I massaged a slightly bruised ego and followed her up one flight and into a tiny living room furnished in some kind of modern — maybe Danish. We sat, me in a stainless-steel-and-leather chair that didn’t look comfortable and wasn’t, and she on a sofa built for people whose bodies bent only at right angles.
“I appreciate your seeing me,” I told her. “The last few days must have been hard on you.”
“They have,” Patricia Royce said softly, looking at the worn toes of her running shoes. “Do you and your Mr. Wolfe represent some insurance company?”
“No. Our client is an individual, someone who feels Mr. Childress may have been murdered.”
“Really? Why in the world would one think that?” Her face lacked both makeup and animation, although its parts were nicely arranged. There were pale freckles sprinkled across an upturned nose. I’ve always been a sucker for freckles.
“I’m not entirely sure. I understand you found his body.”
She leaned forward and kneaded slender, pale hands between her legs, then looked idly around the room, but never at me. “Am I keeping you from something?” I asked after fifteen seconds, trying to mask the irritation I felt.
“Hmm? Oh — no, no,” she said, acting as though she’d just been awakened. “Yes, I found... Charles. As I told the man from Homicide, and also the one newspaper reporter who called, I had gone to Charles’s apartment — it’s only a few blocks from here — to use his word processor, his PC, you know. I did that fairly often if he was going to be out. I have one of my own, but it hasn’t been working.”
She shook her head several times and looked at the wall above my head. I thought I was losing her again, but she tuned back in. “Last... Tuesday, it was, I had called Charles that morning to find out if I might be able to use his PC; mine has been acting up a lot lately, as I said. He was always very generous about it, and he said he’d be away all afternoon, and all evening, too, until late. I went to his apartment about three, and, well... I, I found him.”
“Where?”
“Is this really necessary?” she pleaded in a broken voice. “Are you aware that I gave the police a long statement?”
“Ms. Royce, I realize this isn’t pleasant, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
She glanced around the room before nodding. “Um, all right. Would you like some coffee?”
I told her no thanks, and she leaned back and ran her fingers through her sandy hair. “Well, where was I? Oh yes, as I said, I got to Charles’s apartment about three and let myself in — he’d given me a key years ago. I went back to — you’re not taking any notes.”
I smiled. “I’ve got a good memory.”
She made a half-hearted attempt to return the smile, finally looking straight at me. “You are fortunate, do you know that? I used to work as a newspaper reporter, in Hartford, for a short time just after I got out of school, and I felt I had to take down every single word when I was interviewing someone. Finally I got the good sense to buy a tape recorder. Anyway, as I was saying, I went back to the rear bedroom, which Charles used as his office, and... he was on the floor beside his desk, with a pistol next to him. There wasn’t much blood, just a little on the side of his... on the side of his head.” She passed a hand over the dark blue eyes that seemed even darker against her pale complexion. “Well... that’s it, that’s all. All there is. He was dead. I called the police, and they got there fast, just a few minutes later.”
“Did you recognize the pistol?”
“Yes, it was Charles’s — at least it looked like the one he had bought back in January or February. He showed me where he kept it — in the nightstand next to his bed. He said he wanted me to know where it was in case anybody tried to break in while I was working there alone.”
“I understand there had been some break-ins on the block, and even in his building.”
She nodded, studying her hands. “Yes, and that’s why he said he got the gun. But you know, I’ve been thinking more about that, and I really wonder if maybe he really was planning to kill himself all along, and that’s the real reason...”
“So you’re convinced it was suicide?”
Patricia Royce folded her arms and twitched her shoulders. Another ten minutes with her and I’d start twitching myself. “Of course I am. Who would want to kill Charles?” she cried defiantly.
“Why would he want to kill himself?”
“Like I said, I’ve thought a lot about that. I probably knew Charles as well as just about anyone, and he was very moody. And I do mean very moody. His lows were really low, even when things were going well for him. He tended toward depression, and he’d been depressed and distracted more than usual lately.”
“Why?”
“I think for several reasons,” she replied, furrowing her forehead. She rocked back and forth for another half-minute before going on. “For one thing, he wasn’t getting a lot of good reviews for his Barnstable books, particularly the last one. Have you read any of them?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I feel they’re awfully well done,” she said. “I’m probably biased because of our friendship, but I think they are as good as the ones Darius Sawyer had written. The reviews bothered Charles, particularly what that idiot Hobbs wrote in the Gazette. But he was also down because he didn’t think he was appreciated by Monarch, his publisher.”
“Did you agree with Childress’s assessment?”
“Mr. Goodwin, you may be asking the wrong person,” she responded, avoiding my eyes. “As you might be aware, I’m a novelist, too. Oh, nowhere near as successful as Charles was, but I have written four books, novels set either in the South or in England in the eighteenth century. I think every author is to some degree paranoid. We all feel that we’re undervalued or are taken for granted — or both — by our publishers, whether or not that’s really true. And in Charles’s case, the feeling was intensified because of his latest contract offer, which he thought was insulting. And then there was something else...”
“Go on.”
She looked at the ceiling. “Did you know that he was engaged to be married?”
“I’ve heard something to that effect.”
“It’s true,” she murmured, eyes still fastened on the ceiling. “The woman — her name is Mitchell — Debra Mitchell — is extremely attractive, and extremely successful, too; she is an executive with GBC-TV. Well, in the last few weeks, Charles had been having... misgivings about her.”
“Do you know why?”
Patricia pressed her lips together, then nodded. “Charles didn’t talk a lot to me about it, but I sensed that he’d grown increasingly conscious of how, well... how overbearing she could be. He seemed to feel Debra wanted to run every aspect of his life. And Charles was an extremely independent individual. Extremely.”
“Was he thinking of breaking it off?”
Another deliberate nod, and more lip gymnastics. “I got that distinct impression. I never pried into his social life — that wasn’t how our relationship was structured. But a few days before, well, before what happened, he said something that made me believe he had decided to end their engagement.”
“Can you remember what it was?”
“More or less. I had come by the apartment to use his PC. He was just on the way out, and he made some comment about being doomed to ‘eternal bachelorhood.’ That’s the phrase he used. I remember very distinctly, he said it twice.”
“Do you know if he did end the engagement?”
“No,” she said, rising partway up and tucking her legs under her. “I never asked.”