Is ANYONE OUT THERE?
Weekly Newspapers Group Discussion
Fletch had breakfast in his room, listening to Virginia State Police Captain Andrew Neale questioning Lydia March and Walter March, Junior, in Suite 12.
There were the preliminary courtesies—Captain Neale saying, “I know this must be terribly difficult for you, Mrs. March”; Lydia saying, “I know it’s necessary”; his saying, “Thank you. You have my sympathy. I would avoid disturbing you at this point if it were at all possible”—while Fletch was spooning his half a grapefruit.
Junior had to be fetched from his bedroom.
“Junior’s a little slow this morning,” Lydia said. “Neither of us is getting any sleep, of course.”
“Hello, Mister Neale,” Junior said.
His voice was not as clear as Lydia’s or Neale’s.
“Good morning, Mister March. I’ve told your mother that you have my sympathy, and I hate to put you both through this.…”
“Right,” Junior said. “Hate to go through it. Hate to go through the whole shabby thing.”
“If you would just go over the circumstances of your husband’s.… You don’t mind my using a tape recorder, do you?”
Junior said, “Tape recorder?”
“Of course not, Captain Neale. Do anything you like.”
“As an aid to my memory, and hopefully, so I won’t have to disturb you again. It’s most important that we fix the timing of this … incident precisely.”
“Incident!” said Junior.
“Sorry,” said Neale. “All words are inadequate.…”
“Apparently,” said Junior.
“We’re particularly interested in.…”
“I’ll do my best, Captain,” Lydia said. “Only it’s so.…”
“Mrs. March, if you can just describe everything, every detail, from the moment you woke up yesterday morning?”
“Yes. Well, we, that is, Walter and I, were scheduled to have breakfast at eight o’clock yesterday morning with Helena and Jake Williams—Helena is the Executive Secretary of the Alliance—to go over everything a final time before the mobs arrived, you know, discuss any problems there might have been.…”
“Were there any you knew of?”
“Any what?”
“Any problems.”
“No. Not really. There was a small problem about the President.”
“The president of what?”
“… the United States.”
“Oh. What was that?”
“What was what?”
“The problem with the President of the United States.”
“Oh. Well, you see, he doesn’t play golf.”
“I know.”
“Well, you see, he was scheduled to arrive at three in the afternoon. By helicopter. The problem was what to do with him until dinner. Presidents of the United States have always played golf. Almost always. At these conventions, the President goes out and walks around the golf course with a few members of the press, and it makes good picture opportunities for the working press, and it makes it seem to the public that we’re doing something for him, helping him to relax, giving him a break from work, and that the press and the President can be friendly, you know.…”
“I see.”
“But the President, this President, doesn’t play golf. The night before, Jake—that’s Mister Williams—over drinks—well, we were talking about this and Jake was making silly suggestions, of what to do with the President of the United States for four hours. He suggested we fill up the swimming pool with catfish and give the President a net and let him wade in and catch them all. I shouldn’t be saying this. Oh, Junior, help!”
“What did you decide?”
“I think they were deciding to put up softball teams, the President and Secret Service and all that against some reporters. Only Hendricks Plantation doesn’t have a softball field, of course. Who has? And Jake was saying, what would happen if the President of the United States got beaned by the Associated Press?”
“Really, Mister Neale,” Junior said.
“Right,” Neale said. “Mrs. March.…”
“At least the Vice-President plays golf,” she said.
“At what time did you wake up, Mrs. March?”
“I’m not sure. Seven-fifteen? Seven-twenty? I heard the door to the suite close.”
“That was me, Mister Neale,” Junior said. “I went down to the lobby to get the newspapers.”
“Walter had left his bed. It’s always been a thing with him to be up a little earlier than I. A masculine thing. I heard him moving around the bathroom. I lay in bed a little while, a few minutes, really, waiting for him to be done.”
“The bathroom door was closed?”
“Yes. In a moment I heard the television here in the living room go on, softly—one of those morning news and features network shows Walter always hated so much—so I got up and went into the bathroom.”
“Excuse me. How did your husband get from the bathroom to the living room without coming back through your bedroom?”
“He went through Junior’s bedroom, of course. He didn’t want to disturb me.”
“Mrs. March, are you saying that, in fact, you did not see your husband at all yesterday morning?”
“Oh, Captain Neale.”
“I’m sorry. I mean, alive?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Then how do you know it was he in the bathroom yesterday morning?”
“Captain, we’ve been married fifty years. You get used to the different sounds of your family. You know them, even in a hotel suite.”
“Okay. You were in the bathroom. The television was playing softly in the living room.…”
“I heard the door to the suite close again, so I thought Walter had gone down for coffee.”
“Had the television gone off?”
“No.”
“So, actually, someone could have come into the suite at that point.”
“No. At first, I thought Junior might have come back, but he couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t hear them talking.”
“Would they have been talking? Necessarily?”
“Of course. About the headlines. The newspapers. The bulletins on the television. My husband and son are newspapermen, Captain Neale. Every day there are new developments.…”
“Yes. Of course.”
“After getting the newspapers,” Junior said, “I went into the coffee shop and had breakfast.”
“So, Mrs. March, you think you heard the suite door close again, but your husband hadn’t left the suite, and you think no one entered the suite because you didn’t hear talking?”
“I guess that’s right. I could be mistaken, of course. I’m trying to reconstruct.”
“Pardon, but where were you physically in the bathroom when you heard the door close the second time?”
