She said, «Why should he have lied?»
«I don’t know. Do you think he was telling the truth?»
«How can I possibly know?»
«What was your impression?»
«I assumed he was telling the truth. As I look back on it, I’m reasonably sure he was. He was too upset and too out-of-control to lie. Unless you’re pathogenic about it, it takes considerable effort to make up a lie. Was he a pathogenic liar?»
I thought about it. «No. I can’t say I recall him lying to me, not even under provocation.»
«You knew him well, then?»
«I lived with him for a considerable time,» I said dryly, «in the nonsexual sense of the term.»
«Then I would say he was telling the truth.»
«Let’s assume he was. Then, after the woman left, he went to sleep, and can we further assume that he had awakened not long before your arrival?»
«Some time before. There was a cup of coffee on the telephone table that was half full and had probably been made with the electric coffee maker.»
«You mean that he hadn’t called room service for breakfast?»
«No, I don’t think he did. It’s easy enough to check that out with room service, however.»
«Well, if we have to, we will. But if he slept all night, then that would mean he hadn’t left the room, and possibly the hotel, in search of a woman who would be sympathetic. And if he hadn’t done that, then we lose a large possible source of motivations for the murder.»
«You’re still convinced it was murder?»
«Yes. And if the night is closed off, that leaves us with the missing package as the only unusual thing that could explain the whole tragedy. I dislike that.»
«Because it isn’t motive enough?»
«I don’t see how it can be, but mainly I dislike it because I was supposed to bring it to his room night before last and I didn’t. That was the errand I told you I had forgotten yesterday afternoon… Unless, of course, there’s something we still don’t know about. In all the time you were with him, Sarah, did he say anything, do anything, give you any impression at all, that something was bothering him other than the package?»
«The woman of the night before, whoever she was, was bothering him,» she said firmly, «but except for that, it was the package all the way.»
«All right, go on, then.»
She said, «Once he woke up, he said, he remembered the package and started looking for it. He was in a state of fury, I suppose, that made him pretty irrational, for he tore the bed apart, had all the towels on the floor, the blankets out of the closet, and so on. He might have had some dim thought that you had hidden the package in order to annoy him.»
I shook my head. «It would never have occurred to me.»
«Then he called the desk. I gather he was trying to ask if the cloakroom attendant still had the package or, if not, to whom she had given it.»
I said, «Listen, when he came back the night before, he could have gotten the package, couldn’t he? How late are the cloakrooms open?»
«Till midnight.»
«And if he didn’t have a ticket?»
«That could have been complicated. Still, if he had been able to identify the package, it could have been opened in the presence of the assistant manager.»
«Did he tell you what was in the package?»
«No. Do you know?»
«Yes, I do. Pens. Monogrammed pens. Total worth, maybe ten dollars. And if he had had it opened, his name on those pens would have proved his ownership. That idiot! Dead or not, I’ve got to call him an idiot. If he had just held on to his damned ticket, he could have gotten his package when he came back.»
«There are many people like that,» said Sarah. «They take precautions. They worry about taking chances. I suppose he thought that if he didn’t ask you to get the package for him, he would worry all evening long that the cloakroom might be closed when he returned—»
«And that would have affected his television taping. Yes, I suppose so. Please go on.»
«It was about nine-thirty by then and he said he had an autographing session at ten. So I said, ‘Well, let’s clean up your room and go. I’ll see to it that you get your package if it’s still in the cloakroom.’ I was trying to calm him down, you understand, because it seemed to me he was dangerously close to going out of control… Are you sure, Darius, that the package contained only pens?»
«Not sure,» I said cautiously, «in the sense that I ever saw the contents, but Mrs. Devore said they were pens in there, and I’m sure it’s so. You have to understand that Giles is compulsive. When things don’t follow the scenario he has prepared, he goes wild. Besides, he was trying to change publishers and, between being afraid of losing a big chance and being afraid he was being unethical, he was probably very much uptight and on edge. And besides—»
I wanted to go on and say that since he had failed to work off his little-boy syndrome with Henrietta the night before, he was still a little boy—Sarah had described him exactly that way, as a matter of fact. Certainly, he acted like a little boy over the pens going dry. But I kept it to myself. I wasn’t going to give her anything that would guide her in what she had left to tell.
I said, «So you cleaned up the room?»
«Yes. I didn’t vacuum it, you understand, but I put back the blankets and towels, and made the beds. He didn’t help much.»
«His clothes were neatly hung up or put away?»
«Oh yes. They were that way to begin with.»
«You didn’t leave any clothes hanging around on the chairs or bed?»
«No,» she said firmly. «By the time I was done, it was about ten minutes to ten and I felt it was my responsibility to get him down to the autographing. It wasn’t too hard to lead him, though I kept thinking that I had a robot by the elbow, one who would go wherever pressure impelled him but would stop if he were released and just stand in one spot indefinitely.
«Once we were in the elevator, however, he did insist on going to the cloakroom. I was in no position to make a scene since the elevator, I assure you, was not empty. So we stopped off at the second floor. I knew it would be difficult to negotiate anything quickly with Hilda—she’s a rather hard-bitten attendant and we only had a few minutes. When she balked at handing over something without a ticket, I urged Devore on, telling him I would get the package for him in a few minutes, as soon as he was safely delivered to the autographing session.»
«But you didn’t get the package, did you?»
«No,» she said, with a shake of her head. «I was just keeping him quiet. Besides I didn’t think there was any point in getting it till he was through with the autographing. It never occurred to me that he needed it for the autographing; and he never told me what it was. Even if I had known it was pens, though, it would have seemed to me that the world is full of pens and you could borrow one from anyone about you.»
«Not a monogrammed Devore pen out of which to manufacture a monogrammed Devore book.»
«Well, I didn’t know that, you see.»
«All right, go on.»
«We got into the autographing room and he pulled away from me at once as though he were coming to life again. I let him go, figuring he could find his way to the stage himself, and he did. I saw him in his seat after a while.»
«And no one saw you come in with him?»
«People saw him and people saw me, but I don’t know if anyone saw us both together. The place was crowded as we walked in because another autographing session was just finishing up, and Devore pulled away from me at the threshold.»
«You must have stayed there, though. You knew about the fuss Giles had made. Or did someone tell you?»
«No. I remained. I noticed Asimov standing there and I felt impelled to go to him and apologize for my attitude the night before. I had come on a little strong but, you know, I was having trouble with the art people and the pressures on me were a little intense. He was nice about it, and I asked him who you were and he told me and that rather flabbergasted me.»