There’s a silence as Beverley waits for him to leave, her body charged with impatience. But there is something else making its grim way in, too.
Shame.
How could she really have believed this man—thisoldman—in front of her to be capable of murder? And not just murder, but grisly, ritualistic killings that are now so clearly the work of someone young and strong and troubled.
She eyes Mr. Appleton’s knitted vest, his shirtsleeves swamping frail arms, the uniform of the retired. She is ashamed of herself. But she needs to leave. Now.
“Well, if that’s—”
“I picked up your paper, too.” He holds it out to her.
She pauses. Then, through gritted teeth: “Why don’t you come andhelp me put him back in the garden quickly?” It will take only a minute. She lifts the tortoise like a football. Meatball responds by abruptly wrenching his neck into his shell.
There’s something hanging in the air around Christopher Appleton. She knows its taste all too well.
Loneliness.
She sometimes senses it in her mother, too.
Just a minute, then out. That’s it.
“Have you always lived alone?” she asks as she leads him through the house, thinking of the unkempt garden, the nights in front of the television, the twitching curtains.
He tells her that his wife died almost ten years ago, and that since then he’s never really done well at looking after himself. “Holes in my socks, breakfast cereal for dinner, that sort of thing.” He seems embarrassed to be saying it.
But Beverley is the one who should be embarrassed. She has been the subject of scrutiny herself, the fuel for rumors, the punch line to tasteless jokes.
With a wince, she remembers fleeing from him at the grocery store—seeing the cereal boxes in his cart and making the most elaborate of leaps. This is just a man who is trying to live after loss, a widower who can’t work his oven—someone alone. She knows what that’s like.
“I’d happily cook you a casserole for the freezer.” It’s a paltry offering, but it’s something.
She senses him stopping behind her, so she turns. He stands there, blinking, visibly moved. “You don’t have to do that,” he stammers.
“Actually, you’d be doing me a favor.” She forces a bright tone, wanting to hurry things along. “I’m a hopeless cook.”
“Well, I’d love that.” He smiles a genuine smile. “Shall I put this on the counter?” He raises the newspaper in the air.
She nods, then flinches when she sees the McKenzie girl on the front page. Kate. Stories about the potential killer run almost every day now. Will Peter Farrer be splashed across the front pages tomorrow?
“Well, if that’s everything…” She has to get out, to tell Sharon what her son really is. It’s the decent thing to do for a mother before she reports her son to the police. Even if it means doing it without Elsie and Margot, she has to leave now.
She places Meatball on the floor, picks up her bag again.
Then Mr. Appleton says something she does not quite hear.
She asks him to repeat it.
“Like something from a Hitchcock film,” he says again, tapping the newspaper headline—stabbed in the shower.
“What?” Beverley asks impatiently as Meatball plods away.
“Like Janet Leigh,” he explains. “Marion Crane. Just horrible.”
“You watch a lot of movies?” she asks through gritted teeth, eyeballing the door.
“I’m nutty about cinema,” he says shyly. “I worked at Warner Brothers as a young guy. Props.”
Suddenly her memory serves up something from its recesses: a dark room plastered with movie posters, piles of pack film stacked on the side. Something settles in her mind, heavy like snow.
