“We can’t leave the switchboard. It’s much too busy.”
She connected with a flashing light. “Hendricks Plantation. Good evening.”
“Give me yours,” Fletch said. Helpfully, he slipped it out of its clip. “I’ll Xerox it.”
“I think the office is locked,” she whispered. “I’ll ring, sir.”
“All you have to do is move Helen’s.” He reached over and put Helen’s information sheet between them. “And you can both see it.”
The operator said, “I’m sorry, sir, but a cocktail reception is going on here, and I don’t think many people are in their rooms.”
Helen scowled angrily at him, as she said, “The dining room is open for breakfast at seven o’clock, sir.”
“Tell me.” Fletch was looking at the sheet in his hands. “Lydia March and Walter March, Junior, aren’t still in the suite Walter March died in this morning, are they?”
“No,” the operator said. “They’ve been moved to Suite 12.”
“Thanks.” Fletch waved the telephone information sheet at them. “ ’Preciate it.”
Nine
8:00 P.M. Dinner
Main Dining Room
Fletch had saw-toothed seven edges of two credit cards letting himself into over twenty rooms and suites at Hendricks Plantation before he got caught.
He had just placed bug Number 22 to the back of the bedside lamp in Room 42 and was recrossing the room when he heard a key scratching on the outside of the lock.
He turned immediately for the bathroom, but then heard the lock click.
An apparent burglar, he stood in the middle of Room 42, pretending to be deeply concerned with the telephone information sheet, wondering how he could use it to give some official explanation for his presence in someone else’s room.
Next to each room number and occupant’s name was the number of the bug he had planted in the room.
The door handle was tinning.
“Ahem,” he said to himself. No official frame of mind was occurring to him.
“Ahem.”
The door was being pushed open unnaturally slowly.
In the door, swaying, breathing shallowly, thin red hair splaying up from her head, an aquamarine evening gown lopsided on her, was the great White House wire service reporter, Leona Hatch.
Watery, glazed eyes took a moment to focus on him.
Her right shoulder lurched against the door jamb.
“Oh,” she said to the apparent burglar. “Thank God you’re here.”
And she began to fall.
Fletch grabbed her before she hit the floor.
Dead-weight. She was totally unconscious. She reeked of booze.
Gently, he put her head on the floor.
“Zowie.”
He turned down her bed before carrying her to it and putting her neatly on it.
He put on the bedside lamp.
She was wearing a tight necklace—a choker he thought might choke her—so he lifted her head and felt around in the seventy-odd-years-old woman’s thin hair until he found the clasp. He left the necklace on her bedside table.
He took off her shoes.
Looking at her, he wondered what else he could do to loosen her clothes, and realized she was wearing a corset. His fingers confirmed it.
“Oh, hell.”
He rolled her onto her side to get at the zipper in the back of her gown.
“Errrrrrr,” Leona Hatch said. “Errrrrrrrr.”
“Don’t throw up,” he answered, with great sincerity.
Pulling her gown off her from the bottom, he had to keep returning to the head of the bed and pulling her up toward the pillows by the shoulders. Or, before the gown was off her, she would have been on the floor.
He tossed the gown over a side chair, and realized he had to repeat the process with a slip.
The corset took great study.
In his travels, Fletch had never come across a corset.
In fact, he had never come across so many clothes on one person before.
“Oh, well,” he said. “I suppose you’d do it for me.”
“Errrrrrrrr,” she protested every time he revolved her to get her corset off. “Errrrrrrrr!”
“How do I know? Maybe you already have.”
Finally he left her in what he supposed was the last level of underclothes, loosened as much as he could manage, and flipped the sheet and blanket over her.
“Good night, sweet Princess.” He turned out the bedside lamp. “Dream sweet dreams, and, when you awake, think kindly on the Bumptious Bandit! ‘Daughter, did you hear hoofbeats in the night?’” He left a light on across the room, to orient her when she awoke. “‘Father, Father, I thought it were the palpitations of my own heart!’”
Letting himself out, the telephone information sheet firmly in hand, Fletch said, “‘It were, Daughter. Booze does that to you.’”
Ten
9:00 P.M. Welcoming Remarks
TERRORISM AND TELEVISION
Address by Hy Litwack
“I was afraid you’d show up,” Bob McConnell said.
Dinner was half over when Fletch arrived to take his assigned seat, at a corner table for six.
McConnell—a big man, fortyish, heavy, with sideburns and a mustache—had been alone at the table with Crystal Faoni and Fredericka Arbuthnot.
“I knew a table for six, empty except for two girls and myself, was too good to last.”
“Hi, Bob.”
“Hi.”
“They put us together,” Fredericka Arbuthnot said to Fletch. “Isn’t that chummy?”
“Chummy.”
Fletch glanced at the considerable distance to the head table.
“I guess none of us is considered too important,” he said. “Another few feet to the right, through that wall, and we could stack our dishes in the dishwasher without leaving the table.”
Bob said, “Yeah.”
A few years before, Robert McConnell had left his job at a newspaper and spent ten months as press aide to a presidential candidate.
It would have been the chance of a lifetime.
Except the candidate lost.
His newspaper had taken him back, of course, but begrudgingly, and at the same old job.
His publisher, Walter March, had considered his mistaken judgment more important than his gained experience.
Walter March’s judgment hadn’t been wrong.
He had had his newspapers endorse the other candidate—who had won.
And it had taken Robert McConnell the interim years to work himself out of both the emotional and financial depression taking such a chance had caused.
Crystal said, “How was your massage, sybarite?”
Bob said, “You had a massage?”
To a good reporter, everything was significant
“I was sleepy, afterwards,” Fletch said.
“I should take massages,” Crystal said. “Maybe it would help me get rid of some of this fat.”
“Crystal, darling,” Fletch said. “You’re a bore.”
“Me?”
“All you do is talk about your fat.”
Because he was late, the waiter placed in front of Fletch—all at one time—the fruit cup, salad, roast beef, potato, peas, cake with strawberry goo poured over the top, and coffee.
“You want a drink?” the waiter asked.
Fletch said, “I guess not.”
“My fat is all anybody ever talks about,” Crystal said.
“Only in response to your incessant comments about it.” Fletch chewed the pale slices of grapefruit and orange from the fruit cup. “Historic Hendricks Plantation,” he said. “Even their fruit cup is antebellum.”
“I never, never mention my fat,” Crystal said.
Purposely, humorously, she began to fork his salad.
“You never talk about anything else.” Fletch pulled his roast beef out of her range. “You’re like one of these people with a dog or a horse or a boat or a garden o
r something who never talk about anything but their damn dog, horse, boat, or, what else did I say?”
“Garden,” said Freddie.
“Garden,” said Fletch. “Boring, boring, boring.”
Crystal was sopping up the salad dressing with a piece of bread. “It must be defensive.”
“Stupid,” Fletch said. “You have nothing to be defensive about.”
“I’m fat.”
“You’ve got beautiful skin.”
“Meters and meters of it.”
She reached for his dessert.
Fredericka Arbuthnot said to Robert McConnell, “This is I. M. Fletcher. He gets along well with everybody.”
“This stupid American idea,” Fletch said, “that everybody has to look emaciated.”
Crystal’s voice was muffled through the strawberry-goo-topped cake. “Look who’s talking. You’re not fat.”
“Inside every slim person,” Fletch proclaimed, “is a fat person trying to get out.”
“Yeah,” muttered Freddie. “But through the mouth?”
“If you’d stop telling people you’re fat,” Fletch declaimed, “no one would notice!”
Her mouth still full of cake, Crystal looked sideways at Fletch.
She could contain herself no longer.
She and Fletch both began to laugh and choke and laugh and laugh.
With her left hand Crystal was holding her side. With her right, she was holding her napkin to her face.
Not laughing, Fredericka Arbuthnot and Robert McConnell were watching them.
Crystal began to reach for his coffee.
Fletch banged her wrist onto the table.
“Leave the coffee!”
Crystal nearly rolled out of her chair—laughing.
Robert McConnell had signaled the waiter.
“Bring drinks, all around, will you? We need to catch up with these two.”
The waiter scanned the dead glasses on the table, and looked inquiringly at Fletch.
Bob said, “Fletch?”
“I don’t care.”
“Bring him a brandy,” Bob said. “He needs a steadier.”
“Bring him another dessert,” Crystal said. “I need it!”
Fletch sat back from his plate.
“Oh, I can’t eat any more. I’ve laughed too hard.” He looked at Crystal. “You want it, Crystal?”
“Sure,” she said.
The plate stayed in front of Fletch.
Freddie asked Fletch, “Who were you talking to in your room?”
“Talking to?”
“I couldn’t help hearing you through the wall.”
“Hearing me through the wall?”
“It sounded like you were practicing a speech.”
“Practicing a speech?”
“I couldn’t hear any other voice.”
“I was talking to Crystal,” Fletch said. “On the phone.”
“No,” Freddie shook her head. “It sounded recorded. At one point, when I first heard you, you blurted out something. As if the playback volume was too high.”
“Oh, yeah. I was using a tape recorder. Few notes to myself.”
“A few notes on what?” Bob sat up straight so the waiter could set the drink in front of him.
“Ah, ha!” Crystal said. “The great investigative reporter, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, has discovered who killed Walter March!”
“Actually,” Fletch said. “I have.”
“Who?” Freddie said.
Fletch said, “Robert McConnell.”
Across the table, Bob’s eyes narrowed.
Freddie looked at Bob. “Motive?”
“For having his newspapers endorse the opposition,” Fletch said, “a few years back. It snatched the candy apple right out of Bob’s mouth. Didn’t it, Bob?” Robert McConnell’s face had gone slightly pale. “If March’s newspapers hadn’t endorsed the opposition, Bob’s man probably would have won. Bob would have gone to the White House. Instead, he ended up back at the same old metal desk in the City Room, facing a blank wall, with thousands of dollars of personal bank loans outstanding.”
Fletch and Bob were staring at each other across the table, Fletch with a small smile.
Freddie was looking from one to the other.
“A few notes on what?” Bob asked.
Fletch shrugged. “A travel piece. I’ve been in Italy. By the way, has anyone seen Junior?”
Walter March, Junior, was the sort, at fifty, people continued to call “Junior.”
“I hear he’s drinking,” Crystal said.
“Jake Williams took him and Lydia for a car ride.” Bob sat back in his chair, relaxed his shoulders. “He wanted to get them out of here. Get Junior some air.”
Freddie said, “You mean the police are making Mrs. March and son stay at this damned convention, where Walter March was murdered? How cruel.”
“I suspect they could do something about it,” Bob said, “if they want to.”
Crystal said, “When you have the power of March Newspapers behind you, you are apt to be very, very conciliatory to petty authority.”
“At least, openly,” Bob said.
“At least, initially,” Fletch said.
“Oh, come on,” said the lady who had said she was from Newsworld magazine, but didn’t appear to know very much. “Newspaper chains aren’t very powerful, these days.”
The three newspaper reporters looked at each other.
“March Newspapers?” Crystal Faoni said.
“Pretty powerful,” Robert McConnell said.
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “They even publish other months of the year.”
There was the tinkle of spoon against glass from the head table.
“Here it comes,” Bob McConnell said. “The after-dinner regurgitation. Duck.”
Fletch turned his chair, to face the dais.
“Anybody got a cigar?” Bob asked. “I’ve always wanted to blow smoke up Hy Litwack’s nose.”
Helena Williams was standing at the dais.
“Does this thing work?” she asked the microphone.
Her amplified voice bounced off the walls.
“No!” said the audience.
“Of course not!” said the audience.
“Ask it again, Helena!” said the audiencé.
“Good evening,” said Helena, in her best modulated voice.
The audience stopped scraping its chairs and began restraining its smoke-coughs.
“Despite the tragic circumstances of the death of the president of the American Journalism Alliance’s president, Walter March”—she stopped, flustered, took a deep breath, and, in the best game-old-girl tradition, continued—“it is a pleasure to see you all, and to welcome you to the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Journalism Alliance’s Convention.
“Walter March was to make a welcoming speech at this point, but.…”
“But,” Robert McConnell said, softly, “old Walter’s being sent home in a box.”
“… Well,” Helena said, “of course there is no one who can stand in his place.
“Instead, let us recognize all that Walter has done, both for the Alliance, and, for each of us, individually as newspeople, over the years.…”
“Yeah,” said Robert McConnell.
“Yeah,” said Crystal Faoni.
“… and join in a moment of silence.”
“Hey, Fletch,” Bob said in a stage whisper, “got a deck of cards?”
There was a moment of quiet muttering.
Across the room, Tim Shields was waving at a waiter to bring him a drink.
“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the tragic circumstances,” Helena said, “but the after-dinner speech scheduled for Wednesday evening by the President of the United States has been canceled.…”
“Oh, shucks.” Bob looked at Fletch. “And here I brought two pairs of scissors.”
“… However, the Vice-President has arranged to come.”
“The Administration has decided
not to ignore us completely,” Crystal Faoni said, “just because we’ve taken to stabbing each other in the back more openly than usual.”
“Just one other announcement,” Helena said, “before I introduce Hy Litwack. Well, why don’t I just introduce Virginia State Police Captain Andrew Neale, who has been placed in charge of poor Walter’s.…”
Helena stepped away from the microphone.
A man with salt and pepper short hair, a proper military bearing in a tweed jacket, stood up from a table near the main door and walked to the dais. Clearly, he had not expected to be called upon.
Bob McConnell said, “I betcha he says, ‘Last, but not least.’”
With poise, but blushing slightly, Captain Neale addressed the microphone.
“Good evening,” he said, in a soft, deep drawl. “Accept my sympathy for the loss of the president of your association.”
“Accepted,” Bob muttered. “Easily accepted.”
“First,” Captain Neale said, “I’ve asked that your convention not be canceled. I’m sure that the death of Walter March casts a tragic pall over your meetings.…”
“An appalling pall,” said Bob.
“… but I trust you all will be able to go about your business with as little interference as possible from me and the people working with me.
“Second, of course we will have to take statements from those of you who were actually here at Hendricks Plantation this morning at the time of the tragic occurrence. Your cooperation in being available to us, and open with us, will be greatly appreciated.
“Third, I realize that I am surrounded here by some of the world’s greatest reporters. Frankly, I feel like Daniel in the den of lions. I understand that each of you feels the necessity of reporting the story of Walter March’s murder to your newspapers or networks, and I will try to be as fair with you as I can. But please understand that I, too, have to do my job. Many of you have already come to me with questions. If I do nothing but answer your questions, I won’t be doing my job, which is to investigate this tragedy, and, there won’t be any answers. As solid facts are developed, I will see that you get them. It would help if there were no rumor or speculation.”
“Here it comes,” Bob said.
Captain Neale said, “Last, but not least, if any of you have genuine information which might help in this investigation, of course we will appreciate your reporting that information to me or one of the people working with me.
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