In the Bleak Midwinter

She reached for his coat. “I tried to get a fire going in the fireplace in the living room. But something went wrong.” He shrugged out of the bulky nylon parka and she hung it on an old coatrack.

On either side of the door were broad archways. From the size of the brass chandelier hanging in the room to his left, Russ guessed it was meant to be a dining room, although it looked more like a warehouse at the moment, with boxes and mismatched wooden chairs taking up most of the space. He bit back a smile. Evidently even the prospect of living out of cardboard hadn’t made the Reverend any more receptive to the idea of the church ladies swarming through her things, doing up the house for her.

Through the right arch, he could see the source of the problem. The Colonial-style brick fireplace in the center of the wall held a pile of overly large logs that were sputtering flames. Smoke curled under the mantel and filled the room. Since he didn’t hear anything, he guessed the quaint rectory had never been fitted out with anything as modern and useful as smoke alarms. “Let me see what I can do,” he said. “You open a few windows.”

The first thing he saw once he was on his knees on the flagstone hearth was that the flue was closed. He pulled its handle forward, opening it. The air rushed up the chimney with a sucking sound, drawing the smoke with it. There was an iron woodbox to the left of the fireplace and a wrought iron carrier holding kindling. “You got a newspaper handy?” he asked. She scooped yesterday’s Post-Star off a pine coffee table. He knocked the slightly singed logs to one side and replaced them with crumpled wads of paper, then laid on several small pieces of kindling and a quarter-split log. She had one of those silly brass canisters with foot-long match sticks on the mantelpiece.

“You’re supposed to use newspaper?” she asked, as the fire caught cleanly and began to burn. “I didn’t know that.”

“Where did you learn to make a fire?” Russ asked.

“Survival training,” she admitted. “You know, using pine needles, branches, a gum wrapper . . .”

“Do yourself a favor,” he said, grinning. “Use paper instead. And start small. Don’t pile on the big logs until you’ve got a roaring fire going.”

“I did have a roaring fire going!” she said. “For a minute or two.”

“What, when the pinecones caught on fire?” Russ laughed.

“The smoke’s cleared out,” she said with dignity. “I’ll close the windows.”

Russ took in the room while Clare cranked the casement windows shut. There was an overstuffed sofa and a few fat chairs with faded chintz covers grouped in front of the fireplace, and a needlepoint rug over the floorboards. The low built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace were piled with haphazardly arranged books, pictures, and plants, and topped by two narrow clerestory windows.

“So what brings you here? Besides saving my bacon from getting smoked.”

“Wanted to talk about the case.”

“Ah,” she said. “Then why don’t I get us some coffee first? Make yourself at home.”

“Coffee would be great. This is quite a place you have here. Do you know when it was built?”

She disappeared through a swinging door in the back of the room, but her voice floated out to him. “Nineteen-twelve. It’s very Arts-and-Crafts, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He walked back to the foyer and pulled off his wet boots. “Linda and I have an eighteenth-century farmhouse out near Fort Henry. No closets, eleven rooms and not a level wall or floor in any of them.”

“Must take a lot of work,” Clare shouted from the kitchen.

“Yeah, but I like it. Pretending I’m Bob Vila is a hobby of mine.”

She had set up a square chest on legs under the big front window and put it to work as the bar. Nice decanters. Russ uncorked one and took a sniff of Scotch. The smell was enough to make his mouth water. Sighing, he replaced the top. The little cane-seat chairs on either side didn’t look as if they could hold his weight, but he liked the plain, bare window, showing off the small panes of glass that ran along the edges. That was the one thing that drove him nuts about his wife’s custom curtain business—every window in his house was swagged and draped and ruffled with about fifty-seven yards of fabric.

Two standing lamps flanked a folded gateleg table behind the sofa. There was an assortment of family pictures, some in fancy silver frames, others in good-quality wood. He picked up the largest photo, taken on a beach somewhere. An older couple who must be Clare’s parents sitting on a driftwood log. A younger Clare in shorts and cotton sweater, her arm around a similarly dressed blond girl of eye-catching good looks. Two blond guys flanking them, not much taller than the girls but broad-shouldered and big. Which would explain the two separate photos of men in UVA football uniforms.