At a quarter to four the station wagon pulled into the driveway. Seeing him, Nancy waved and drove on into the garage. He was at the front door when she came out of the garage.
“Hello, Jim.” She did not seem surprised to see him. “Waiting long?”
“Not long.”
“I had to drive my father and mother to the airport. Poor dears, they’re all worn out. I wanted them to stay a few days, but dad had to get back to his practice. Did I ever tell you my dad is a doctor?”
“Yes,” Layton said.
“I’m sorry you didn’t meet them, Jim.” She unlocked the door and went in, and he followed her. “I think you’d have liked one another.”
Layton shut the door, bolted it, and put the guard chain in place. Nancy had stopped at the little wall mirror in the foyer to take off her hat and remove her gloves and give her incredible mass of jet hair a few pokes. At the sound of the bolt and guard chain she turned in surprise.
“I hope you’re not expecting anybody,” Layton said.
“No.” She frowned ever so little. “What’s the matter, Jim? Is something wrong?” Her tone lightened. “Lose your job, or fall in love?”
Layton stood there looking at her. He was not conscious of any emotion at all. It was as if the thalamic function that made it possible for him to feel pain had stopped working, starting a paralytic process that had reached to the tiniest ganglia of his nervous system.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” Nancy said quietly. “I know now there’s something dreadfully the matter. Let’s go into the living room.”
He followed her in.
“Sit down.”
He remained standing.
She glanced at him in a puzzled rather than an apprehensive way. “Will you have a drink?”
“Yesterday was for drinking,” Layton said. “Today is for being cold, dead sober.”
“Was it the funeral, Jim? I... looked for you at the cemetery, but I didn’t see you, although I did catch a glimpse of you in the chapel before the service.”
She came to him and touched his hand. “I know, Jim, I know you’ve fallen in love with me. I... feel a great deal for you, too. So soon... It’s confused me. I mean... I want you to put your arms around me, Jim, oh, I do. I want you to kiss me, and I want to kiss you. But... not yet.”
“Please don’t do that,” Layton said, staring down at her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was stupidly, thoughtlessly female. I’m sorry, Jim.” She went over to the big chair near the fireplace and sat down, tucking one leg under her like a little girl. “I realize how hard it must have been for you yesterday, having to come to toy husband’s funeral, having to watch me in the role of his widow—”
“If I’d known then what I know now,” Layton said, “I might have enjoyed your performance.”
“What do you mean, Jim?” Her hands groped for the chair arms and clutched.
Layton went over to the fireplace and put his forearm on the mantelpiece and rested his head on his forearm. Her eyes followed him, hugely troubled.
“I can’t remember the time when the very thought of doing a dishonest thing didn’t shame and frighten me, Nancy. It’s been very easy for me to be honest, considering the way I was brought up. When I was old enough to analyze it, it even bothered me. I felt there was something unnatural about me. I asked an acquaintance of mine once, a psychiatrist, whether that wasn’t so, as if honesty were abnormal, a disease. He was surprised. He said he didn’t remember ever having been asked that question in just that way, and that to attempt to answer it he’d have to take me on as a patient.” Layton laughed. “Can you tie that? Be honest, and you need a psychiatrist.”
He stopped laughing, and the room was very quiet. “I’ve often wondered just how honest I really am. It’s been a cinch for me to turn down bribes to sit on a story or kill it. I haven’t had the least trouble returning lost wallets to their owners intact. It’s perfectly simple for me to resist defrauding an insurance company, even though it’s the kind of fraud most people indulge in and the companies have given up trying to lick. I’ve even been honest in the other sense, as far as I know — with myself, I mean. To thine own self be true — that jazz. But you know something? Yesterday I found out I’d never been put to the test. The real test. Where you love somebody, and she loves you — you think — and you’ve got to make a decision that involves not money, not ethics, but your lives... both your lives.”
He swung around. The liquid eyes were so full of pain that he had to steel himself to keep from looking away.
Layton walked over to stand before her. She stared up at him, silent and bloodless. “It’s even tougher than that, Nancy. Because, you see, I don’t have to do anything actively dishonest, just keep my mouth shut. The yen to do exactly that is so damn powerful it tore me apart yesterday, and today it’s paralyzed me.” But the mechanism of pain — was it turned on by hers? — began working again without warning. Layton groped to a nearby chair. He sat down with a groan.
“Jim.” It was the faintest echo of a whisper.
Her pallor was so deathly as she sat across from him, her eyes so distended, her body so frozen, that Layton jumped up and began walking up and down. Anything — anything to keep from having to look at her.
After a moment he said in a rational voice, “I drove Nora Perkins and Wayne Mission home from the funeral parlor yesterday. You remember — the president and vice president of the Tutter King Los Angeles Fan Club.
“The boy insisted on discussing your husband’s death, and in the course of it dropped something neither he nor the girl had mentioned when Trimble questioned them. Wayne said that after he and Nora looked into Tutter’s dressing room during the intermission and didn’t see him there, Nora stopped in the ladies’ room before they went back to Studio A. The kid said that, all told, he must have been waiting in the corridor there some four minutes, most of it while Nora was in the john. As far as he was concerned, the only human being he laid eyes on during the whole time was Stander, down at the end of the hall, headed for the Studio B and C control room.”
“I don’t... understand.” She sounded so helplessly tired that Layton found himself grinding his teeth.
“Don’t you, Nancy? I’ll refresh your memory. We’ll start from the time Tutter left Studio A, at the news break. He was immediately followed by Lola Arkwright, and just then Hathaway left his office. King stopped for a moment to let Lola catch up with him, and Hathaway was practically on their heels. Tutter went into his dressing room, Lola walked on a few steps and went into hers — next door — and Hathaway continued down the hall to the B-C control booth.”
It was like something out of a dream, or a movie, or anything make-believe — his walking about calmly reciting what they both knew, as if any of it were necessary. Yet he went on, driven by a compulsion to be logical, to wrap it up... that was it, to wrap it up, get rid of it. Out of his system? But then what?
“Then you came out of Studio A, Nancy. You told Trimble you walked up to Tutter’s dressing room, saw the door was shut, decided not to go in after all, went into the ladies’ room next door to the studio, and from the ladies’ room returned to the studio.
“I was about twenty seconds or more later than you leaving Studio A. By the time I got into the hall you would have had to be in the ladies’ room to account for my not seeing you, if your story was the truth.
“I walked down the corridor looking into dressing rooms with their doors open, then I walked back. I’d certainly have heard the door of the ladies’ room open while my back was turned; I noticed when I first got to the station that its automatic closing gadget is out of order, and the noise the door makes being opened and closed by hand in those halls is loud and startling. And when I was coming back up the hall I’d certainly have seen as well as heard you coming out. So when I turned into the other arm of the L, you must still — according to your story — have been in the ladies’ room.