“Getting back to Jerome,” I said. “He’s staying over for the funeral, I take it.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“I can give you the number where he is staying.”
“That’d be nice. Thank you.”
There was a brief, awkward silence, which Mae broke after a few moments: “I talked to some reporters this morning.”
“I heard you did.”
“I was surprised they’d be interested in my husband. I thought Roscoe was… well, sort of a has-been. Is it cruel of me to say so?”
“Not really,” I said. “Realistic, maybe. Not cruel. I’m afraid… and I don’t mean to be cruel by pointing this out… but I’m afraid the media folks are just picking up on the fact that a once-famous mystery writer died a somewhat mysterious death on the eve of a mystery convention.”
She nodded, her smile a bitter line. “I’m afraid you’re right. I sensed that, from the tenor of their questions. I didn’t give them your name, for that very reason. I thought if they found out another mystery writer had discovered Roscoe’s body, they’d make something out of it.”
“I quite agree with you.”
“I haven’t seen any of the papers yet….”
“Too early.”
“Well… do you think they’ll say anything about-how was it you put it? — the somewhat ‘mysterious’ nature of Roscoe’s death?”
I shrugged.
“I certainly hope not,” she said. “This is unpleasant enough without that sort of exploitation creeping in. As an old media maven myself, I can just see them stooping to that. Ugh.”
That made it harder for me to say what I’d come here to say.
“Mae,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I said I needed to talk to you.”
“You implied it was urgent, as a matter of fact. Is there something you’re having trouble getting to? Something you’re having trouble saying?” She smiled, and there was no bitterness in it, but plenty of sex appeal, damnit. “That isn’t like you, Mallory. You usually have plenty to say.”
“Yeah”-I grinned-“I am a little long-winded sometimes. I had a critic give me hell for that once.”
“I remember Roscoe mentioning that… in one of his periodic diatribes against critics in general. As I recall, one reviewer called you ‘verbose,’ and another ‘curt,’ for the same piece of work. So what does that make you?”
I shrugged, smiled. “Curtly verbose?”
“Perhaps.” She smiled. “Mal.”
“Yes?”
“Get to the point.”
“Yes. Mae. I think there really may be something… ‘mysterious’ about Roscoe’s death. I think he may have been murdered.”
She leaned forward; her dark eyes flared, then narrowed, boring into me.
“Explain,” she said curtly.
I explained, verbosely. I went through what I had told the assistant coroner; she’d been in the room while I did that, but she’d been gin-sedated, so this was all new to her. As I spoke, she reached for her purse on the nightstand and got some cigarettes out, tapped one down on the cigarette pack (Lucky Strikes, like Roscoe and Gat Garson smoked-not a very ladylike cigarette, but she made smoking them a sensuous affair) and lit up, listening intently. When I got to the part about the maid remembering delivering four towels to 714, her eyes got Joan Crawford-wide again.
“My God,” she said. “I believe he was murdered.”
And she reached for the phone. Almost lurched for it.
I put my hand on hers, stopping her; her hand was warm, and I drew mine away. I hated myself for the attraction I felt for her. She was old enough to be my mother, almost; she was my hero’s widow of less than a day.
“I thought that through already,” I said. “I even called the police, got the name of the assistant coroner from last night-which is Myers, incidentally-and was ready to make the call, when it occurred to me how little I had.”
With a trembling urgency in her voice, she said, “You can prove the point you were trying to make last night, about the towels! That’s a lot!”
I shook my head no. “It’s very little. It’s hardly anything. Oh, it’d be enough for Gat Garson. But I don’t think the Chicago coroner’s office is going to give a damn.”
“Why?”
“Who’s to say that maid’s story’s going to hold up? Why should she remember servicing a specific room, a day later? Will she be so damn sure of herself on a witness stand, at an inquest, as she was when she was looking at my five-dollar bill? Even if she’s believed, how do you build a murder investigation on some wet towels being tossed in a hamper? Who’s to say Roscoe didn’t bathe that afternoon, before going out for dinner with his son? In which case, he’d have gotten several towels wet; perhaps he himself took the wet towels with him, looking for a closet to get some fresh ones. And when he found the closet, he didn’t find any clean towels, but the hamper was right there and so he dumped the wet ones in. Or perhaps another maid came in late in the day and turned down the beds-they were turned down, remember? — and got rid of the wet towels, but didn’t have any fresh ones to leave, so… anyway, it would be a fine piece of evidence in a mystery novel. But at a coroner’s inquest, it would be shrugged off twelve ways to Tuesday.”
Her face was damn near as pale as her hair. Her eyes were wet. A tear trickled out of one them, making a shiny trail on her cheek. Her fists were clenched and so was her jaw, which was trembling.
I said, “I’d like to do something about this. My instinct is Roscoe was murdered. Or at least, may have been. But we don’t have enough to go to the police with.”
“I think you should. I think you should call Mr. Myers and tell him what you found out.”
“All right, I will. But nothing will come of it.”
She stabbed the cigarette out in a glass Americana-Congress ashtray on the nightstand. “Damnit, if Roscoe was murdered, we can’t just let it lay there! We’ve got to do something, Mal!”
“I know. I know.”
We sat and looked at each other; she leaned forward, got a crinkly smile going and stroked my face, in what she probably thought was a motherly fashion. Her skirt was hiked up over her knees, and I wanted to throw myself on her-or out a window.
“Poor Mal,” she said. “Poor, poor Mal.”
“Poor Roscoe,” I said. “I feel fine.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
And her mask of composure slipped and she was crying into her cupped hands.
I stood, hoping how I felt about her didn’t show.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” I said. “I should’ve let it ride.”
“You can’t let murder ride,” she said, sobbing.
“That’s a Gat Garson line,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Chapter One, Kiss or Kill.”
“You were Roscoe’s fan, too, weren’t you?”
“He was my hero,” she said.
I touched her shoulder. Like a son, I hoped.
I said, “Let me poke around a little. Ask some questions. I’ll keep my suspicions to myself. I don’t want the media to get hold of this, not yet, anyway.”
“All right-” She sniffed.
“And I wanted to ask you a big favor. Stick around till tomorrow.”
She cocked her head, looking at me close. “Oh? Why?”
“There’s a presentation tomorrow afternoon, by the Private Eye Writers of America. They were going to give Roscoe their Life Achievement Award; now that it’s going to be posthumous, well… they’d like you to be there to accept it.”
She smiled bravely. “I’d like that very much.”
“It will attract some media attention, I’ve got to warn you.”
“This sounds like the right kind of media attention.”
“I agree. Enough of that kind of media attention might get Roscoe Kane’s books back into print, where they belong.”
“That would be nice. I’ll be proud to stay, to accept Roscoe’s award.”
“Thanks. Besides, if I am going to ask some questions around, about Roscoe, I’d like you available, so I can check back with you… you know, compare notes.”