Bleeding Hearts (28 page)

Gregor folded the page in his hands. “I’d like to keep this, if the two of you wouldn’t mind.”

“We made it for you to keep,” Helen Tevorakian said. “It isn’t as complete as it might be. I have Hannah over at my apartment, of course, but the doctor’s given her a sedative. And I wouldn’t have felt right about questioning her.”

“I’ll talk to Hannah myself later,” Gregor said. “Let me just clear up a couple of points here. Mary went upstairs right after Paul Hazzard did.”

“That’s right. Practically on his heels. Except not quite. If you see what I mean.”

“What I’m interested in is what you found when you got there,” Gregor said. “Was the door to Hannah’s bedroom open?”

“Oh, yes.” Mary nodded.

“Where was Hannah?”

“In the bathroom.”

“No,” Mary said. “The bathroom door was closed. And locked.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw Paul Hazzard try it. He rattled the knob and then he called out to Hannah. To Mrs. Krekorian.”

“Did Hannah answer?”

“Not really,” Mary Ohanian said. “She was crying, you know. She was totally hysterical. I could hear her.”

“All right,” Gregor said. “Did Paul Hazzard see you? Or hear you? Did he know you were there?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Demarkian. He never turned around. And Hannah was making a lot of noise.”

“All right,” Gregor said again. “That’s clear enough, I suppose. Helen, let’s go to you. You went up later. Why?”

Helen Tevorakian shot him a dry, self-deprecating smile. “
Why
isn’t the question here, Krekor. The question is how we all managed the admirable self-restraint it took not to install ourselves outside Hannah’s bedroom door the minute after Paul Hazzard ran upstairs. We were all itching to get up there.”

Gregor laughed. “Noted. I’ll take that as an explanation. You did go up there though. What did you find?”

“Nothing, really,” Helen said. “The bedroom door was locked by the time I got there. I couldn’t see anything.”

“You’re sure it was locked.”

“Absolutely sure. I tried it myself.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I listened. I stood very still outside in the hallway and listened hard.”

“What did you hear?”

“Paul Hazzard pacing in the bedroom. Hannah crying. Still behind the bathroom door.”

“Can you really be sure about either of those things?”

Helen Tevorakian considered it. “I can be sure about Hannah’s crying. It was really very, very muffled. It would have been much clearer if there had been nothing between us but that one bedroom door.”

“But you can’t be sure about the pacing,” Gregor prodded.

“I can be sure I heard somebody walking around in there. That was unmistakable. And Hazzard was in there, Gregor. I remember wondering if he was pacing around like that to keep warm,” Helen said. “It was terribly cold in the hall. Frigid.”

Gregor played with the piece of paper in his hands and frowned. “Mary, when you came upstairs and saw Paul Hazzard in Hannah’s bedroom, was there a window open in that bedroom?”

Mary was alert. “You mean the window that was open later when we found the body? Oh, no, Gregor, it wasn’t open when I went up. I could have seen the curtains blowing from where I was standing.”

“And you weren’t cold?”

“Not in the least. I remember thinking it was just like Mrs. Krekorian. She always keeps her rooms too stuffy.”

“Is the open window some kind of clue?” Helen asked. “I read a murder mystery once where the murderer tried to change around the time the coroner was going to say the death occurred by putting the body in a refrigerator. Is that something like this?”

“I don’t see how it can be,” Mary Ohanian said. “When that kind of thing happens in books, it’s always meant to change the time of death by hours. Nobody could have done that here. Mrs. Krekorian was in the bathroom. There were dozens of people downstairs. The murderer had to know the body was going to be discovered practically right away.”

Helen looked stricken. “I have just been thinking about the times again. It won’t work out, will it, Krekor? That DeWitt woman wouldn’t have had time to commit the murder. She would have had only two minutes.”

“If your times are right,” Gregor agreed, “she wouldn’t have had time.”

“I don’t see how anybody would have had time,” Mary Ohanian said. “Even Hannah. They were never alone up there for more than three or four minutes. How long does it take to stab a man six times?”

Actually, Gregor thought, it didn’t take very long at all. It could be done in ninety seconds flat if you were fast enough and if you had the right things going for you. The most important thing you had to have going for you was surprise. You had to be someone Paul Hazzard did not expect could, or would, hurt him. You had to be someone with a reason for practically throwing yourself into Paul Hazzard’s arms. Unfortunately, Hannah Krekorian fit both those conditions far better than Candida DeWitt did.

Gregor stuck the folded timetable into the inside pocket of his coat.

“I’m going to go over to see Father Tibor,” he said. “Are you two going to be around all day if I need you? After the police see this timetable, they may have a few questions I didn’t think of.”

“I’m going to be around all day,” Mary Ohanian said gloomily. “The way my father’s behaving, he’ll probably chain me in my room.”

Helen stood up. “I’m going to go back and take care of Hannah. She needs taking care of. Any minute now, the full force of this is going to hit her, and she’s going to have a nervous breakdown.”

“I wish I knew why that window was open,” Gregor said. “I wish I knew who opened it. Maybe it’s time I talked to Hannah Krekorian myself.”

“You talked to her last night,” Helen Tevorakian said. “That’s enough for the time being.”

But it wasn’t enough for the time being, and Gregor knew it. Every new fact he found was just making matters worse.

W
HEN THE FLOWERS CAME
to Lida Arkmanian’s house, Hannah Krekorian was sitting on the couch in Helen Tevorakian’s living room, looking down on Cavanaugh Street from the living room window. The couch had its back to the window. She had to twist around to see that way. After the second armful of roses went in, she twisted back and stared at Helen’s coffee table instead. The coffee table had a stack of books on it
(The Art of Picasso, Gauguin in Tahiti, Florentine Art)
and a big green ceramic frog. The frog reminded Hannah uncomfortably of the game they used to play as children, called Frogs and Princesses. The girls had always been the princesses, of course. The frogs had been the boys who chased them. Hannah couldn’t remember if she had been chased much. She couldn’t even remember if she had been happy to play. It was all so long ago. Nothing seemed real to her at the moment except Paul Hazzard’s body dead on her bedroom carpet and her own dull ache. That was what she had been feeling today, a dull ache. All other emotion had been melted out of her. Paul. The party last night. That
woman.
Hannah was sure she ought to be angry at somebody. It took too much energy. It required a certainty she didn’t have.

She twisted around to look at the street again. The street was empty. She turned around again and saw that Helen’s heavy teakwood wall clock had advanced another thirty-five minutes. When? While she’d been staring at the street for the second time or while she’d been staring at the coffee table? How? It had been like this all day. It had been impossible.

Hannah got up and made her way to the back of the apartment. Helen’s kitchen was covered with Valentine’s Day cards from her children and grandchildren. Hannah had a load of cards just like these in her own apartment, which she couldn’t get to. They used to pass out cards like that in school on Valentine’s Day. There would be a cardboard box covered in crepe paper with a slit at the top, to act as a post office. The cards would be passed out at lunch. Hannah had a distinct memory of sitting in class all Valentine’s Day morning, scared to death that when the cards were passed out, not a single one of them would come to her. Later she found out that all the other mothers were just like her own. They made their children send cards to every other child in the class, with no one left out. Hannah didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse. She would have been grateful not to have been afraid.

Hannah got a cup out of Helen’s china cabinet and put the teakettle on for water. Helen kept a little box of teabags next to the chocolate Ovaltine in her pantry and Hannah got that out too. Hannah didn’t know if she wanted a cup of tea, but getting one was something to do. She wished she’d had the courage to go down to the Ararat this morning. She wished she knew what people were thinking. Most of all, she wished she knew if people were laughing at her. She wouldn’t blame them if they were. Paul Hazzard, for heaven’s sake. What had she been thinking of?

There was the scratchy sound of a key in a lock and then the whoosh of an opening door. Helen Tevorakian’s voice sailed through the apartment. “She’s around here someplace, Krekor,” Helen said. “The only thing I worry about is that she might be sleeping.”

The teakettle was spitting water and air. Hannah took it off the flame and poured boiling water into her teacup. She heard the front door close and said, “I’m not sleeping, Helen. I’m in here.”

“She’s in the kitchen,” Helen said irrelevantly. “Come this way, Krekor. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this apartment.”

Hannah didn’t know if Gregor had ever been in this apartment either, but it hardly seemed to matter. She turned off the stove and sat down in front of her tea. She put a single spare teaspoon of sugar in it and waited for them to come in. Only Gregor entered. He was wearing his heaviest long coat and his longest scarf. He looked cold.

“Where’s Helen?” she asked him.

“Helen’s gone off someplace to do her laundry. She’s trying to give us a little privacy.”

“Did you ask her to?”

“Yes.”

“Helen’s very good at taking directions. Do you remember? She used to get ribbons for it when we were all in school.”

“Mmm. I was just over at Father Tibor’s apartment. He wasn’t home.”

“He went to lunch with somebody. Some young woman. I heard Helen talking to Sheila Kashinian about it on the phone. He’ll be back around five-thirty or so. He promised.”

“Good.” Gregor unwound his scarf and draped it over the back of a chair. He took off his coat and threw that over the back of another chair. Hannah appraised him dispassionately. It was different for boys, she knew that. With girls, it was what you looked like and that was it. Unless you had a fairy godmother or the money for a good plastic surgeon, girls were born blessed or cursed. Boys could change everything with what they did. Gregor had not been considered especially attractive in grammar school or high school. As soon as he’d gone off to the University of Pennsylvania, all that had changed. As soon as he’d graduated, he’d become a catch. All the girls on Cavanaugh Street had wanted to go out with him.

Gregor sat down in the chair with the scarf on the back of it. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re staring at me. Do I have my shirt on inside out?”

“No, Krekor. I was just thinking about us. You and me and Lida and the rest of us. When we were in high school.”

“Were you? I try not to.”

“It’s all I seem to think about these days. Not just—not just since Paul died, you know, but from before. From when I first met him. It doesn’t seem possible that that was only a week ago.”

“I think I’ll get myself something to drink.”

Gregor got up, found hot water, found a cup, found a spoon, looked for coffee, and settled for one of the teabags instead. He put a cup of tea together and sat down again.

“Well,” he said. “Here we are. Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, Krekor. I am all right. Are the police going to arrest me?”

Gregor stirred uneasily. “I don’t know.”

“I keep expecting them to,” Hannah said. “It only makes sense. There I was, standing over the body with a smoking gun. So to speak.”

“Yes, I know, Hannah. But these things are more complicated than that.”

“And you know I didn’t kill him.”

“I believe you when you say you didn’t kill him.”

“Yes.” Hannah nodded. “There is a distinction there, and you ought to make it. But I didn’t kill him.”

Gregor took his teabag out of his cup, tasted the tea, made a face, and reached for the sugar. “Let’s start further back now, to about the time you ran upstairs. You ran upstairs because the things Candida DeWitt was saying made you upset—”

“I ran upstairs because the existence of Candida DeWitt made me look like a damn fool,” Hannah corrected him. “Excuse my language, Krekor, but I can’t help it. I am very good at self-delusion, but even I have to quit sometimes.”

“What do you mean by self-delusion?”

“I mean that I still don’t know what Paul Hazzard wanted out of me, but whatever it was, it wasn’t my
self.
He was not the kind of man who would be attracted to a woman like me. He didn’t have to compromise. He could have Candida DeWitt.”

“He doesn’t seem to have wanted Candida DeWitt,” Gregor pointed out.

Hannah waved this away. “He could have had a woman like Candida DeWitt. He could have had someone young. Do you know what my theory is?”

“What?”

“After the murder of his wife, Paul’s business went downhill. That is common knowledge, Krekor, we don’t have to speculate about that. He needed money but he had trouble finding women with money to marry him, because they did not want to put themselves in the same position as the wife who died. And I have money, Krekor. Not millions and millions and millions of dollars, but enough. All five of my sons pitched in together to make me a portfolio ten years ago, and they have managed it very well.”

“Well,” Gregor said, “that’s a thought. But I think you’re being a little too hard on yourself. You have a lot more to offer than your portfolio.”

“Possibly, Krekor, yes. But not to a man. Not for romantic purposes.”

Gregor started to protest, then looked away. Hannah smiled grimly. Oh, she had been right to be upset last night. She had been right. She had been making such a spectacularly
public
fool of herself.