«So it can’t be a woman,» I said. «Any woman who knew him would play the game properly; any woman who didn’t know him would play it properly or it wouldn’t get played. In either case, the clothes would be folded. If they were folded and Giles died in any fashion, why should anyone take the time to strew them around? Don’t you see, it works down to this; that he had to die with his clothes on and that someone didn’t know Giles’s peculiarities, so he had to take the clothes off him while he was dead, toss them about, and take him into the bathroom. And why on earth do that but to convert murder into apparent accident.»
«Except,» said Eunice, «that it’s been six months since the last time I played the game and for all I know there has been a change.»
«Do you believe that?»
«No, I don’t. Not for a moment. But a lawyer would point that out.»
«The hell with lawyers,» I said desperately. «What do you think? Murder or not.»
«I don’t think anything, Just. Let it be to hell with lawyers but I’m one and what strikes me as important is what the jury thinks. The jury would decide on accident after listening to the evidence.»
«Doesn’t it bother you that juries can be wrong? Doesn’t it bother you that it might be murder whatever they say?»
«Why? Suppose I say: It’s murder. Does that bring Giles back to life?»
«Do you want the murderer to get away with it?»
«What murderer? That’s another thing. If you decide Giles was murdered, you would have to think about the matter of who murdered him. Who had a motive? And who was strong enough to get his dead body into the bathroom? He weighed two hundred and twenty pounds.»
I stared at her thoughtfully and she stared back and her lip curled. «You’re wondering if it could have been Eunice Devore. The first suspect in the death of a husband is the wife, right?»
I felt uneasy and shrugged. «I don’t say that,» I said.
«Say it, and let’s go over the evidence. First, do I have a motive? Sexual frustration, unhappy marriage, he’s been talking about a divorce. I’m sure he meant to consult a lawyer right after his new book was published and was clearly a best seller. If I kill him and make it look like an accident, I spare myself humiliation, get a kind of revenge, probably inherit the bulk of his estate, which might not be a bad one at that, if this new book makes a good movie sale, as it might. Going against that is the fact that I am not a very sexually driven woman, that I have no objection to a divorce, and that I make a good living on my own.
«Second, the means. Could I have killed him? Why not? I’m as strong as a man and he’s a flabby person. I could have made use of something that would serve as a bludgeon, break his neck and take the weapon away with me. Or I could have used a karate blow.»
«Karate?» I asked with sudden interest.
«Yes, I’ve taken lessons in karate. I work late at night in the city sometimes and a woman needs to know the art of self-defense, I’m told, though the fact is that I’ve never been attacked. The idea of karate came to me once when Giles told me that you were an expert in it. I’m not. I don’t know if I could crack Giles’s spine just under the skull with one quick sidewise strike of my hand. I imagine you could, however.»
I said, «And how would I carry him into the bathroom?»
«You don’t have to carry him, sonny. You drag him.» She looked at my shoulders appraisingly. «I think you could do it.»
I said, «Dragging would have left traces, I suspect. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, what’s my motive?»
She said, «Who cares? That’s nonsense about motives. Anyone could have a motive and anything suits for a motive. He could have called you a little squirt or he could have said you were a lousy writer or he could have insulted your sainted mother. What’s the difference? It was something that made you lose your temper.
«But let’s go on to the third, opportunity. I was in the city all day; I have no alibi, I could have been here. So I’ve got motive, means, and opportunity—and the only catch is that I didn’t do it. Did you?»
«No, I didn’t,» I said, dismissing the matter as though it were nonsense, which it was. «But tell me, how was it you were in town? How long have you been here?»
She raised her eyebrows. «Since about four p.m. yesterday. Do you want an explanation?»
«I can’t make you give one. Do you want to offer one?»
«Nothing is easier than the truth. He called me. He had left a package at home—»
«A package?»
I have a feeling my eyes bugged at that one, for Eunice looked at me with amusement and said, «Yes, a package. Have I given myself away with that? Am I guilty?»
«No. Go on.»
«He called me up, told me where the package was, asked me if I could bring it in. I said I would try. The point was, it would serve as a possible excuse to visit my brother, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year for all we live only forty miles apart. I called him up and he was home, not out for the weekend, and he said, ‘Come over.’
«I did. I brought the package with me. I called Giles’s room, and he wasn’t in. I didn’t expect him to be—unless he were with a woman, in which case I don’t think he’d answer. So I checked the package and left the ticket at the desk for him. They put it in an envelope, and put a message buzzer on the gizmo in his room; at least that’s what they told me they would do. Off I went to my brother’s—he lives about ten miles from here—and I spent the night there.»
I shook my head. «I wish they had sent the package up to his room and had the maid take it in.»
«Why? He got it, didn’t he? I saw it lying on the bureau when I came in, just before they put it into a canvas bag with his other loose belongings. In a few hours I’ll get it back. So much for bringing it in yesterday.»
«That’s the errand I had to run, Eunice,» I said, in self-disgust. «He got the ticket last night and never had time to go to the checkroom. He gave me the ticket and the key and asked me to get it for him. I did, but not till lunch today and he was dead by then.»
«Oh, well. Big deal.»
I said, «When I first said I had forgotten to run an errand for him you asked if there was any connection with his death. Now you dismiss it as unimportant. Why? Do you happen to know what there was in the package?»
«Of course I know. He gets them all the time. Pens. His own special triangular blue pens with his name monogrammed on them. I’m the one who first got them for him. I couldn’t stand his fiddling with the ordinary ballpoints.»
«I know,» I said, «and dropping the springs.»
«You were married to him, too, then,» she said, with some sarcasm.
«In a way,» I said.
«Well, they’re his babies now, comfortable to his finger, comfortable to his ego, cheap, disposable. As far as I know, they have only two disadvantages. They don’t last long, but run dry quickly. The other disadvantage is that he puts them back in his pocket when they’re dry and its up to me to check the pens in his inner jacket pocket and throw them out if they’re dry.»
I nodded. I could guess now the nature of the fuss at the autographing table. Giles had tried to autograph books with a nearly dry pen (the one on the bureau in his room, no doubt, the one with which I had drawn the question mark, using the last dregs of ink that had settled down to the point after it had run dry on him). He didn’t have the fresh supply of his pens since I had not brought them to him and he had had to use some non-monogrammed pen that didn’t set well in his fingers.
That would have a lot to do with his annoyance with me; everything to do, in fact—and even recognizing his neurosis with respect to pens, I could scarcely blame him. But how would a dry pen contribute to his murder? It might make him murder me out of petulance, but it wasn’t something to induce the murder of him.