Hands riveted to him, holding him there. The outer door closed muffledly. A little sachet came drifting out of the empty bedroom, seeming to whisper. “Remember? Remember when I was your love? Remember?”
This time he sank down suddenly, buried his face within his two gouging, kneading hands. You could hear his breath. The tempo was all shot to pieces. He said to them in helpless surprise, after his hands had dropped again, “I thought guys didn’t cry — and now I just have.”
The one who had been in the chair before passed him a cigarette, and even lit it for him. His eyes looked bright, Henderson’s, in the shine of the match.
Whether it was that that had interrupted it, or it had died out of its own accord for lack of anything further to feed on, the questioning didn’t resume. When they resumed talking again, it was pointless, inane, almost as though they were talking just to kill time, for the sake of having something to say.
“You’re a very neat dresser, Mr. Henderson.” the one in the chair observed at random.
Henderson gave him a half-disgusted look, didn’t answer.
“It’s great the way everything you’ve got on goes together.”
“That’s an art in itself,” the former magazine reader chimed in.
“Socks, and shirt, and pocket handkerchief—”
“All but the tie,” the one by the window objected.
“Why do you have to discuss anything like that at a time like this?” Henderson protested wearily.
“It should be blue, shouldn’t it? Everything else is blue. It knocks your whole get-up silly. I’m not a fashion plate, but y’know just looking at it does something to me—” And then he went on innocently, “How’d you happen to slip up on an item as important as the tie, when you went to all the trouble of matching everything else up? Haven’t you got a blue tie?”
Henderson protested almost pleadingly. “What’re you trying to do to me? Can’t you see I can’t talk about trifles like—”
He asked the question again, as tonelessly as before. “Haven’t you got a blue tie, Mr. Henderson?”
Henderson ran his hand up through his hair. “Are you trying to drive me out of my mind?” He said it very quietly, as though this small talk was almost unendurable. “Yes, I have a blue tie. Inside, on my tie rack, I think.”
“Then how’d you come to skip it when you were putting on an outfit like this? It cries out for it.” The detective gestured disarmingly. “Unless, of course, you did have it on to begin with, changed your mind at the last minute, whipped it off, and put on the one you’re wearing instead.”
Henderson said, “What’s the difference? Why do you keep this up?” His voice went up a note. “My wife is dead. I’m all cracked up inside. What’s the difference what color tie I did or didn’t put on?”
It went on, as relentlessly as drops of water falling one by one upon the head. “Are you sure you didn’t have it on originally, then change your mind—?”
His voice was smothered. “Yes, I’m sure. It’s hanging from my tie rack in there.”
The detective said guilelessly, “No, it isn’t hanging from your tie rack. That’s why I’m asking. You know those little vertical notches running down your tie rack, like a fish’s backbone? We found the one it belongs on, the one you usually kept it strung through, because that was the only vacant one on the whole gadget. And that was the lowest one of all, in other words all the ties on the upper ones overlapped it as they hung down straight. So you see, it was removed from under all the other ties, which means you must have gone there and selected it originally, not just pulled it off at random from the top. Now what bothers me is why, if you went to all the trouble of lifting up all your other ties and selecting that one from underneath, and withdrawing it from the rack, you then changed your mind and went back to the one you’d already been wearing all day at business, and which didn’t go with your after dark outfit.”
Henderson hit himself smartly at the ridge of the forehead with the heel of one hand. He sprang up. “I can’t stand this!” he muttered. “I can’t stand any more of it. I tell you! Come out with what you’re doing it for, or else stop it! If it’s not on the tie rack, then where is it? I haven’t got it on! Where is it? You tell me, if you know! What’s the difference where it is, anyway?”
“A great deal of difference, Mr. Henderson.”
There was a long wait after that; so long that he started to get pale even before it had come to an end.
“It was knotted tight around your wife’s neck. So tight it killed her. So tight it will have to be cut loose with a knife to get it off.”
3
The Hundred and Forty-Ninth Day Before the Execution
Daybreak
A thousand questions later, the early light of day peering in the windows made the room look different, somehow, although everything in it was the same, including the people. It looked like a room in which an all-night party had taken place. Cigarette ends spilling over in every possible container, and many that weren’t intended as such. The cobalt blue lamp was still there, looking strange in the dawn with its halo of faded electric light. The photographs were still there: hers a He now, a picture of someone that no longer existed.
They all looked and acted like men suffering from a hangover. They had their coats and vests off, and their shirt collars open. One of them was in the bathroom, freshening up at the cold water tap. You could hear him snorting through the open door. The other two kept smoking and moving restlessly around. Only Henderson was sitting quiet. He was still sitting on the same sofa he’d been on all night. He felt as though he’d spent all his life on it, had never known what it was to be anywhere but in this one room.
The one in the bathroom, his name was Burgess, came to the door. He was pressing drops of excess water out of his hair, as though he’d ducked his whole head in the wash basin. “Where’re all your towels?” he asked Henderson, with odd sounding commonplaceness.
“I was never able to find one on the rack myself,” the latter admitted ruefully. “She— I’d always be given one when I asked for it, but I don’t know to this day just where they’re kept.”
The detective looked around helplessly, dripping all over the doorsill. “D’you mind if I use the edge of the shower curtain?” he asked.
“I don’t mind,” Henderson said with a sort of touching wistfulness.
It began again. It always began again just when it seemed to have finally stopped for good.
“It wasn’t just about two theater tickets. Why do you keep trying to make us believe it was that?”
He looked up at the wrong one first. He was still used to the parliamentary system of being looked at when spoken to. It had come from the one who wasn’t looking at him.
“Because it was that. What should I say it was about, if that’s all it was about? Didn’t you ever hear of two people having words about a pair of theater tickets? It can happen, you know.”
The other one said, “Come on, Henderson, quit stalling. Who is she?”
“Who is who?”
“Oh, don’t start that again,” his questioner said disgustedly. “That takes us back an hour and a half or two hours, to where we were about four this morning. Who is she?”
Henderson dug wearied fingers through his hair, let his head droop over in futility.
Burgess came out of the bathroom, tucking his shirt in. He took his wristwatch out of his pocket, strapped it on. He scanned it idly, then he drifted aimlessly out into the foyer. He must have picked up the house phone. His voice came back. “All right now, Tierney.” Nobody paid any attention, least of all Henderson. He was half asleep there with his eyes open, staring down at the carpet.