The other man said, “I’m Detective Breen,” and put out his hand. After I had shaken it, I told him about the television repairman and how Arnold Hamilton had suddenly come home.
“Yes, we know,” Detective Breen said. He was sucking a curved pipe the way a child would a lollipop. “Mr. Hamilton told us about him. But he doesn’t know his name and can’t think of the name of the company he works for.”
“It’s the Riverside TV Service.”
“Thanks a lot, Dr. McKay. This will save lot of trouble locating him.”
“Glad I could help,” I said. But I didn’t leave. Putting a match to his pipe, the detective studied me lazily. The entire street was watching us. I began to feel self-conscious. I drew in my breath and asked, “Has he confessed?”
“Mr. Hamilton? No. He insists it was the TV man.”
“At least an hour passed after he’d driven away before the police came,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“No, we didn’t. Interesting.” He nodded to himself. “Would you mind coming in with me, Dr. McKay?”
I had no idea why he wanted me in there, but of course I went.
The house had a center hall. Through an open door on the left, I could look into a kind of study. The television set stood against a wall, and on a sofa at the opposite wall Arnold Hamilton sat. His face was in his hands. The way his sparse hair was plastered sideways on his scalp to cover as much area as possible struck me as particularly pathetic. He didn’t look up. A motionless, silent detective stood near him.
We went up the hall a little way and turned through an arched doorway into the bedroom. Three men in plain clothes and one in uniform were in there. And Norma Hamilton.
She was grotesque in death. In falling, one of her arms had hooked over the post at the front of the bed. She hung there, just her toes touching the floor. Blood covered her head and face and spattered the beige carpet. Not far from her right hand was what must have done it, since some blood was on it — a slender, off-white earthenware flower vase. The only aura emanating from her now was that of death. I was quite shaken.
“The coroner is on the way here,” Breen was saying to me. “But he’s not a doctor. We’ve sent for Dr. Morganstern, who usually comes in a homicide, but he happens to be out on a call. I’d appreciate it, Dr. McKay, if you’d make a preliminary examination to determine how long she’s been dead. Time is important, as you—”
“But I’m not a physician,” I broke in.
“You’re not?”
“I’m a dentist.”
Somebody in the room laughed softly.
“I see.” Breen managed to keep himself from looking foolish. “Sorry to have troubled you.”
He conducted me out of the house. As we passed the television room, I had another look at Arnold Hamilton on the sofa. He had raised his head, but he wasn’t looking at anything. Breen opened the front door and said, “I’d like to speak to you and your wife later, Dr. McKay,” and closed the door behind me.
Neighbors converged on me when I reached the street. I told them what I had seen; then I moved on to my house, where Margaret was waiting on the porch rocker, and I told her.
“We should have done something,” she said.
“Such as what?”
“I don’t know, but I feel we could have saved her.” Margaret was very pale; at times like this she was beginning to show her age. “I felt in my bones something would happen. But you scoffed at me.”
“You sound as if you think it’s my fault.”
Margaret said nothing more for a while. She rocked gently and I paced the porch, both of us watching what went on across the street, along with the rest of the neighborhood.
There was a lot of coming and going of cars, and then from a police car that had pulled up at the curb stepped the television repairman. He now wore a tan poplin jacket over his muscles. On the sidewalk, he paused to look at the crowd with an expression of bewilderment. Then one of the two detectives who had brought him touched his arm and they moved up the walk to the house.
Margaret said, “It’s his fault Arnold killed Norma. And nothing will be done to him.” She sniffed — a habit of hers I detested. “But of course the really guilty person has already been punished.”
“How easy for you to make moral judgments.”
“You’re still trying to find excuses for her,” she said like an accusation.
“I don’t know enough about it to excuse or not to excuse anybody,” I said. “But I saw what had been done to her with that vase. Try a little pity, Margaret.”
She looked up at me from the chair, and then in the same instant, we looked away from each other.
The afternoon dribbled on. The repairman came out with one of the detectives who had brought him and they drove away. Shortly afterward, Arnold Hamilton appeared, flanked by two detectives. The street became very quiet; a funeral hush hung in the hot air. Arnold Hamilton walked between the detectives as if unaware of them and his gawking neighbors. The three got into one of the police sedans, and when it was gone, the voices in the street resumed like a collective sigh.
Then Detective Breen was crossing the street. He came up on our porch and I introduced him to Margaret. She did not pause in her rocking as she nodded, moving in that chair with a kind of relentless rhythm. Breen, taking his time, put his broad rear on the porch railing and set about loading his pipe.
“Well, did either of them confess?” I burst out.
His quiet eyes looked up at me over the flaring match. “No.” He drew the flame into the bowl and then said, “Mrs. McKay, your husband told me you often saw the TV truck parked at the Hamilton house.”
“I don’t know how often. Every few days, it seemed. There may have been other times when I wasn’t home to see it.” Margaret rocked and rocked. “Didn’t he admit he was carrying on with her?”
“He denies it. But then he would. It gives him a motive.”
“Motive?” I said. “Isn’t it obvious that her husband killed her?”
“Not obvious. Let’s say probable at this point.” He smiled a little. “We policemen have to make these nice distinctions. We are holding Hamilton for further questioning. We are also holding Forrest.”
Margaret said, “Did he, Forrest — that’s the repairman, isn’t it?”
“Larry Forrest, ma’am. What were you going to ask me?”
“Didn’t he admit anything at all?” Margaret said.
“About what, ma’am?”
“About their affair.”
“I said he didn’t. Mrs. McKay, how long would you say his truck was in front of the house before Hamilton came home?”
“Quite a while. I don’t remember exactly. But longer than it ordinarily takes to repair a set.”
Breen nodded. “In this case, there was nothing wrong with the set.”
“You see!” Margaret cried triumphantly. I didn’t like the almost gloating expression on her face. “It’s proof of what I’ve been saying.”
“It could be.” Perched on the railing like a small boy, Breen rubbed the hot pipe bowl against his cheek. “Mrs. Hamilton called up Riverside Service and said that her set was out of order. According to Forrest, there was no answer when he rang the doorbell. But the door was unlocked, so he let himself in.”
“Because he was right at home there,” Margaret said.
“So it seems. He said he’d been there before and knew where the set was in that room off the hall. He turned it on and the picture was all right. But the fact was that Mrs. Hamilton had called in saying it wasn’t He said he thought maybe the trouble would show up after the tubes had warmed up, so he sat down to wait He said after ten minutes, maybe a little longer, the set was still working properly, and he decided to leave. Just then, he saw Hamilton get out of his car in the driveway. Anyway, that’s his story.”