“Did she give you any reason?”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously, nearly dislodging the towel. “I asked her why she wouldn’t talk to him when he called, and she just said she wasn’t interested anymore. Then I asked her if anything went wrong, and she said no. I really felt guilty that things had gone bad, because she met Sparky through me.”
“I’d like to hear how that happened.”
Polly wrinkled her nose and fidgeted some more, then fixed her hazel eyes on me as if to come forth with a revelation. “I don’t know if Noreen told you this, but I had gone out with Sparky a few times myself, and one night when we came back here for a drink after we’d been out, he met Noreen.”
“Interesting. How well would you say you knew Linville?”
“Oh, we had a few dates. He was a lot of fun, knew a lot of people.” Her long fingers were flying again as she talked.
“The newspapers made him sound like he was more than a tad on the wild side.”
“Well, he loved to drive fast, too fast, I suppose, and he liked to hit all the hot spots, but he was really okay.” She mouthed it without conviction.
“Back to Noreen. What’s your opinion as to what happened between her and Linville?”
This time I got both nose-wrinkling and eye-rolling. “I don’t know. Maybe he put some moves on her or something.”
“Was that typical of him?”
Polly blushed and this time didn’t bother with the dramatics. “I really wouldn’t know,” she replied stiffly.
“You can do better than that,” I said, easing forward and leaning on my knees. “One man is dead, another has been charged with his murder, and your roommate is devastated. This is no time for getting coy. I know this is sensitive stuff, but to use a cliché, a life may be on the line. Now, tell me about you and Sparky Linville.”
She did, and it wasn’t at all pretty. She deserves more than a modicum of privacy, however, so I will only report that her own unpleasant experience with Linville — also on their final date — was not unlike Noreen’s. Tears came early on in her narrative, and by the end she was sobbing into the handkerchief I had passed to her.
“Miss Mars, I promise you none of this will ever get beyond Mr. Wolfe and me unless it is absolutely vital to establish an individual’s innocence or guilt. But I must ask one more tough question: Given your own experience with Linville, how could you let Noreen James go out with him?”
She moaned and sniffled into the handkerchief before raising a tearstained face. “Oh, God, that’s the worst part of all. I couldn’t bear to tell anybody what happened to me — not my parents, not Noreen, not even my shrink. And I’m a better actor than Noreen is; I kept it hidden. Also, one thing I didn’t mention: Sparky had gotten interested in Noreen before... before what happened to me. He even asked me — this was before our last date, if you want to call it that — he asked me if I minded his calling her.”
“And?”
“And I told him no, I didn’t mind, which was true. I was never serious about Sparky, I just like to have a good time, and he knew how to have a good time. I mean, you know, not like what—”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” I said solemnly. “So it was after your episode with him that he asked Noreen to go out?”
“Yes!” she spat it angrily, dabbing at her eyes. “After Noreen told me he’d called her, she wanted to know if I had any objections, and I was flabbergasted. I stuttered around and at least said one true thing — that I wasn’t interested in Sparky. I was so damn stupid. I wish I’d said more to her. Anyway, when Noreen wasn’t around, I phoned Sparky and told him to stay the hell away from her. I said if he didn’t, I was going to tell her what happened to me.”
“His reaction?”
“He said nothing happened to me that I didn’t want to have happen. And then he laughed — he laughed. He told me that I’d never say anything about it to anybody because that would make me look bad, and he said that not looking bad was more important to me than anything else. And dammit, maybe he was right. Mr. Goodwin, I hated him for what he did to me, I hated him for what he did to Noreen, and I hated myself most of all for not warning her about him.” Her tears had turned to rage. “God, I’m such a coward.”
“Easy,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “How close are you and Noreen?”
“We went to college together and we’ve been roommates here for two years. But even with all that, we don’t talk much about, well... the really personal stuff, if you know what I mean.”
That confirmed what Noreen had told me. “I do. What do you think occurred between Noreen and Linville?”
She wrung my damp handkerchief nervously. “Huh. That’s obvious. She never told me, but she didn’t have to. I could tell from the way she acted. And even knowing that, I didn’t try to comfort her. Some friend I am, all the way around!”
“So here you were, two roommates with apparently identical experiences, and nobody said a thing — to each other or to anyone else?”
Polly nodded soberly. I wondered how many others, like her and Noreen, were locked in self-imposed prisons of silence because of similar horrors. Far more than those who spoke out against their attackers, I supposed. “Miss Mars,” I said gently, “I’m sure you know Michael James. What is your opinion about his arrest?”
“How do you mean?”
“Do you think he killed Linville?”
She twitched her shoulders twice, then raised her dewy eyes. I’d buy toothpaste from her any day. “I don’t know Michael terribly well — oh, I’ve met him a few times, although we never talked a lot to each other. But, yeah, I guess it wouldn’t surprise me at all that he did it.”
“Any particular reason for saying that?”
“Mr. Goodwin, I’ve got an older brother too — his name is Chris — and if he ever found out what had happened to me, like Michael must have found out with Noreen, I honestly think he would have gone berserk and killed Sparky, too.”
“Miss Mars,” I said, watching her face carefully, “where were you on Wednesday night?”
“Wednesday night? Let’s see, I was... Wait a minute, why do you want to know?” She recoiled, realizing where I was coming from.
“Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
“So you think I’m the one who...” She let it trail off, looking at me reproachfully.
“I didn’t say that, but in fact, you must admit you had a reason for intensely disliking Linville.”
“And now you know that reason.”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” I said.
She readjusted the towel with a hand, letting it come to rest on her right cheek, then punched up her reproachful look, obviously hoping I would say something to make her feel better or else let her off the hook. I kept my mouth shut and my face expressionless and waited.
“Wednesday night,” she repeated dully. “I was... I had a late photo assignment, in a studio on East Fifty-second.”
“How late?”
“Until... about seven-thirty.”
“Then what?”
“I had dinner at a little Italian place on Sixth Avenue up near the park.”
“Alone?”
“Yes,” she said. “I got out of there about nine and took a cab back here.”
“Again, alone?”
“Yes. Nobody was here. Noreen was staying at her mother’s place, but you probably know that.”
“And the rest of the evening?”
“I stayed home, watched a little TV, did some ironing, went to bed around eleven. I guess I don’t have an alibi, do I, for when Sparky got killed?” she said in what she tried to make a defiant tone.
“I guess not.”