Read Enough! (A Travesty and Ordo) for Free Online

face value and said, “That’s
right. But are you suggesting—” I paused, as though struck by a sudden
disquieting thought. “Did somebody do something to her?”
    He frowned. “Such as
what, Mr. Thorpe?”
    “I don’t know, I was just—I just
remembered what she was saying last night.”
    “And what was that?”
    “It was all very vague,” I said.
“She had the idea there was a man hanging around, following her. She
pointed him out last night, standing on the sidewalk across the street.”
    “You saw this man?”
    “He was just a man,” I said.
“He didn’t seem interested in Laura or me in particular. She had the idea
her ex-husband had hired somebody to make trouble for her.”
    “Do you know Mr. Penney?”
    “No. I believe he’s in Chicago or
somewhere.”
    He nodded. “Could you describe the man
you saw last night?”
    “I only saw him for a minute. Across the street.”
    “As best you can.”
    “Well, I’d say he was in his mid-forties.
Wearing a brown topcoat. He seemed heavyset, and I got
the impression of a large nose. Sort of a W. C. Fields
nose.”
    Bray nodded throughout my description, but
wrote nothing down. “And you say Mrs. Penney seemed afraid of this
man?”
    “Well, not afraid, exactly. Upset, I
suppose. I offered to come upstairs with her if she was worried, but she said
she wanted to phone her husband. I had the idea she wanted privacy for
that.”
    “Mm-hm.”
    “Sergeant Bray, uh—Is
it Sergeant Bray?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well—Could you
tell me what happened?”
    “We’re not entirely sure as yet,” he
told me. “Mrs. Penney fell in this room and struck her head. She might
have been alone here, she might have slipped. On the other hand, it seems
likely there was someone with her.”
    “Why?” I asked, and movement to my
left made me turn my head.
    It was another one, in black pea jacket and
brown slacks, coming into the room from deeper in the apartment and carrying
what I recognized immediately as my socks. As I caught sight of him he said,
“Al, I found these and—Oh, sorry.”
    “Come on in, Fred. This is Carey
Thorpe.”
    Fred grinned in recognition. “Right. Dinner, seven-thirty.”
    “Mr. Thorpe,” Bray said, “my
partner, Detective Sergeant Staples.”
    I got to my feet, unsure whether or not we
were supposed to shake hands. “How do you do?”
    “Fair to
middling.” This one was a bit younger than Bray and looked more
easygoing. He said, “Would you be the movie reviewer?”
    “As a matter of fact,
yes.”
    “I read you all the time,” Staples
told me. “In The Kips Bay Voice . My wife and I
both, we think you’re terrific, we swear by you.”
    “Well, thank you very much.”
    “If you say a movie’s good, we go. If you
say it stinks, we stay away from it.”
    “I hardly know what to say,” I
admitted, and it was the truth. Such extravagant praise had never come my way
before.
    “Pauline Kael, Vincent Canby, we just
don’t care.”
    Even praise can reach a surfeit, and I was
happy to be rescued by Bray, who interrupted his partner by saying, “What
have you got there, Fred?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
He held them up like a dead rabbit. “Socks.”
    Bray seemed to find that significant. “Ah
hah,” he said. “I thought so.”
    I said, “Excuse me, is that a clue?”
    Staples probably would have answered, but Bray
asked me a question first: “Was Mrs. Penney involved with any man in
particular, that you know of?”
    “A lover?”
I shook my head, frowning with thought. “I don’t think so. She was usually
available for an evening out, and I never heard her talk about any steady boy
friend.”
    “Well, there was one,” Staples said.
“And he looks like our man, doesn’t he, Al?”
    “Could be.”
    I found myself watching these two as though
they were characters in a movie I’d be writing up, noticing with approval the
complementary types they offered. Bray was the slower and more methodical,
while Staples was