myself remember having seen it all just that way.
But it wouldn’t work. I could just about convince myself that it had happened that way, but I couldn’t make it interlock with anything that remained in my memory. It was possible, I thought, that with the selective vision of the drunk, I had seen only the arm and the hand and had never seen the killer’s face at all.
If that were the case, teasing my memory would do no good. I could not force myself to recall what I had never seen.
In the darkness, in the quiet, I found myself remembering Sunday morning in the Maxfield Hotel It was now- what? Tuesday, incredibly enough. Tuesday afternoon, late afternoon.
It seemed ages ago.
I let myself remember it, the moment of discovery, all of it. And then there was something that had not bothered me before, but that seemed inconsistent now. When I wrapped myself up in the bedsheet and went down the hall to the bathroom, the door to my room had been locked. Not from the outside-you needed the key to lock that door, and the key had been in the room with me. But the door had been bolted from within, and I had unbolted it before I could leave.
Who could have locked it? Robin? It seemed logical that she would, but I couldn’t remember her doing so. And if she had, how had the killer entered the room?
All right. Suppose, then, that she had not bolted the door. Then whoever killed her had somehow contrived to bolt the door after killing her, and leave without disturbing the lock. It was possible, if there was a fire escape at the window, or a door leading to an adjoining room. But why do it that way? Why not just leave by the regular door?
Of course it made a better frame this way. Finding myself locked in with her, I had to believe that I had killed her myself. But-
There was a sudden flash of horrible doubt, and I threw myself up from the bed and turned on the overhead light, unwilling to be alone in the darkness with the horrible feeling of dread.
Because-
Because suppose the memory of that arm and hand were a false memory, a schizoid separation of self from self. Suppose, then, that a part of my mind had chosen to see myself kill Robin and view it as the act of another man. Suppose-
No.
I was not going to let it be that way. No.
11
I CALLED GWEN ON TUESDAY MORNING. BY WEDNESDAY NIGHT I was so profoundly awash in a sea of lists and phone calls and clippings and names that I ached for the dry land of movement and action and contact. I had to find out things about Russell Stone, about Pete Landis, about Warren Hayden. And I had to find out these things without exposing myself, somewhat in the manner of a smoker attempting to light a cigarette from a roaring bonfire. I didn’t dare get close enough to do the job. So far I had not gotten burned, but the cigarette wasn’t lit, either, and its end was not even warm.
Hayden was in Peru. A telephone call to the college confirmed this, he was on sabbatical leave in Peru, he had left months ago, and it would be months before he would return. The airlines which link New York with Lima had no record of a passenger named Warren Hayden within the past month. He could conceivably have slipped away from the lost city of the Incas to fly to New York and back under an assumed name. He could have done this, but I would not make book on it I crossed him off the list.
Pete Landis led me a chase. He wasn’t listed in the phone book at his old address, but there were other P. Landises and Peter Landises scattered throughout the five boroughs, and I wasted dimes calling several of them. I called his old employer and couldn’t get any information about him. He wasn’t with them any more, and they either did not know or would not say where he was now. I called the main office of the New York Stock Exchange on the chance that they might keep track of the whereabouts of various brokers. I talked with a good many secretaries and assistant managerial types and got nowhere.
I called the branch post office in his old neighborhood to see if they had a change of address card on him in the files. They didn’t, so I went to his building on the chance that he and Mary had de-listed their telephone number. They were not living there. I asked the building superintendent if he remembered the Landises, and when they moved. He said he couldn’t keep track of everybody, and that he had only been on this job for a year and a half, and maybe they had moved out before his time. I asked if he could call the landlord and check it out for me. He didn’t know if the landlord would keep records of past tenants. I told him it was worth checking out, and he said he was a busy man and had plenty of things to do.
“I’d appreciate it,” I said.
“Well, it’d take up my time.”
“It’s important to me.”
“Important is important, but time is money.”
I felt exceptionally stupid. It had never occurred to me to bribe the man. I had no idea what might be the proper bribe. I handed him ten dollars, which in retrospect seemed rather high for one phone call. He did not offer to give me change. He went into his apartment and closed the door, leaving me out in the hallway. I heard him dialing the telephone but couldn’t follow his conversation. I had a sudden urge to run, certain that he had recognized me and that he was calling not the landlord but the police. I lit a cigarette and forced myself to stay where I was, and a moment later he returned with an address scrawled on an irregular scrap of brown wrapping paper. They had moved three years ago, the superintendent assured me. I thanked him-why thank him? he was well paid-and left.
The scrap of paper gave me a street address in Atlanta. The Atlanta telephone operator had no listing at that address, but did have a Peter Landis listed at another Atlanta address. I got the number, dialed it direct. Mary answered. I recognized her voice, and was amused to discover that three years in Georgia had provided her with a southern accent.
The fact that the two of them were still married answered most of my questions, and made me anxious to leave it at that and cross him off the list. Still, I felt I might as well go on playing detective. I didn’t want to use the market research survey now. I didn’t feel I could fake a southern accent, and my own speech might not sound like the tone of an Atlanta-based researcher.
Instead I passed myself off as an old buddy of Pete’s who hadn’t seen him in years and was just passing through town. I don’t recall what name I invented for the occasion. Mary got quite excited-her accent slipped, which pleased me-and suggested I call Pete right away. She gave me his number and the name of the firm he was with. He had a junior partnership now, she told me, and would very probably be made a full partner after the first of the year.
“Ah’m sure he’ll be thrilled to heah from you,” she said, the drawl firmly back in place now. Tie’s told me so much about you.”
I privately doubted this. She asked if I would be in town long and if I could come to dinner. I said that I was leaving in a few hours, that I had passed through town a few days ago and tried to call them then.
“I tried you on Saturday,” I said. “You must have been out of town.”
“Saturday? We were home all day.”
“Saturday night.”
“Oh. Why, we were out at the club-”
I finished the conversation and rang off, promising to call good old Pete at the office. If they were home all day Saturday and at the club all night, it seemed highly unlikely that good old Pete could have been in New York late Saturday night or early Sunday morning to slit Robin Canelli’s throat.
It was unlikely anyway, since Pete and Mary were still together, and since he was evidently quite successful, and all the rest. If he had killed for Gwen, why wouldn’t he have pursued her once I was out of the way?
The trouble with this, of course, was that it was all conlecture. I could make a case either way, but it could never be more than hypothesis. Perhaps he killed Evangeline Grant to frame me because he wanted Gwen, and then
