The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [29]
“Right-o,” Henny bayed, still in her Colonel Race persona. “Not accustomed to suspect’s role. New experience. Good-oh.”
Laurel smoothed back a tendril of blond hair. “One writer even went so far as to suggest,” her tone was one of quiet condescension, “that our own dear Edgar was himself the murderer of Mary Rogers!”
Annie muttered wearily, “‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.’ The first fictional use of a true crime. Young woman clerk in a New York cigar store disappeared, body found in river. Never solved for certain.”
Max scowled. “That’s absurd.”
Laurel beamed at her son. “Dear Max, you agree! Certainly it was absurd to accuse Edgar!”
Saulter’s face creased in puzzlement.
Max was more accustomed to Laurel’s thought processes. “That’s not the matter at issue,” he said to his mother. “Look, Frank, it’s obvious Mother couldn’t have had anything to do with it. She doesn’t know a thing about Bledsoe.”
“Not true, darling,” Laurel trilled.
Now she truly had everyone’s attention. Especially the chief’s.
Laurel gazed at them all with childlike candor. “So necessary, isn’t it, in a criminal investigation to reveal every last tidbit of information, whether or not germane?” Laurel’s countenance drooped. “A truly discomfiting experience. Very bad karma. Do you know, I feel confident Edgar would have truly understood the concept of karma!”
Saulter refused to be distracted. “You know Bledsoe?”
“I am acquainted with him. Not a memory I cherish.” She fingered her gold charm bracelet and a tiny ship clicked against a palm tree. “That mystery cruise to Rio.” She turned wide blue eyes on Annie. “My dear, I was so glad you weren’t along. Though I always treasure your company. Your serious approach to life, your no-nonsense attitude, your—”
“Bledsoe was on the ship?” Saulter prompted.
She nodded agreeably. “A speaker. On the mystery. Though, I must certainly say, not the mystery as I understand it. All about books with characters named Big Al and Rutabaga Ralph”—a slight frown—“or was it Banana Bob? And the detectives he talked about. Not gentlemen. And no first names. Quill or Brill or Spode or Tarker. And drink? My dears,” she leaned forward confidingly, “this enormous capacity for alcohol, as if that were admirable! And sex at the most unexpected”—her glance paused on her son and she changed course—“a most peculiar, and I might add, unattractive, view of women. No more than chattel. To be used and abused. And the plots seemed—”
“Mrs. Roethke! That’s fine. That’s enough. You knew Bledsoe from a mystery cruise. Any other contact?”
“No. Not an acquaintanceship to be pursued.” A cheerful smile.
Saulter asked abruptly, “What’s your opinion of him?”
Laurel placed her fingertips together and looked off, as if into a great distance, her face grave, her demeanor one of unparalleled sobriety. “‘The worst heart of the world is a grosser book than the Hortulus Animae, and perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that “er lasst sich nicht lessen.”’”
“The closing sentence of ‘The Man of the Crowd,’” Annie murmured. “Poe opens the story by saying that it is well said of a certain German book that ‘it does not permit itself to be read.’”
“Uh, yeah.” Undaunted, the chief scrawled something in his notes. Laurel smiled on them serenely. Max ate the last peanut and stared thoughtfully at the empty bowl.
Annie was still hoping for a quick resolution. “Chief, did the boys get a good look at the gunman?”
Saulter laughed grimly. “Did they? To hear those kids tell it, he was ten feet tall, had a skull instead of a head, was dressed all in black. Unfortunately, they didn’t see all that much. They were on their bikes and had just come out of the alley when they heard the shots”—as Saulter related their report, Max idly sketched a map on a cocktail napkin—“which they thought were firecrackers. Then they heard the glass break and saw Bledsoe fall down on top of Honeycutt. The bushes rustled over by the ruin of the old theater, and a minute later they