“Address?”
“I live at the school, Holbrook Hall. Mr. Lennard called in sick a few days ago and I’ve been trying to get in touch with him on a certain matter. When I couldn’t, I drove down here to see him, thinking he might be quite sick.”
“Or drunk,” Abercrombie said. “But I knew he couldn’t be drunk. He was a Mormon — they’re not supposed to drink. He wasn’t sick, either. He was messing around with some girl, told me he was going to be married and wanted to bring the bride here until they could find a nice apartment. This is a single unit, see, and we don’t allow—”
“You and I will talk later, Mr. Abercrombie,” the lieutenant said. “I’d like to question Mrs. Holbrook alone for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
They sat in the back seat of Lieutenant Peterson’s car. He closed the windows and turned on the air-conditioner.
“I called my lawyer,” Mrs. Holbrook said. “I believe I should wait for him before answering any questions.”
“That’s your privilege, ma’am.”
There was a silence. It didn’t seem to bother the lieutenant. He leaned back and closed his eyes, as if he’d been waiting for a chance to take a nap.
“I’ve never been in a situation like this before,” she said.
He didn’t find the statement interesting enough to make him open his eyes.
“I mean, this sort of thing doesn’t happen to a woman like me.”
“Women like you don’t usually go around picking locks either.”
“I’ve never done it before except at school when I’ve had to free some student who’d been locked in a room.”
“What did you use?”
“A picklock.”
“Show it to me.”
She opened her purse, taking no pains to hide the large envelope from Roger’s kitchen table. It bore no sender’s name or address; there was nothing to connect it with its source. She showed him the picklock.
“This belongs in a burglar’s tool kit,” he said, “not a lady’s handbag.”
“I gave you my reason for having it and my reason for using it. When you’re trying to extricate a wildly hysterical child from a locked room you don’t question the legality of what or how you do it. You just do it. On the last occasion it was a girl, fifteen. She wasn’t hysterical. She was unconscious from an overdose of Seconal. Her mouth and tongue and throat were bright red the way Roger’s were. The girl lived. I don’t think Roger will.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve had some experience with death. Roger’s body was already cooling.” Her voice shook in spite of her efforts to control it. “I’m — I was very fond of Roger. His work with the students was so positive, he emphasized what they had, not what they didn’t have. He gave them a sense of identity.”
“What about his identity?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You’ve done pretty well so far.”
He gave her back the picklock and she returned it to her purse.
“Was Mr. Lennard depressed lately?” he said.
“No.”
“Did he say anything to you about getting married?”
“No.”
“Did you know he was having a love affair?”
“Yes.”
“Were you acquainted with the girl?”
“It wasn’t a girl.”
She could see Aragon’s old Chevy trying to get into the road that bisected the court. A patrolman waved him away and he backed up into the street.
“What’s his name?” the lieutenant said.
“Whose name?”
“The man you just recognized.”
“He’s my lawyer, Tomas Aragon.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I never heard of him either until a few days ago,” she said. “As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even know yet that he’s my lawyer.”
“You have surprises for everyone, Mrs. Holbrook.”
“I’ve been getting quite a few myself lately.”
“Well, let’s see how Mr. Aragon reacts to his new client.”
The lieutenant helped her out of the car and they stood waiting for Aragon’s approach. After the shade and coolness of the air-conditioned car the sun was blinding and the heat oppressive, but the lieutenant neither blinked nor unbuttoned his coat. He said to Aragon, “Mrs. Holbrook’s lawyer, I presume?”
Aragon acknowledged his sudden appointment with a somewhat baffled smile and the two men exchanged names as they shook hands.
“Mrs. Holbrook and I have just concluded a pleasant little chat,” the lieutenant said. “She has an interesting new hobby you should discuss with her some time. You might want to encourage her to take up something more conventional, like needlepoint.”
Aragon looked at Mrs. Holbrook. “You told him about the picklock?”
“I had to. Abercrombie saw me use it.”
“You wouldn’t make a very good criminal, Mrs. Holbrook.”
“Don’t sell her short,” the lieutenant said. “She may be telling me a little so I won’t ask her for a lot.” Then to Mrs. Holbrook: “I’d like you to stick around for a while until I talk to Mr. Abercrombie and get a report from the hospital on Mr. Lennard. Does that suit you?”
“It will have to, I guess.”
“You guessed right.”
He didn’t offer them the use of his car to wait in, so they walked back and sat on a bus stop bench under an oak tree.
“Did you tell him I was your lawyer?” Aragon asked.
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. If anything comes up which makes you and Mr. Jasper adversaries, my prior commitment is to him.”
“Nothing has come up. Perhaps nothing will.”
“I’d like to find out a little bit more about what I’m getting into. Did you put the envelope back as I asked you to?”
“No.”
“No? That’s it, no?”
“That’s it.”
He said a word in Spanish that he hadn’t spoken since he was a teenager.
She looked at him curiously. “So what does that mean?”
“It means, what am I going to do with this dame and how did I get into a crazy situation like this?”
“It means all that?”
“To me it does.”
“You’ll have to spell it for me some time.”
“I don’t think so,” Aragon said. “Where’s the envelope now?”
“In my purse.”
“Will you let me see it?”
“What good would that do? It’s still sealed. I don’t intend to open it until I’m alone.”
“What have you got to lose?”
“It’s what Roger has to lose that concerns me. There might be something in here that, if he survives, he wouldn’t want people to know, things he might regret having written. The envelope is full and carries an extra stamp. There’s more to it than just a simple suicide note.”
“It may be more than just a simple suicide,” Aragon said. “When I came in I heard a couple of policemen talking about an attack. Someone hit Roger a hard blow on the right side of his face. His hands were unmarked, so apparently he didn’t put up much of a fight, either because he was knocked unconscious or because he didn’t want to.”
“Abercrombie told me Roger had a visitor around lunchtime, a big man wearing a grey suit and Panama hat. Abercrombie heard them quarreling.”
“Timothy North is a big man, and in view of Roger’s impending marriage he and Roger had a lot to quarrel about. But I somehow doubt that he owns any suits. They’re not part of his lifestyle... Mr. Jasper is also a big man.”
“Yes.”
“He probably owns a couple of dozen suits.”
“Very likely.”
“What’s more, he’s left-handed.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“The injuries to Roger’s face were on the right side, one of the policemen said.”