The Cherry Blossom Corpse (14 page)

“Very well. But I'd rather not use the sitting-room, in case we wake her. Perhaps you would come along to my room?”

We walked down the corridor past Lorelei's bedroom, and went into Felicity's, which was next door. No doubt this was so that Lorelei could bang on the wall for her if she needed her, or merely if she felt like it. I could just picture her doing it. Felicity's bedroom was spartan but functional, like the rest, but it was cluttered with
more luggage than most, which I guessed was mostly Mrs. Zuckerman's. Felicity gestured me to a hard upright chair, and herself sat on the bed.

“Right. Can we be fairly quick? She will probably wake up in twenty minutes or so.”

“Of course. I'm interested for the moment in last night in Mrs. Zuckerman's room. What can you tell me about it?”

She replied without hesitation.

“I saw you talking outside to Mr. Mackay. I doubt if I can add anything. He and Mrs. Zuckerman talked about professional matters—me too, when I had anything to say. The Swede—is he a Swede?”

“Finn.”

“Right. The Finn sat there, pretty comatose, but drinking steadily. You'll be wanting to know about alibis, I suppose?”

“Certainly.

“Lorelei was in the sitting-room the whole time, of course. The Finn went to the john—twice I think. Mr. Mackay went to the john once, and once went to get some books. I fetched fresh drinks from the bar when necessary.”

“How long were those various absences?”

“I didn't particularly notice. The visits to the john lasted I suppose as long as visits to the john do last—know what I mean?”

I nodded. I too visited the john.

“Though I suppose with the Finn I was a bit more aware than I otherwise would be—wondering whether he would make it there, and make it back. I would think he probably took rather longer than usual, but I couldn't be sure. Mackay was pretty much what one would expect.”

“And his excursion to his room?”

“Longer . . . Of course I didn't time it.”

“What were you doing while he was away?”

“Doing?”

“Well, there you were, Mrs. Zuckerman and the comatose Finn. Most of the conversation up to that point had been between Mrs. Zuckerman and Mackay. What happened when he left? Did you make conversation with the Finn?”

“Oh no. I don't think that would have been possible. He hardly said a word all evening . . . I remember I plumped Mrs. Zuckerman up in her chair, poured her a brandy . . . got her a couple of the digestive biscuits that she likes to nibble. Maybe we talked a bit—about whether she was tired, that sort of thing. He wasn't away that long.”

“A quarter of an hour?”

She frowned.

“I wouldn't have thought so . . . But then time means less when . . . when you've had a couple of drinks.”

“Well, let's get on to the drinks. It was you who fetched them from the bar?”

“That's right.”

“How often?”

She thought.

“Three times is what I told the Norwegian police, and I think that's right. The third time it was just a refill for the Finn.”

“Otherwise you were getting drinks for all four?”

“Three. Mrs. Zuckerman has her own brandy.”

“Was there any delay at the bar? How long would each trip have taken you?”

“I don't remember any particular difficulty. People seemed to be spinning their drinks out, so there was no queue. Of course, I didn't time myself, but I would have said not more than ten minutes.”

“Do you remember when these trips were?”

“Oh no . . . Wait . . . The second time I went there was
a little portable television switched on behind the bar. The lady who runs the place wanted to watch because it was Thursday, and there was a P. D. James serial on television. We looked at the clock, and it was nearly nine. You were there in the bar, I remember.”

“That's right, I would have been.”

“And the last time I went must have been half an hour or so after that. The rest of us hadn't finished our drinks, not by a long chalk, but the Finn seemed to want more. It would have been a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes after I got back to the suite that we heard your sister—”

“Having hysterics. Well, thank you. That was very clear and helpful.”

“The times are approximate only.”

“Now, had either you or Mrs. Zuckerman met Amanda Fairchild before you came to this conference?”

“I'd rather you let Mrs. Zuckerman answer for herself, in general, but in this case I can say pretty definitely ‘no,' for both of us.”

“What about the other delegates?”

“I had met none of them before. Mrs. Zuckerman does not fraternize widely, so this has meant I haven't had a great deal of contact with any other writers. Mrs. Zuckerman will no doubt be able to tell you which of them she has met before.”

“You say ‘Mrs. Zuckerman.' She has been married, then?”

“I believe so.” I waited for more, but after a pause she said: “I would much rather you asked Mrs. Zuckerman any questions pertaining to herself. You must realize that anything I might tell you would be mere hearsay.”

“Of course. Still, you can testify that there is no husband in evidence at the moment.”

“That is correct.”

“Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me how you became Mrs. Zuckerman's—what?—secretary? nurse?”

“Nurse-companion. Naturally she has a secretary in New York. No, I don't mind at all. My mother and I lived in the next apartment to hers. My mother was an invalid for several years before she died, and I was always with her. After her death Mrs. Zuckerman offered me my present position, which I was happy to accept.”

“Why?”

The brutality of my question seemed to startle her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why were you happy to accept? Having nursed one invalid, most people wouldn't want to go straight over to nursing another. Mrs. Zuckerman seems not to enjoy good health.”

“Lorelei has a heart condition, which is likely to prove fatal within eighteen months or so. Some people have a gift for nursing, Superintendent. With some it's children, others it's old people. I must say I've never found it a wearisome chore. But I'm not going to pretend I'm being entirely unselfish either.”

“Oh? You hope for something in Mrs. Zuckerman's will?”

She pursed up her mouth, and looked very Sunday School indeed.

“Come, come, Mr. Trethowan. Of course not. Nothing of the sort. Why, I wouldn't even be able to claim to be a servant of particularly long standing.”

“I'm sorry. That was a crude, policeman's conjecture.”

“What I meant was that I, in my small way, am also a romantic writer. Three books to date, but I am learning my craft slowly. I could hardly learn it in better circumstances than by being with Mrs. Zuckerman. I act as a sort of sounding-board while her books take shape, and all the time I'm learning more and more about the art
of romance writing—and of course the commercial side of it.”

“Quite.”

“Mrs. Zuckerman is very generous with advice and information on the commercial level, as Mr. Mackay will testify. Many people wouldn't expect it, but she is.”

“You like her?”

She looked at me with a rather aggravatingly upright air.

“Affection doesn't enter into it. Lorelei wouldn't want or expect it to. I feel enormous gratitude and respect, and that is enough for her.”

“And she is, I imagine, enormously rich?”

“You keep coming back to money, I don't know why. I repeat, that is the sort of thing you ought to talk to her about.”

“But you do know that she sells well.”

“Oh, certainly. Her sales figures are stupendous. I can see you despise romance writing, Superintendent.” I made a gesture of dissent which was clearly as unconvincing as it was insincere. “You think of it as dream fodder for women. You can equally say that Westerns and war books are dream fodder for men, but I don't imagine you despise them half as much. All popular literature ministers to pretty basic human impulses; otherwise it wouldn't be popular literature. And if you do it skilfully—and Lorelei is supremely skilful—I don't see why you should be ashamed. She certainly isn't, and I don't feel ashamed for her.”

I felt rebuked. Felicity Maxwell followed up her advantage by getting up.

“She'll be waking up soon. I think I've told you all I can.” She led the way out into the corridor, and shut the door in a firm, housekeeperly sort of way, as if she suspected I might want to nip back in. “If you wait for
a little, I'll get her into the sitting-room and make her presentable.”

She went into Mrs. Zuckerman's bedroom, leaving me casting around in my mind for images that could represent Lorelei before she had been made to look presentable.

M
RS. ZUCKERMAN HAVING BEEN MADE PRESENTABLE
, I was summoned into the presence, to find her sitting in an armchair with the sources of her comfort around her—a bottle, a packet of cigarettes, a plateful of digestive biscuits. The chair she was in was probably a perfectly good chair under any normal bum, but she managed to make it look uncomfortable. It was the cheerless expression, the straight back, the black bombazine dress above the thick black stockings, the air of a lifestyle deliberately chosen to exclude joy. Or to exclude what normal people would call joy, for there was about her generally some substratum of self-satisfaction, a hugging of herself over some experience or some power, which I found disgusting but which was indicative of some twisted form
of pleasure. I didn't necessarily connect it, though, with the death of Amanda Fairchild. I had felt it in her since she arrived.

When Felicity Maxwell introduced me, Lorelei Zuckerman gazed on me malevolently, and gave me not so much as a nod. This was clearly one of her little routines, for I remembered her practising it on Amanda on our first night. Her mouth was working, as if she was masticating some choice titbit, but beyond that she registered no reaction to me. She said: “Put another cushion at my back,” and the eyes glinted when Felicity hurried to obey. She got more pleasure, I think, from ordering about this cool, self-possessed girl than she would from tyrannizing over a drudge. Being slave-master to born slaves is the first pleasure that palls in the power game. Lorelei's tastes were now much more recondite.

When Felicity had sat me down, she said in her competent-nurse voice: “Well, I'll be in my room, should you want me, Lorelei.” And then she went out.

The brandy and water at Lorelei's elbow had been mixed to her specifications before I had been let in. Now, still registering nothing at my presence in the room, Mrs. Zuckerman took a sip, and looked ahead of her thoughtfully, as if meditating some particularly luckless star-crossing of her fictional lovers.

“I suppose you can guess that I would like to discuss last night, Mrs. Zuckerman,” I began, trying to speak in a casual voice to demonstrate that I was not impressed by her performance. Her strong, square, bombazined shoulders sketched a shrug.

“I don't see why,” she said in her harsh drawl, like a badly-played clarinet. “There were three people to testify that I was here all evening.” She thought for a moment, and then added: “Two of whom had all their wits about them.”

She had anticipated my next point, no doubt intentionally.

“Exactly,” I said. “One was, if I'm not mistaken, thoroughly soused. And if one of the other two was out of the room, and if the other of them was in your pay or your confidence . . .”

Lorelei laughed harshly.

“If you think I'm a sham cripple, you can get all the medical details from my doctor, my heart specialist and my hospital. Maxwell will give you all the details.”

“I don't seriously doubt your medical condition,” I said, though I did make a note in my mind to get the details from Felicity. “But everything has to be checked. And it's important I talk to you to establish the alibis of the other three. Your corroboration is vital.”

Mrs. Zuckerman's face assumed a contemptuous expression. An alibi from her, it seemed, was to be regarded as a favour rather than as a right. She volunteered nothing. I said:

“Your nurse-companion fetched fresh drinks for herself and the two men. Do you remember when and how often she did that?”

Felicity Maxwell had left Lorelei's cigarettes and matches on a little table by the left arm of Lorelei's chair. Now, slowly, she took a cigarette, fitted it into a long holder, lit it, and puffed smoke in my direction. It was a piece of insolence, or perhaps a display of power and prerogative. I sat there, neither helping nor reacting. She was all too used to having people jump to her whims. Finally she spoke, in that harsh, uningratiating drawl:

“She certainly renewed the drinks. More than once. I would guess three times. But I had my own drink. I drink nothing but brandy and water. Except for an occasional sherry. I certainly didn't notice what time she fetched them. Why should I?”

“No reason at all. And the men, too, left the room on various errands, did they not? What about the Finn, for example?”

She went through the same process of lengthy consideration—making it seem as though she was considering not what to tell me, but whether.

“I think he went to the john. If he didn't, he must have a pretty peculiar constitution. Don't remember anything about it, only that he went.”

“And Mr. Mackay?”

Again that aggravating silence. Thank God we were not being broadcast.

“Is that his name? He went to fetch some books. His own, of course. Don't remember anything more about it.”

“Do you remember how long these various absences were?”

“No.”

“Miss Maxwell's absences, for example, would have been longer than the Finn's?”