“As for me,” she said at last, “I am not so concerned with your having found her dead as I am with what you would have done if you hadn’t.”
“There’s no use speculating about that, so far as I can see. She was dead, and nothing was done.”
“On the contrary, there’s a great deal of use in speculating about it. One could very easily reach some mighty interesting conclusions, although the range of possibilities of what could be done in a dark park is so broad that it almost staggers the imagination.”
“Damn it, there was nothing of any consequence intended. You know how this town is, and what would have been said about us if we had been seen together. We merely wanted to avoid gossip, that’s all, and Dreamer’s Park was just a place that occurred to her and seemed reasonable to me because it’s a place we had been before, a long time ago, and a place where couples still go now and then.”
“I know that couples go there, and I know what for. Your explanation, however, is just ridiculous enough to seem characteristic, and I’ll consider accepting it. But now, I suppose, I had better consider the rest of the matter. You’ve made a mess of things by drinking gin and sneaking off in the night to meet someone who turned up dead, and it’s plain that I must consider what’s to be done about it. Isn’t it expected of a person who finds a body to report it to the police or someone?”
“Yes, it is. It’s expected.”
“Then why, may I ask, didn’t you do what was expected?”
“Because she was dead from having been killed. Because I wanted to avoid the suspicion of having killed her. It would probably be difficult to explain to a cop how I just happened to be in that damn park at such an hour.”
“That’s true. It’s even difficult to explain it to me. Wouldn’t it have shown you were innocent if you reported the body?”
“Not necessarily. They’d be sure to think it might be a trick.”
“I doubt that you’d be seriously considered a suspect, sugar. A man who is too cowardly to take a dose of Kaopectate would hardly commit a murder. How was she killed, by the way?”
“I don’t know. I only saw her for a few seconds by the light of a match, and I didn’t see any wound or anything.”
“Then how the hell do you know she was killed at all?”
“It seems probable.”
“I agree that it does. Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night is hardly a place where one would go deliberately to die naturally. Do you know what I think?”
“No. What?”
“I think that there is nothing to be done except let things work out as they will. If bad comes to worse, you are at least a lawyer and can defend yourself competently.”
“Thanks. That’s very reassuring.”
“How are you feeling now?”
“Cheerful and confident. I always feel cheerful and confident after finding a body under incriminating circumstances.”
“I mean your stomach, sugar.”
“Oh, my stomach’s all right. It’s fine.”
“You see? Kaopectate works wonders.”
She went over and turned off the little light on her dressing table and came back and lay down beside me in the darkness. I could hear her breathing evenly, and smell the sweet scent of her, and after a while feel the soft warmth of her, and we lay there for a while quietly before she spoke again.
“Sugar,” she said, “is it possible that you killed her after all?”
“No.”
“One could conceivably believe it.”
“A few minutes ago you said that one couldn’t.”
“I know, but I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided that it’s possible. After all, I am as unlikely a murderer as you are, and if she were here alive at this very moment, I’m quite sure I would kill her with pleasure.”
I woke early after going to sleep late. Sid was still asleep on her side, curled like a cold child in a sprinkling of white rosebuds. Outside, in the bright light of morning, a cardinal was screeching his pointed red head off, telling everyone to cheer up, cheer up, and I thought to myself, like hell I will.
I went into the bathroom and bathed and shaved and brushed, and then I dressed and decided that I might find myself a little more tolerable if I were full of hot coffee, and so I went downstairs to the kitchen and put on the pot. I drank the coffee black, two cups, after which I went out into the hall to the foot of the stairs and stood listening for sounds of life above, but there weren’t any. There didn’t seem to be anything left to do but go, and so I went, walking, and it was still pretty early when I reached my office.
An hour and a half had passed when Millie came, half an hour late, and it took her ten minutes more to get from her desk to mine. She looked fairly fresh and alert, and smug enough to justify the assumption that something pleasant had recently happened to her.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” she said. “You’ve got bags under your eyes.”
“So have you.”
“I was up all hours. Were you?”
“Never mind. How was the engineer?”
“Determined. Original, too. He was interesting and challenging, but not entirely successful.”
“Next time, give in. You’ll get to bed earlier and to work on time.”
“Well, aren’t we sour this morning! What happened to you last night?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Well, then, that explains everything. That’s the worst kind of night of all.”
In my opinion, she was wrong, but I didn’t feel like continuing the discussion. Having had the last word, she went back to her desk in the outer office, and a few minutes later I could hear the busy sound of her typewriter.
The morning got going much as other mornings had been getting going for something like seven years, and at ten fifteen Millie took a coffee break in the Hotel Carson coffee shop. She returned at ten forty, ten minutes late, and came on directly into my office. I could see at once by her glittering eyes that she had been stimulated during her absence by more than caffeine.
“The most shocking thing has happened,” she said. “I heard all about it in the coffee shop.”
“Shocking things are happening all the time everywhere,” I said.
She hooked half of her bottom on the edge of my desk and inspected the fingernails of her right hand. “You remember Beth Webb Thatcher? I think you used to know her.”
“You know damn well I used to know her. I used to go with her fairly regularly. In fact, exclusively. I thought for a while that I was going to marry her, but I didn’t, and I’m glad. This is all ancient history.”
“Well, now she’s dead. This is modern history. In fact, it’s current events. This morning a couple of kids went into Dreamer’s Park to play in the old bandstand, and there she was. Beth. Dead. Someone had slipped a long, thin blade into her from behind, and she had died of it. Just imagine. All this was happening to her while an engineer was happening to me and nothing at all was happening to you.”
I thought I was prepared for it, but it made me sick. I guess I showed it, pallor or something, for Millie unhooked her bottom from the desk and came around and hooked it on the arm of my chair and put an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Gid,” she said. “I’m just a witch, that’s what I am.”
“Think nothing of it,” I said. “It’s no more than the natural shock of learning that someone you once knew intimately has died suddenly from having a long, thin blade slipped into her from behind.”
“You’re a good boss and an understanding fellow,” she said, “and I love you.”