Going Out in Style by Gloria Dank Page B

body had been discovered by Albert at nine o’clock, as the party was starting to wind down. He had gone into the kitchen to get more champagne, and had found Mrs. MacGregor face down on the floor in a pool of her own blood. A ten-inch kitchen knife, snatched from the rack of knives over the counter, was buried squarely in the middle of her back. Albert had reacted as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time, which in fact it was beginning to. He had gone straight to thephone and called the police. Then he had gone back into the living room and said, “I’m afraid something terrible has happened.”
    The police had arrived fifteen minutes later. Janovy had spoken to everyone except Susan, who had taken her son to Dora’s house and then come back (“I can’t have Harold here,” she had said in her practical way, before bundling him into the car), and Albert himself.
    Now he was trying to interview Susan, but it wasn’t easy.
    “Mrs. MacGregor was talking to your brother when you came into the kitchen yesterday?”
    “That’s right. I’ve already told you so.”
    “And she was saying—?”
    Susan made an impatient gesture. “I don’t remember exactly what it was. Do you, George?”
    George sat clutching his viola and bow. His face had the same anxious, unhappy expression as Susan’s. “I don’t know. Susie and I had just come in. She was saying something to Albert, but she stopped when she saw us.”
    Susan said impatiently, “Mrs. MacGregor was always going on about something—oh, I know it’s terrible to say, but it’s true. She loved to gossip, to blow things out of proportion. I’ve learned not to pay any attention.”
    But this time, thought Janovy, you were wrong, weren’t you? As if she knew what he was thinking, she stared at him defiantly and said,
    “This time I should have listened. But how was I to
know
?”
    Albert said calmly, “What next, Detective? What next?”
    He was sitting in the dining room at the great mahogany table. The room was ornate, with oil paintings on thewalls, a Calder mobile hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and heavy blue silk curtains. Gretchen sat next to him, his hand in hers. Jessie had had a fit when the body was discovered, and after hysterically claiming total ignorance of anything having to do with murder in general and this murder in particular, she had been allowed by the police to go home.
    Janovy looked at Albert sharply. He seemed calm and composed; too composed, thought Janovy. It wasn’t natural.
    “Please, Dr. Whitaker, just tell me what Mrs. MacGregor was saying to you yesterday.”
    Albert said vaguely, “It was something to do with something she saw the night my mother was killed … I’m not quite sure … she could have meant anything, really. She said there was something she just realized—something she should have seen but didn’t, or might have seen but couldn’t, or would have seen but hadn’t.… Is that helpful, Detective?”
    Janovy, remembering Palomino Grove and mushrooms, rose to his feet.
    “Do you have anything to add, Dr. Schneider?”
    Gretchen jumped a bit. “Oh, no, no, of course not. I wasn’t here yesterday. I told you already that Mrs. MacGregor had been hinting around to all of us. You know, Detective, we want to be helpful, but Albert’s had an awful shock, and I think he should go lie down for a while. I mean, all this happening right after his mother’s death—you understand how we feel—”
    “Yes. Just one more thing, Dr. Whitaker. Was there anything else unusual about Mrs. MacGregor’s behavior in the past few days?”
    Albert took his glasses off and polished them assiduously on the table linen. With the glasses off, his face looked less moon-eyed and more sensitive than ever. Janovycould see that it was marked with deep lines which seemed to have come all at once, recently. Albert said thoughtfully, “There’s the coat, of course.”
    “The coat?”
    Albert explained. “She was the