Her voice gained a sudden edge. «Why do you say I took him to his room?»
«You were going to, weren’t you? The last thing you said when you left with him was that you would see him safely back to his room.»
«Oh, I see what you mean,» she said, with a sudden air of indifference as though it all meant very little. «I went up the elevator with him to his floor.»
It would have been utterly unconvincing in any case, but now that I had talked to Eunice, I knew exactly where we stood and she didn’t have a chance with me. «Of course,» I said, «he asked you into his room.»
«No-o-o,» she said feebly.
«Henrietta,» I said, «be reasonable. He asks every woman into his room.» (I didn’t know that for a fact, but I felt absolutely safe.) «And you must have gone in, or you wouldn’t be in this state.»
She didn’t answer and she turned her head away. I’m sure she had started to cry.
I said, «I promise you, I won’t repeat anything you say. You don’t have to go into any details. Just let me know, roughly, what went on.»
She looked about to see if there was anyone near us.
There wasn’t. There’s a kind of freemasonry of humanity that keeps anyone not completely outside the pale from coming too near any man and woman engaged in what seems an intimate conversation. She said, «There’s nothing I have to be ashamed of, but it’s all so unpleasant.»
I said, «Henrietta, I know Giles better than you think. I have an idea of what he is capable of. He didn’t—hurt you? (Even though I was doing my best to use words that would keep her calm, it hurt me to use that Victorian pause followed by that Victorian euphemism.)»
«Oh, he didn’t,» she said, grateful for the euphemism, I’m sure. «He just asked me to come in and tuck him in, because I said—joking, you know—after the taping was over that now I would take him right back to the hotel as I had promised and tuck him in.
«I laughed, because I thought he was joking, too, and said that I hoped he would have a good night’s sleep. But he took my wrist in his hand and said, ‘Oh, come on in for a while.’ Well, I didn’t like to make a scene and I couldn’t believe he had anything really—you know—» She paused in confusion.
I said, «You didn’t expect him to try to use force on you, you mean?»
«Well, I thought he might try to persuade me to come to bed with him,»—she was suddenly more businesslike, as though she felt it to be beneath her dignity to be caught being too coy—«but I had no doubt he wouldn’t succeed. He didn’t appeal to me at all and I have a lover who’s quite satisfactory. So I let myself be pulled in and the door closed behind me and then I said as coldly as I could, ‘Really, I have work to do, Mr. Devore,’ and his voice changed.»
«His voice changed?»
«It became high-pitched and squeaky—Do I have to go on?»
«I wish you would. Please. Just roughly. You don’t have to give me every word.»
«He wanted me to undress him. He called me Mommy.»
«What did you do? Undress him?»
«I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to start screaming; I didn’t want to create a stupid scandal. I thought I’d humor him a little and perhaps calm him down. I mean, I’m not a virgin and I’m not afraid of men. I took off his jacket, his tie, his shirt, and I helped him off with his shoes and socks. But that was as far as I could go, really. And he said—he said, he wanted me to bathe him. I mean, he said, ‘Bathe me, Mommy,’ and that was just too much. I just dashed for the door and out.»
«He didn’t try to stop you?»
«No. He just cried. After I closed the door, I could hear him crying inside, like a little boy. So I went down to the bar and I had a couple of drinks and, thank God, I didn’t meet anyone I knew. Then I went to my room and took a sleeping pill.»
I waited a while to let her recover, then I said, «When you took off his clothes—those items of clothing you did take off, that is—what did you do with them?»
«Oh, that! That was another weird thing. He directed me. He made me put the shoes in the closet with the points inward. He made me hang up his jacket with the buttons facing left, and I had to fold his shirt in some very careful way.»
«How did he make you?»
«Well, he told me, in his baby voice, in a whiny sort of way. So I did it—I told you I was trying to keep him under control. He wanted me to blow in his socks before folding them. That I wouldn’t do and he got petulant and said he wanted to be bathed and I ran.»
That was it, then. I had what I wanted. As late as last night, he still insisted on having his clothes folded.
Henrietta said, breaking in on my thoughts, «So you have what you wanted.»
«What?» I looked up quickly. Was another one reading my mind?
«It was over me that he was upset, not over the missing pens.»
«Are you guessing that or did he tell you that this morning?»
She got down from her seat on the wall. «Oh no, I didn’t see him this morning. After I left him last night, I never saw him again. I had no intention of seeing him. When I got up this morning, I had breakfast in my room, and I called down at five after nine and told them I wouldn’t be in till after ten. He would be autographing then and there would be no chance of running into him.»
«Then you weren’t at the autographing session?»
«Certainly not!»
«Didn’t someone go for him in the morning?»
«I wouldn’t know, but it wasn’t I. I was through squiring him around.»
Yet I had the distinct impression there had been a woman with him in the morning before ten. Someone had told me so.
There was even a name given me… No use, I drew a blank.
I said, «Look, Henrietta, don’t start thinking it was over you that all this happened. It could have been something else altogether. Did Giles say anything at all to you last night that indicated he was disturbed about anything?»
«Not a thing.»
«Well, think about it for a while. Did anything happen out of the ordinary? Were you stopped by anyone at any time? Did someone speak to Giles? Did Giles say something puzzling? Did he look funny at any time I mean, not with respect to his sex games. Is there anything, as you think back on last night, that puzzled you at the time?»
She said, «Not a thing! Nothing!»
Well, I had to accept it. I couldn’t beat her into remembering. And at that point, even if there was something to remember, I suspected that she wouldn’t—just to be done with it all. In fact, I didn’t think I could keep Henrietta there much longer. She showed distinct signs of getting ready to leave. I said hastily, «When did you leave him last night?»
«I didn’t look at my watch. It felt something like elevenish, but I don’t know. Look, I don’t want to talk about it any more and—you know—it’s confidential.»
«Absolutely. And thank you.»
She turned and hurried down the steps, and I turned in another direction and walked down the street toward the hotel.
19 SHIRLEY JENNIFER 9:10 P.M.
What was I to do next? I knew what Giles had done up to possibly 11 p.m. the night before. At 10 A.M. he was autographing. Nobody had said he was late and it would have been remarked on if he were. What had happened in those eleven hours of night and morning that might account for what happened toward noon?
There was a woman with him toward the end of the period. Of that I was certain even if I couldn’t remember what it was that made me certain. The question was: Who was she and had she been with him all night?
I tried to put myself in Giles’s place. As long as he was with Henrietta and he was engaged in his game, it would surely never have occurred to him to look at the bureau and note that the package and key were not there. Once she left, did he find another woman with whom to continue the game and was it not till morning that he noticed the lack? Or did he go to sleep in frustration after Henrietta left, too much the little boy of his sexual fantasies to notice? Or was it that he did notice but thought the cloakroom was closed after eleven and was he too frustrated and too little-boy to do anything about it?