“Dylan Thomas wasn’t talking about dead lovers,” I said.

  Her eyes showed surprise. “You know the poem!” she said. “I didn’t think private eyes were literate.”

  “They taught me how to read in grade school. Old habits die hard.”

  “Yes, they do.

  There was a minute of silence. Just as I was about to prompt her into speaking, she repeated, “After the first death there is no other.” She sighed. “When one death affects you completely, then the deaths that come after it don’t have their full effect. Do you follow me?”

  I nodded. “When did it happen?” I asked.

  “Four years ago. I was in college then.”

  “A boy?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at her drink, then drained it.

  “I was 19 then. Pure and innocent. A popular girl who dated all the best boys and had a fine time. Then I met him. Ray Powell introduced us. You probably met Ray. He worked in the same office as Mark.”

  I nodded. That explained one contradiction—Ray’s referring to Lynn as the pure type, the one-man woman. When he had known her, the shoe fit. Since then she had outgrown it.

  “I started going out with John and all at once I was in love. I had never been in love before. I’ve never been in love since. It was something.” For a shadow of an instant a smile crossed her face, then disappeared. “I can’t honestly remember what it was like. Being in love, that is. I’m not the same person. That girl could love; I can’t.”

  She reached out a hand for another cigarette. I gave her one, she took two drags and set the cigarette in an ashtray. Smoke rose from it in a long thin column that reached almost to the ceiling.

  “He was going to pick me up and something went wrong with his car. The steering wheel or something like that. He was going around a turn and the wheels wouldn’t straighten out and—

  “I changed after that. At first I just hurt. All over. And then the callous formed, the emotional callous to keep me from going crazy, I suppose.” She picked up a cigarette and puffed on it nervously then stubbed it out. “You know what bothered me most? We never slept together. We were going to wait until we were married. See what a corny little girl I was?

  “But I changed, Ed. I thought that at least I could have given him that much before he died. And I thought about that, and maybe brooded about it, and something happened inside me.” She almost smiled. “I’m afraid I became a little bit of a tramp, Ed. Not just now and then, like last night. A tramp. I went to Ray Powell and lost my virginity, and then I made myself a one-woman welcoming committee for visiting Yale boys.”

  Her face filled up with memories. “I’m not that bad any more. And I don’t honestly feel John’s death either, to be truthful. It happened a long time ago, and to a different girl.”

  “I don’t think Mark Donahue killed himself,” I said, “or the girl. I think he was framed and then murdered.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No,” she said, sadly, vacantly. “It should, I know. But it doesn’t, Ed.” She stood up. “Do you know why I really wanted to come here?”

  “To talk.”

  “Yes. I’ve learned to pretend, you see. And I intend to pretend, too. I’ll be the very shocked and saddened Miss Farwell now. That’s the role I have to play.” Another too-brief smile. “But I don’t have to play that role with you, Ed. I wanted to say what I felt if only to one person. Or what I didn’t feel.” She rose to leave.

  “And now I’ll wear imitation widow’s weeds for a while, and then I’ll find some other bright young man to marry. Goodbye, Ed London.”

  I ALMOST forgot about the date with Ceil. I’d made it the night before instead of the pass I would have preferred to make. When I got there, she said she was tired and hot and didn’t feel like dressing.

  “The Britannia is right down the block,” she said. “And I can go there like this.”

  She was wearing slacks and a man’s shirt. She didn’t look mannish, though. That would have been slightly impossible. I asked her what the Brittanie was.

  “A fish-and-chips place. Cheap, fast, easy, and good. Or don’t you like fish-and-chips?”

  “I love them.”

  “Good.”

  We walked down the block to a hole in the wall with a sign that said, appropriately, FISH AND CHIPS. There were half a dozen small tables in a room decorated with travel posters of Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace and every major British tourist attraction with the possible exception of Diana Dors. We sat at a small table and ordered fish-and-chips and bottles of Guinness.

  I said, “Donahue’s dead.”

  “I know. I heard it on the radio.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Suicide. He confessed to the murder and shot himself. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “I don’t think so.” I signaled the waiter for two more bottles of Guinness. Then I used Ceil for a sounding board again, bringing her up to date on what had happened since I’d seen her last. I left out the little interlude with Lynn. It might have certain relevance when placed in the proper context, but I wasn’t that obsessed with telling all the facts.

  “It’s possible that someone—probably Conn—killed Donahue,” I added. “The door to his apartment was locked when the police got there, but it’s one of those spring locks. The inside bolt wasn’t turned. Conn could have gone there as soon as he learned Mark was released, then shot him and locked the door as he left.”

  “How could he know Mark was released?”

  “A phone call to police Headquarters, or a call to Mark. That’s no problem.”

  “How about the time? Maybe Conn has an alibi.”

  “I’m going to check that tomorrow,” I said. “That’s why I would have liked to see Jerry Gunther keep the file open on the case. Then he could have questioned Conn. The guy threw punches at me once already. I don’t know if I can take him a second time.”

  She grinned. Then her face sobered. “Are you sure it was Conn? You said Abeles had the same motive.”

  “He’s also got an alibi.”

  “A good one?”

  “Damn good. I’m his alibi. I was with him in Scarsdale that afternoon, and I called Donahue’s apartment as soon as I got back to town, and by that time Donahue was dead. Phil Abeles would have needed a jet plane to pull it off. Besides, I can’t see him as the killer.”

  “And you can see Conn?”

  “That’s the trouble,” I said. “I can’t. Not really.”

  WE DRANK up. I paid our check and we left. We walked a block to Washington Square and sat on a bench. I started to smoke my pipe when I heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to stare at Ceil.

  “Oh,” she said. “I just had a grisly idea.”

  “What?”

  “It’s silly. Like an Alfred Hitchcock television show. I thought maybe Karen really did make those phone calls to him, not because she was jealous but just to tease him, thinking what a gag it would be when she popped out of the cake at his bachelor dinner. And then the gag backfires and he shoots her because he’s scared she wants to kill him.” She laughed. “I’ve got a cute imagination,” she said. “But I’m not much of a help, am I?”

  I didn’t answer her. My mind was off on a limb somewhere. I closed my eyes and saw the waiters wheeling the cake out toward the center of the room. Stripper music playing on a phonograph. A girl bursting from the cake, nude and lovely. A wide smile on her face—

  “Ed, what’s the matter?”

  Most of the time problems are solved by simple trial and error, a lot of legwork that pays off finally. Other times all the legwork in the world falls flat, and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle where you suddenly catch the necessary piece and all the others leap into place. This was one of those times.

  “You’re a genius!” I told Ceil.

  “You don’t mean it happened that way? I—”

  “Oh, no. Of course not. Donahue didn’t kill Karen—” I stood.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Ceil asked.

  “Gotta run,” I said. “Can’t even walk you home. Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll have dinner, okay?”

  I didn’t hear her answer. I didn’t wait for it. I raced across the park and jumped into the nearest cab.

  I called Lynn Farwell from my apartment. She was back in her North Shore home, and life had returned to her voice. “I didn’t expect to hear from you,” she said. “I suppose you’re interested in my body, Ed. It wouldn’t be decent so soon after Mark’s death, you know. But you may be able to persuade me—”

  “Not your body,” I said. “Your memory. Can you talk now? Without being overheard?”

  She giggled lewdly. “If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have said what I did. Go ahead, Mr. Detective.”

  I asked questions. She gave me answers. They were the ones I wanted to hear.

  I strapped on a shoulder holster and jammed a gun into it. I covered up the shoulder rig with a sports jacket. The jacket didn’t match the slacks I was wearing, but I wasn’t too worried about little niceties like that. I had more important things to worry about than sartorial dissonance.

  My cabby was waiting outside. I jumped into the back and gave him an address. We got going.

  TEN

  IT WAS a luxury apartment building in an expensive neighborhood. A prestige address. The doorman, all done up in miles of gold brocade, wanted to know who I was. I flipped open my wallet and showed him a badge that said Special Officer. It was the kind you get by sending two boxtops and a quarter to General Mills. The doorman saluted sharply and I went past him.

  The door to Powell’s apartment was locked. I rang the bell once. No one answered. I waited a few minutes, then took out my pen knife and went to work on the lock. Like the locks in all decent buildings in New York, this was one of the burglar-proof models. And, like just 99 percent of them, it wasn’t burglar-proof. It took half a minute to open.

  I turned the knob. Then I eased the gun from my shoulder holster and shoved the door open. I didn’t need the gun just then. The room was empty.

  But the apartment wasn’t. I heard noises from another room, people noises, sex noises. A man’s voice and a girl’s voice. The man was saying he heard somebody in the living room. The girl was telling him he was crazy. He said he would check. Then there were footsteps, and he came through the doorway, and I pointed the gun at him.

  I said, “Stay right there, Powell.”

  He looked a little ridiculous. He was wearing a bathrobe, his feet were bare, and it was fairly obvious that he had been interrupted somewhere in the middle of his favorite pastime. I kept the gun on him and watched his eyes. He was good—damned good. The eyes showed fear, outrage, surprise. Nothing else. Not the look of a man in a trap.

  “If this is some kind of a joke—”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “The end of the line,” I said. “You made a hell of a try. You almost got away with it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re driving at, London. But—”

  “I think you do.”

  She picked that moment to wander into the room. She was a redhead with her hair messed. One of the buttons on her blouse was buttoned wrong. She walked into the room, wondering aloud what the interruption was about, and then she saw the gun and her mouth made a little O.

  She said, “Maybe I should of stood in the other room.”

  “Maybe you should go home,” I snapped.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, that’s a very good idea.” She moved to her left and sort of backed around me, as if she wanted to keep as much distance as possible between her well-constructed body and the gun in my hand. “I think you’re right,” she said. “I think I should go home… And you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Good.”

  “I should tell you I have no memory at all,” she said. “I never came here, never met you, never saw your face, and I cannot possibly remember what you look like. It is terrible, my memory.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Living I like very much better than remembering. Goodbye, Mr. Nobody.”

  The door slammed, and Ray Powell and I were alone. He glared at me.

  “What in hell do you want, exactly?”

  “To talk to you.”

  “You need a gun for that?”

  “Probably.”

  He grinned disarmingly. “Guns make me nervous.”

  “They never did before. You’ve got a knack for getting hold of unregistered guns, Powell. Is there another one in the bedroom?”

  “I don’t get it,” he said. He scratched his head. “You must mean something, London. Spit it out.”

  “Don’t play games.”

  ‘’I—’’

  “Cut it,” I said. “You killed Karen Price. You knew she was going to do the cake bit because you were the one who put the idea in Phil Abeles’ head.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “He’s forgotten. But he’ll remember with a little prompting. You set her up and then you killed her and tossed the gun on the floor. You figured the police would arrest Donahue, and you were right. But you didn’t think they would let him go. When they did, you went to his place with another gun. He let you in. You shot him, made it look like suicide, and let the one death cover the other.”

  He shook his head in wonder. “You really believe this?”

  “I know it.”

  “I suppose I had a motive,” he said musingly. “What, pray tell, did I have against the girl? She was good in bed, you know. I make it a rule never to kill a good bed partner if I can help it.” He grinned. “So why did I kill her?”

  “You didn’t have a thing against her,” I said.

  “My point exactly. I—”

  “You killed her to frame Donahue,” I added. “You got to Karen Price while the bachelor dinner was still in the planning stage. You hired her to make a series of calls to Donahue, jealousy calls threatening to kill him or otherwise foul up his wedding. It was going to be a big joke—she would scare him silly; and then for a capper she would pop out of the cake as naked as the truth and tell him she was just pulling his leg.

  “But you topped the gag. She popped out of the cake covered with a smile and you put a bullet in her and left Donahue looking like the killer. Then, when you thought he was getting off the hook, you killed him. Not to cover the first murder—you felt safe enough on that score…because you really didn’t have a reason to kill the girl herself. You killed Donahue because he was the one you wanted dead all along.”

  Powell was still grinning. Only not so self-assuredly now. In the beginning, he hadn’t been aware of how much I knew. Now he was learning and it wasn’t making him happy.

  “I’ll play your game,” he said. “I killed Karen, even though I didn’t have any reason. Now why did I kill Mark? Did I have a reason for that one?”

  “Sure.”

  “What?”

  “For the same reason you hired Karen to bother Donahue,” I said. “Maybe a psychiatrist could explain it better. He’d call it transference.”

  “Go on.”

  “You wanted Mark Donahue dead because he was going to marry Lynn Farwell. And you don’t want anybody to marry Lynn Farwell. Powell, you’d kill anybody who tried.”

  WE WERE getting down to the wire now. The grin had faded almost completely. I could reed other things in his face now. He was trying to measure the distance separating us, calculating whether he could jump me before I had time to shoot him.

  “Keep talking,” he said.

  “How am I doing so far?”

  “Oh, you’re brilliant, London. I suppose I’m in love with Lynn?”

  “In a way.”

  “That’s why I’ve never asked her to marry me. And why I bed down anything else that gets close enough to jump.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re out of your mind, London.”

  “No,” I said. “But you are.” I took a breath. “You’ve been in love with Lynn for a long time. Four years, anyway. It’s no normal love, Powell, because you’re not a normal person. Lynn’s part of a fixation of yours. She’s sweet and pure and unattainable in your mind. You don’t want to possess her completely because that would destroy the illusion. Instead you compensate by proving your virility with any available girl. But you can’t let Lynn marry someone else. That would take her away from you. You don’t want to have her—except for an occasional evening, maybe—but you won’t let anyone else have her.”

  He was tottering on the edge now…trying to take a step toward me and then backing off. I had to push him over that edge. If he cracked, then he would crack wide open. If he held himself together he might wriggle free. I knew damn well he was guilty, but there wasn’t enough evidence to present to a jury. I had to make him crack.

  “First I’m a double murderer,” Powell said. “Now I’m a mental case. I don’t deny that I like Lynn. She’s a sweet, clean, decent girl. But that’s as far as it goes.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Donahue’s the second man who almost married her. The first one was four years ago. Remember John? You introduced the two of them. That was a mistake, wasn’t it?”

  “He wouldn’t have been good for her. But it didn’t matter. I suppose you know he died in a car accident.”

  “In a car, yes. Not an accident. You gimmicked the steering wheel. Then you let him kill himself. You got away clean with that one, Powell.”

  For a moment the mask slipped. That was going back far, to a murder he had probably almost forgotten. It had been a shot in the almost-dark, too, but it had been right. His face showed it. He stared at me for one moment with naked hate in his eyes. Then the mask dropped back into place. I hadn’t cracked him yet. I was close, but he was still able to compose himself.

  “It was an accident,” he exclaimed. “Besides, it happened a long time ago. I’m surprised you even bother mentioning it.”

  I ignored his words. “The death shook Lynn up a lot,” I said. “It must have been tough for you to preserve your image of her. The sweet and innocent thing turned into a round-heeled little nymph for a while.”