The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [25]
“I suppose he has to.”
“Oh, with all the laws, but I’ve had no trouble.” She laid a forefinger alongside her nose. It’s a gesture you don’t see too much these days. “Then I rented poor Mary’s room two weeks ago to a very nice woman, a widow. She likes her beer, she does, but why shouldn’t she have it? I keep my eye on her and she’s making no trouble, and if she wants an old jar now and then whose business is it but her own?” She fixed her blue-gray eyes on me. “You like your drink,” she said.
“Is it on my breath?”
“No, but I can see it in your face. Larkin liked his drink and there’s some say it killed him but he liked it and a man has a right to live what life he wants. And he was never a hard man when he drank, never cursed or fought or beat a woman as some I could name but won’t. Mrs. Shepard’s out now. That’s the one took poor Mary’s room, and I’ll show it to you if you want.”
So I saw the room. It was kept neat.
“She keeps it tidier than poor Mary,” Mrs. Larkin said. “Now Mary wasn’t dirty, you understand, but she had all her belongings. Her shopping bags and other things that she kept in her room. She made a mare’s nest of the place, and all the years she lived here, you see, it wasn’t tidy. I would keep her bed made but she didn’t want me touching her things and so I let it be cluttered as she wanted it. She paid her rent on time and made no trouble otherwise. She had money, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“She left some to a woman on the fourth floor. A much younger woman, she’d only moved here three months before Mary was killed, and if she exchanged a word with Mary I couldn’t swear to it, but Mary left her almost a thousand dollars. Now Mrs. Klein across the hall lived here since before Mary ever moved in and the two old things always had a good word for each other, and all Mrs. Klein has is the welfare and she could have made good use of a couple of dollars, but Mary left her money instead to Miss Strom.” She raised her eyebrows to show bewilderment. “Now Mrs. Klein said nothing, and I don’t even know if she’s had the thought that Mary might have mentioned her in her will, but Miss Strom said she didn’t know what to make of it. She just couldn’t understand it at all, and what I told her was you can’t figure out a woman like poor Mary who never had both her feet on the pavement. Troubled as she was, daft as she was, who’s to say what she might have had on her mind?”
“Could I see Miss Strom?”
“That would be for her to say, but she’s not home from work yet. She works part-time in the afternoons. She’s a close one, not that she hasn’t the right to be, and she’s never said what it is that she does. But she’s a decent sort. This is a decent house.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“It’s single rooms and they don’t cost much so you know you’re not at the Ritz Hotel, but there’s decent people here and I keep it as clean as a person can. When there’s not but one toilet on the floor it’s a struggle. But it’s decent.”
“Yes.”
“Poor Mary. Why’d anyone kill her? Was it sex, do you know? Not that you could imagine anyone wanting her, the old thing, but try to figure out a madman and you’ll go mad your own self. Was she molested?”
“No.”
“Just killed, then. Oh, God save us all. I gave her a home for almost seven years. Which it was no more than my job to do, not making it out to be charity on my part. But I had her here all that time and of course I never knew her, you couldn’t get to know a poor old soul like that, but I got used to her. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“I got used to having her about. I might say Hello and Good morning and Isn’t it a nice day and not get a look in reply, but even on those days she was someone familiar to say something to. And