“Hathaway’s office door is only a few steps from where the corridors meet and the Studio A and ladies’ room doors are situated. Stander came out of Hathaway’s office as I approached to go in. I went into the office; Stander walked on. He turned into the arm of the L I’d just come from and proceeded toward the B-C control booth. And what did Stander say? That after noticing me go into Hathaway’s office he saw and heard no one until he got down toward the end of the hall. That, Nancy, still leaves you in the ladies’ room.
“As Stander got to the far end of the hall Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins stepped out of Studio A. Remember, you’re still in the ladies’ room. The kids looked into Tutter’s dressing room, found it empty, turned back... and Wayne waited in the hall while Nora went into the ladies room.”
She was leaning back in the chair now in an exhausted way, her head uptilted, watching his lips.
“This is what Nora Perkins told me yesterday, Nancy. I can quote her exact words; there are some things that burn into your brain like acid.” And now Layton’s eyes were burning. “She said: ‘The only person either Wayne or I laid eyes on from the time we left Studio A until we went back in was that Mr. Stander down at the end of the hall.’ I ask you: Since the recap I’ve just gone through places you in that ladies’ room when Nora went in, why didn’t she see you? Because, Nancy, you weren’t there.”
Layton leaned over her. She did not react in any way.
“I didn’t believe it at first. I tried to give you an out, find one for you. But I couldn’t. If it had been the usual public ladies’ room you might have been in one of the stalls, and conceivably Nora might not have noticed you. But it isn’t the usual public ladies’ room, Nancy. It’s like a small private bathroom; all it has is a washbowl and an open toilet — not even a window. As a matter of fact, had you been in that ladies’ room, Nancy, Nora couldn’t have got in at all. It bolts from inside, and you’d hardly have gone in without bolting it.
“But just to make absolutely sure I asked Nora: Was anyone in there when she went in? Of course she said no. In fact, what she said was: ‘How could there have been?’
“I wriggled, and I squirmed, and I fought and bled to get you out of that damn ladies’ room in a reasonable, legitimate way. But in the end it all came down to the same thing: Your story, combined with the others’ stories, placed you in the ladies’ room; and you weren’t.
“So, Nancy, you lied to Trimble. You hadn’t gone into the ladies’ room in the first place. Why would you lie about a trivial thing like that? Here’s the answer I’ve had to come up with, Nancy — look at me!” He seized her chin and forced her head up. “The answer is: You lied because you were with Tutter in dressing room 1, sticking an ice pick into his heart. Now tell me where I’m wrong. Tell me!”
He felt a froth form at the corner of his mouth and, as if awakening from a nightmare, he released her chin and licked the froth away and straightened up.
But Nancy’s head drooped and she shut her eyes.
“Tell me, Nancy,” Layton pleaded quietly. “For God’s sake, tell me.”
Nancy got up. She walked out into the foyer and picked up her bag and came back, opening it, searching for a cigarette, a lighter.
“No, Jim,” she said at his automatic movement. “You just sit down.”
He sat down. She found the cigarette and the lighter and she sat down opposite him with the bag in her lap and inhaled deeply.
“The Arkwright woman doesn’t know it,” she said, “but she missed out by a hair. Before Tutter left for the station Friday he told me that he’d done a lot of thinking since KZZX canceled his contract. He told me that since his disc-jockey career was over and he had to build a new career for himself, he’d decided to make a clean sweep. He wanted a divorce.”
She leaned back, smoking hungrily.
“He wanted a divorce from me, and he was going to marry Lola Arkwright. He smiled at me and said, yes, he knew she was a tramp, but she was wonderful in bed — something I, apparently, had never been for him. They were muy simpático as lovers, and Lola was so desperate for respectability that she’d stop being a tramp the moment he put a wedding ring on her finger. Do you know something, Jim? I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right about her. Tutter was very shrewd when it came to sizing up women. The reason Lola was so confused is that his entire career, based as it was on the admiration of women, had made him supercautious in his relations with them, as well as contemptuous. It was characteristic that Tutter would give his wife the bounce without committing himself in so many words to her successor. Actually he told me he was going to announce his engagement to Lola at the end of the telecast. That was to be his big surprise — to her, I suppose. She’d had to guess at it. He’d been so vague with her that she was able to talk herself out of it afterward. I think the whole idea of announcing his engagement on the air as his sign-off was motivated by his basic contempt for women. Down deep Tutter hated the millions of women, from adolescents to grandmothers, who drooled every time he opened his mouth. It was his way of expressing his hatred.”
Layton nodded slowly. “Tell me, Nancy. How come everything Trimble turned up about your private life indicated that you and King were happily married?”
“Why shouldn’t it? I thought so, too.” Nancy flipped her cigarette into the fireplace. Her eyes had cleared, her voice was strong and steady now. “I wonder if you can imagine, Jim, what happened to me when — out of a clear sky, without the slightest warning — Tutter pronounced my fate. I’d known about Lola, and there’d been other women, and he knew I knew — but I’d let him, or myself, talk me into believing they were meaningless. Of course, I was a fool. I really loved him. For ten years I’d kept myself buried, like a mole, watching the man I loved besieged by armies of other women, sleeping with some of them... kept myself buried willingly, because I thought I was the only woman really important in his life, and that by keeping myself buried I was furthering my loved and loving husband’s career.
“And he blew it all up in my face with one word on Friday morning.
“What happened to me, Jim,” Nancy went on, steadily still, “was that after he left the house I went into the kitchen and rummaged around in a drawer and found an ice pick that had been lying there unused for years, and I put it in my bag and drove down to KZZX. I could have used the gun he’d bought me years ago — for protection, he said, when I was here alone — but I saw no reason to shoot him and be caught because of the noise and have to throw away the rest of my life with his... Look at me, Jim. Look at me.”
And now it was his turn to force his glance.
“It was premeditated murder. I knew just what I was going to do. I went there armed with a silent weapon, intending to kill him and get away with it. I knew all about his intermissions, his routine. I lied when I said I went to dressing room 2 and decided not to go in, I did go in, and Tutter was there alone. The moment he saw me he suggested going across the hall. I knew why. Lola Arkwright was in the next dressing room, and he thought I was going to make a scene, and Lola would overhear and find out he’d been living with me all the years he’d told her he was having nothing to do with me. He took me by the arm and ran me across the hall to that unoccupied dressing room, and he shut the door with great care, so that no one would hear us. He did it so fast we were in dressing room 1 before you had time, apparently, to step out of Studio A.”