Laura. Vera Caspary

personal for scrutiny.”

      “But I wanted you to help me identify some of the people whose names are in her address book.”

      “Do you think the murderer will be there?”

      “It’s possible.”

      “How’d we know him? Do you think he might swoon at the bier?”

      “Will you come?”

      “No,” I said firmly, and added, “Let Shelby help you this time.”

      “He’s a chief mourner. You must come. No one will see you. Use the side entrance and tell them you’re meeting me. I’ll be on the balcony.”

      Her friends had loved Laura and been desolate at her passing, but they had failed to enjoy the excitement. Like Mark, they hoped for some crisis of discovery. Eyes that should have been downcast in grief and piety were sliding this way and that in the hope of perceiving the flushed countenance, the guilty gesture that would enable lips, later, to boast, “I knew it the moment I saw that sly face and noted the way he rubbed his hands together during the Twenty-Third Psalm.”

      She lay in a coffin covered in white silk. Pale ringless hands had been folded against the lavender-tinted white moiré of her favorite evening gown. An arrangement of gardenias, draped like a confirmation veil, covered the ruined face. The only mourners deserving seats in the section reserved for deepest suffering were Auntie Sue and Shelby Carpenter. Her sister, brother-in-law, and some far-western cousins had been unwilling or unable to make the long journey for the sake of this hour in the mortuary. After the service was read, the organ pealed and Heatherstone attendants wheeled the casket into a private chamber from which it was later transferred to the crematorium.

      It is from the lush sentimentality of the newspaper versions that I prune this brief account of obsequies. I did not attend. Mark waited in vain.

      As he descended from the balcony and joined the slowly moving mass, he noted a hand, gloved in black, signalling him. Bessie Clary pushed her way through the crowd.

      “I got something to tell you, Mr. McPherson.”

      He took her arm. “Shall we go upstairs where it’s quiet or does this place depress you?”

      “If you wouldn’t mind, we could go up to the flat,” Bessie suggested. “It’s up there, what I got to show you.”

      Mark had his car. Bessie sat beside him primly, black gloved hands folded in the lap of her black silk dress.

      “It’s hot enough to kill a cat,” she said by way of making conversation.

      “What have you got to tell me?”

      “You needn’t to yell at me. I ain’t afraid of cops, or dicks either.” She drew out her best handkerchief and blew such a clarion note that her nose seemed an instrument fashioned for the purpose of sounding defiance. “I was brought up to spit whenever I saw one.”

      “I was brought up to hate the Irish,” Mark observed, “but I’m a grown man now. I haven’t asked for love, Miss Clary. What is it you want to tell me?”

      “You won’t get on my good side by that Miss Clary stuff either. Bessie’s my name, I’m domestic and I got nothing to be ashamed of.”

      They drove across the Park in silence. When they passed the policeman who stood guard at the door of Laura’s house, Bessie smiled down upon him with virtuous hauteur. Once in the apartment, she assumed the airs of ownership, raised windows, adjusted curtains, emptied trays filled with ashes from Mark’s pipe.

      “Cops, brought up in barns,” she sniffed as she drew hatpins from out of the structure that rode high on her head. “Don’t know how to act when they get in a decent house.” When she had drawn off black gloves, folded them and stored them in her bag, settled herself on the straightest chair, and fixed a glassy stare upon his face, she asked, “What do they do to people that hide something from the cops?”

      The question, so humble in contrast with her belligerence, provided him with a weapon. “So you’ve been trying to shield the murderer? That’s dangerous, Bessie!”

      Her knotted hands unfolded. “What makes you think that I know the murderer?”

      “By hiding evidence, you have become an accessory after the fact. What is the evidence, and what was your purpose in concealing it?”

      Bessie turned her eyes ceilingward as though she expected help from heaven. “If I’d hold out on you, you’d never know nothing about it. And if they hadn’t played that music at the funeral, I’d never’ve told you. Church music makes me soft.”

      “Whom were you shielding, Bessie?”

      “Her.”

      “Miss Hunt?”

      Bessie nodded grimly.

      “Why, Bessie? She’s dead.”

      “Her reputation ain’t,” Bessie observed righteously and went to the corner cabinet, in which Laura had always kept a small stock of liquor. “Just look at this.”

      Mark leaped. “Hey, be careful. There may be fingerprints.”

      Bessie laughed. “Maybe there was a lot of fingerprints around here! But the cops never seen them.”

      “You wiped them off, Bessie? For God’s sakes!”

      “That ain’t all I wiped off,” Bessie chuckled. “I cleaned off the bed and table in there and the bathroom before the cops come.”

      Mark seized bony wrists. “I’ve a good mind to take you into custody.”

      She pulled her hands away. “I don’t believe in fingerprints anyway. All Saturday afternoon the cops was sprinkling white powder around my clean flat. Didn’t do them no good because I polished all the furniture on Friday after she’d went to the office. If they found any fingerprints, they was mine.”

      “If you don’t believe in fingerprints, why were you so anxious to get rid of those in the bedroom?”

      “Cops got dirty minds. I don’t want the whole world thinking she was the kind that got drunk with a fellow in her bedroom, God rest her soul.”

      “Drunk in her bedroom? Bessie, what does this mean?”

      “So help me,” Bessie swore, “there was two glasses.”

      He seized her wrists again. “Why are you making up this story, Bessie? What have you to gain by it?”

      Hers was the hauteur of an enraged duchess. “What right you got to yell at me? You don’t believe me, huh? Say, I was the one that cared about her reputation. You never even knew her. What are you getting so mad about?”

      Mark retreated, the sudden display of temper puzzling and shaming him. His fury had grown out of all proportions to its cause.

      Bessie drew out a bottle. “Where do you think I found this? Right there.” She pointed through the open door to the bedroom. “On the table by the bed. With two dirty glasses.”

      Laura’s bedroom was as chaste and peaceful as the chamber of a young girl whose experience of love has been confined to sonnets, dreams, and a diary. The white Swiss spread lay smooth and starched, the pillow rounded neatly at the polished pine headboard, a white-and-blue knitted afghan folded at the foot.

      “I cleaned up the room and washed the glasses before the first cop got here. Lucky I come to my senses in time,” Bessie sniffed. “The bottle I put in the cabinet so’s no one would notice. It wasn’t her kind of liquor. I can tell you this much, Mr. McPherson, this here bottle was brought in after I left on Friday.”

      Mark examined the bottle. It was Three Horses Bourbon, a brand favored by frugal tipplers. “Are you sure, Bessie? How do you know? You must keep close watch on the liquor that’s used in this place.”

      Bessie’s iron jaw shot