There was silence for a moment, and then I had to smother another gasp, because Ms. T actually said, “I would be bright enough to consider his secretary, who has had an eye on Walter Prescott for decades and who took quite a late lunch yesterday.”
Much as I appreciated her spirited defense of Mr. P, and hopeful as I was that she might actually discover the real perpetrator, suspecting me was not, I thought, very nice. The idea that the eye I kept on Mr. P had a salacious glint in it was both untrue and, to my mind, indelicate. Besides, decades was a low blow. I may have passed my prime, but her implication that I had entered an advanced stage of life was inaccurate.
I was simultaneously offended and unnerved, and my brain started whirling frantically. Was anyone else at the firm suffering from the same misapprehension as Ms. T? And, from a practical point of view, had anyone seen me in the park?
Indicative of my emotional conflict was the fact that the next statement from the police actually made me feel relieved, but just for the moment it took affection to triumph over self-interest.
“Ms. Trudeau,” said a deep voice. “We have the murder weapon. It’s a knife from the Prescotts’ kitchen, and it has Mr. Prescott’s fingerprints on it. It also has blood of Mrs. Prescott’s type on it, and it matches the depth and nature of the wound exactly. It was discovered last night, in a dumpster half a block down the alley from their home.”
The phone rang, making me jump and, unfortunately, sounding loudly enough in Ms. T’s office for her to realize the door was ajar. The next thing I knew, it had been closed all the way, and that would be the end of what I’d be able to hear.
The voice on the line was familiar, but I didn’t recognize it, even when the man gave his name. “Charlie here,” he said. “I need to talk to you. Can you get away?”
I was a little stiff. “Charlie? Perhaps I should know who you are, but I do not.”
He laughed, embarrassed. “Oh, gosh! Sorry! Charlie Potter. Patricia Prescott’s brother. In Marketing.”
I agreed to meet him at a coffee shop around the corner. I left a note on my desk. “Back in twenty minutes,” it said. No further explanation. Decades indeed!
Charlie Potter was a wreck. Elegantly dressed, as always, but a wreck. He had circles under his eyes, his tie was crooked, and he’d cut his chin while shaving.
“The police came by at midnight,” he said. “They arrested Walter!”
“My goodness,” I said noncommittally. “Was he at your house?”
Charlie waved a hand. “No, no, of course not. I was at Patricia’s house. I mean, his house.”
“It’s dreadful,” I said. “And ridiculous.”
Charlie nodded vigorously. “I know! But you must be able to give him an alibi. You always know where he is, what he’s doing. Have the police talked to you yet?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, to tell him. I sipped carefully at my coffee while I thought. He took too large a swallow and grimaced. “Look,” he said, “you know he didn’t do it. Not Walter.”
“Of course he didn’t,” I said, with more confidence than I felt just then. My understanding of fingerprints is that they are, well, incontrovertible. “But what do you want from me?”
He laughed nervously. “Why, nothing,” he said, “except the truth. Just tell the police what you’re sure is the truth.”
“And why wouldn’t I?” I asked, frostily.
“But you would!” he said. “It’s just that, if you didn’t happen to be able to provide a definite alibi for Walter by stating what you know to be facts, well, perhaps you might provide one by stating what you are convinced are facts.”
It took me a moment to take this in. “You mean, make up an alibi?” I asked. “Say he was in his office when he wasn’t?”
“Look,” said Charlie, “you know he didn’t murder Patsy.”
Actually, though I didn’t say so, that was something I was feeling less sure of all the time. Charlie Potter, it appeared, didn’t realize that the murder weapon had been found, or he wouldn’t have thought my lying would do any good.
I stood up, stretching to the limits of my less than considerable height so I would have as far to look down as possible. “Goodbye, Mr. Potter,” I said.
Five seconds after I arrived back at my desk, Ms. T buzzed me. I went into her office with my steno pad at the ready, but she had a new method of torture in mind.
“You are, I believe,” she said, “a secretary. I could look up your job description, but I am reasonably sure I know what it says, and I do not think it mentions your taking twenty-minute breaks whenever the fancy strikes you.”
I didn’t reply. Silence fit my purposes as well as anything. I gazed at her, thinking about something I’d read recently — that Cro Magnons were skeletally identical to modern humans. “Dress one up in a suit,” it said, “and you couldn’t tell the difference.” That, I thought, would explain a lot.
She looked angrily at me. I looked placidly at her. Then she sighed.
“Look, Richard,” she said. “I need help! Running this place is hard. This awful situation is so unnerving, so horrid, so...” And then, to my amazement and extreme discomfiture, she began to cry. I really can’t stand to see people cry. I was, however, still annoyed.
“There, there, Helen,” I said. “There, there. No one expects you to do as good a job as Mr. Prescott.”
In the days that followed, everyone tended to gather in clumps. Groups of us took coffee breaks together, ate lunch together, waited for the bus together. Even the management-level people seemed cozier than usual. We all felt confused and insecure, and there seemed to be safety in numbers. Everyone had heard about the knife in the dumpster and, though there was no further news of any importance, the situation was a topic of constant conjecture. Ms. T went back to calling me Mr. Andrews and I went back to calling her Ms. Trudeau. I would find stacks of work with detailed instructions on my desk. My dictaphone always had letters on it for me to type up (while cringing). I often ran through the capacity of my personal note recorder with reminders to myself about what to get done when. But we had little personal contact except when she called me in to her office to tell me which restaurants to make reservations at that week, where to pick up her dry cleaning, and what photographer to schedule for the shots of her that would appear in Allied’s annual report.
I did my work as best I could under the circumstances, though it wasn’t easy. Mr. P was out on bail, but he didn’t come near the firm. Ms. T moved her potted plants and silver-framed photos into his office, and it gradually lost its identification with Mr. P entirely. I, however, was not willing to see him disappear permanently from Allied Enterprises. One afternoon, I decided to pay him a visit.
I had to go out anyway, to pick up the photos of Ms. T so she could choose the one that did the best job of making her look both competent and ravishing. It was close to five o’clock by the time I could get away, so I didn’t come back to the office, but headed over to Mr. P’s.
He answered the door himself, looking a good ten years older than he had just a few short weeks before. He brightened a bit when he saw me.
“Richard!” he said. Mr. P can call me Richard anytime he chooses, having spent years earning the right. “This is a pretty kettle of fish, wouldn’t you say?”
I sat myself down on an antique something or other and dove in. “Mr. Prescott,” I said, “something has to be done. Did you kill Mrs. Prescott?”
He looked at me and laughed. “Ah, Richard. I should have known you’d be direct. No, I did not kill Mrs. Prescott.”