Teddy had emphatically shaken her head.
Well, fine then, they said. We're sure everything will work out fine. We're confident of that, Mrs. Carella. As for his nose, we'll have to make a more thorough examination in the morning. We don't know when he sustained the injury, you see, or whether or not the broken bones have already knitted. In any case, we should be able to reset it, though it may involve an operation. Please be assured we'll do everything in our power. Would you like to see him now?
She sat in the darkness.
When at last he opened his eyes, he seemed surprised to see her. He smiled and then said, "Teddy."
She returned the smile. She touched his face tentatively.
"Teddy," he said again, and then — because the room was dark and because she could not see his mouth too clearly — he said something which she was sure she misunderstood.
"That's your name," he said. "I didn't forget."
Doll, 1965
Chloe Chadderton
Chloe Chadderton responded to their insistent knocking in a voice still unraveling sleep. When they identified themselves as police officers, she opened the door a crack, and asked that they show her their shields. Only when she was satisfied that these were truly policemen standing there in the hallway, did she take off the night chain and open the door.
She was a tall slender woman in her late twenties, her complexion a flawless beige, her sloe eyes dark and luminous in the narrow oval of her face. Standing in the doorway wearing a long pink robe over a pink nightgown, she looked only sleepy and a trifle annoyed. No anticipation in those eyes or on that face, no expectation of bad news, no sense of alarm. In this neighborhood, visits from the police were commonplace. They were always knocking on doors, investigating this or that burglary or mugging, usually in the daytime, but sometimes at night if the crime was more serious.
"Mrs. Chadderton?" Carella asked, and the first faint suspicion flickered on her face. He had called her by name, this was not a routine door-to-door inquiry, they had come here specifically to talk to her, to talk to Mrs. Chadderton; the time was two in the morning, and her husband wasn't yet home.
"What is it?" she said at once.
"Are you Chloe Chadderton?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"Mrs. Chadderton, I'm sorry to tell you this," Carella said, "but your husband…"
"What is it?" she said. "Has he been hurt?"
"He's dead," Carella said.
The woman flinched at his words. She backed away from him, shaking her head as she moved out of the doorway, back into the kitchen, against the refrigerator, shaking her head, staring at him.
"I'm sorry," Carella said. "May we come in?"
"George?" she said. "Is it George Chadderton? Are you sure you have the right…"
"Ma'am, I'm sorry," Carella said.
She screamed then. She screamed and immediately brought her hand to her mouth, and bit down hard on the knuckle of her bent index finger. She turned her back to them. She stood by the refrigerator, the scream trailing into a choking sob that swelled into a torrent of tears. Carella and Meyer stood just outside the open door. Meyer was looking down at his shoes.
"Mrs. Chadderton?" Carella said.
Weeping, she shook her head, and — still with her back to them — gestured with one hand widespread behind her, the fingers patting the air, silently asking them to wait. They waited. She fumbled in the pocket of the robe for a handkerchief, found none, went to the sink where a roll of paper towels hung over the drainboard, tore one loose, and buried her face in it, sobbing. She blew her nose. She began sobbing again, and again buried her face in the toweling. A door down the hall opened. A woman with her hair tied in rags poked her head out.
"What is it?" she shouted. "Chloe?"
"It's all right," Carella said. "We're the police."
"They're the police," Chloe murmured.
"It's all right, go back to sleep," Carella said, and entered the apartment behind Meyer, and closed the door.
It wasn't all right; there was no going back to sleep for Chloe Chadderton. She wanted to know what had happened, and they told her. She listened, numbed. She cried again. She asked for details. They gave her the details. She asked if they had caught who'd done it. They told her they had just begun working on it. All the formula answers. Strangers bearing witness to a stranger's naked grief. Strangers who had to ask questions now at ten past two in the morning because someone had taken another man's life, and these first twenty-four hours were the most important.
"We can come back in the morning," Carella said, hoping she would not ask them to. He wanted the time edge. The killer had all the time in the world. Only the detectives were working against time.
"What difference will it make?" she said, and began weeping softly again. She went to the kitchen table, took a chair from it, and sat. The flap of the robe fell open, revealing long slender legs and the laced edge of the baby-doll nightgown. "Please sit down," she said.
Carella took a chair at the table. Meyer stood near the refrigerator. He had taken off the Professor Higgins hat. His coat was sopping wet from the rain outside.
"Mrs. Chadderton," Carella said gently, "can you tell me when you last saw your husband alive?"
"When he left the apartment tonight."
"When was that? What time?"
"About seven-thirty. Ame stopped by to pick him up."
"Ame?"
"Ambrose Harding. His manager."
"Did your husband receive any phone calls before he left the apartment?"
"No calls."
"Did anyone try to reach him after he left?"
"No one."
"Were you here all night, Mrs. Chadderton?"
"Yes, all night."
"Then you would have heard the phone—"
"Yes."
"And answered it, if it had rung."
"Yes."
"Mrs. Chadderton, have you ever answered the phone in recent weeks only to have the caller hang up on you?"
"No."
"If your husband had received any threatening calls, would he have mentioned them to you?"
"Yes, I'm sure he would have."
"Were there any such calls?"
"No."
"Any hate mail?"
"No."
"Has he had any recent arguments with anyone about money, or—"
"Everybody has arguments," she said.
"Did your husband have a recent argument with someone?"
"What kind of argument?"
"About anything at all, however insignificant it might have seemed at the time."
"Well, everybody has arguments," she said again.
Carella was silent for a moment. Then, very gently, he asked, "Did you and he argue about something, is that it?"
"Sometimes."
"What about, Mrs. Chadderton?"
"My job. He wanted me to quit my job."
"What is your job?"
"I'm a dancer."
"Where do you dance?"
"At the Flamingo. On Landis Avenue." She hesitated. Her eyes met his. "It's a topless club."
"I see," Carella said.
"My husband didn't like the idea of me dancing there. He asked me to quit the job. But it brings in money," she said. "George wasn't earning all that much with his calypso."
"How much would you say he normally—"
"Two, three hundred a week, some weeks. Other weeks, nothing."
"Did he owe anyone money?"
"No. But that's only because of the dancing. That's why I didn't want to quit the job. We wouldn't have been able to make ends meet otherwise."
"But aside from any arguments you had about your job…"