Friday dawned wet and cold. I woke with the light, but ruminated for a long time in bed before getting up. I charged it as work time.
I often do my best work in bed.
I cooked a big breakfast. I washed all the dishes. At nine-thirty I went to the phone.
I called the police department, got put straight through.
‘Lieutenant Miller.’ The voice was strong.
‘You sound like a razor-keen ambitious cop again,’ I said.
‘I feel reborn,’ he said.
‘I’m pleased for you, Jerry. I’m pleased you’re getting some joy.’ ‘I have no idea where it’s going to lead, Al. But we are good for each other. I kind of keep her feet on the ground and she kind of keeps my head in the air. Food even tastes better to me now.’
‘And you’re not resigning?’
‘No. We’re looking to keep the status quo, on the surface.’
‘So, no TV slot?’
‘It’s been shelved. I’m an unofficial consultant. It wouldn’t be the right career move for me to change jobs now.’
I could visualise him smiling. Then he asked, ‘What did you want?’
‘An up-date on the Murchison case.’
‘Nothing new,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s remembered anyone going in or out of the room?’
‘No. We’ve covered all the staff on duty and most of the residents. There is a lot of routine traffic in the corridor so somebody probably did see but didn’t notice. We’re trying a reconstruction, as many people repeating their movements as possible.’
‘No feelings about whether or not it was someone to do with the nursing home?’
‘We’ve got no evidence about anything yet, Al.’
‘Good luck,’ I said.
I went out into the big world. My first visit was to the house of Wanda Edwards.
I rang the bell three times before the door was answered by bestseller-writer-in-the-making Jane Smith. She wore a long quilted dressing gown and her puffy face said, ‘If you think I look rough on the outside, just be thankful you aren’t participating in what’s on the inside.’
‘Yeah?’ she said aloud.
I asked to see Miss Edwards.
She said, ‘Hang on,’ and closed the door.
It took so long for her to come back that even a patient person like me was on the verge of having a go at the bell again.
But then the door reopened. ‘You didn’t tell me who you are,’Jane Smith said.
‘You didn’t give me the chance.’
She sighed deeply. ‘Jesus. Hell. Shit. Come in.’
When it’s put right, I don’t need asking twice.
‘I was here a couple of days ago,’ I said.
She looked at me, but as if the effort hurt her eyes. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘So who are you?’
I told her. Then I said, as we walked into the depths of the house, ‘Feeling the effects of a bit of late research?’
She stopped, turned and spoke, each action completed before the next began. ‘Were you part of the scene last night?’
‘No.’
‘What do you know about my research?’
‘Virtually nothing,’ I said. ‘We established that fact the last time I was here.’
‘Oh.’
She turned, led with her right foot and followed it with a left.
We stopped outside the conservatory door. I told her my name again, without being asked.
She looked at me with a painful squint of recollection. ‘A detective?’
‘Yes.’
‘You guys sure pick your times.’ She entered the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after ten.
Jane Smith reappeared almost immediately. She passed me without a word, and I took that to be an invitation to enter the room.
Miss Edwards sat in a chair by the wall of windows which faced the rear garden. I walked towards her and she turned to face me. She placed the palms of her hands together and touched the joined tops of her index fingers to the point of her chin. It was an attitude of serious contemplation.
‘Mr Samson,’ she said. ‘The private investigator.’
‘May I sit down. Miss Edwards?’
‘Certainly.’ She didn’t point, but there was a choice of three wicker-framed cushioned chairs.
I sat.
Miss Edwards said, ‘I have been thinking about death. Something that someone of my age has good reason to take into account.’ She paused, but not long enough to force me to make the social sound of hoping earnestly that she see us all out. The old woman looked slighter than I remembered, but purposeful. She said, ‘Do you know that I am the last surviving member of my family? That when I die the line will end?’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.
She smiled slightly over the tops of her fingers. She said, ‘Oh, I think you did.’
‘I suspected it,’ I said, ‘but, in fact, it is a closely related subject that I wanted to speak to you about.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘I meant to work up to it more gently.’
‘That is candid of you. Say what you must.’
‘I have been reading a transcript of your sister-in-law’s trial.’
What smile there was vanished.
‘Please tell me to go if you are not willing to talk to me about it.’
Her hands dropped to rest one on each leg. She took a deep breath. ‘You reopened all that for me the other day,’ she said. ‘Ask what you want.’
‘My key question is to do with your testimony that your brother was positive he was not the father of the child which his wife was expecting.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Miss Edwards, what I need to know is how he could be so sure, and how you could be so certain that he was sure.’
‘I knew my brother, Mr Samson. I was present when he received the news. His reaction was immediate, instinctive and true. It was surprise, shock, and anger. I had no doubt then and have no doubt now. Benny would know. He said it couldn’t be. So that is the fact of the matter.’
I said quietly, ‘You realise it would mean you have a niece or nephew somewhere.’
‘There is no chance whatever of that being the case,’ Miss Edwards said.
‘All right.’
She leaned back. ‘The things that woman said.’
She meant Vera Edwards in her testimony about Benny’s sexual predilections.
‘I hadn’t thought about it for decades.’ She looked beyond me, somewhere distant. Into the past? But it was only for a moment.
She said, ‘I realised I knew very little about my secretary yesterday. So I asked her what sort of books she wants to write.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘They are so smart, these young people. But so misdirected. Life was so positive, so organised and orderly when I was a young woman, a younger woman. I long for those days.’
‘What do you miss?’
Her hands found each other once again and then palm slid past palm so each set of fingers gripped a wrist. ‘Myself, I loved the shopping. We had real stores then, where the clerks knew you by name and made you feel as if a customer was something worth being. Hasson’s, Lieber’s, Charlie Meyer’s for buying presents and Ayres of course.’ She tilted her head and remembered. ‘You could get fresh fish easily. It was something to do with the railroad connections from the east, but we had such lovely oysters and lobsters and fish.’
I watched her become younger with the pleasure of remembering.
‘And there were concerts. I used to go to the Murat for the symphony. When it was hot they opened the doors. No air conditioning then. And it meant you’d get unscored bells from the street cars as they went up and down outside.’
She stopped talking abruptly and her face grew harder and she said, ‘Of course she had no appreciation of real music’
‘She?’
‘But what do you expect of a night-club whore? Why Benny had to take up with her is something I never, never, never understood. So many nice girls.’
I said, ‘What parts of her life as your brother’s wife did your sister-in-law take to?’
‘None.’ Arch, sharp and short.
‘Not the parties?’
‘None of our people would invite them.’
‘The home organising?’
‘Nothing. A quiet, resentful slut. Not an ounce of feeling for my brother. And he was a boy who needed someone to care for him. The only thing she did for poor Benny was to sing to soothe him sometimes. I would hear her thin little voice wailing out some base tune or another. A siren’s call. She lured him to the very rocks and destroyed him.’
I was allowed to find my own way out. But instead of doing so I spent a few minutes wandering around the house.
I found Jane Smith in the dining room. She sat in a haze of pot smoke, holding her breath and a cigarette. In front of her, making a condensation ring on the table, was a glass of orange juice.
‘Miss Edwards asked that I remind you to use coasters under your glasses,’ I said, ‘and to be careful about ashes on the carpet.’
Jane Smith looked up blearily. ‘What? Oh. Yeah.’
She sat still.
There was a buffet behind her. I tried some drawers and came across some place mats. I took one and put her glass on it. I dried the ring with my jacket sleeve and left the ashes to fate.
She looked at me and said, ‘I remember you now.’
‘The cloud lifting with the hair of the dog?’
She grimaced.
I said, ‘I want to ask you a question.’
She shrugged.
I sat in a chair next to her and said, ‘As you went into the room to speak to Miss Edwards you said, “You guys sure pick your times”.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you mean by “you guys”?’
‘I meant you private-eye guys.’
‘Has there been another private detective here?’
‘Yeah. Nice looking too, if you like the executive type that carries a calculator instead of a gun.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you carry a gun?’
‘Three.’
She looked impressed. ‘Can I hold one?’
‘I only take them out when I’m going to shoot someone,’ I said.
‘Oh.’
She drew, then sipped.
‘I don’t know what you said to Miss Edwards the other day, but she’s been a different person.’
‘Different how?’
‘She’s been active. And she’s been talking to me. She told me this weird story about her brother being murdered. She’s even gone out of the house for no special reason a couple of times. When she’s gone out before you wouldn’t believe the production number it’s been.’
‘And she hired a detective.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He came here this morning?’
‘No, no. Day before yesterday. But it was late for business, you know. After ten p.m. I kind of had some friends in.’
‘Are you sure the man was a private detective? As opposed to a police detective?’
‘Miss Edwards had me look them up in the Yellow Pages and give her the name of what looked like the biggest. The guy’s card said he was from them.’
‘Which agency was it?’
‘National Security Company.’
‘Do you remember his name?’
‘Roger something. Look, what’s this about? You going to detect the detective now?’
‘Miss Edwards does not have a high opinion of private investigators. It’s interesting that she has hired one herself.’
Jane Smith didn’t share my interest.
I got up. ‘How’s the book coming?’ I asked.
She looked at me. ‘That meant to be some obscure double entendre or something?’
I left quietly.