“Yes,” I said.
Hec looked surprised and uncomfortable, and Cotton looked something I couldn’t see, for I wasn’t looking at him. I could hear him, though, and I heard him make a little wet smacking sound with his lips that seemed to have in it a quality of satisfaction.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” Hec said.
“Certainly I know,” I said. “I said I was in Dreamer’s Park, and I was.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so before?” Cotton said.
“You didn’t ask me,” I said.
“It’s your God-damn duty to tell something like that to the police without being asked,” Cotton said.
“That’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “You know it is. You should have told Cotton. Why didn’t you?”
“That should be obvious,” I said. “I didn’t tell because I wanted do avoid exactly what I haven’t. I wanted to avoid being suspected of killing someone I didn’t.”
“I don’t know that you’re suspected of lolling anyone yet,” Hec said.
“As for me,” Cotton said, “I don’t know that he isn’t.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“You’d better tell us why you went there and what you did there,” Hec said.
“I’ll be happy to,” I said. “I went there to meet Beth at her request, but I didn’t meet her because she was dead.”
“Why the hell didn’t you report her death to the police?” Cotton said. “Don’t you know there’s a law about reporting bodies when you find them?”
“I didn’t report it because I didn’t know it.”
“God-damn it, you just said she was dead. Now you say you didn’t know it.”
“Oh, come off, Cotton. Why don’t you quit trying to be a detective every minute? I said she was dead because she was later found dead. Putting that fact with the fact that she failed to meet me after arranging the meeting herself, I merely assumed that the failure was the result of her being dead.”
“You mean to say she might have been dead in that old bandstand all the time you were there and you didn’t even see her?”
I considered my answer carefully for a split second, and I decided that the truth was fine as far as it went, but it was possible to try to make it go too far. Having reached this decision, I retreated to Sid’s prepared position.
“I mean to say,” I said.
“What I can’t figure out,” Hec said, “is why you agreed to meet her in Dreamer’s Park in the middle of the night, of all places and all times. There doesn’t seem to me to be any good reason for it.”
“As for me,” Cotton said, “I can think of two good reasons, and the other one’s murder.”
“You aren’t even half right,” I said. “Dreamer’s Park is a place of sentiment, and we were going to say a proper good-by, and it seemed appropriate to say it in a sentimental place. Besides, I had been listening to cicadas and drinking gin.”
“It’s a fact, Cotton, that Dreamer’s Park is a place of sentiment,” Hec said. “In my time, I’ve made a few connections there myself.”
“Well,” Cotton said, “nooky is one thing, and murder’s another, and I don’t think we ought to be mixing them up in our thinking.”
“Cotton’s right, Gid,” Hec said. “We’ve got to keep sentiment out of this. Maybe you’d better just tell us what happened in your own words.”
“To begin with,” I said, “I was pretty restless, the evening coming on for what it was plainly going to be, and then I met Beth after a lot of years in the Kiowa Room.”
“We know all about that,” Cotton said.
“Yes, Gid,” Hec said, “just skip along to a little later. Tell us how it happened that you agreed to meet her.”
“It wouldn’t have happened at all,” I said, “if Sid hadn’t gone off to talk with Rose Pogue about Zoroaster.”
“About who?” Cotton said.
“About whom?” Hec said.
“Never mind,” I said. “Who or whom, off she went to talk, and I was alone in the house drinking gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration. Then the phone rang, and it was Beth. She said she was going away the next day, and would I come to meet her and say good-by, and I asked where. That was when she thought of Dreamer’s Park, and it seemed like a fine place to say good-by, with sentimental connections and all, and I agreed to go there to meet her.”
“What time was this?” Cotton said. He had a little notebook out, and was taking notes.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “As I explained, I’d been drinking gimlets. I’m pretty sure it was pretty late, though. About nine-thirty.”
“Go on, Gid,” Hec said.
“There isn’t much farther to go. Just across town to Dreamer’s Park. When I got there, I sat in the bandstand and waited for Beth, but she didn’t come, and finally I decided that she had simply found someone else to do something more interesting with. I went home and went to bed, and the next day I heard she’d been murdered, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” Cotton said, “that there may be more.”
“Did you see anyone at all while you were in the park?” Hec said.
“No one,” I said, “except a few people at a distance passing along the streets. No one in the park itself.”
“What I was wondering specifically,” Hec said, “is whether you saw anyone who might have seen you who might have written this note.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“That’s too bad. I don’t care too much for anonymous notes, if you want to know the truth. You got any enemies who might want to get you involved in a murder out of pure meanness?”
“None that I know of.”
“You’d better think hard. Someone you put in jail or something?”
“I’ve never put anyone in jail. My talents have been employed in trying to keep everyone out. I’ve sued a few for modest amounts, but never for enough to justify
