Now it turned out that Donovan, while I had been resting, had kindled the fire in the hearth. His blaze was really up. Dry logs were catching, the flue was drawing, and everything seemed grand except for the fact that bats tenant the chimney. This was not a new problem. It never fazed anyone particularly when three or five bats flapped out of the hearth and turned figure eights around the chandelier cords above our heads. We keep nets on long poles expressly for this event.

That night it was the triplets, Herbert, Patrick, and Jeffrey, who grabbed nets on poles and went hunting bats. The triplets are professionally trained dancers, so they can do this sort of thing.

“Pork chops for dinner,” I said quietly to the back of the man in front of me. This was Rex. He answered gruffly, “Nothing ever changes around here, does it?” and I asked him if he had by any chance noticed Spooner in the crowd. He told me he hadn’t. He then said, “Stop bumping into me, Doug.” I hadn’t realized I had been and I apologized and moved away. Milton, Pierce, and Fielding were strolling along in a clique behind me. I asked if they’d noticed Spooner anywhere, but no one had. Fielding was carrying his broken camera’s parts in his hands. A triplet shouting, “Heads up!” raced by, enormous net trailing, after a bat that apparently had touched down on the underside of an elk’s antler. Everyone turned to watch, but when the triplet arrived at the elk, the bat had flown. Milton said, “That was Patrick.”

“It was Jeffrey,” Pierce said.

“No,” said Milton. “It was Patrick.”

“Jeffrey.”

“Patrick.”

“I don’t know how you can think such a wrong thing. That was obviously Jeffrey,” said Pierce.

“Bet?”

“Bet.”

“It might have been Herbert,” suggested Fielding, who was awkwardly trying, as he walked, to join his fractured movie camera’s pieces together in his hands.

“That wasn’t Herbert,” said Pierce, and he went on to explain, “Herbert’s fat.”

Silence followed this. After a moment Fielding announced, “Well, they’re all fat.”

“They quit dancing,” I chipped in. “One of them injured his knee and they all retired, the idiots.”

There was silence again. We were approaching the dinner table, but a crowd blocked the way. Some had sat and others were milling around with their water glasses. I could see Zachary ahead and made a mental note to stay away from him. Jason and Joshua were striking matches, igniting flames underneath food trays. Fielding said, “I’ve got twenty that says that was Herbert. We’ll each put in twenty and winner takes all.”

Milton said to Fielding, “You might as well hand over that cash right now, Brother, because I can feel the vibrations around people and my feelings say that was Patrick.”