If I could afford one of those Bluegrass country homes, I’d never envy anyone who lived in New York. Not to mention Carmel, Cal., the Isle of Capri, anywhere you like on the Riviera. Or what have you.
When I woke up in Lovelawn’s west guest room next morning, my vista was a golden green sea of rippling corn, an emerald knoll where jet-black cattle browsed, a bronze mare and her nuzzling colt silhouetted against the sun on the crest. Prettier than Central Park. Much.
There was more to it than My Old Kentucky Home atmosphere, too. A shaving-kit the Syrian had set out in my private shower room. Tasty old ham with eggs goldenrod, corn cakes and country butter, clotted cream and coffee our breakfast chef should have taken a cue from — served in solitary splendor off Limoges china, by a Negress who had as much aplomb as any of our Gallic waiters.
I couldn’t understand how Tildy Millett would have been willing to give up all that. She’d have had to, of course; Dow Lanerd wouldn’t have been the type to move into any wife’s home.
The females of the household had petit déjeuner upstairs. The youngster’d been up for hours, was ky-hootin’ around the yard on a palomino pony, buckarooing all over the place.
I had seconds on old ham, made a note to ask Emile why we couldn’t get flavor like that on our menu, went over Nikky’s story, step by step.
It dovetailed neatly with the official version. Maybe too neatly. I’d stayed up half the night with her, trying to discover discrepancies. She’d had answers for everything.
Why’d she described the murderer’s suit as dark instead of cream-colored? To divert suspicion from “her baby’s” fiancé.
What reason could Tildy have had for claiming the man who killed Roffis looked like Roy Yaker, an acquaintance of Lanerd’s? Must have been because Yaker was the first person who’d come to Tildy’s mind, when I’d insisted on some description. The pollster’d been loitering around 21CC and the corridor with what Nikky diagnosed as lecherous intent. Once he’d been in the elevator with Tildy and managed to let his hand come into contact with her — Nikky illustrated with scornful distaste — her behind! Tildy’d ignored him. But she’d have remembered him, unkindly.
Nikky got peeved at my persistence.