'Ah, dear me, a shame, a shame.' His droopy eyelids seeped concern. 'It's serious?'
'Yes, I'm afraid it is.'
'May I ask...?' he probed with a delicate gesture.
'We still don't know.'
'Watch out for drafts,' he cautioned firmly.
Chris looked blank.
'A draft in the winter when a house is hot is a magic carpet for bacteria. My mother used to say that. Maybe that's folk myth. Maybe.' He shrugged. 'But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans,' he said earnestly.
Chris relaxed. The shaggy dog padding fuddled through cornfields had returned.
'That's hers, that's her room'---he was thumbing toward the ceiling---'with that great big window looking out on these steps?'
Chris nodded.
'Keep the window closed and she'll get better.'
'Well, it's always closed and it's always shuttered' Chris said as he dipped a pudgy hand in the inside pocket of his jacket.
'She'll get better,' he repeated sententiously. 'Just remember, 'An ounce of prevention...' '
Chris drummed her fingertips on the tabletop again.
'You're busy. Well, we're finished. Just a note for the record---routine---we're all done.'
From the pocket of the jacket he'd extracted a crumpled mimeographed program of a high-school production of Cyrano de Bergerac and now groped in the pockets of his coat, where he netted a toothmarked yellow stub of a number 2 pencil, whose point had the look of having been sharpened with the blade of a scissors. He pressed the program flat on the table, brushing out the wrinkles. 'Now just a name or two,' he puffed. 'That's Spencer with a c?'
'Yes, c.'
'A c,' he repeated, writing the name in a margin of the program. 'And the housekeepers? John and Willie...?'
'Karl and Willie Engstrom.'
'Karl. That's right, it's Karl. Karl Engstrom.' He scribbled the names in a dark, thick script. 'Now the times I remember,' he told her huskily, turning the program around in search of white space. 'Times I----Oh. Oh, no, wait. I forgot. Yes, the housekeepers. You said they got home at what time?'
'I didn't say. Karl, what time did you get in last night?' Chris called to him.
The Swiss turned around, his face inscrutable. 'Exactly nine-thirty, madam.'
'Yeah, that's right, you'd forgotten your key. I remember I looked at the clock in the kitchen when you rang the doorbell.'
'You saw a good film?' the detective asked Karl. 'I never go by reviews,' he explained to Chris in a breathy aside. 'It's what the people think, the audience.'
'Paul Scofield in Lear' Karl informed the detective.
'Ah, I saw that; that's excellent. Excellent. Marvelous '
'Yes, at the Crest,' Karl continued. 'The six-o'clock showing. Then immediately after I take the bus from in front of the theater and---'
'Please, that's not necessary,' the detective pro-tested with a gesture. 'Please.'
'I don't mind.'
'If you insist.'
'I get off at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street. Nine-twenty, perhaps. And then I walk to the house.'
'Look, you didn't have to tell me,' the detective told him, 'but anyway, thank you, it was very considerate. You liked the film?'
'It was excellent.'
'Yes, I thought so too. Exceptional. Well, now...' He turned back to Chris and to scribbling on the program. 'I've wasted your time, but I have a job.' He shrugged. 'Well, only a moment and finished. Tragic... tragic...' he breathed as he jotted down fragments in margins. 'Such a talent. And a man who knew people, I'm sure: how to handle them. With so many elements who could make him look good or maybe make him look bad---like the cameraman, the sound man, the composer, whatever.... Please correct me if I'm wrong, bud it seems to me nowadays a director of importance has also to be almost a Dale Carnegie. Am I wrong?'
'Oh, well, Burke had a temper,' Chris sighed.
The detective repositioned the program. 'Ah, well, maybe so with the big shots. People his size.' Once again he was scribbling. 'But the key is the little people, the menials, the people who handle the minor details that if they didn't handle right would be major details. Don't you think?'
Chris glanced at her fingernails and ruefully shook her head. 'When Burke let fly, he never discriminated,' she murmured with a weak, wry smile. 'No, sir. It was only when he drank, though.'
