By the early afternoon, Ritchie has interviewed less than half the company, and the men are beginning to take bets on whether the interviews will extend into the following day.
“Were your ears burning, Gibson?” Anderson asks Jack as soon as he returns from his own trip to the taproom.
“Why?”
“Ritchie had a lot of questions about what you were up to with that chandelier.”
Jack glances at Lydia, who gives him a sympathetic smile. “What did you tell him?”
Anderson seems confused by the question. “What do you think I told him?”
Jack just blinks. Honestly, at this point, he doesn’t know.
“I stuck to the story,” says Anderson, looking around the room. “As I hope you all have.”
One person who seems to have had no trouble sticking to the story is Twaits. He sailed through his interview with Ritchie, and now he is back from his errand to the jail, too. Anderson asks how he managed, over at the birdcage, and he says there was nothing to it. “I just fingered a handful of men and said that I was sure I’d seen them near the stage door.”
Jack squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. “You really went after specific men? What did the jailer do to them?”
Twaits shrugs. “I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“Jesus, Twaits,” says Jack. “Do you have so little regard for human life?”
“Careful, Jack,” says Anderson, and Jack feels the muscles in his neck tighten.
Young, Burke, and Perry are recruiting a fourth player for a game of whist, and Young asks if Twaits wants to be dealt in. He nods, takes a seat at the makeshift card table, and asks where Placide is.
“Across the street, I think,” says Burke. “He went to see when the next Charleston-bound ship leaves Norfolk.”
“Isn’t he getting ahead of himself?” says West, who has installed himself on a window seat.
Perry plays a card. “Ritchie told me he expects to issue his report by Tuesday at the latest.”
“We could speed this up if we just told Ritchie the whole thing was Jack’s fault,” says Burke.
Several men laugh, and Jack can feel his pulse quickening. “How many times do I have to tell you? I was following orders.”
Anderson claps his hands, once and then twice. “Enough, everybody. And you,” he says, looking Jack straight in the eye, “keep your voice down.”
Twaits plays a card, then asks West how his own interview with Ritchie went.
West sighs. “Mostly, he just wanted to talk to me about selling the property.”
“I assume you told him to go piss up a rope?” says Anderson.
West gives him an exaggerated eye roll. “I did not.”
“What does he want the property for?” asks Twaits.
“He doesn’t,” West says. “The burial committee does.”
“The burial committee?” says Twaits.
“Apparently, no one likes the idea of burying everyone at Henrico Parish Church.”
Twaits screws up his face in confusion. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s a long way for all these mourners to walk in the cold,” West says. “And for another, the folks at Beth Shalome aren’t happy that the remains of so many Jewish citizens might come to rest in a cemetery that sits in the shadow of an Episcopal church.”
