And then he saw her.
He saw her, and his heart was in his throat in a wild leap, and he wanted to go to her so badly that he began to itch all over.
She was coming in slowly with two elderly couples, ushered to the front of the chapel, near the casket, by the mortuary’s head man himself. Special wing chairs were waiting for them, so that when they sat down the public view of them was largely cut off and they could indulge their grief in a variable percentage of privacy, depending on where the lesser mourners were seated.
His glimpse of her was a flick and an eternity.
Layton sat back, satisfied.
This is your day, Tutter, he thought.
Tomorrow is mine.
Layton paid no attention to the service. It was in the little white hands of a clergyman whose resonant response to the proximity of the dead man was in no way impaired by the fact that they had never met in life. He delivered the customary fervid eulogy, investing the dear departed with all but visible wings.
Layton could see the merest segment of Nancy, a long, narrow plinth, but he was in a mood to exult over even a bit of her. The sliver of cheek in view seemed no paler than it usually was. The single sable eyelash was lowered. She was in unostentatious black and she wore no mourning veil.
The elderly people between whom she was sitting were her parents, he guessed. She had told him once — how long ago it seemed! — that her folks live in Oregon; her father was a country doctor. He was a worn, fragile-looking man and his hand, like a dried insect, lay quietly on hers. Her mother seemed a cipher, a small, sweet nonentity, too naïve to pretend distress over a man she had not known. Nancy looked like her father.
The other elderly couple were evidently Tutter King’s father and mother. Layton looked away.
I love you, he said to the sliver of pale cheek, I love you. It amused him that he felt no quiver of shame at repeating in the privacy of his head the oldest cliché known to man. I love you, Nancy...
When it was all over, Layton caught the arm of a columnist for the Bulletin who was covering the funeral from the woman’s angle and said, “You going out to Forest Lawn, Cissie?”
“Well, sure.”
“Do me a favor and cover for me, will you?”
“Why, where are you going?” the woman asked suspiciously.
“Oh, nuts, Cis, I can’t take any more of this. Be nice, huh? I’ll scratch your back some time.”
“That’ll be the day,” she sniffed. “I’ve been trying to arouse the spark of manhood in you for years.”
“You’re just not my type.” Layton grinned.
“Who is — King’s widow?”
He pretended amused indignation. “Come again?”
“I heard you had a thing for her.”
“Can you beat that,” Layton said, shaking his head. “So now I’m a casket robber.”
The newspaperwoman kept watching him. “She’s a pretty little thing.”
“So’s my grandmother.” Layton gave her a friendly shove. “Go on, Cissie, before they leave you at the rail. And thanks. Remind me to buy you a drink.”
He could feel her scalpel glance probing his back as he made for the phone booths. The hell with her, too. She’d have plenty to yack about soon enough.
By the time he was through phoning in his report of the service, the cortege of glittering black Cadillacs had departed for the cemetery. Layton strolled out of the funeral home, stifling an impulse to whistle. The bulk of the mob had dispersed; the police were coiling the ropes. To his surprise, Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins were standing disconsolately on the sidewalk.
“Hi, kids,” Layton said, looking from one to the other.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Layton.” Young Mission’s tone was glum. The girl’s plump cheeks were smeary and her marbly little eyes were swollen from weeping. “Aren’t you going to Forest Lawn, either?”
“I’m not high on cemeteries, Wayne. But how come you two didn’t go?”
“We forgot to ask in advance. They didn’t assign us to a car, and I couldn’t get my father’s heap for today.”
“Who cares?” Nora Perkins said sullenly. “I’m sorry I even came for the service.”
“That’s great, that’s a fine thing to say,” Wayne snapped.
“It would look nice, wouldn’t it, if the president and vice president of Tutter King’s original fan club didn’t show up for his funeral! Sometimes I don’t dig you at all, Nora.”
“So you don’t! Anyway, I’m going home.”
“Don’t you think you’d better go back to school?” Layton asked.
“Oh, we got excused for today,” the boy muttered. “Well — see you, Mr. Layton.”
“Wait a minute,” Layton said. “Where do you two live?”
“I’m on Asbury, twenty-nine hundred block. Nora’s on Elm. They’re out in the Highland Park district, off San Fernando Road.”
“I’ll drive you home.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mr Layton,” the girl said with a trace of interest. “We’ll take the bus.”
“Come on, both of you.”
“Gosh, Mr. Layton, this is awfully nice of you...”
The niceness was in the kids, Layton thought as he headed for the downtown Freeway interchange. The professional mourners could wring their hands over juvenile degeneration in the atomic age, but the fact was that kids like these displayed sturdier qualities of character and worth than the clay-footed idols they worshiped. They knew faith and they practiced loyalty. It was the so-called grown-up world that broke them down and embittered enough of them to create a social problem.
“What did you think of the funeral?” Layton said.
“It was horrible.” Nora shivered. “I don’t ever want to go to one again.”
“That minister saying all those things about Tutter,” Wayne said. “How would he know? He didn’t know Tutter.”
Neither did you, Layton said, but not aloud. And maybe that’s just as well.
He was turning into the Pasadena Freeway when Wayne Mission said suddenly, “People are rats. Where were all the big shots Tutter knew from show business? His friends — stars!” The boy snorted. “They’re crums, that’s all they are. Rats jumping off the sinking ship... I don’t care what anybody, says. Tutter was real cool. He was sure nice to Nora and me.”
“Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t,” the girl said in a tight voice.
The goggled boy shook his head. “How do you like that! Nora’s sore, Mr. Layton, because Tutter was married. So what? It didn’t make any difference to me.”
“It wouldn’t,” the girl retorted. “You’re not a woman.”
“Well, neither are you!”
Nora sank back, furious but silenced.
After a while young Mission stirred. “That inquest yesterday, Mr. Layton.”
“What about it?”
“Why was all that stuff brought up about murder?”
“Because,” Layton said, gently and carefully, “some people thought it might have been. The way Tutter died... people don’t often commit suicide that way.”
“Yeah,” the boy said thoughtfully, “that bothered me, too. But who’d want to kill a wonderful person like Tutter? So it must have been suicide, the way the jury said.”
“He shouldn’t have done it, he shouldn’t!” Nora said passionately. “He had so much to live for.”
“Wait a minute, Nora! Mr. Layton, what did you think?”
“Look, can’t we talk about something else?” Layton said lightly. “The verdict is in, Tutter’s dead and being buried—”
“No, I mean it, Mr. Layton,” Wayne Mission said. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and it doesn’t add up, somehow. Did you think it was murder?”
Layton sighed. “Well, there were some possible motives. And, of course, a number of people had the opportunity—”