The room was on the tenth floor of The Piccadilly, far less fashionable than the hotels in the sidestreets off Jefferson Avenue, and not close enough to The Stem to be considered convenient to restaurants or shows. Carella had some dim recollection that the place used to be a riding academy in the nottoo-distant past, before the new mayor started cracking down on hookers using hot-bed hotels for their swift transactions. The place still had a look of seedy weariness about it, the drapes and matching bedspread a trifle shabby, the arms on both easy chairs beginning to look a bit threadbare. Carella sat in one of those chairs, Brown in the other. Palmer stood on the far side of the bed, facing them, carrying clothes from the dresser and the closet to his open suitcase on the bed.
A brown suit, a canary-colored shirt with a white collar, a fresh pair of Jockey shorts, brown socks, and a brown silk tie were laid out neatly on the bed. Palmer explained that he’d set them aside for when he went out to dinner and a play tonight. He named the play-which neither of the detectives had seen, or even heard of-and explained that Norman Zimmer had arranged for house seats at the Ferguson Theater, all of this in the Cockney accent that made him sound like a bad imitation of an Englishman.
“So to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he asked.
“Know a woman named Martha Coleridge?” Brown said.
“Know of her,” Palmer said, “but I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Did you receive a letter from her recently?”
“Oh indeed I did.”
“Accompanying a play called My Room, and a copy of the opening night program?”
“Yes. All that. Indeed.”
“What’d you think of it?” Carella asked.
“Can’t say I read the play. But I thought the letter quite interesting.”
“What’d you do about it?”
Palmer was carrying some five or six folded shirts from the dresser to the bed. He stopped, looked across the bed at the detectives, and said, “Do about it? Was I supposed to do something about it?”
“Didn’t the letter seem threatening to you?”
“Well, no, actually. I simply took her for a barmy old lady,” Palmer said, and began arranging the shirts in the suitcase.
“Didn’t find her at all threatening, huh?”
“Was I supposed to find her threatening?” Palmer said, and managed to look surprised, and amused, and at the same time somehow challenging, like a kid making a cute face for grandma and grandpa, his blue eyes opening wide, his mouth curling into an impish little grin. Again, Carella had the feeling he was imitating someone, perhaps a comic he’d seen on a music hall stage, perhaps a silly comedian in a movie. Or perhaps he was merely stupid.
“Did you call her or anything?” Brown asked.
“Lord, no!” Palmer said.
“Didn’t think it was worth a call, huh?”
“Certainly not.”
“Did you talk to either Cynthia Keating or Felicia Carr about it?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Mention it to Mr Zimmer? Or his partner?”
“I may have, yes.”
“When was that?”
“That I mentioned it to them? At the party, I would imagine.”
“Didn’t call either of them before the party, huh?”
“No. Was I supposed to ring them?”
“No, but how come you didn’t?”
“Well, let me see. The material was forwarded to me from Mr Zimmer’s office, you know. So I assumed he already knew what it was about. In which case, there was no need to call him, was there?”
Again the impish, somewhat insulting raised eyebrows and grin that said, Now, really, this is all quite elementary stuff, isn’t it, chaps? So why are we getting all in a dither about it, eh? Brown felt like smacking him right in the eye.
“Didn’t you feel this woman was endangering the show?”
“Of course I did!”
“And a possible future windfall?”
“Of course!” Palmer said. “But she wanted a hundred thousand dollars from each of us! A hundred thousand! She could just as easily have asked for a hundred million. I shouldn’t have been able to give her either sum, don’t you see? Do you know how much I earn in the post room at Martins and Grenville? Seven thousand pounds a year. That’s a far shout from a hundred thousand dollars.”
Again the raised eyebrows. The wide blue eyes. The lopsided grin.
Brown was doing the arithmetic. He figured seven thousand pounds came to about ten-five a year in dollars.
“So you just let it drop,” he said.
“I just let it…” A shrug. “Drop, yes. As you put it.” A pursing of the lips. “I simply ignored it.”
“And now she’s dead,” Brown said, and watched him.
“I know,” Palmer said. “I saw the news in one of your tabloids.”
No widening of the big blue eyes this time. No look of surprise. If anything, there was instead a somewhat exaggerated expression of sorrow.
More and more, Carella felt the man was acting a part, pretending to be someone a lot smarter, a lot more sophisticated than the underpaid mailroom clerk he actually was.
“How’d you feel when you read the story?” he asked.
