“So?”
“Well, Bream now has a wife himself. They were married about three years ago, no children, live out in Weston. Her name is Thelma. Mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing.”
“You should get around, Richards. Like me. That suicide note Galloway left — well, let’s put it this way: I’ve got a pretty good friend in the police department.”
“He let you see the note?”
“No, but he told me what was in it.”
Richards looked grim. “For how much?”
“Not a cent. He likes my pretty blue eyes.”
“I suppose policemen find you as irresistible as nurses do?”
“You might,” Blake said with a smile, “put it like that, yes.”
“You’re a fresh kid, Blake. Full of ideas, some of them good, full of stories, some of them true. But mostly full of you-know-what. I wouldn’t give you a job here even if I could. You’re trouble.”
“Trouble or not, I have some very valuable information.”
“My advice is, take it to the News.”
“The News has no class. Besides, I hear it’s going to fold. I don’t want to start a trip on a sinking ship. I can’t swim.”
“You’d better learn.”
“O.K., the hell with you, Richards. Let a silly personal prejudice cut you off from a scoop.”
“We don’t depend on scoops for our circulation.”
“All right, but would you turn one down?”
Richards hesitated, drumming his pencil on the desk.
“Listen, Blake, if you’ve got a story, I might buy it. I won’t buy you.”
“How much?”
“That depends on the story. If it’s good, if it’s true. And if it’s printable.”
“I’d print it, if I were news editor.”
“We don’t always think alike. Let’s hear the story.”
“Not yet. I have to check out one more thing before everything’s positive. Oh, it’ll check, don’t worry. My methods may not come under the Boy Scout rules, but they work.” He perched on the edge of Richards’ desk, clasping his hands together as if he were congratulating himself. “You know, that’s the trouble with this paper, you need a live wire around with some high voltage.”
“You might blow the fuses.”
“Think it over. I’ve got guts, energy, youth, a nose for news...”
“What makes you hate yourself so much?”
“I’ve got to talk myself up. Who else will do it?”
“Haven’t you got a mother?”
“Oh, come off it, Richards. How do you pick reporters around here, for their modest smiles and the way they sweet-talk you? Anybody can do that. Oh, you’re a great man, Mr. Richards, sir, I don’t really deserve to work for such an outstanding newspaper, sir, but I’ll do anything, I’ll scrub floors, I’ll wash out the cuspidors...”
“Beat it, Blake. I told you I was busy.”
“O.K., but I’ll be back. Unless I get a better offer somewhere else.”
“If you do, take it.” He picked up a piece of copy from his desk and began reading.
Blake craned his neck to look at it. “The autopsy report on Galloway, eh? You know what I bet you’ll do with it? Take your little red pencil and reduce it to something as dull as a stock quotation.”
“That’s my business.”
When he had gone, Richards took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty, as though he’d been bucking a strong and dirty wind. He felt more distaste for than interest in Blake’s promises. If the police department had so many leaks that a kid like Blake could find out the contents of a supposedly secret suicide letter, this was a story in itself, perhaps a bigger story, in the long run, than any Blake could dream up.
He replaced his spectacles and turned back to the autopsy report. It was, as far as Richards was concerned, considerably duller than a stock quotation: death had been caused by drowning, water was found in the stomach and lungs, and foamy mucus in the trachea, and the blood chlorides on the left side of the heart were thirty percent lower than those of the right, a positive indication of drowning in fresh water.
The report revealed only one surprise, that Galloway had made a previous attempt at suicide in the earlier hours of the night, Saturday, that he had died. Considerable amounts of a barbiturate compound were found in the stomach and other vital organs. When questioned about this point, Dr. Robert Whitewood, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, stated that it was fairly common to discover traces of previous suicide attempts, which he compared roughly to the “hesitation marks” frequently found on victims of suicide who had used razors, knives, or other sharp instruments.
Nothing in the early part of the report affected Richards — water in the lungs, chloride content of the heart, mucus in the trachea, these meant only that Galloway was a dead man. But the phrase, hesitation marks, conjured up a live one.
“Hesitation marks.” Richards repeated it aloud, thinking, Galloway was a man, like himself, going through all the motions of living, until one day he no longer felt any incentive to move. He had tried to kill himself, and failing, had tried again. Between the two attempts there was the time of hesitation. At what point had he written the letter to his wife?
And who, Richards wondered, was Thelma?
Seventeen
Thelma seldom read the newspapers. She was not actually concerned about other people, and though she had her share of female curiosity Thelma’s ran round and round on a limited track like a toy train stopping only at certain junctions, responsive only to the lever of Thelma’s immediate interest.
On the front lawn the morning paper lay unopened, already yellowing under the sharp spring sun. For several hours Turee had been trying to reach her by phone to warn her about the small but strategically placed paragraph on the second page of the News, headed MYSTERY WOMAN HINTED IN GALLOWAY DEATH. Thelma had heard the phone ringing and had refused to answer. She was practically certain that the caller was Turee and that he merely intended to repeat what he’d been telling her for the past two days, that, in the interests of good taste if nothing else, she was not to attend Galloway’s funeral. Thelma had resisted this advice with voluble obstinacy. For one reason, quite unconscious, it presented her with something definite to rebel against, and so helped to take the edge off her grief. Turee’s interference served as a counter-irritant, and the time she spent resenting and opposing it was time she would otherwise have spent in self-pity and regret and guilt.
The funeral was scheduled for three o’clock that afternoon at the Galloway home, and though it was not yet one, Thelma was already dressed for the occasion in an old black wool suit that didn’t quite accommodate her new proportions. She had bathed her eyes to reduce the swelling and used powder on the lids to hide their blisterlike transparency. She wore no other make-up, and her light hair was pulled back from her face into a small tight knot. She looked more like a sorrowing widow than Esther could have looked after a month of practice. She was aware of this fact, too, and it gave her a grim sense of triumph.
But the thought of Ron brought tears to her eyes and she was on the point of breaking into sobs when the telephone began to ring again, and, almost simultaneously, the front-door bell.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn you, leave me alone!”
Then she turned deliberately away from the ringing phone and, wiping her eyes on her sleeve like a small girl, she went to answer the front door.
On the threshold stood a good-looking young man with a crew cut, a handful of pamphlets showing the advantage of owning a water-softener, and such a fast opening spiel that Thelma didn’t even hear all of it.