with me, had been shot and killed. Now, in the attempt to restore my failing appetite, Roberto had stewed kidneys and mushrooms in claret. While we ate, Mark described the scene at the morgue where Laura’s body had been identified by Bessie, her maid, and her aunt, Susan Treadwell.
In spite of deep suffering, I could not but enjoy the contrast between the young man’s appreciation of the meal and the morbid quality of his talk. “When they were shown the body”—he paused to lift a morsel on his fork—“both women collapsed. It was hard to take even if you didn’t know her. A lot of blood”—he soaked a bit of toast in the sauce. “With BB shot . . . You can imagine . . .”
I closed my eyes as if she lay there on the Aubusson rug, as Bessie had discovered her, naked except for a blue silk taffeta robe and a pair of silver slippers.
“Fired at close range”—he spooned relish on his plate. “Mrs. Treadwell passed out, but the servant took it like a veteran. She’s a queer duck, that Bessie.”
“She’s been more than maid to Laura. Guide, philosopher, and worst enemy of all of Laura’s best friends. Cooks like an angel, but serves bitter herbs with the choicest roasts. No man that entered the apartment was, in Bessie’s opinion, good enough for Laura.”
“She was cool as a cucumber when the boys got there. Opened the door and pointed to the body so calmly you’d have thought it was an everyday thing for her to find her boss murdered.”
“That’s Bessie,” I commented. “But wait till you get her roused.”
Roberto brought in the coffee. Eighteen stories below a motorist blew his siren. Through open windows we heard the rhythms of a Sunday morning radio concert.
“No! No! No!” I cried as Roberto handed Mark my Napoleon cup. I reached across the table and took it myself, leaving the Empress Josephine for my guest.
He drank his coffee in silent disapproval, watching as I unscrewed the carnelian cap of the silver box in which I keep my saccharine tablets. Although I spread butter lavishly on my brioches, I cling religiously to the belief that the substitution of saccharine for sugar in coffee will make me slender and fascinating. His scorn robbed my attitudes of character.
“I must say you go about your work in a leisurely way,” I remarked petulantly. “Why don’t you go out and take some fingerprints?”
“There are times in the investigation of a crime when it’s more important to look at faces.”
I turned to the mirror. “How singularly innocent I seem this morning! Tell me, McPherson, have you ever seen such candid eyes?” I took off my glasses and presented my face, round and pink as a cherub’s. “But speaking of faces, McPherson, have you met the bridegroom?”
“Shelby Carpenter. I’m seeing him at twelve. He’s staying with Mrs. Treadwell.”
I seized the fact avidly. “Shelby staying there! Wouldn’t he just?”
“He finds the Hotel Framingham too public. Crowds wait in the lobby to see the fellow who was going to marry a murder victim.”
“What do you think of Shelby’s alibi?”
“What do I think of yours?” he retorted.
“But you’ve agreed that it’s quite normal for a man to spend an evening at home with Gibbon.”
“What’s wrong about a man going to a Stadium concert?” Puritan nostrils quivered. “Among a lot of music-lovers and art collectors, that seems a pretty natural way to spend an evening.”
“If you knew the bridegroom, you’d not think a twenty-five-cent seat normal. But he finds it a convenient way of not having been seen by any of his friends.”
“I’m always grateful for information, Mr. Lydecker, but I prefer forming my own opinions.”
“Neat, McPherson. Very neat.”
“How long had you known her, Mr. Lydecker?”
“Seven, eight—yes, it was eight years,” I told him. “We met in thirty-four. Shall I tell you about it?”
Mark puffed at his pipe, the room was filled with its rancid sweet odor. Roberto entered noiselessly to refill the coffee cups. The radio orchestra played a rhumba.
“She rang my doorbell, McPherson, much as you rang it this morning. I was working at my desk, writing, as I remember, a birthday piece about a certain eminent American, the Father of Our Country. I should never have committed such a cliché, but, as my editor had asked for it and as we were in the midst of some rather delicate financial rearrangements, I had decided that I could not but gain by appeasement. Just as I was about to throw away a substantial increase in earning power as indulgence for my boredom, this lovely child entered my life.”
I should have been an actor. Had I been physically better suited to the narcissistic profession, I should probably have been among the greatest of my time. Now, as Mark let the second cup of coffee grow cold, he saw me as I had been eight years before, wrapped in the same style of Persian dressing gown, padding on loose Japanese clogs to answer the doorbell.
“Carlo, who was Roberto’s predecessor, had gone out to do the daily marketing. I think she was surprised to see that I answered my own doorbell. She was a slender thing, timid as a fawn and fawn-like, too, in her young uncertain grace. She had a tiny head, delicate for even that thin body, and the tilt of it along with the bright shyness of her slightly oblique dark eyes further contributed to the sense that Bambi—or Bambi’s doe—had escaped from the forest and galloped up the eighteen flights to this apartment.
“When I asked why she had come, she gave a little clucking sound. Fear had taken her voice. I was certain that she had walked around and around the building before daring to enter, and that she had stood in the corridor hearing her own heart pound before she dared touch a frightened finger to my doorbell.
“‘Well, out with it!’ Unwilling to acknowledge that I had been touched by her pretty shyness, I spoke harshly. My temper was more choleric in those days, Mr. McPherson.
“She spoke softly and very rapidly. I remember it as all one sentence, beginning with a plea that I forgive her for disturbing me and then promising that I should receive huge publicity for reward if I would endorse a fountain pen her employers were advertising. It was called the Byron.
“I exploded. ‘Give me publicity, my good girl! Your reasoning is sadly distorted. It’s my name that will give distinction to your cheap fountain pen. And how dared you take the sacred name of Byron? Who gave you the right? I’ve a good mind to write the manufacturers a stiff letter.’
“I tried not to notice the brightness of her eyes, McPherson. I was not aware at this time that she had named the fountain pen herself and that she was proud of its literary sound. She persisted bravely, telling me about a fifty-thousand-dollar advertising campaign which could not fail to glorify my name.
“I felt it my duty to become apoplectic. ‘Do you know how many dollars’ worth of white space my syndicated columns now occupy? And do you realize that manufacturers of typewriters, toothpaste, and razors with fifty-thousand-dollar checks in their pockets are turned away from this door daily? You talk of giving me publicity!’
“Her embarrassment was painful. I asked if she would stay and have a glass
