Guy said, “Ro? What was her name? Terry what?”
Rosemary opened her eyes and swallowed. “I don’t remember,” she said. “Italian, with a G. A long name. She made ‘a joke about spelling it. Not being able to.”
Guy said to the blue-eyed policeman, “She was staying with people named Castevet, in apartment seven A.”
“We’ve got that already,” the policeman said.
Another policeman came up, holding a sleet of pale yellow notepaper. Mr. Micklas was behind him, tight- mouthed, in a raincoat over striped pajamas. “Short and sweet,” the policeman said to the blue-eyed one, and handed him the yellow paper. “She stuck it to the window sill with a Band-Aid so it wouldn’t blow away.”
“Anybody there?”
The other shook his head.
The blue-eyed policeman read what was written on the sheet of paper, sucking thoughtfully at his front teeth. “Theresa Gionoffrio,” he said. He pronounced it as an Italian would. Rosemary nodded.
Guy said, “Wednesday night you wouldn’t have guessed she had a sad thought in her mind.”
“Nothing but sad thoughts,” the policeman said, opening his pad holder. He laid the paper inside it and closed the holder with a width of yellow sticking out.
“Did you know her?” Mr. Micklas asked Rosemary.
“Only slightly,” she said.
“Oh, of course,” Mr. Micklas said; “you’re on seven too.”
Guy said to Rosemary, “Come on, honey, let’s go upstairs.”
The policeman said, “Do you have any idea where we can find these people Castevet?”
“No, none at all,” Guy said. “We’ve never even met them.”
“They’re usually at home now,” Rosemary said. “We hear them through the wall. Our bedroom is next to theirs.”
Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back. “Come on, hon,” he said. They nodded to the policeman and Mr. Micklas, and started toward the house.
“Here they come now,” Mr. Micklas said. Rosemary and Guy stopped and turned. Coming from downtown, as they themselves had come, were a tall, broad, white-haired woman and a tall, thin, shuffling man. “The Castevets?” Rosemary asked. Mr. Micklas nodded.
Mrs. Castevet was wrapped in light blue, with snow-white dabs of gloves, purse, shoes, and hat. Nurselike she supported her husband’s forearm. He was dazzling, in an every-color seersucker jacket, red slacks, a pink bow tie, and a gray fedora with a pink band. He was seventy-five or older; she was sixtyeight or -nine. They came closer with expressions of young alertness, with friendly quizzical smiles. The policeman stepped forward to meet them and their smiles faltered and fell away. Mrs. Castevet said something worryingly; Mr. Castevet frowned and shook his head. His wide, thin-upped mouth was rosy-pink, as if lipsticked; his cheeks were chalky, his eyes small and bright in deep sockets. She was big-nosed, with a sullen fleshy underlip. She wore pink-rimmed eyeglasses on a neckchain that dipped down from behind plain pearl earrings.
The policeman said, “Are you folks the Castevets on the seventh floor?”
“We are,” Mr. Castevet said in a dry voice that had to be listened for.
“You have a young woman named Theresa Gionoffrio living with you?”
“We do,” Mr. Castevet said. “What’s wrong? Has there been an accident?”
“You’d better brace yourselves for some bad news,” the policeman said. He waited, looking at each of them in turn, and then he said, “She’s dead. She killed herself.” He raised a hand, the thumb pointing back over his shoulder. “She jumped out of the window.”
They looked at him with no change of expression at all, as if he hadn’t spoken yet; then Mrs. Castevet leaned sideways, glanced beyond him at the red-stained blanket, and stood straight again and looked him in the eyes. “That’s not possible,” she said in her loud midwestern Roman-bring-me-someroot-beer voice. “It’s a mistake. Somebody else is under there.”
The policeman, not turning from her, said, “Artie, would you let these people take a look, please?”
Mrs. Castevet marched past him, her jaw set.
Mr. Castevet stayed where he was. “I knew this would happen,” he said. “She got deeply depressed every three weeks or so. I noticed it and told my wife, but she pooh-poohed me. She’s an optimist who refuses to admit that everything doesn’t always turn out the way she wants it to.”
Mrs. Castevet came back. “That doesn’t mean that she killed herself,” she said. “She was a very happy girl with no reason for self-destruction. It must have been an accident. She must have been cleaning the windows and lost her hold. She was always surprising us by cleaning things and doing things for us.”
“She wasn’t cleaning windows at midnight,” Mr. Castevet said.
“Why not?” Mrs. Castevet said angrily. “Maybe she was!”
The policeman held out the pale yellow paper, having taken it from his pad holder.
Mrs. Castevet hesitated, then took it and turned it around and read it. Mr. Castevet tipped his head in over her arm and read it too, his thin vivid lips moving.
“Is that her handwriting?” the policeman asked.
Mrs. Castevet nodded. Mr. Castevet said, “Definitely. Absolutely.”
The policeman held out his hand and Mrs. Castevet gave him the paper. He said, “Thank you. I’ll see you get it back when we’re done with it.”
She took off her glasses, dropped them on their neckchain, and covered both her eyes with white-gloved fingertips. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I just don’t believe it. She was so happy. All her troubles were in the past.” Mr. Castevet put his hand on her shoulder and looked at the ground and shook his head.
“Do you know the name of her next-of-kin?” the policeman asked.
“She didn’t have any,” Mrs. Castevet said. “She was all alone. She didn’t have anyone, only us.”
“Didn’t she have a brother?” Rosemary asked.
Mrs. Castevet put on her glasses and looked at her. Mr. Castevet looked up from the ground, his deep- socketed eyes glinting under his hat brim.
“Did she?” the policeman asked.
“She said she did,” Rosemary said. “In the Navy.”
The policeman looked to the Castevets.
“It’s news to me,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “To both of us.”
The policeman asked Rosemary, “Do you know his rank or where he’s stationed?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, and to the Castevets: “She mentioned him to me the other day, in the laundry room. I’m Rosemary Woodhouse.”
Guy said, “We’re in seven E.”
“I feel just the way you do, Mrs. Castevet,” Rosemary said. “She seemed so happy and full of-of good feelings about the future. She said wonderful things about you and your husband; how grateful she was to both of you for all the help you were giving her.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “It’s nice of you to tell us that. It makes it a little easier.”
The policeman said, “You don’t know anything else about this brother except that he’s in the Navy?”
“That’s all,” Rosemary said. “I don’t think she liked him very much.”
“It should be easy to find him,” Mr. Castevet said, “with an uncommon name like Gionoffrio.”
Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back again and they withdrew toward the house. “I’m so stunned and so sorry,” Rosemary said to the Castevets, and Guy said, “It’s such a pity. It’s-“
Mrs. Castevet said, “Thank you,” and Mr. Castevet said something long and sibilant of which only the phrase “her last days” was understandable.
They rode upstairs (“Oh, my!” the night elevator man Diego said; “Oh, my! Oh, my!”), looked ruefully at the now-haunted door of 7A, and walked through the branching hallway to their own apartment. Mr. Kellogg in 7G peered out from behind his chained door and asked what was going on downstairs. They told him.
They sat on the edge of their bed for a few minutes, speculating about Terry’s reason for killing herself. Only if the Castevets told them some day what was in the note, they agreed, would they ever learn for certain what had driven her to the violent death they had nearly witnessed. And even knowing what was in the note, Guy pointed out,
