She laughed. “I’m pleased you’re pleased I’m pleased.”
He laughed.
Silence.
This is impossible, Layton thought desperately.
“Jim?”
“Yes, Nancy,” he mumbled.
“Was that all you called to say?”
Layton inhaled. “No. How about my picking you up tomorrow morning and driving us down to the inquest together?”
She was silent again. But then she said, “No, Jim.”
“Why not?” Layton heard himself demanding.
“Well... I can drive myself now, and I don’t see why you should have to go all that extra distance—”
“You think it’s because of my job, don’t you?”
“Because of your job?” She seemed genuinely baffled.
“I’m a reporter,” he said. “I’ve had the inside track on this story from the start. So naturally you’d think—”
Her quiet voice said, “Jim, that never crossed my mind.”
“It didn’t?”
“No. I don’t think of you as a reporter after a story. I don’t know why, but I never have.”
A singing began in Layton’s ears. “Then how about it?”
“How about what, Jim?”
“My driving you in the morning?”
Once more she was silent. Then suddenly he heard a vexed laugh. “We’re both not very bright, are we? We forgot you won’t have a car tomorrow. You’re supposed to take it to your garage for a new windshield, remember?”
“Damn the new windshield!”
“No, Jim. I’ll see you at the Hall of Justice.”
Layton said, “I guess I’d better say good night, Nancy.”
“Good night, Jim.” Her voice was very soft. “And... thanks for thinking of me.”
When he got home Layton kicked the Miller book back to the other side of the room and went to bed. He lay staring up into the darkness, hands clasped behind his head, for a timeless interval. He could not have said that he was thinking, or even that he was feeling. All he was conscious of was the soft voice in endless repetition pronouncing his name.
Oddly, Layton overslept. By the time he had dropped his car off at Joe’s and taxied down to the Hall of Justice, Coroner’s Court was full.
In the second row of the section reserved for witnesses Layton saw Lola Arkwright, George Hathaway, Hubert Stander, and Nancy King. The two men were seated together between the two women. Stander had been careful not to sit next to Lola; he was between Hathaway and Nancy. All four were staring straight ahead.
There was no sign of Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins, even in the jammed spectator section. The district attorney’s office must have decided for reasons of prudence to keep the proceedings entirely free of Tutter King’s hysterical teenage admirers; there was not a youngster to be seen in the courtroom. Apparently Mrs. Stander and Linda Norman Hathaway were not present, either. Nor could Layton see Hazel Grant.
The two crime-lab men who had examined the KZZX dressing rooms on Friday were seated in the front row. With them was a thin, bald, keen-eyed man Layton recognized as some official from the coroner’s office.
Harry Trimble was standing near the coroner’s bench talking to a tired-looking young man with a brief case. Layton walked over.
“Hi,” Trimble said. “This is Jim Layton, Artie. Arthur Cabot of the D.A.’s office.”
They shook hands; Cabot’s handshake was limp. “The reporter who found the body,” he said, more as if he were checking off a mental item.
“That’s right,” Layton said. “Where do I sit — in the press section or with the witnesses?”
“Another problem!” the young assistant district attorney muttered. “The witnesses, the witnesses.”
“The witnesses it is,” Layton said; and he walked over to the second row and sat down beside Nancy. She kept staring ahead, but his arm was touching hers and he could feel her trembling. He was obscurely glad that she had not done the usual Hollywood bit and dressed in dramatic black cum widow’s veil. She was wearing a simple dark gray suit and a gray silk blouse; her hat was an unassuming little cap of black felt.
The others did not acknowledge Layton’s arrival, either. He sat back and folded his arms.
When the coroner — a tall, gaunt man with a shock of unruly black hair who looked remarkably like a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln — entered the courtroom and took his place at the bench, Sergeant Trimble joined the row of witnesses, seating himself beside Lola Arkwright.
Trimble had hardly had time to warm the seat when he was called as the first witness.
He gave his name and rank, and immediately plunged into a factual account of his and Sergeant Winterman’s investigation, beginning with the exact time of Layton’s call to Homicide and their arrival at KZZX.
When the one-eyed detective had finished, the coroner said, “Sergeant, what conclusion did you draw concerning the probable manner in which the deceased died?”
“We listed it tentatively on the five point ten,” Trimble replied, “as suspected suicide.”
“The five point ten, so-called, is the investigating officer’s report, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.”
The coroner grasped the loose skin of his skinny neck between thumb and forefinger, and pulled — a nasty habit, Layton thought, for a man bearing the responsibility of a resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. “Does this mean that you discounted the possibility of murder?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you develop that, Sergeant?”
Trimble explained in detail the physical layout of the area of KZZX in which King had been found dead, and he sketched in briefly the circumstances surrounding King’s last telecast “They were such,” he went on, “as to open up the possibility that the deceased had been murdered. We found that if it was murder, only a few people had the opportunity to commit it.” He named George Hathaway, manager of KZZX; Hubert Stander, chairman of the TV station’s board; Lola Arkwright deceased’s assistant; Mrs. Nancy King, deceased’s widow (here a murmur rippled through the room as hundreds of eyes focused upon Nancy, but she gave no sign that she was aware of them — no sign except to Layton, who felt her body quiver); and James Layton, newspaper reporter.
“There were also two teenage fans of Tutter King’s who theoretically had opportunity,” Trimble concluded, “but at no time were they out of each other’s sight and they alibi each other. There is no reason of any kind to suppose that these minors had anything to do with King’s death. I will name them if ordered to do so, but in a public hearing—”
“Right, quite right, Sergeant,” the coroner said hastily. “You wish to ask a question, Mr. Cabot?”
The tired-looking young assistant district attorney said to Trimble, “How were you able to reduce the number of possible suspects — if this was murder — to so few persons, Sergeant? Weren’t there several hundred people in the building at the time?”
Trimble went into an explanation in depth. When he had finished, the coroner asked, “Of the persons you have named who had opportunity, assuming this might have been homicide, Sergeant Trimble, were you able to pinpoint any with motive?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. George Hathaway and Mr. Hubert Stander.”
A buzz began to swell, and the coroner admonished the spectators. Hathaway and Stander were so rigid that Layton had the ridiculous feeling that both men had stopped breathing.
“Develop that, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. At the start of the telecast King announced that he was going to make an important statement at the end of the show. He repeated this announcement before going off the air for the news-break intermission at 4 P.M., just a few minutes before he died. No one knows, or professes to know, what King meant to say, but there’s plenty of testimony to the effect that he was very angry and bitter at both Mr. Hathaway and Mr. Stander for the cancellation of his show. We can’t state it as a fact, but there’s a strong possibility that what King intended to say at the end of the show concerned Mr. Hathaway or Mr. Stander, or both. We further established that Mr. Hathaway heard King’s promise of a ‘surprise announcement’ on his office monitor, and that Mr. Stander heard it on his set at home.”