Mrs. Cowley takes a nip from the bottle of brandy and hands it to her, uncorked. “The very best we can.”
JACK
The actors trickle into theWashington Tavern’s back room over the course of a couple of hours. The room boasts a large stone fireplace and a smattering of tables and chairs, but by the time Jack arrives, at a little after one o’clock in the morning, most of the tables are full. He finds Lydia seated against the wall in the far corner of the room and sits down next to her.
“Have you heard anything more about Nancy?” he asks.
“No,” she whispers. Her eyes are red and puffy. If she were his, he might put an arm around her, whisper some comfort into her ear, but all he can do is hug his knees to his chest.
The room is eerily quiet. Roy lies on the floor a few feet away from them, staring up at the ceiling, and Perry is perched on a window seat, slowly opening and closing his folding knife, so that the click of the blade is the only sound any of them hear.
When Anderson arrives, he finds a seat at a table in the center of the room and motions for Jack to join him. Jack doesn’t want to give up his spot next to Lydia, but he is too afraid to argue.
“Is everyone here?” asks Placide, who is pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace.
“Robertson’s not,” says Perry.
“Where is he?”
Twaits clears his throat. “I think he’s still helping.”
“Helping?”
“Burke said he exited through the pit. Got stuck helping people out a first-floor window.”
“Huh,” says Placide, as if he’s never considered the fact that Robertson—or any of them, really—might have an altruistic bent. “Do we have everyone else? With the exception of the Greens, of course.”
People look around, and no one offers up any other names, so Placideasks Anderson to shut the door. “All right,” he says when Anderson returns to his seat. “Now that we’re all in a room together, I want someone to explain what happened.”
Young is eager to contribute to the conversation, but all he can tell Placide is that the fire started in the flyspace, which is the same thing everyone else is saying.
“Anderson,” says Placide. “Get out a piece of paper.”
Anderson does as he is told.
“I want a list of everyone who was backstage when the fire started.”
The words have barely rolled off his tongue when Perry’s hand shoots up in the air. “I was.”
“Me too,” says Roy.
“I was, too,” Clive says. “And Jack.”
“Are you getting all this?” Placide asks Anderson.
“You don’t need a list,” Jack says impatiently. “I can just tell you what happened.”
The room goes quiet.
Placide’s lips are as thin as thread, but he says, “Go on.”
Jack is so relieved to have everyone’s attention that he rushes to get out all the details. The forest, the chandelier, Green’s insistence that he raise the lamp. The whole story comes out in one long torrent. When he is through, he looks around the room, and everyone’s eyes have gone wide with surprise.
“So,” says Placide slowly, “what you’re saying is that, if you hadn’t forgotten to lower the chandelier, none of this would have happened?”
That’s true, although Jack doesn’t like the implication that this is all his fault. He hurries to clarify. “If Green had allowed the chandelier to stay where it was, once we realized my mistake, we’d also have been fine.”
Placide does not look convinced.
