"I have to keep that confidential for the time being," I said to her.
She appeared disappointed but not surprised. I was becoming more wary of her by the minute. I said, "You mentioned something about the deaths of several top executives across the country…"
"Yes," Alison said, "counting Manners, six, nationwide, in a very short period of time."
"I wasn't aware of the trend."
"One would have to be in a position to see the entire cloth to discern the pattern."
"And your magazine thinks there is a pattern?"
She lowered her coffee cup from her lips. "That's partly what I've been assigned to discover."
I wadded my own cup and tossed it neatly into a trash container. I didn't like the idea of becoming mixed up with a reporter, but at this point there was little to lose. She had no idea who or what I was actually investigating, and I could keep it on those terms.
"Have you ever heard of the Gratuity Insurance Company?" I asked her.
"No, why?"
"I wondered if anyone you've questioned in connection with the other deaths mentioned them."
"No, but on the other hand, I didn't ask. I can check back, though."
I smiled at her. "That's what I was really asking."
Alison pulled a notebook from her purse. "Gratuity Insurance," she said, jotting it down as she pronounced it.
"How about the name Jerry Congram?" I asked while she had her notebook out. The pencil darted again while Alison spelled the name aloud to me.
She looked at me expectantly for a moment saw nothing else was forthcoming and snapped the notebook shut. "I'm at the Clairbank Hotel," she said, "room four oh seven. That's an invitation only to exchange information after you've talked to Elizabeth Manners and I've talked to Brian Cheevers."
"I thought you might want to show me your stock market graphs," I said innocently.
18
Elizabeth Manners lived in a sun-faded but stately neo-Spanish home not far off the Ventura Freeway. Azaleas were thriving along the wide front of the pastel yellow house, and as I rang the doorbell I could see a curved garden path flanked by rhododendrons, some of them still displaying rosy-purple blooms.
Mrs. Manners answered the door almost immediately. When I identified myself, she smiled at me and held the door open wider. She was a very thin, graceful woman, somewhere in her sixties, with the sort of beauty that retains its gentle magnetism far into old age. Her face was lined but taut, and her thin frame was draped in a simple but expensive purple dress. If one word were needed to describe her, it would be "gracious."
She endured my clumsy expressions of sympathy, then led me to a room of pinks and blues that had been blessed by a decorator's touch. After I'd declined her offer of something to drink, we sat to talk.
"Have you any idea what was bothering your husband?" I asked her.
Her folded hands, strangely older than the rest of her, lay, withered yet elegant, in her lap. "No, Mr. Nudger, Robert didn't share that problem with me, which was uncharacteristic."
"Why do you think he chose not to confide in you?"
"I don't know. One of the reasons I agreed to talk to you and the young lady is my curiosity about that matter. Robert and I were close; we worked together for his career."
"But you agree with the consensus that he was depressed."
"I would describe it more as anxious, apprehensive." She frowned as she sifted for explanations. "Perhaps he was afraid for me to know why."
"Do you think it was something connected with his work?"
"I doubt it. As I said, we worked together for his career." The withered hands in her lap shifted, briefly separated, as if seeking some purpose, then folded back into each other.
"Do you think, in the week or so before your husband's death, that his apprehension grew, reached a peak?"
"To the point of driving him to suicide?"
She was trying to make my tact unnecessary. "Well, yes."
"I think that's apparent, Mr. Nudger."
"Then you believe it was suicide?"
"I know it." Something in her pale eyes turned inward for a second, surveying her thoughts. "I'm going to tell you something I chose not to tell the young lady and I'd like you to keep it confidential unless you absolutely must reveal it. Only under those terms will I tell you, and then I'll tell you only because you are the only representative of the law still investigating my husband's death, and I'd like to know why he elected to die. Miss Day is a magazine writer, and I do not want my husband to become a case in point in some article, an example."
"I can understand that," I told her, "and I can promise you."
She looked at me for a long moment, her hands still. Then she stood and walked to a dainty walnut secretary desk near the white-curtained window. She drew an envelope from one of the flat drawers and handed it tome.
"My husband's suicide note," she said in a voice detached from emotion. "It was delivered in the mail the day after he died."
I accepted the white envelope, examined the postmark. "Do the police know about this?"
"No one has known about it but me, and now you."
Elizabeth Manners sat back down as I drew the neatly typed, folded paper from the envelope arid read.
Dearest Elizabeth:
I die by my own hand because I know this to be my wisest alternative-indeed my duty. I have never balked at responsibility, nor would you want me to even now if you could know the circumstances.
I am grateful for all that you have been to me, saddened to cause you this necessary pain.
Your loving husband forever, Robert The letter was signed beneath a typed signature, a distinctive black-inked scrawl.
"Is this your husband's signature?" I asked.
Elizabeth Manners nodded. "I have no doubt of that, Mr. Nudger."
I replaced the letter in its envelope and handed it back to her. "Why haven't you given this to the police?"
She leaned forward in her chair with a strangely graceful, compelling intensity. "I knew if the police learned my husband had definitely killed himself they would stop investigating his death. And I wanted to know why he committed suicide." She leaned back, smiled a sadly resigned smile. "I see now that it made no difference; the police are no longer concerned with the case anyway. They've accepted the theory of Robert's suicide, like everyone else."
"And it would be pointless to tell them about the letter now," I said.
"Exactly. You are a private detective, Mr. Nudger. Would you consider undertaking to find the reason for my husband's death? Obviously you already have some interest in doing this or you wouldn't have talked to Brian Cheevers and Alice. So I would like to hire you."
I shook my head. "That won't be necessary, Mrs. Manners. What you want coincides with what I'm presently investigating, and if I find out anything I'll be glad to let you know."
"I insist on paying."
"We'll talk about that if the time comes," I told her. "In the meantime, maybe you can help. Did your husband ever mention the Gratuity Insurance Company?"
"No, I never heard of them."
"The names Jerry Congram or Victor Talbert?"
"Neither of them are familiar."
An evenly spaced, relentless thudding and scraping sound came from outside the window, a sound that seemed to violate the quietly tasteful and orderly room.
"My gardener," Mrs. Manners explained.
I recognized then the sound of a hoe being worked in soft earth. "Do you know who, at Witlow Cable, profited the most from your husband's death?"
"Brian Cheevers, although I doubt that at the time he knew he would profit."
Unless he'd known something Mrs. Manners hadn't. Cheevers was definitely the close-to-the-vest type. I didn't want to think that Manners' death might be unrelated to whatever his connection was with Gratuity Insurance, but it was a possibility. The problem was that there were a number of unrelated possibilities.