All right, it was only something he imagined, peculiar to him alone. But he knew from experience that it was unwise to take even imagined horrors lightly. They were part of a man's thinking, his inner life, his individuality. It was a mistake to take them too seriously, but just as bad to brush them aside as of no importance.
All right, the violence had been there, but in another way the office had seemed the opposite of crepe-somber. It had seemed still filled with her living presence, as if she were still striding back and forth from her desk to the window, or sitting at her desk impatiently talking into the intercom.
That she had been a strong-willed, very determined woman despite her aspect of pulse-stirring femininity he'd strongly suspected the instant he'd entered the office with its costly but severely functional furnishings. The choice of furnishings had quite obviously not been influenced in any way by feminine whims and extravagances. No woman, surely, would have really liked such severity in the décor surrounding her. But a woman determined to keep her professional and private lives in separate compartments might well have made such a choice deliberately and taken pride in her ability to impose a severe discipline upon herself.
The conclusion he'd drawn, the kind of woman he'd pictured her as being, hadn't been based on anything very solid. It had been a mere hunch at first, a gathering together of intangibles. But the few questions he'd had an opportunity to ask the editorial staff immediately on his arrival had completely confirmed it. She'd been a considerable woman, and had ruffled a great deal of fur the wrong way, apparently, and there had probably been some baring of claws.
Well ... all right. The Lathrup slaying was one of the sensational ones. It would arouse widespread indignation if it were not solved quickly and even more indignation if it remained unsolved for the next fifty years, as well it might. If the murderer was caught and stood trial—the newspapers would have no reason to complain and it would enrich a great many other people in a dozen or more ways, perhaps even the murderer himself if he wrote the story of his life for a major news syndicate the week before he went to the chair.
He couldn't take it with him—but what the hell. There'd be the thrill of making all that money overnight. Or was the stipulation that a murderer couldn't profit from his crime a bugaboo in that department too? Thirty years on the Force, and he still didn't know for sure.
Well ... there was nothing to be gained by shaking his head and dwelling with anger and pity on the tragic circumstances of a crime he could have done nothing to prevent. Her beauty, so cruelly hidden now from all but the eyes of a mortician—there would be a brief moment when it would be again on view—every aspect of her personal life; the way she'd walked and talked and held herself, her wardrobe, her personal likes and dislikes, the friends she'd made, the enemies who did not think too highly of her, her jewels, her rumored affairs, her choice of restaurants, had all become the emotional property of the public.
Not too short a life perhaps. But to die at thirty-six always meant ... many of the great moments, the moments of complete fulfillment and happiness, however brief, which every human being born into the world had a right to look forward to, would never be experienced at all. A cruel and tragic outrage had been perpetrated upon her, cutting off her life in mid-stream.
That the outrage could be attributed to the inscrutable workings of Fate or Destiny or whatever you cared to call the big, continuously revolving wheel ... that it struck down thousands of women just as beautiful every day all over the world ... that illness and accidents took a far more grievous toll ... did not diminish by one whit the tragedy of it. And when it was brought about by a deliberate act of willful criminal violence it had a special quality which made it seem a hundred times more cruel and unjust.
Fenton looked down at the three letters, spread fanwise on the desk before him. Each was neatly typewritten, neatly creased and just as neatly signed in a firm, precise hand. Michael Willard.