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that, if it kept on, Birdwood might have to get himself another boy.
    â€œOnly a squabble,” Jerry said. “At any rate, Birdwood thought so. A case of Simon getting tensed up. As, he says, Simon has a habit of getting. He did say—Birdwood, I mean—that he was keeping his fingers crossed. He said that all producers end up with permanently bent fingers.”
    â€œHe did get one of the actors fired,” Tom Hathaway said. “Payne did. Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. Made a thing of it. Said this guy—name of Blaine something—was n.b.g. A row about it, and Birdwood made Simon give in. I don’t know why. You’d think if Simon wanted—”
    â€œPayne put some money in the play,” Jerry said. “I don’t know how much or whether—”
    â€œBlaine who?” Pam said. She spoke very quickly. “Smythe? With a ‘y’ and, for that matter, an ‘e’?”
    That sounded right to Tom Hathaway.
    â€œBecause—” Pam said, “unless there are two of him, and there seldom are, of course, he and Mrs. Payne are very—anyway—”
    She told them of Lauren Payne on the sofa at the party; of her feeling that there was anxiety in Lauren Payne’s manner, and in her eyes. “He seemed—” Pam said, and hesitated. “So often,” she said, “people remember more than there was. When there’s reason to remember. I think now he was—seemed—protective. And that they seemed—close together. But I didn’t think that—I don’t think I thought that—until Mr. Payne was killed.”
    â€œI know,” Bill Weigand said. “It happens that way. Still—”
    â€œFrom what I heard,” Tom Hathaway said, “Lars Simon thought this Smythe was very good in the part. And Payne didn’t make his pitch until—well, until pretty well on. They’ve been rehearsing for quite a while. Lot of rewriting, apparently. Which louses things up.”
    â€œAnxious?” Bill said. “Mrs. Payne?”
    â€œWell—any word, I guess. Jittery. Perhaps even—” Pam hesitated. “Perhaps even frightened,” Pam said. “She’s very sensitive, I think. When I—when Jerry made me be the one to tell her—” She stopped again; looked at Jerry.
    â€œI thought a woman,” Jerry said. “There didn’t seem to be anybody else.”
    â€œOh,” Pam said, “I know the convention. Anyway—it hit her very hard. Terribly hard. It was as if—as if everything had fallen away. So if you—all right, all of us—are drawing inferences about her and this Blaine Smythe—when she was told her husband was dead things fell apart for her. I’m sure of—” But, suddenly, she paused. “Of course that’s what it was,” she said, very firmly—very firmly indeed.
    â€œUnless,” Bill Weigand said, and spoke gently, “she thought Smythe had killed him.”
    â€œYou were the one who said it, Bill,” Pam said. “That he was—was a target. Not Anthony Payne.”
    â€œThat that seemed probable. It still does. Simon wished Payne would take a trip around the world. Or, drop dead. You felt there was a—call it relationship—between Payne’s wife and this actor named Smythe. What else, Pam? In case Payne wasn’t merely a target?”
    â€œIt’s all—trivial. It all seemed trivial. There was a man named Self. Very contemptuous of Mr. Payne. Works in—”
    â€œJames Self. Runs a bookstore,” Jerry said. “Does a little criticism on the side. Very select criticism for very select readers. Very—superior. Particularly to authors who sell. Harmless, so far as I know. Anyway—I can’t see him criticizing with a rifle.”
    â€œThere was the first Mrs. Payne,” Pam said. “Faith Constable she is now. In the