Going Out in Style (12 page)

Mrs. MacGregor’s body had been discovered by Albert at nine o’clock, as the party was starting to wind down. He had gone into the kitchen to get more champagne, and had found Mrs. MacGregor face down on the floor in a pool of her own blood. A ten-inch kitchen knife, snatched from the rack of knives over the counter, was buried squarely in the middle of her back. Albert had reacted as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time, which in fact it was beginning to. He had gone straight to the
phone and called the police. Then he had gone back into the living room and said, “I’m afraid something terrible has happened.”

The police had arrived fifteen minutes later. Janovy had spoken to everyone except Susan, who had taken her son to Dora’s house and then come back (“I can’t have Harold here,” she had said in her practical way, before bundling him into the car), and Albert himself.

Now he was trying to interview Susan, but it wasn’t easy.

“Mrs. MacGregor was talking to your brother when you came into the kitchen yesterday?”

“That’s right. I’ve already told you so.”

“And she was saying—?”

Susan made an impatient gesture. “I don’t remember exactly what it was. Do you, George?”

George sat clutching his viola and bow. His face had the same anxious, unhappy expression as Susan’s. “I don’t know. Susie and I had just come in. She was saying something to Albert, but she stopped when she saw us.”

Susan said impatiently, “Mrs. MacGregor was always going on about something—oh, I know it’s terrible to say, but it’s true. She loved to gossip, to blow things out of proportion. I’ve learned not to pay any attention.”

But this time, thought Janovy, you were wrong, weren’t you? As if she knew what he was thinking, she stared at him defiantly and said,

“This time I should have listened. But how was I to
know
?”

Albert said calmly, “What next, Detective? What next?”

He was sitting in the dining room at the great mahogany table. The room was ornate, with oil paintings on the
walls, a Calder mobile hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and heavy blue silk curtains. Gretchen sat next to him, his hand in hers. Jessie had had a fit when the body was discovered, and after hysterically claiming total ignorance of anything having to do with murder in general and this murder in particular, she had been allowed by the police to go home.

Janovy looked at Albert sharply. He seemed calm and composed; too composed, thought Janovy. It wasn’t natural.

“Please, Dr. Whitaker, just tell me what Mrs. MacGregor was saying to you yesterday.”

Albert said vaguely, “It was something to do with something she saw the night my mother was killed … I’m not quite sure … she could have meant anything, really. She said there was something she just realized—something she should have seen but didn’t, or might have seen but couldn’t, or would have seen but hadn’t.… Is that helpful, Detective?”

Janovy, remembering Palomino Grove and mushrooms, rose to his feet.

“Do you have anything to add, Dr. Schneider?”

Gretchen jumped a bit. “Oh, no, no, of course not. I wasn’t here yesterday. I told you already that Mrs. MacGregor had been hinting around to all of us. You know, Detective, we want to be helpful, but Albert’s had an awful shock, and I think he should go lie down for a while. I mean, all this happening right after his mother’s death—you understand how we feel—”

“Yes. Just one more thing, Dr. Whitaker. Was there anything else unusual about Mrs. MacGregor’s behavior in the past few days?”

Albert took his glasses off and polished them assiduously on the table linen. With the glasses off, his face looked less moon-eyed and more sensitive than ever. Janovy
could see that it was marked with deep lines which seemed to have come all at once, recently. Albert said thoughtfully, “There’s the coat, of course.”

“The coat?”

Albert explained. “She was the right height for it, you see … at least, that’s what Susan said—you know,” he said abruptly, “it’s not Susan’s fault that I didn’t call the police yesterday. I hope she didn’t make it out that it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh … well …” He explained that he had wanted to go to the police, but his sister had stopped him. “But it’s not her fault. I should have called anyway. After all, Mrs. MacGregor was talking to
me
.”

Janovy cast a look over his shoulder at Fish, who was sitting nearby taking notes. So Susan had stopped her brother from calling the police, had she? Fish’s face showed no emotion at all. His eyes were bulging, but then Fish’s eyes always bulged. Janovy said, “I see. Yes. Where is the coat now?”

“It’s here, in the front closet. She—Mrs. MacGregor wore it here today. She was very proud of it, I think.”

Janovy thought this over. Perhaps it was something about the coat … or something
missing
from the coat.…

“Thank you, Dr. Whitaker. If you don’t mind, we’ll take the coat with us when we leave. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“You’re welcome.”

On the way out, Janovy stopped at the front closet and opened it. There, hanging in the center, was the mink coat. Janovy took it out and looked it over carefully. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nice quality, he thought. Nothing obviously missing.

He felt in the pockets. Nothing there. He draped it over one arm and said, “Come along, Fish.”

“… so the poor old woman was stabbed to death in the kitchen while the rest of us were out partying and giving birthday presents,” said Snooky.

“Not all of you,” said Bernard.

“What?”

“Not all of you were out partying when Mrs. MacGregor was killed.”

“No.” Snooky moved restlessly in his chair. He looked pale and drained; he had lost weight recently and his cheekbones stood out sharply on his face. “No, I guess not.”

Bernard had ushered his brother-in-law into his study and for the past hour had been grilling him relentlessly about the birthday party. Who was where, who talked to whom, and most importantly, who left the room and when.…

Snooky, as it turned out, had an excellent memory for these kinds of things. His account was detailed and lucid, but not, in the end, particularly helpful. People had been coming and going all evening, and it was impossible to pin down exactly when Mrs. MacGregor had been killed. She had been found at nine o’clock, the police were there by nine-fifteen, and Snooky had heard them say the death could have occurred anytime between seven-thirty and eight-thirty.

“Who left the room then?”

Snooky lifted an eyebrow. “Contrary to your expectations, Bernard, I wasn’t sitting with my eyes glued to my watch the entire time. I don’t know. Let’s see … Albert went out at one point to get more punch … Gretchen
was going back and forth to the kitchen, helping out … Susan was running herself ragged.… Well, I really don’t know.”

Bernard looked at him coldly. “So much for keeping your eyes open, eh?”

“I’m sorry. What can I say? If you want my personal opinion, I think that kid Harold did it. There’s something actively evil about him. Have you noticed this?”

Bernard was not interested. He was gazing out of the window into darkness.

Snooky sat with his forehead wrinkled. “As far as I can tell, the only person who never left the room, even once, was Aunt Etta. She came in at five o’clock, sat down in a chair in the middle of the room and never budged. And Susan’s friend George was in the room most of the time, too. I remember because he was playing some incredibly long piece he wrote himself, and Susan kept asking him to stop.”

“So Mrs. MacGregor had been hinting about something—something she saw or didn’t see?”

“Yes. To nearly everybody, it turns out. Aunt Etta told me that Mrs. MacGregor was never happier than when she had a secret like that. She could spin it out for days. Of course, in this case she didn’t get much of a chance.” Despite his flippant tone, Snooky looked depressed. He slouched in his chair, fiddling idly with a rubber band he had unearthed from the clutter on top of Bernard’s desk.

“Could anyone else have gotten into the house—maybe through the back door, into the kitchen?”

“That’s the first thing the police checked for. All the doors and windows were locked on the inside. It’s got to be someone who was at that party, Bernard.”

“Looks like it. Five people, then, assuming you’re right about Aunt Etta never leaving the room.”

“Yes.”

“Six people, counting you.”

A wan smile broke over Snooky’s face. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Bernard. Your trust is a rare and beautiful thing.”

“Stop twanging that rubber band,” said Bernard. “Go lie down. You look awful. And Snooky—”

“Yes?”

“Turn off the lights when you leave.”

After Snooky had departed, Bernard sat quietly in the darkness for a while. Then he switched on his desk lamp, took out a small notebook and fished around in the top drawer for a large green Magic Marker. He opened the notebook and wrote in his neat, cramped hand,

SMTHNG SH DDNT C?

“Something she didn’t see?” he said out loud, and grunted to himself. Bernard had developed his own private shorthand for taking notes. It was his firm belief that vowels were not required for reading comprehension. The fact that he had often been proved tragically wrong, as when he was unable to decipher his own notes later, had never dampened his enthusiasm.

Underneath he wrote:

CT?

This looked very much like the abbreviation for Connecticut, but in fact stood for
coat
. He stared at that for a while.

Under that he wrote:

and underlined it heavily.

Then:

and

“Greed,” he said out loud, and grunted cheerfully. “Marriage.”

Bernard had always made a curious grunting sound when his work was going well. Now the only sound in his study was the dog’s snoring and his happy porcine grunts as his hand traveled down the page, noting points and questions for future investigation.…

Maya came into Snooky’s bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. Outdoors, it was five degrees Fahrenheit; in the third-floor guest bedroom, it felt like it was ten below. She said, “Good Lord, Snooky, how does it get so
cold
in here?”

“I don’t know, My.” He was sitting up, wrapped in a thick cocoon of blankets, leaning against a pile of pillows. “I don’t understand it myself. Ask Bernard.”

She regarded him quietly. He held a rubber band between his fingers and was plucking at it listlessly.

“Snooky.”

“Yes?”

“I won’t say I told you so.”

“Thank you, Maya. Thank you more than I can ever say.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No. No. I’ll just sit here and freeze to death. Please tell Bernard he can go out and dance on my grave.”

“Something hot, maybe?”

“Well … a cup of tea would be nice.”

A few minutes later she returned with a steaming cup of tea. “With milk and honey. Just the way you like it.”

“Thanks, My. You’re too good to me.”

“I turned up the heat.”

“What?”

“I turned up the heat.”

“Oh, don’t do that, Maya. You’ll take away Bernard’s only joy in life. You know he loves to watch me suffer.”

“I think you’re going through enough without having to freeze,” Maya said mildly. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. No, I don’t. Thank you.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. It’s just … Maya?”

“Still here, Snooky.”

“I want to get whoever’s behind this. I want to find out who it is, and then I want to bring him in. It’s not right, Maya. I’m telling you, it’s not right.”

She regarded him with concern. His face was set in that stubborn attitude she knew so well. “Snooky—”

“Yes?”

He had lost so much weight recently, she thought. As unreliable as he generally was, one thing you had to say about him was that he was a loyal friend. She knew he had not been sleeping well. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would wake up and hear the television on downstairs. Whenever he was depressed, he would watch TV. “TV is my friend,” he would say, flicking the dial.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can say.”

“I guess not.”

“Just watch out for yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me, Maya. I’m like a cat.”

“Oh,
please
.”

“Anyway, you should worry about Bernard instead. He’s been thinking about this thing, too.”

“I don’t have to worry about Bernard,” Maya said tartly. “He’ll never get killed.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he never leaves the house, Snooky. Now, can I make you something nice and hot to eat?”

“No fingerprints on the knife?” Janovy asked.

Fish shook his head. “No, sir. None besides Mrs. MacGregor’s anyway. Hers were there, faintly blurred. We found this—” he produced a red-and-blue checked
kitchen towel—“on the counter nearby. The killer must have wrapped it around his hand before picking up the knife.”

“
His
hand, Fish?”

“Or hers, of course.”

“Would this have taken a great deal of strength?”

“No. The knife was sharp. A woman could easily have done it.”