“I don’t suppose you ever looked up this Miss Falconer.”
“No, but I tried to find out where she lived just out of curiosity. There was no Miss Falconer — or Faulkner — listed in the 1951 or ’50 Arbana directories. The ’48 directory listed a Jemima Falconer as a secretary and gave a Catherine Avenue address, I believe. It may or may not have been the same woman, and besides, a lot can happen in four years.”
“What about the Detroit vicinity?”
“I found several listings under both spellings, which was as good as a dead end for me. I hadn’t the time or inclination to try and track down the woman, especially since the only evidence I had of her connection with Claude was that chance meeting in Hudson’s, and Lily’s intuition. You’ve no doubt had some experience with female intuition, in court and out of it. It’s almost as fallible as tea leaves or head bumps.”
He took Meecham’s coat and hat out of the hall closet.
“I repeat, it was nice of you to come out and talk to Lily. I think now that she’s gotten a few things off her chest she’ll be better.”
“Probably.”
“Send your bill to me. Please don’t be hesitant about it. That was our arrangement over the phone.”
“Let’s leave it on the cuff,” Meecham said. “I might want a favor from you some day.”
“Any time. My office is in the First National Building and my house is in Grosse Point.”
“I’ll remember that.”
They parted with a very hearty handshake like a pair of old alumni after a homecoming.
Meecham crossed the wet driveway and got into his car. He drove in low gear down the steep grade to the entrance gate.
During the hour that he’d been in the house the snow-lady had been melting in the soft air like butter in the sun. The icicle was still sticking through her heart, though her nose and her remaining eye had fallen out and the scarf clung moistly to her shrinking head. By morning, if the weather held, she would topple into an indistinguishable mass of gray slush, and no one would remember her existence except two children.
18
Gurton’s café was on State Street at Main, between a haberdashery and a department store. Gurton had been installed there for thirty years, the chef for nearly twenty, and for five Meecham had been eating his dinners there several times a week. He knew the menus, the waiters, Gurton’s children and their children, and every picture on the wall. When the place closed for repainting once a year, Meecham missed it. It was the closest thing to a home, a social continuity, that he had ever had in his solitary life.
Gurton came to the door to meet him, smelling heavily of the cloves he was always chewing. “How’ve you been, Meech?”
“Fine.”
“Somebody’s got your table.”
“That’s all right. I’ll sit someplace else.”
“I thought you weren’t coming. I figured you were out of town. You haven’t been around.”
“I’ve been working.”
Gurton was an enormous man. He ate too much, and drank too much beer in his off-hours, and the only exercise he ever got was shuffling to the front door to greet his friends and counting his money at night after the place was closed. He enjoyed counting his money and he always took the day’s receipts home with him. To protect himself he carried a Colt automatic. He knew, theoretically, how to use it, but he was actually more terrified of the automatic than he was of any robber. Gurton was convinced that someday, in spite of the safety catch, it would go off accidentally and cripple him, or explode in his pocket and blow him to pieces. Like a man putting all his eggs in one basket, Gurton had loaded all his worries and fears into the automatic.
“You got your name in tonight’s paper,” he said.
“Did I?”
“I rang up all my kids and said, Meech has his name in the paper. You want to see it?”
“No.”
“You aren’t human.” Gurton shook his head and his jowls flapped like a turkey’s wattles. “I knew this guy Loftus that you found dead. Not by name, but once I saw his picture I recognized him. He used to come in here about two, three years ago, with his girlfriend, a tall bright-looking redhead. They used to sit and drink coffee, never saw a pair that could drink so much coffee. After a while they stopped coming in and I thought they must have broken up or got married.”
“They got married,” Meecham said, “and moved to another town.”
“Is that a fact? It didn’t mention that in the paper.”
“They were divorced after a short time and the woman was killed in an auto accident out West.”
“That’s too bad. I always feel sorry when people get divorced or don’t get married at all, which is even worse.”
Meecham knew what was coming and tried to avoid it by picking up the menu.
It came anyway. “It’s no good for a man, always being alone. You ought to get married, Meech, start having a few kids to put a little zip in your life and to give you something to leave behind you. Take this guy, Loftus, what did he leave behind him, eh?”
“Seven hundred and sixteen dollars.”
Gurton looked disappointed. He hadn’t expected or wanted an answer. “Now how come you know that?”
“You’re getting nosy, Gurton.”
“I’ve always been nosy.”
“It’s bad for business.” Meecham put the menu back in its metal holder. “I’ll take the veal cutlets. Mind if I use the phone in your office?”
“Go ahead. The cutlets are no good, it’s the wrong time of year for veal.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“That reminds me, you know what the priest said to the butcher at confession? He said, you’re cutting up too much.”
“That’s a howl.”
“I consider it funny,” Gurton said with dignity. “Thank God I don’t work so hard that I have no sense of humor left, like some people.”
Gurton’s office was a small room on the mezzanine. In contrast to the meticulously neat kitchen downstairs, the office was littered with papers and letters, magazines, canceled checks, watch folders and half-empty packs of cigarettes.
Meecham closed the door and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk. It took him five minutes to find the telephone directory, which had fallen into the wastebasket. Hearst was listed as Jameson R. Hearst, 611 Division Street. He dialed 2-6306.
Emmy Hearst answered the phone. She sounded as if she’d been crying again and he knew she must have found out about Loftus by this time.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Mrs. Hearst?”
“Yes.” There was a hum of activity in the background, voices and music and bursts of laughter. It was seven o’clock; Mrs. Hearst’s “boys” would all be home. Meecham recalled the first night he’d gone to see Loftus’ room; how incongruous it had seemed to him that Loftus should live in a house so full of youth and vitality.
“This is Eric Meecham. Is Mr. Hearst in? I’d like to talk to him.”
“What about? Jim doesn’t know anything.”
“It’s a trivial matter,” Meecham said, hoping that it was. “I don’t want to bother you about it, you’ve had a bad time.”
“I wish I were dead,” she said in a low flat voice. “I wish I were dead.”
“Words aren’t much good, I know, but I’d like to assure you that he didn’t suffer. I saw him afterwards.”
“He didn’t leave any note, any message?”
“No.”
“It said in the paper that he talked to the guard all night.”
“To the orderly, yes.”
“Did he talk about — me?”
“I guess he talked about everything.” He couldn’t give her the bald truth, that Loftus had talked only about Birdie. Mrs. Hearst didn’t even know of Birdie’s existence. The first night when she discussed Loftus with Cordwink she’d said, Earl tells me everything and he’s never mentioned a wife. It would be a cruel blow to her when she found out about Birdie. Meecham knew that eventually she must find out. He said, “I know it’s hard to be realistic in a situation like this, Mrs. Hearst. But the fact is, Earl had very little time left anyway. He would have died soon.”