“Don’t tell her why, George,” Stander called after him. “We can’t have her going to pieces on the air!” He smacked his forehead suddenly. “The police. We forgot to notify the police—”
“I didn’t, Layton said.
The chairman of the board turned to glare at the press.
“You wouldn’t,” he snarled and then he hurried after Hathaway.
4
The homicide team consisted of two sergeants who identified themselves as Harry Trimble and Ed Winterman. Trimble was an elongated bone of a man with close-cropped carrot hair and a diagonal scar that ran from his temple to his nose across his left eye, which was of glass. Winterman was broad and squat, with dark coloring and long arms. Trimble seemed to be Winterman’s senior. Both looked very tough.
They had brought with them two police technicians and a photographer, who had gone to work immediately. The two detectives spent some time in dressing room 1 with the lab men. Then they rejoined the group waiting for them in Stander’s office.
Sergeant Trimble’s one working eye fixed on Layton. It seemed quite capable of doing double duty. “Aren’t you Jim Layton of the Bulletin?”
The reporter nodded. “I kept stepping on your heels all through that Bentley homicide last year, Sergeant.”
“A dilly.” Trimble grinned. “And you sure kept me hopping. When you called in, Layton, you said you found King. How come?”
Layton explained the circumstances. Sergeant Trimble listened in silence, fingering his glass eye as if he were worried it might pop out.
“Which one is George Hathaway?” Trimble asked when Layton had finished. He was consulting a piece of paper handed him by a uniformed man.
Hathaway said nervously, “I am.”
“What’s your story, Mr. Hathaway?”
“I have no story. I knew nothing about it until Layton ran into my office saying he’d just found Tutter King dead in dressing room 1. Mr. Stander — this gentleman here, the chairman of our board — was with me at the time, and we went immediately to dressing room 1—”
“Where we were extremely careful, Sergeant, not to touch anything,” Hubert Stander said. “Although, of course, I can’t vouch for Layton’s not having touched anything when he found the body.”
You elegant bastard, Layton thought admiringly.
“I’ll vouch for it,” Layton said.
“You sure?” the one-eyed detective asked him with the merest touch of a grin.
“Positive,” Layton said gravely.
“You anything to add, Mr. Stander?”
“No.”
Trimble turned to the black-haired woman, consulting the paper. She had used the lavatory off the board room to repair the damage to her make-up, and the Charles Addams pallor and expression were back on her face. There was a kind of resignation about her now, however, that had not been there before. As if she’d never had a real hope of release from her prison, anyway, Layton thought, and now she could slip right back into the old familiar nothing.
“You’re Nancy King?” Sergeant Trimble said.
“Mrs. Tutter King.” The voice, the nod, were quite lifeless.
Trimble’s squat, swarthy partner opened his mouth for the first time. “My kid sister’ll flip when she hears Tut King was married. She may not even go into mourning.” Sergeant Winterman stared at King’s widow as if he had a personal grievance.
“Cut it out, Ed,” Trimble said. “What can you tell us about this, Mrs. King?
“Me?” She shrugged. “Not a thing.”
“How about your husband’s enemies? Maybe you can give us a lead.”
“Come on, don’t be bashful, Mrs. King,” Winterman said. “This is an important case to the youth of America. Open up.”
Nancy King shook her head. “If Tutter had any enemies, he never mentioned them to me.”
Trimble glanced glumly at Layton. “This has all the makings of another dilly. Maybe sixty employees in the building, a couple of hundred studio guests—”
“I think you can rule most of them out for lack of opportunity, Trimble,” Layton said. “The way this building’s laid out ought to cut the suspects way down.”
“Yeah?” the scarred detective said. “Tell me more.”
“Wait — just — one — moment!” Stander and Hathaway had been exchanging furtive looks, and now the chairman of the board stepped forward. “Am I to understand, Sergeant Trimble, that you’re going on the assumption this was murder?”
“What assumption would you go on, Mr. Stander?” Trimble asked in an interested voice.
“Why — anything but that! Why would anybody want to murder that unfortunate young fool? But he did have every reason to kill himself!”
“With an ice pick?” Sergeant Trimble asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, Harry,” his partner said. “They’ll do it in some pretty screwy ways.”
“You’re absolutely right, Sergeant Winterman,” George Hathaway said eagerly.
“That is,” Winterman drawled, “if they’re screwballs. But the way I always heard it, there wasn’t a loose screw in King’s noggin.”
“We aren’t ruling out suicide,” Trimble said. “We aren’t ruling out anything right now — including murder.”
“But his career,” Hubert Stander stormed, “finished—!”
“Who knows how finished it was, Mr. Stander? The public has a short memory. And King sure must have had enough dough stashed away to keep him going till he could ease back in.” Trimble turned to Nancy King again. “Your husband admitted to that investigating committee he’d accepted something like half a million dollars in payola over the last four-five years, Mrs. King. And that’s all aside from his legit income from TV and records. Would you say he had any financial worries?”
She looked up. “I can’t tell you, Sergeant.”
“Oh, come on, Mrs. King.”
“I can’t. Tutter never discussed his finances with me.”
Trimble said in a dry voice, “Wives have been known to ask.”
The merest suggestion of life invaded her face. “I wasn’t that kind of wife.”
“Sounds like Tutter wasn’t that kind of husband, either,” Winterman remarked.
“He was a very good husband to me, Sergeant Winterman!” There was actually animation in her voice. “There wasn’t anything I ever wanted that Tutter didn’t give me, cheerfully. I always took it for granted, of course, that he was making a lot of money. But how much of it he saved I can’t tell you.”
“Didn’t you save any of it for him?”
She froze. “I think I’ve answered your question. I don’t see why I should answer it again.”
Trimble glanced at Winterman, and Winterman nodded. The scarred detective was about to say something to Layton when Hubert Stander said in a fretful voice, “I don’t understand you people. You have this ridiculous idea that someone murdered King, yet you haven’t done a thing to look for anybody—”
“There are officers posted at the doors of Studio A, and every exit from the building is under guard,” Trimble said mildly. “Nobody’s going anywhere, unless they went before we got here. Layton.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You said something about the way this building’s laid out. Suppose you show us.”
“I think,” Layton said, “Mr. Hathaway’d better come along.”
The uniformed man remained with Nancy King and Hubert Stander. The two detectives and Layton went out and over to Hathaway’s office, Hathaway trailing unhappily behind. Mrs. Grant stopped typing as if she had been shot.
“Mr. Hathaway—” she began in a trembling voice.
Hathaway glared at her, and she swallowed. “Hazel, these are Detective Sergeants Trimble and Winterman. My secretary, Hazel Grant.”