FRANK LEFT AT FOUR-THIRTY. I had commissioned him to draw up specific plans for a quintupled budget.
Well, I did have the Charlotte Vivien money.
But when he was gone I sat down at my desk and returned to the world I knew. I could hardly believe what I had done.
Yet wasn't the whole idea to end having to scratch for work, once and for all? And if I really made an effort to become a Go-for-It Detective, then maybe, just maybe . . .
The clock said I should be hungry, but I didn't feel like eating. I turned on the television: PBS, no commercials. I watched a cranky commentator argue that as carbon dioxide globally warmed the earth, people would need less heat in the winter, would therefore burn less fossil fuel and would therefore produce less carbon dioxide so in the end the balance would correct itself. So we didn't need to worry about it now after all.
I tried to heal.
He had just gotten to me when I was weak, Frank.
And I hadn't done anything irreversible.
And by occupying Frank I had given my woman a fair crack at the fair Lucy.
Persuasive broad, my woman.
Besides, she would probably approve of what I had done. We could go out, celebrate. Take in a movie.
My fantasies were interrupted. I heard footsteps on the stairs to the office.
I couldn't believe it at first.
Five-thirty. There was no reasonable explanation as to who it might be.
Yet one does not climb a flight of metal steps signposted “To the Detective” by mistake. Even the neon sign gets rested on the Sabbath.
Then the footsteps stopped. They rang my bell. The bell that is connected to the button below the brass plate that said, “Albert Samson, Private Investigator.”
Not, surely, a client. No beleaguered Hoosier could expect aid or succor. Or security consultancy, personnel evaluation, litigation research, surveillance, VIP protection, political risk analysis or juvenile reconstructive work. Not on a Sunday.
You can't even get beer in Indiana on a Sunday.
Yet the evidence of a presence was irrefutable.
I answered the door.
Standing outside was a thin angular man with a shock of dark hair that half obscured his face. There was no obscuring the fact that it was Quentin, the party Brit.
I was too astonished to speak.
He wasn't. He said, “How was it for you?”
I stared at him.
“The party. Did you enjoy any of it?”
Since the party had been unspeakable, I said nothing. “Look,” he said, “sorry if you're not feeling jolly, but may I come in?”
“What do you want?”
“To hire you,” he said.
“Hire me? What for?”
“I don't mean to be a nuisance, old chap, but it is rather important.”
Oh well.
I stepped aside and he entered. In the middle of the room he shook his head so that for a moment he had the use of both eyes. He glanced around but then said to me, “I knew it when I saw you working so manfully through that awful murder script of mine.”
“Knew what?”
“That you were someone I could talk to. A soulmate.”
I waited, but it was not a good day for testing my patience.
“In England, you know, Albert is a name used by members of the working class and by princes.”
“In Indiana, Albert is a name used by tired private detectives who don't like their Sundays interrupted. If you have something to say, please get on with it.”
He laughed his goosey laugh. He punched me on the shoulder, man to man. “I have something to say,” he said.
“Well?”
“I need you to help me murder my wife.”