“Better come with me,” he said.
Nine
The Death of the Party
After the hospital, where they gave me a shot and a scrub and some gauze bandage on my cheek, I went with Staples back to my apartment and we discussed the Laura Penney murder some more. He assured me they were investigating possibilities other than the guilt of Kit Markowitz, meaning they were still checking into the five original male suspects. I asked him the questions Kit had assigned me, and he said no, they hadn’t established solid alibis for Jay English or Dave Poumon, mostly because the initial interview with that pair had seemed conclusive enough. As for Claire and Ellen, Kit’s two alternate female suspects, Staples acknowledged they’d studied Claire a bit without establishing much of anything, but Ellen came as a surprise to him. He made himself a note, and I said, “Our investigations overlap.”
“The more the merrier,” he told me. “I really want to solve this Laura Penney murder, Carey.”
“Good,” I said.
Next I asked him about the anonymous letter, and he turned out to have a Xerox copy of it on his person. He let me make my own copy, in longhand, and then a phone call from his office summoned him away.
I hadn’t wanted to check my messages while he was there, not being absolutely certain Patricia wouldn’t be cute in spite of my warning, but it turned out to be just the usual dull band of voices, including Shirley, calling from Boston again about those damned papers she wanted signed: “I know you have them by now, and this time I’m serious. If I don’t receive them by tomorrow, my Boston attorney is going to hire a New York attorney. At your expense.”
Papers, papers. Yes, I remembered receiving them, but had I ever signed and returned them? With all this other stuff going on, I was pretty sure I hadn’t, but when I went through the crap on my desk they weren’t there.
Damn. Who needed this annoyance? I spent ten minutes searching the apartment, in every likely and unlikely corner, and finally had to give up and call Shirley, a thing I hate to do. One of the brats answered — until John’s voice changes, which I presume it will some day, there’s no way to tell them apart, even if I wanted to — but then Shirley came on the line and I said, “Look, I’m not trying to make trouble, but I lost those damn papers.”
“You’re such a bullshitter, Carey.”
“Well, that’s all right, you do what you want to do, only if you send me another set I’ll sign them right away and send them straight back.”
Some snarling followed, until it was agreed I’d be sent another set of papers, and then we both hung up and off I went for the Valium. That, plus the medication I’d been given at the hospital, plus the hectic life I’d been leading recently, combined to knock me out all of a sudden, and I staggered to the bed and slept until seven-thirty, when the phone woke me, being Kit, wondering where I was.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be right there.” And I was, extending the anonymous letter out in front of me as a peace offering.
“Wonderful!” she said, clutching at it. “How did you do it?”
“I have my methods, Watson.”
So then dinner, which was already late, had to be delayed further while Kit immersed herself in the anonymous letter, reading aloud its cryptic algebra: “If A got too close to B, what would C do?” With paper and pencil, she proceeded to put columns of names under the letters A and C, reserving B for Laura. Gradually she demonstrated to her own satisfaction that everybody she knew could go in one column or the other, and that most names could go in both. “Oh, really!” she said, at last. “Being anonymous is one thing, but being a smartass is something else. Why didn’t she say what she meant?”
“She?”
“This was obviously written by a woman.”
“Ah.”
“Look at this sentence about the husband. ‘He doesn’t know anything about it.’ That’s a woman saying that. A man wouldn’t even mention the husband at all.”
“I see. Very clever.”
Having announced this deduction, Kit went back to studying the columns of names again, and it began to look as though we’d never get to dinner, until I pointed out that Laura need not necessarily be character B, but could also be character C. Kit frowned at the sheets of paper in front of her and said, “How could that be?”
“Well, for instance, what if Laura had a secret yen for Jack Freelander, but—”
“That’s ridiculous. Jack?”
“Wait a minute. What if she thought Claire Wallace was the competition? Then that sentence could read, If Claire Wallace got too close to Jack Freelander, what would Laura Penney do?’”
Kit mouthed the words, vertical frown lines in her forehead. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning Laura might have Claire over to her place to talk it out. There’s an argument, Claire hits her, and that’s it.”
“Claire? Is that possible?”
“It could be a lot of people. Let’s see.” I ran a finger down column A. “Now, what if—?”
“Oh, I’ve had enough! Let’s have dinner.” Kit flung down her pencil, got up from her desk, and gave me a puzzled frown. “What happened to your face?”
“You noticed,” I said, touching the bandage. “A girl fell out of a ceiling and scratched me.”
“What?”
So at last I had her attention away from the anonymous letter, and over dinner I told her my latest exploit, and she was properly impressed. Of course, after dinner we had to play with the names and the columns again for another hour or so, but I didn’t mind, now that I’d been fed. This detective business could be rather restful at times.
The whole week was very restful, in fact, much more so than the preceding seven days. By Tuesday afternoon Kit had finished inviting all her suspects to the Friday night party, and all had agreed to come. (No reason for the get-together was given, the guests being allowed to believe it was simply an ordinary Thank-God-It’s-Friday & Isn’t-Winter-Awful party.) After I’d delivered to Kit the copy of the anonymous letter, plus Staples’ answers to her other questions, she had no further active role for me to play other than as the sounding board who listened every evening to that day’s sleuthing and conclusions. At different times between Tuesday morning and Friday afternoon she conclusively demonstrated the guilt of four different people, and subsequently just as conclusively exonerated all four of them again. It was a pleasure to observe all of this deducing and detecting, particularly since I had already peeked at the last chapter.
When I wasn’t being Dr. Watson with Kit, I was playing a very different kind of doctor with Patricia Staples. Fascinating woman! My initial impression could not have been more wrong. I had thought of her as the ultimate mousy housewife, totally absorbed in husband and casseroles, when in fact her absorption was totally with Patricia Staples. She was incredible to watch, a woman with no more concept of the world outside herself than a canary. She agreed with everything Fred said — and now with everything I said — not because she was lost in her man but because she was lost in herself. Fred admired her and kept her comfortable, so she responded by being agreeable. If he said a particular movie was wonderful or a particular politician was no good, why not agree with him? Neither the movie nor the politician mattered at all, even existed at all, insofar as she was concerned, so what difference did it make what anybody said about them?