"I'm glad to see you've been taken care of, Miss Fielden," she said pleasantly, noting the ministrations of her fellow officers.
They had brought the young woman coffee, doughnuts and the morning papers; and now they were offering themselves as substitute subjects to interview.
"Ms. Fielden," said the editor a little breathily, "but do call me Iris."
From her past experience Sigrid was quite prepared for a glamorous editor; but most of the interviewers she had met had achieved some balance between the feminine and the businesslike. Ms. Fielden, however, kept her businesslike qualities-whatever they might be-well concealed.
She had curls, long eyelashes, and many rings on her pink-tipped fingers; and she so completely filled a pink ruffled shirt that the distracted Duckett seemed unable to tear himself away from Sigrid's office. That Ms. notwithstanding, Iris Fielden looked about as militant a feminist as the average Las Vegas chorine, and her manner matched her appearance.
And true to Sigrid's foreboding, the lady gushed. Still as Captain McKinnon had pointed out the day before, this was not her first interview. Efficiently she removed Duckett and the rest from her office, closed the door, then faced Fielden's tape recorder calmly. Whenever the questions strayed from the professional to the personal, she couched her answers in vague generalities that would apply to almost any working woman and firmly steered the conversation back to the job itself. In the end the young editor was so inundated with facts, figures and stacks of police-department publicity pamphlets that she numbly asked, "What was the name of the sergeant who works in-Burglary, was it?"
"Missing Persons," Sigrid answered guilelessly. "Sergeant Louella Dickerson. Mrs. Dickerson." Without the slightest twinge of conscience Sigrid offered Dickerson up on a sacrificial platter, even tucking in a candied apple to enhance the dish: "I've heard that her husband's extremely proud of her, but that he worries about her all the time."
It was sufficient. Appreciatively Ms. Iris Fielden jotted down directions and telephone numbers, then departed making her own way across the squad room to the accompaniment of even more appreciative whistles.
Even Detective Tildon, entering the office as she left, looked bemused until he felt Sigrid's sardonic stare. He flushed, his cherubic face embarrassed. Despite twelve years on the force Tillie still believed that a happily married man shouldn't be looking.
"I wonder if Marian would like a blouse like that?" he said, then flushed again.
Sigrid had met Tillie's wife once: a pleasant-faced birdlike redhead whose chest was even flatter than her own. She rather doubted that Marian Tildon would do justice to a pink ruffled blouse and repressively reminded Tillie of the tasks at hand.
Without going into details about Roman Tramegra and the previous evening, Sigrid outlined her new theory of how Riley Quinn's killer had made certain he and not Nauman would get the poisoned cup.
Tillie nodded enthusiastically when she'd finished. "That sure takes care of the how," he said "but why?"
Together they sorted through all the statements they'd been given during the past two days and looked for stronger motives. Everything was too nebulous. It meant another morning of digging.
"Just the same, I wonder why Harley Harris didn't say something," Tillie said.
Sigrid reached for the telephone. "Did we ever ask him?"
It was shortly after 10:00 A.M. when they met again to compare notes at the unmarked cruiser parked behind Van Hoeen Hall.
"Why don't we walk down to the river?" asked Tillie, who responded more directly than Sigrid to spring's quickening transformation. "It's another gorgeous day."
Sigrid looked around and for the first time realized that it was a gorgeous day. Once again spring seemed to have arrived while her back was turned. She stepped from the car and followed Tillie down a long brick path, which led to the promenade overlooking the East River.
Short-sleeved students lay on the grass in sheltered nooks close to the buildings, rushing the sunbathing season as they studied or flirted or just enjoyed being outdoors without heavy winter clothes.
Overhead a few small puffs of white cloud had drifted into the April blue sky; forsythia arched golden branches over a nearby water fountain, and a double row of yellow buttercups marched primly along each side of the path. Most of the benches along the path were occupied, but a breeze blowing in across the water kept the river walk itself almost deserted. The ropes of wisteria twined about the overarching trellis let welcome sunshine through now; later in the summer the walkway would be a dark tunnel shaded by thick leaves and sweet with the heavy scent of purple blossoms. As they paced its sunlit length, there was a medieval feel to the promenade, which reminded Sigrid of the reconstructed Cloisters up at Fort Tryon Park.
She leaned against a brick column, one trousered leg propped upon a low stone bench, listening to Tillie's report with only half an ear while she stared moodily across the blue gray river at the ugly piers lining the Brooklyn shore.
Riley Quinn was to be buried tomorrow afternoon. By all accounts he had been a pompous, arrogant man. An opportunistic thief and so petty as to use his own work of scholarship for revenge; yet scholar enough to save a potentially destructive journal because it chronicled the creation of Janos Karoly's masterwork. That was a saving grace; but even if Quinn had died without a single virtue, the responsibility of discovering his murderer would still be hers.
Think of it as a puzzle in logistics, she reminded herself. Or a simple algebraic equation, a solving for x. Try to forget that x equaled a person who might be a hundred times more ethical, more humane, more likable than Riley Quinn. Judgment-thank God-was definitely not her responsibility-only the clear identification of the unknown x. Hold to that.
Traffic out on the East River was light this morning. Gulls wheeled and swooped above an open garbage scow, and in the middle distance a slow-moving police launch passed an even slower tug. Downriver from them a helicopter lifted from a pad at the water's edge, shattering the relative quiet and bringing Sigrid back to the present.
Friday classes in the Art Departments till weren't back on schedule this morning though she and Tillie hadn't interrupted that pace. They had poked around classrooms and offices casually, their questions vague and seemingly unspecific; but between them they had spoken to everyone except Sandy Keppler and Oscar Nauman. David Wade wasn't expected till after eleven, but Tillie had tracked down the graduate student who shared a desk in the Nursery with Wade and had taken that puzzled young woman into an empty classroom for a long talk. His indirect questioning had elicited answers that confirmed Sigrid's earlier hypothesis.
"Does it feel right to you now?" asked Tillie, hoping that Sigrid's intuition would agree with what common sense accepted so completely. He had learned that unraveling the problem was what held the tall, calm-eyed lieutenant's interest. The more complex the better. Wearing a suspect down, hearing the actual confession, amassing evidence for an airtight prosecution-all the details so reassuring to his methodical soul-left her depressed; so he was relieved to see her nod.
"All we need is confirmation from
Professor Nauman," she said, squaring her shoulders decisively as they turned away from the river and headed back to Van Hoeen Hall.
Although a couple of inches shorter, Tillie matched her easy strides. His heart lightened as they moved toward familiar routine. This was one of the easy ones after all; another open-and-shut case.
Just that one tricky bit remaining, he reminded himself as they retraced their steps and merged with a throng of brightly clad students surging into Van Hoeen's side entrance.