The present was depressing him. He poured himself a drink.
I refused the offer of one. `What happened to Carol?'
`She dropped out of sight. I think she ran off with a sailor, or something like that. She didn't have what it takes, anyway, after the first bloom.'
Joey sighed deeply. `If you see Susanna, mention my name, will you, Lew? I mean, if you can do it gracefully.'
He moved one hand in an undulating horizontal curve. `She acts like she thought I was dead.'
I used Joey's phone to make a call to Susanna Drew's office. Her secretary let me talk to her: `This is Lew Archer, Susanna.'
`How nice to hear from you.'
`The occasion isn't so nice,' I said bluntly. `I'm investigating a murder. The victim may or may not be a girl you knew back in the forties, named Carol.'
'Not Carol Harley?'
`I'm afraid she's the one.'
Her voice roughened. `And you say she's dead?'
`Yes. She was murdered yesterday in a place called Ocean View.'
She was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer and younger. `What can I do?'
`Tell me about your friend Carol.'
`Not on the telephone, please. The telephone dehumanizes everything.'
`A personal meeting would suit me much better,' I said rather formally. `I have some pictures to show you, to make the identification positive. It should be soon. We're twenty-four hours behind-'
`Come over now. I'll send your name out front.'
I thanked Joey and drove to Television City. A guard from the front office escorted me through the building to Susanna Drew's office. It was large and bright, with flowers on the desk and explosive-looking abstract expressionist paintings on the walls. Susanna was standing at the window, crying. She was a slim woman with short straight hair so black the eye stayed on it. She kept her back to me for some time after her secretary went out and closed the door. Finally she turned to face me, still dabbing at her wet cheeks with a piece of yellow Kleenex.
She was fortyish now, and not exactly pretty, but neither did she look like anybody else. Her black eyes, even in sorrow, were furiously alive. She had style, and intelligence in the lines and contours of her face. Legs still good. Mouth still good. It said: `I don't know why I'm carrying on like this. I haven't seen or heard from Carol in seventeen or eighteen years.'
She paused. `I really do know, though. 'It is Margaret I mourn for.' Do you know Hopkins's poem?'
`You know I don't. Who's Margaret?'
`The girl in the poem,' she said. `She's grieving over the fallen autumn leaves. And Hopkins tells her she's grieving for herself. Which is what I'm doing.'
She breathed deeply. `I used to be so young.'
`You're not exactly over the hill now.'
`Don't flatter me. I'm old old old. I was twenty in 1945 when I knew Carol. Back in the pre-atomic era.'
On the way to her desk she paused in front of one of the abstract paintings, as if it represented what had happened to the world since. She sat down with an air of great efficiency. `Well, let me look at your pictures.'
`You won't like them. She was beaten to death.'
`God. Who would do that?'
`Her husband is the prime suspect.'
'Harley? Is she - was she still with that schmo?'
`Evidently she still was.'
`I knew he'd do her in sooner or later.'
I leaned on the end of her desk. `How did you know that?'
`It was one of those fated things. Elective affinities with a reverse twist. She was a really nice child, as tender as a soft-boiled egg, and he was a psychopathic personality. He just couldn't leave her alone.'
`How do you know he was a psychopathic personality?'
`I know a psychopathic personality when I see one,' she said, lifting her chin. `I was married to one, briefly, back in the fabulous fifties. Which constitutes me an authority. If you want a definition, a psychopathic personality is a man you can't depend on for anything except trouble.'
`And that's the way Harley was?'
`Oh yes.'
`What was his first name?'
`Mike. He was a sailor, a sailor in the Navy.'
