I mouthed it so that I practically made no sound.
She said, «Why?» talking normally.
I said, still quite low, «It’s important.»
«About—»
She didn’t finish the phrase, not because I interrupted her, or because anyone or anything did. She just didn’t want to finish it and that gap in sound was as clear an ending to the phrase as a word would have been.
«Yes.»
«Can’t it wait?» She was looking angry.
«Please,» I said.
She looked rapidly from face to face as though hoping for some sort of rescue, but her momentary withdrawal from the general conversation meant, merely, that it flowed past and over her and it was as though she were not there at all.
So she said crossly, «Well?»
«Not here. Please. Come with me.»
I’ve felt reluctant arms in my time. I’ve led girls in directions they were not sure they wanted to go. Generally, I expected to be able to change their minds and make them glad they had come along. This time it was different.
Henrietta’s arm felt stiff and unyielding and I didn’t have the self-assurance of delights to come to lend me plausibility.
I said, «Let’s go outside. We can’t talk here. Just outside. Five steps outside,» I said urgently. «No more.»
She came with me.
It was the darker half of twilight outside, with the sky slate gray, and the air motionless and mild. The traffic was gaudy in its headlights and taillights. The street was wide, not too full of people, and there was a hip-high wall of concrete about the building in which the restaurant was.
Through a break in the wall there was a wide, shallow stairway that led down to a sunken patio.
It had been my notion to go down to the patio, but it carried an overflow of people from the party at the small tables there, so I motioned her, instead, to sit down on the wall. I placed my hands on it and lifted myself up to sit on it with my feet dangling.
She said, «That was a terrible thing. Talk about the wrong kind of publicity! It will be in all the papers.»
«I don’t know about that, Henrietta. The hotel will do its best to keep it quiet, and what is there to a guy falling in the tub? He’s not exactly a household word. He might become one after this, but he isn’t yet.»
I was trying to soothe her, loosen her up. I swung my feet and grew chattier. «You know,» I said, «when the movie actor James Dean died in a road accident about twenty years ago, he got exactly two inches in the newspapers. I noticed it at the time because I had seen him on a TV show and had admired him. Then his final movies came out, and he became a soaring teen-age idol. If, two years after his death, he could have come back to life and died again, there’d have been no type large enough for any newspaper in the United States to announce the fact. It might be that way with Giles two years from now, but right now it’s two inches—maybe one inch.»
«I’m the one who had to make the announcement.»
«It’s your job.»
«It doesn’t mean I have to like it.»
«All right, don’t like it. What you’re doing is disliking me, just because I brought the news to you. I don’t like it, either. How’d you have liked to have been there and—»
«Shut up!» Rather to my surprise, she seemed on the point of tears.
I did shut up, and waited till I saw whether she was going to tip toward tears or dry eyes.
It was the latter and she said, «What are we doing out here?»
I said, «Look, he was a friend of mine. You were there last night and he didn’t want to go with you, remember? I made him go, and because I did, he couldn’t pick up a package he wanted to pick up and he asked me to do so and—uh—I didn’t get a chance to do it. It’s important to me, now, to make sure that my failure with that package didn’t lead to his death. This could mean a lot to me. Just remember that I’m stuck with my misery now because I did you a favor last night. I’m trying to find out as much about this whole thing as I can, now, and you can return the favor and help me.»
She wasn’t buying it, though I was using my most sincere and insinuating tone of voice. She said, «How could the package mean anything one way or the other?»
I shrugged. «They were pens. He always used monogrammed pens and he had left his supply home. I didn’t get them to him, so he autographed books with the one pen he had and it ran out of ink and that upset him. If he hadn’t been upset he might have gone to the book-and-author lunch afterward. Since he was upset, he went up to his room in a huff and decided to take a shower and cool off and, I suppose, fell. So that makes it all my fault in a way.»
«If that’s the way it was, what can I do about it?»
«You can help me show myself that I’m wrong; that there may have been some other reason he went up to his room, some other reason he was upset, some other reason he slipped. I don’t want to have to think I helped kill my friend, if I can avoid it. And you can help me.»
«But how?»
«I just want to know everything that happened after the last time I saw him alive last night, and you walked off with him.»
When she hesitated, I said, «I’m not a policeman, Henrietta. I can’t make you tell me. I’m just asking you to tell me out of common humanity.»
«But there’s nothing to tell. We went to a TV station and we taped a show.»
«How did you go? Where? Who did the taping?»
«We went by taxi. We picked one up just outside the hotel and it took us to the studio. It was a morning talk show with what’s-her-name.» She waved one hand in the air. «Sandra someone.» (I knew whom she meant.) «We taped it and that’s all.»
«Did you have to wait long before you started?»
«Five or ten minutes. You know how it is. They always make you wait just so that you know who’s boss.»
«How did Giles take that?»
«He just sat there, looking straight ahead, puffing out his mustache. I was a little nervous because I had insisted he come, and once or twice he looked at his watch and then at me, but he didn’t say a word.»
«And how did he behave during the taping?»
«Like a doll, actually. He was very good. They’re going to run it in about three weeks to fit in with publication day. If they have any brains, they’ll push it ahead now. I wouldn’t be surprised,» she added bitterly, «if they run it tomorrow morning while the convention is still on.»
«Not a chance,» I said soothingly. «They have commitments, too. What did they talk about?»
«About what you’d expect. She wanted to know about his book and what it was about and whether there would be a movie sale. Then she got onto his writing habits. Since he had said the book dealt partly with the Watergate crisis, she asked whether he didn’t think there were fantasy aspects to that. He said ‘surrealism’ was the word he would use and explained what he meant. He was very good. It was a good show.»
«I’ll have to watch,» I said. «Did she ask about his publishers? Anything at all?»
«No, she didn’t.» Henrietta sounded surprised. «Should she have?»
«I don’t know,» I said ingenuously. «I’m just asking because Prism Press are my publishers, too, and I was wondering if they got any of the publicity.»
«Oh, sure. When they mentioned the name of the book at the beginning and end of the program, they mentioned the publisher, too.»
«At no other time? Nothing else?»
«Nothing that I can remember.»
«And what happened after the taping was over?»
«Nothing. We went back.»
It was quite dark by then and I couldn’t see her face clearly in the streetlights. Her voice, however, had gone dead.
I said, «After you took him to his room, I mean.»