He had a date to work from: Kitty's pictures had been paid for on September 27, 1959.
I went back to the pavilion. The music was still going on, but the party had narrowed down to its hard core and shifted its main focus to the bar. It wasn't late, as parties go, but in my absence most of the people had deteriorated, as if a sudden illness had fallen on them: manic-depressive psychosis, or a mild cerebral hemorrhage.
Only the bartender hadn't changed at all. He made the drinks and served them and stood back from the party, watching it with his quicksilver eyes. I showed him the picture of Kitty, and the negative.
He held it up to the fluorescent light at the back of the bar. 'Yeah, I remember the man and the girl. She came in here with him one night and tried to get tight on B and B - that's all she knew about drinking - and she had a coughing fit. She had about four or five recruits patting her on the back at once and her husband started pushing them around. Me and Mr. Fablon got him calmed down, though.'
'How did Mr. Fablon get into the act?'
'He was with them.'
'They were friends of his?'
'I wouldn't want to say that, exactly. He was just with them. They drifted in together. Maybe he liked the woman. She was a knockout, I'll give her that.'
'Was Fablon a woman chaser?'
'You're putting words into my mouth. He liked women. He didn't chase'em. Some of them chased him. But he'd have more sense than mess with that dame. Her husband was bad news.'
'Who is he, Marco?'
He shrugged. 'I never saw him before or since, and I haven't been sitting around waiting to hear from him. He was bad news, a blowtop, a muscle.'
'How did he get in?'
'He was staying here. Some of our members can't say no when they get asked for a guest card. It would save me a lot of trouble if they could learn to say no.'
He looked around the room with a kind of contemptuous tolerance. 'Make you a drink?'
'No thanks.'
Marco leaned toward me across the bar. 'Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but Mrs. Fablon was in here a little while ago.'
'So?'
'She asked the same question you did, whether I thought her husband committed suicide. She knew him and I were friends, like. I told her no, I didn't think so.'
'What did she say?'
'She didn't have a chance to say anything. Dr Sylvester came into the bar and took her over. She wasn't looking too good.'
'What do you mean?'
He moved his head in a quick negative gesture.
A woman came up and asked for a double scotch. She was behind me, and I didn't recognize her changed voice until she spoke.
'My husband's been drinking double scotches and I say what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and vice versa.'
'Okay, Mrs. Sylvester, if you say so.'
Marco laid down the photograph and the negative on the bartop and poured her a very meager double scotch. She reached past me with both hands and picked up both the drink and the picture of Kitty. 'What's this? I love to look at pictures.'
'That's mine,' I said.
Her whisky-stunned eyes didn't seem to recognize me. 'But you don't mind if I look at it?' she said argumentatively. 'That's Mrs. Ketchel, isn't it?'
'Who?'
'Mrs. Ketchel,' she said.
'A friend of yours?'
'Hardly.'
She drew herself erect. Her bouffant hair was slipping down her forehead like a wig. 'Her husband was one of my husband's patients at one time. A doctor can't pick and choose his patients, you know.'
'I share the problem.'
'Of course,' she said. 'You're the detective, aren't you? What are you doing with a picture of Mrs. Ketchel?'
She waved it in my face. For a moment all the people at the bar were looking in our direction. I took the picture out of her hands and put it and the negative back in my pocket.
'You can trust me with your dark secrets,' she said. 'I am a doctor's wife.'
I slid off my stool and drew her away from the bar to an empty table. 'Where's Dr Sylvester?'
'He drove Henrietta Fablon home. She's - she was not in a good way. But he'll be back.'
'What's the matter with Mrs. Fablon?'
'What isn't?' she said lightly. 'Marietta's a friend of mine, one of the oldest friends I have in this town, but she's certainly let herself go to pieces lately, physically and morally. I have no objection to people getting plastered - I'm slightly plastered myself, as a matter of fact, Mr. Arch-'
'Archer.'
She went right on: 'But Marietta came here really looped tonight. She walked in, if walking is the word, literally rubber-legged. George had to gather up the pieces and take her home. She's getting to be more and more of a burden to George.'
'In what respect'' 'Morally and financially. She hasn't paid her bill, of course, within living memory, and that's all right, I suppose. She's a friend, live and let live. But when it comes to scrounging more money from him, that's too much.'
'Has she been doing that?'
'Has she? Today she invited him for lunch - I happened to be at the hairdresser's - and made a sudden pitch for five thousand dollars. We don't have that kind of ready money in the bank, which is the only way I know about it - he tried to get my signature on the loan. But I said nix.'
She paused, and her alcohol-angered face grew suddenly quiet with anxiety. I think her mind was playing back what she had said. 'I've been telling you my deep dark secrets, haven't I?'
'It's all right.'
'It isn't all right if you tell George what I said. You won't tell George what I said?'
She had unloaded her malice but she didn't want to take the responsibility for it.
'All right,' I said.
'You're nice.'
She reached for my hand on the tabletop and pressed it rather hard. She was more worried now than she was drunk, trying to think of something to make herself feel better. 'Do you like dancing, Mr. Arch?'
'Archer.'
'I love to dance myself.'
Still holding on to my hand she rose and towed me out onto the dance floor. Round and round we went, with her hair slipping down into both our eyes and her breasts bouncing against me like the special organs of her enthusiasm.
'My first name is Audrey,' she confided. 'What's your first name, Mr. Arch?'
'Fallen.'
Her laughter blasted my right ear-drum. When the music stopped I took her back to the table, and went out to the front office. Ella was still at her post, looking rather wan.
'Are you tired?' I asked her.
She glanced at herself in the wall mirror facing her desk. 'Not so very. It's the music. It gets on my nerves when I'm not allowed to dance to it.'
She passed her hand over her forehead. 'I don't know how much longer I can hold this job.'
