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ack and turned again toward the house, but by then…”
Another pause, another sip of water.
“By then they were engulfed,” Weaver finally said. “I stood up in the bed of the cart, and
saw it all. Mrs. Sloane run through, along with the toddler she was carrying in her arms. A single
thrust for them both, quite expedient. The oldest child, a boy of maybe seven? Eight? He got quite
far on his own, to the edge of the yard before they caught him. And Roland….he emerged through the
door last, which is just as of course it would be. Of course he would ensure that the others were out
of the burning house before he would leave it, and he saw Mrs. Sloane and the child dying there in the
yard, the small boy slain in the corner. Saw them at once, of course, and the horror of it was so
complete that for a moment he froze.”
“As for what he was thinking, how much he understood…” Weaver said, “I am not
entirely sure. And if you think I am a heartless creature for telling you this story with dry eyes and a
steady voice, let me assure you that this calmness is borne only of repetition. I have relived this
morning in my mind every day of my life, Detective. Some version of it, at least. Memory is a rather
imperfect vehicle, even when not further hampered by guilt, and each time I recall the scene, it is a
little different. Did Roland look at me, there in the farmyard, at that moment when he knew his death
was imminent? Did he see me standing in the cart, did he know that I was on the verge of deserting
the lot of them?” Weaver shrugged. “Most likely he did not, and this image that I carry, his
expression of disgust and condemnation, is entirely the fruit of my own imagination. For the yard was
utter bedlam, you see. Roland was struck from behind. The child he was carrying, the fifth little
Sloane, tumbled from his arms. I do not know what happened to it. Nothing good, I suppose.”
Rayley was too stunned by this matter-of-fact description of hell to respond. The two
men sat for some time in an utter silence, broken only by a far-away tinkling of some sort of bell.
“You condemn me,” Weaver finally said.
“I could not have done it,” Rayley said.
“How can any man say what he would do or not do in the heat of such a moment?”
Rayley looked at the notes in his lap, pretending to be absorbed in the words written on
the paper, which actually swam before his eyes. Weaver’s statement was true enough. He had never
been in war, never found himself caught up in a slaughter of the sort that Weaver described.
Whenever he arrived at a crime scene, the danger was always passed.
“I cannot say I would never panic and run,” he finally answered with honestly. “But the
moment you describe, the one where you stood in the cart and looked back over the farmyard… The
moment when you saw your best friend engulfed…”
“You believe you would have reentered the fray. That if it were Welles on point of
sword, you would go back.”
“I do.”
“And yet he surpasses you,” Weaver said. “Stands above you in importance, just as
Roland did me. I cannot think why this would be – my brief experience with the two of you suggests
you may possess the finer mind – so I can only imagine that certain twists of fate have been unkind to
you in the same way they were unkind to me. Your Hebrew faith, perhaps? Or some other accident of
birth?”
Weaver waited a moment for a confirmation which Rayley did not provide, and then
continued. “Roland and I first met as schoolfellows, you know. He was two years older, a prefect
when I was a mere novice, and he was remained just that, always a step ahead. He was the one with
the perfect marks, the admirable post, the heavier insignia on his jacket, a larger house – “