A week later a small item on the Boston Globe’s website said that Henry Kimball had been discharged from the hospital. I wondered how much he remembered about what had happened to him. And I wondered what he had thought when he heard that Joan was dead.
I still had the buzz cut but I’d let my hair grow out a little before going to another barber, this time in Connecticut, and my hair was now back to my natural color, a pale red.
When I had first returned from Cambridge my mother had been utterly baffled by my blond hair, and finally I told her I was dating a man who had suggested it, and that I wasn’t dating him anymore.
I don’t know if she believed me, but it made her forget about the haircut and start speculating about the man instead.
My father, who had not initially noticed the new hair, spotted it after we were playing a game of backgammon one night, when I was taking a long time on a move.
“Look at your hair, Lil,” he said.
“Oh, you noticed.”
“I knew you looked different when you came back from your trip, but I was so glad to see you that I barely paid attention.”
“I thought novelists were meant to be observant.”
He smirked. “God, no. No, that’s not true. I actually have a theory about this.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, pretty sure I’d heard it before, but willing to listen again.
“There are two kinds of writers,” he said, “observers and imaginers. Even though my books are supposed to be realism, I’m basically an imaginer, with a little bit of observer dashed in. There’s a lot of writers out there like me. And a few writers who are purely good observers. Updike’s one of those. Incredible observation. Terrible imagination.”
“You’ve given this some thought,” I said.
“A little bit.”
“Isn’t there a William Faulkner quote about this?”
“I don’t know. Is there?”
It was ringing a bell so I looked it up on my phone, no doubt irritating my father. “Yes,” I said. “He said that authors need observation, imagination, and experience. And he said that any two of which or sometimes even one of which can supply the lack of the others.”
My father frowned, then said, “Well, that second part is true. But the thing about experience is that it’s overrated. If we’re alive we have experience. You don’t have to go on a fucking African safari to be a good writer. Barbara Pym never went anywhere. Philip Larkin never went anywhere.”
“Didn’t Barbara Pym go to—”
“No, writers just need either imagination or observation. That’s all.”
“So tell me an author who is purely imagination, besides fantasy writers?”
“I suspect that not all fantasy writers are bad observers, but maybe most of them are. Let me think of a good example. Oh, here’s one and you won’t like it, but your favorite author, Lil, Agatha Christie. All imagination and a terrible observer.”
“You think so?”
“Oh, yeah. She cares about getting her plots right and doesn’t care about getting the world right. Nothing wrong with it.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Trust me, she was probably the same in real life. If you met Agatha Christie on a walk, she’d have no idea where she was. She’d just be dreaming up murder plots. We are who we are.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t get tetchy. It doesn’t make her a bad writer, just a lousy observer. But the best writers, of course, are equal parts imagination and observation.”
“Who are those?”
“Oh, you know, the biggies. Charles Dickens, Jane Austen. Shakespeare, of course.”
“But not you?”
“Good lord, no. My novels are basically wish fulfillment, and I was lucky enough to be able to craft a decent sentence. But, honestly, I have zero idea how this world actually works.”
I’d made my move and was waiting for my father to roll his dice. “I feel the same way as you do. About the world, I mean,” I said, as he rolled a four and a five and groaned about it.
In early December, Henry came to visit. As usual, he didn’t call ahead or send a letter. He just appeared on a cold and beautiful Saturday afternoon.
“This a good time?” he said as I came out onto the front stoop to see him. He had gotten out of his car and was leaning against it.
“It is,” I said.
“What about for your parents?”
“I’ll just tell them you were expected, and that they’d forgotten about it. They’ll never know. And they’ll be glad to see you.”
He had brought a small overnight bag, so I showed him upstairs to the room he usually slept in. On the way we passed my mother in the kitchen prepping green beans for that night’s dinner, and she got up and came over and gave Henry a hug, saying, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” as though she really had been expecting him.
“Does your mother think I’m your boyfriend?” Henry said, after putting his bag down on the single bed in the guest room. I was standing in the doorway. He looked thin, which wasn’t a surprise, and I had noticed a slight limp as he’d gone up the stairs.
“Probably,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Physically I’m okay. Emotionally I’m a little shaky, like I’m living in a strange new world. It’s not a good feeling when you wake up in the hospital and don’t know why you’re there.”
“Is that what happened?”
“They told me that a bomb had gone off outside of my office and that it was brought there by Richard Seddon, but I don’t remember that.”
“Do you remember who Richard Seddon was?”
“A little bit. I know that he was friends with James Pursall, and I know that he was somehow connected with Joan Grieve, but it’s fuzzy.”
“You remember Joan?”
“Yes, I remember the case, and I remember finding her husband’s body, and Pam’s body. That’s the last completely clear memory I have. The rest is . . . incomplete.”
“Do you remember coming here?”
“When? After I’d found the bodies?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I kind of remember that. No, I do remember. I wanted to talk with you about what had happened.”
“You thought that there was a third person involved, someone Joan knew who had killed her husband and his girlfriend, and you wanted help figuring out who that person was.”
Henry was nodding his head, his eyes on the ceiling, trying hard to remember. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and I moved into the bedroom, turning the desk chair so that it faced him and sitting down. “I told you all that?” he said.
“You did. And I think that you figured out that Richard Seddon was the third person, and he knew that you knew, and that was why he tried to kill you.”
“And kill himself?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. He brought a bomb to your office. Maybe he was going to leave it there or maybe he was going to blow both of you up.”
“The police told me that I was on the other side of my office door when the bomb exploded, otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now.”