for the typewriter.”

“You come back any time,” said Flynn. “Any time you’re free, that is.”

In the cold vestibule, Flynn said, “I guess you didn’t have the conversation with me this afternoon you wanted to.”

“No,” said Fletch. “This was much better.”

“I thought you’d think so.”

“May I see you in your office tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“What’s a good time?”

“Five o’clock. Any policeman with good sense is in his office at that time. The traffic is terrible.”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“Ninety-nine Craigie Lane. If you get lost, ask the plainclothesmen following you.”

They said good night.

Outside, the air was damp and cold.

Fletch stood on the top step off the porch for a moment, adjusting his eyes to the dark, feeling the house’s warmth at his back, hearing a bit of early Beethoven scraping in his memory’s ears, thinking of the two blue doll’s eyes under a doll’s mop of tossed, curly blond hair.

Across the street, under a streetlight, he clearly saw the faces of the two plainclothesmen waiting for him. It seemed to him their eyes were filled with hatred.

One of them picked up the car phone, as Fletch started down the steps. Flynn would be telling them Fletcher was going to the airport, and they shouldn’t panic…but to make sure he didn’t get on a plane.

“Jesus Christ,” Fletch said.

The scrape of his chin on his shirt collar made him realize he should have shaved.