I put my pen down and closed my hanging jaw by resting it on folded hands. It is a posture I adopt to look like I’m thinking.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said.
‘They were all names from the same pie,’ Maude said. ‘Why else . . . ?’ She began, but didn’t finish her sentence.
I picked up my pen again. ‘Let’s do this in short simple sentences, spoken slowly.’
‘Born Vera Wert, in Logansport in—’
I interrupted. ‘Vera?’
‘That’s right. Ready?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Born in 1920. For some reason I don’t have the date. She came to Indianapolis in 1936 and became a moderately successful club singer with a little-girl-lost kind of style. O.K.?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Rich kid Edwards spotted her singing. Probably one day when he thought he was slumming. He courted her, for getting on to a couple of years. It is said that she was reluctant to marry him, because of the difference in their stations.’
‘By whom?’
‘Her own testimony.’
‘She went in the box?’
‘She did indeed. Our reporter thought she did pretty well.’
‘Is your reporter still around?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘Sub-editing God’s in-house news sheet.’
‘Vera Wert,’ I said.
‘Married Edwards on June 28th, 1938. His family hated it.’
‘What family was there?’
She looked at her notepad. ‘A father who was not very well. Died in 1944. A sister.’ She looked at me. ‘You had to have known that Wanda Edwards was George Bennett Raymond’s sister . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And that when Vera was acquitted she tried to shoot her . . .’
‘The hell she did!’
‘She put a slug into the courtroom ceiling. All dealt with quietly afterwards. She never came to trial.’ Maude looked at her notes again. ‘The sister never married, as far as I know. Looked after her father, who was . . . seventy-six when he died.’
‘His wife?’
‘Died when George Bennett Raymond was born. The old man never remarried. I don’t know whether there is any additional information to be had about post-marital social life, but I don’t have any.’
‘I don’t think it’s important to me,’ I said.
‘O.K.,’ Maude said. ‘So George and Vera got married, without family blessing, but with family participation. They made a big splash, notable for the lack of celebration which pervaded the reception party.’
‘Vera Wert’s family?’
‘Not on the guest list,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything about Vera before the murder except from our reports from the trial. Excuse me, I shouldn’t say “murder”. The “shooting”. And little after, because the young couple didn’t have much social life. The upper crust was not generous to wives with Mrs Edwards’ background.’
‘We’re talking late on in the depression,’ I said. ‘Was there much social life for them to be excluded from?’
Maude leaned back. ‘Oh, yes. There was a whole season of dances. If anything it was more active than when times were economically better. Young men couldn’t marry as early as they did before, and the dances were the main contact between expanded pools of unmarried young ladies and gentlemen. And the young marrieds were involved too.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘They got married. They got snubbed. They stopped getting along. He became strange, or maybe just stranger. He suspected her of playing around.’
‘You said simple sentences . . .’
‘So, on April 2Ist, she shoots him. What is known about that night?’
‘Uncontested, that Edwards learned early in the evening that Mrs E. was pregnant. Family doctor stopped by. Vera was out, so he told Edwards. This led Edwards to be upset and he told his sister emphatically that it could not be his child.’
‘That sounds a bit rough.’
‘So did the sister’s testimony about Mrs Edwards, but it was made completely clear that she had resented her sister-in-law from the beginning and probably the prejudice undercut what she had to say.’
‘Mrs Edwards wasn’t there when her husband learned about the pregnancy? Don’t doctors tell the mother-to-be first?’
‘I suspect some of the niceties become blurred when you’re dealing with that kind of money.’ Maude consulted a notepad. ‘There was a houseboy who testified as to when Mrs Edwards got home. Just after ten.’
‘Where had she been?’
‘At a concert.’
‘With someone?’
‘Alone.’
I made a face.
Maude said, ‘A maid testified too, agreeing about the time of Mrs Edwards’ return, and saying that she seemed edgy, but not more than normal. Mrs Edwards testified that after she got home she and her husband had an argument about his jealousy. No one seems to have heard this. The bedrooms and the servants’ room were all a considerable distance from the conservatory.’
I nodded.
‘Mrs Edwards said that her husband began to beat her in his rage, and that she took her gun out to scare him. It didn’t. They fought, it went off twice.’
‘She carried a gun around?’
‘She said that she often did.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘She just happened to have her gun handy. How did she pass that off?’
‘Must be the way she told it,’ Maude said.
‘And is that it?’
‘More or less. She called the police as soon as it happened. Nobody seems to have contested that there was no delay.’
‘A big question for me now, Maude,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘What happened to her after the trial?’
‘Apart from acting as a target for her aggrieved sister-in-law?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t have anything,’ she said simply. ‘Either as Mrs Edwards, or as Daisy Wines. The only suggestion is in one of the last stories. When she got off, she was asked what she was planning to do. She said that she was going to go away for a while.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
I said, ‘I want to locate her.’
‘Well, if she’s not in Indianapolis, that only leaves the rest of the world.’
‘I know who knows where she is. But they’re not telling.’
‘Oh?’
‘Her lawyers.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Barker, McKay and Gay.’
Maude nodded slowly. ‘I know old Ken Gay. I’ll try but I don’t think I can give you much hope.’
‘I suddenly feel terribly tired,’ I said.
‘Let me give you the rest of what I’ve got. Then you can go collapse somewhere else.’
‘O.K.’
‘Wanda Edwards. Still lives in the family home. You know where that is?’
‘I’ve been there,’ I said.
Maude raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m impressed, because she’s been virtually a recluse since 1940. All my information is negative. No club memberships. No charities.’
‘I have no club memberships or charities either,’ I said. It didn’t merit a response. ‘Normal Bates?’
‘Private eyes don’t leave much of a mark,’ Maude said.