But once she’d allowed herself to cool off sufficiently, she understood why he’d done it. He hadn’t seriously expected to find anything in there. It was just a psychological trick, to jangle her, undermine her self-confidence, if possible. Put her on the defensive.
She felt by now as if their questioning had been going on forever. The strain was beginning to tell, particularly so soon after the not-yet-worn-off shock of finding the body. And she had an uneasy feeling she hadn’t come through it as well as she might have. For one thing, by not asking from the beginning what had happened to Dell, which would have been the normal reaction of anybody placed in her situation. What had kept her from it, probably, was the guilty knowledge that she already knew, and the fear of letting this slip out in some way if she asked at all. It was too late now to do so with any degree of plausibility or grace.
They were at it again. The technique was to keep the person bouncing, and if possible off-balance. Somewhat like dribbling a basketball or swatting a punching bag this way and that.
“Did you leave the hotel at any time this evening?”
How could she say no? The elevator boy, the desk man, the man on door duty, had all seen her.
“I went out about seven.”
“And where did you go?”
She had taken a taxi a few yards offside to the door. She took a chance on those few yards covering her up. Because a taxi meant a destination, you didn’t take it without one.
“Nowhere. I went just for a walk. I needed some exercise and I needed some fresh air.”
“Do you go for a walk every evening at about that time? Is that your custom?”
“No. Tonight was the first time.”
“And where did you walk?” came from the tiger one, who by this time had become a personal enemy.
“On the street,” she snapped.
The other one made a strangled sound down in his throat, and murmured half audibly, “One down on you, Smitts.”
“And what street was that?” he asked dulcetly.
She recited six of them in a row. “Satisfactory?” she asked sarcastically.
“For a walk, yes,” he said imperturbably. The implication, somewhere down deep, being, “If you had taken one, but you didn’t.”
“And you came back—”
“By around eight.”
She knew why all this. That was the time slot that encompassed Dell’s death.
“Had you had your dinner before or after?”
“Neither. I did without it tonight.”
The tiger one purred, “Did something happen to make you lose your appetite?”
This time she couldn’t hold back. “Not at the time. But it has now.” And she left his partner out of the incinerating glare she sent him. He was making her very angry, which is a bad thing for a person under questioning to be.
Suddenly he got to his feet, and as if at a given signal the other one did too.
She let out a long, unconcealed sigh of relief, and let her head go limply back against the top of the sofa. The next thing she knew, he was saying, “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to ask you to accompany us.”
Her head jerked upright again. “But why?” she wailed almost tearfully. “Haven’t I answered all your questions?”
“Yes,” he said briefly.
“Haven’t I answered them satisfactorily?”
“You would know more about that.” Meaning, whether the answers were true or not.
The other one, standing by the door, said, “Coming, Smitts?” but she knew he meant it for her and not his partner.
“After Miss Chalmers,” Smitts said pointedly, and brought up the rear.
She shuddered uncontrollably as she walked between them down the long carpeted hotel corridor, which seemed to stretch ahead for miles. “I feel terrible about this,” she said in a fearful whisper. “I never was taken anywhere under police escort before.”
“Weren’t you?” Smitts said laconically.
The glass-prismed chandeliers, the offside mirrors, the offside needlepoint chairs. The offside desk, not meant for anything more serious than RSVPs and thank-you notes. You weren’t supposed to walk along here with two detectives for company, involved in an act of violence. Going down to their place, at their order. You were supposed to walk along it in furs, with diamonds on your fingers and on your neck, owning the world. The only thing that hurt you, maybe a little corn because your Italian shoes are too tight.
And then, far too late, she finally asked, “What is it about? What’s happened to her?”
“Shouldn’t you have asked that before?”
“It could have been anything, how was I to know?” she said defensively. “She drinks a lot. Sometimes when a person’s drunk they make all sorts of bad accusations against others.”
“But when they’re dead,” he said, “they make the worst accusation of all.”
“Dead?” she breathed, appalled, and only hoped she did it right.
“You’ll never win an Academy Award.” He gave her the look you give a cat that’s come in out of the rain. It’s all bedraggled, but you feel sorry for it, you have a heart. You even want to give it warm milk.
The transit from hotel to street to car was made fairly painlessly. No one looked at her a second time, or if they did, seemed to see only a pretty girl escorted by two young men in business suits. Detention was the last thought anybody would have connected with her graceful free-swinging arms.
The car was unmarked. Or at least, it definitely wasn’t a piebald “Mickey Mouse” prowl car. Riding in it with them, she tried to analyze her feelings. Actual fear was minimal. But there was an uncomfortableness other than that. For the first time in her life she felt gauche, awkward, unsure of herself. That was probably because the initiative had gone over to them; she was no longer a free agent.
At the precinct house she was shown into an unoccupied room and asked, as politely as if she were a visitor or a guest, if she minded waiting there a minute. “We’ll be right with you,” one of them promised, and they both went out through a door ahead of the one they had entered by.
The room was depressing, but not particularly ominous or threatening. It was painted an ugly darkling green halfway up the walls, and the rest of the way up was just white plaster. Why the green stopped where it did was problematical. Either they’d run out of paint or they’d run out of money. Or someone had walked off with the painter’s ladder. The window was of the old-fashioned proportions of the windows of sixty years ago: tall and narrow. Its glass was protected by a pattern of wire mesh embedded in it. The purpose of this she couldn’t conjecture; certainly no one would be foolhardy enough to throw rocks at a police-station window, would they? It, the window, overlooked a backyard which it shared with a soot-blackened tenement backing up toward it from the other side. In some of the windows of this, people could be seen going about their daily lives without even a glance at the punitive place across the way, so used to it were they by a lifetime of propinquity. Which argued, at any rate, that suspects were not beaten or otherwise roughed up in these exposed rear rooms. And then again, did it? The tenement tenants might have even been immune to that.
Finally, the room had a number of scarred and scarified wooden chairs in it, ranged in a row against the wall, and a wooden table, likewise scarred, likewise scarified, cigarette burns galore scalloping its edges, and likewise back against the wall.
She turned her head, and a woman in uniform, a matron, had come into the room. She nodded pleasantly but impersonally to Madeline, sat down on one of the chairs, opened a narrow-spread paper, and lost herself in it.
Madeline could feel herself becoming highly nervous over her presence in the room. It seemed to predicate a rigorous forthcoming questioning, and perhaps even arrest, with the woman present to comply with regulations because the detainee was a woman herself.