Passage

“Distracted,” Kit said. “When I first told her about the book, I got the idea she didn’t know what I was talking about. She sounded… distant, worried. Definitely not excited or happy.”

“And she didn’t say why she was busy or what she was working on?”

“No,” Kit said, but she had hesitated before answering, she wasn’t looking at him.

“She said something,” he said. “We have to hear it, even if it’s bad. What did she say?”

Kit tamped down the straw in her Coke. “She asked me if I’d found out if there were any fires on the Titanic.”

“Fires?” Vielle said incredulously. “The Titanic hit an iceberg, it didn’t burn down.”

“I know,” Kit said, “but she wanted to know if there had been any fires on board after it hit the iceberg.”

“Were there?” Richard asked curiously.

“Yes and no,” Kit said. “There had been a fire smoldering in the coal in Boiler Room 6 since before the ship sailed, and there were fireplaces in the first-class lounge and the smoking room, but no other fires.”

“You said she asked you if you’d found this out?” Richard said. “Had she asked you about a fire before?”

Kit nodded. “The day I found the book,” she said. “The first time, I mean. I’d found the book four days before, but when she came over to get it, my uncle had hidden it again.”

“And she asked you about the fires then?”

“Yes.”

And four days later she was still on the same track, Richard thought. Whatever it was.

“That was the day I saw her getting into a taxi,” Vielle said. “She looked like she was in a desperate hurry, and she didn’t have her coat on or her purse. Kit, did she have a coat on when she came to see you?”

“No, just a cardigan,” Kit said, “but she didn’t come in a taxi. She had her car.”

“And she asked you about fires on the Titanic?” Richard asked.

“Yes, and I said I didn’t know of any, but I said I’d check.”

“And you’re sure she came in her own car and not a taxi?” Vielle said.

“Yes, because she left in such a hurry. When I came downstairs from looking for the book, she said she had to go, and went out and got into her car without even saying good-bye. I thought she was upset because my uncle had said something to her — he does sometimes, he can’t help himself, it’s the illness — or because I couldn’t find the book—”

Vielle was shaking her head. “She was already upset when I saw her,” she said. “I wonder where she was going in that taxi? What time did she come to your house?”

“Two o’clock,” Kit said.

“Are you sure?” Vielle asked, frowning.

“Yes. I was surprised to see her. She’d said she didn’t think she’d be over till later on that afternoon. Why?”

“Because it was a quarter after one when she got in the taxi,” Vielle said, “and she would have had to go wherever she went, come back, get her own car, and drive to your house, which is how far from the hospital?”

“Twenty minutes,” Kit said.

“Twenty minutes, by two o’clock,” Vielle finished her sentence. “Which means wherever she was going in that taxi could only have been a few blocks away. What’s a few blocks from the hospital?”

“What are you getting at, Vielle?” Richard asked. “You think she found out whatever it was four days ago instead of the day she was killed?”

“Or part of it,” Vielle said, “and then she spent the next three days trying to find out the other part, or trying to prove what she’d discovered. And it had something to do with a fire on the Titanic.”

“But there wasn’t a fire on the Titanic,” Kit said, “at least not the kind she wanted. When I told her about Boiler Room 6, she asked me if it had caused a lot of smoke, and when I said no, she asked me if there had been any other fires. And she wasn’t excited. She seemed worried and upset. Was she excited when you saw her getting into the taxi, Vielle?”

“No,” Vielle conceded. “I saw her that night after she got back, and she looked like she’d just had bad news. I was worried about her. I was afraid the project was making her sick.”

And four days later, excited and happy, she had run down to her death in her eagerness to tell him something.

“Are you finished with this?” a voice said. Richard turned around. The cafeteria lady was standing there, pointing grimly at his coffee.

He nodded, and she snatched it and the Coke cups off the table and wiped at the table with a gray rag. “You need to finish up. We close in ten minutes,” she said, and went over to stand pointedly by the door.

“We need more time,” Vielle said.

Richard shook his head. “What we need is more data. We need to find out where she went in the hospital.”

“And in that taxi,” Vielle said.

Richard nodded. “We need to find out what she was doing on three-west, what she was looking for in the transcripts—”

“And what happened between her and my uncle while I was upstairs,” Kit said.

“Will he remember?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know,” Kit said. “Sometimes a direct question, if it’s casual enough — I’ll try.”

“I want you to go through the textbook, too,” Richard said, “and see if you can find anything in it about the Titanic.”