Death Spins the Platter

17

Layton loved-hated every second of it.

The usual hundreds of rubbernecks surrounded the funeral home. Most of them were teenagers. The police had stretched ropes along each side of the walk from the curb to the entrance and they were busy pressing the crowds back. Put an emcee here with a hand mike and a faceful of teeth, Layton thought, plus a couple of those blockbuster searchlights, and it might just as well be a Hollywood premiere or a supermarket opening.

The mortician’s assistants and the police were doing the usual quiet, efficient Los Angeles job of screening would-be-gate crashers and giving them the usual quiet, efficient bum’s rush. As Layton came up, a dilapidated blonde with blood in her eye was being escorted by a police officer from the inviting open walk into the jam behind the ropes.

“But I tell you Mrs. King is a close personal friend!” the woman was yelling.

“Sure, lady, sure, that’s why you don’t know her address.” The officer grabbed Layton with his free hand. “Hey, bud, where do you think you’re going?”

Layton showed his press card. The officer let go, and Layton trudged up the walk and had to produce his card again, and finally he achieved the sanctuary.

An usher with a trained voice — ten to one he’s on the books of Central Casting, Layton thought — directed him to the main chapel. “The left two front rows are reserved for the press,” the usher said in soft, reverent tones.

“Lucky press,” Layton said. The man looked at him, startled. Layton shrugged and stepped into the chapel. It had a capacity of over two hundred, but large patches of empty seats told him that in Hollywood’s view the Tutter King funeral was a bright area. King had died under a cloud. The Hollywood that counted disliked clouds. And the great majority of King’s friends — the only friends he had apparently had — who could have filled a hundred chapels twice the size, were not being allowed in.

Layton looked through the occupied seats for Nancy. He saw Hubert Stander and, surprisingly, Mrs. Stander; he saw George Hathaway; he saw young Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins, presumably privileged because of their fan-club status; he saw Hazel Grant, dabbing at her eyes (but she had had a new rinse for the occasion, merrily blue as the sky); he saw a few of the KZZX technical staff, and a morose-looking man in rumpled clothing he recognized as the top-flight press agent who had handled Tutter King’s account; but Lola Arkwright was not there, and of Nancy there was no sign.

Of course, he thought. They’ve put her in the “family” room, for privacy. She won’t come in until just before the service starts.

The temptation to join her became so strong that an ache developed in his groin. To discipline himself he walked down to the front of the chapel and deliberately stopped before the casket.

It was set in a forest of flowers. The headpiece had been removed, and Tutter King was looking at the ceiling.

It was queer to think of a corpse looking at a ceiling when the lids had been forcibly shuttered over the eyes. But it was really no queerer than those ancient Roman statues with blanks where the eyes should be — blanks that looked at you quite as convincingly as the real thing.

It was even queer to think of Tutter King in relation to this waxworks figure in the bronze casket. This was the Tussaud dummy in the mould of a man that Nancy had fondled and warmed and been fondled and warmed by for ten years. This thing, when it had blood in its veins instead of embalming fluid, stuck an ice pick into its living heart. Saith the state of California. Saith Jim Layton of the Los Angeles Bulletin: This thing was foully done in by a grand larcenist of its breath and being who’s getting away with it.

And I’m inheriting its wife.

And I’m glad. Jim Layton, the last honest man, is so damn full of gladness it’s become a hurt in the groin.

Layton started at a tap on his shoulder.

“Looks pretty good, doesn’t he?” said the dry sotto of Sergeant Harry Trimble.

“Hello, Sergeant.”

“Well, that’s what you’re supposed to say over the bum that’s been degutted and laid out, isn’t it?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m kind of at loose ends. I don’t like loose ends, Layton.”

“Neither do I.”

They stared down at what was left of Tutter King.

“This one’s going to haunt me till I’m lying where he is,” the one-eyed detective muttered, “Ah, let’s sit down.”

Layton slipped into the aisle seat in the row immediately behind the press section. His colleagues gave him a unified glare, then turned back to their chores.

The sergeant sat down beside him.

The hell with them, Layton thought. The hell with you, too, he said silently to the detective at his side. I know what I want and, I’ve got it... He grinned deeply inside. He could imagine what the boys of news town would be saying when Lonesome Jim Layton took unto his bosom the midnight-haired widow of Tutter King.

And then he saw her.

He saw her, and his heart was in his throat in a wild leap, and he wanted to go to her so badly that he began to itch all over.

She was coming in slowly with two elderly couples, ushered to the front of the chapel, near the casket, by the mortuary’s head man himself. Special wing chairs were waiting for them, so that when they sat down the public view of them was largely cut off and they could indulge their grief in a variable percentage of privacy, depending on where the lesser mourners were seated.

His glimpse of her was a flick and an eternity.

Layton sat back, satisfied.

This is your day, Tutter, he thought.

Tomorrow is mine.

Layton paid no attention to the service. It was in the little white hands of a clergyman whose resonant response to the proximity of the dead man was in no way impaired by the fact that they had never met in life. He delivered the customary fervid eulogy, investing the dear departed with all but visible wings.

Layton could see the merest segment of Nancy, a long, narrow plinth, but he was in a mood to exult over even a bit of her. The sliver of cheek in view seemed no paler than it usually was. The single sable eyelash was lowered. She was in unostentatious black and she wore no mourning veil.

The elderly people between whom she was sitting were her parents, he guessed. She had told him once — how long ago it seemed! — that her folks live in Oregon; her father was a country doctor. He was a worn, fragile-looking man and his hand, like a dried insect, lay quietly on hers. Her mother seemed a cipher, a small, sweet nonentity, too naïve to pretend distress over a man she had not known. Nancy looked like her father.

The other elderly couple were evidently Tutter King’s father and mother. Layton looked away.

I love you, he said to the sliver of pale cheek, I love you. It amused him that he felt no quiver of shame at repeating in the privacy of his head the oldest cliché known to man. I love you, Nancy...

When it was all over, Layton caught the arm of a columnist for the Bulletin who was covering the funeral from the woman’s angle and said, “You going out to Forest Lawn, Cissie?”

“Well, sure.”

“Do me a favor and cover for me, will you?”

“Why, where are you going?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“Oh, nuts, Cis, I can’t take any more of this. Be nice, huh? I’ll scratch your back some time.”

“That’ll be the day,” she sniffed. “I’ve been trying to arouse the spark of manhood in you for years.”

“You’re just not my type.” Layton grinned.

“Who is — King’s widow?”

He pretended amused indignation. “Come again?”

“I heard you had a thing for her.”

“Can you beat that,” Layton said, shaking his head. “So now I’m a casket robber.”

The newspaperwoman kept watching him. “She’s a pretty little thing.”

“So’s my grandmother.” Layton gave her a friendly shove. “Go on, Cissie, before they leave you at the rail. And thanks. Remind me to buy you a drink.”

He could feel her scalpel glance probing his back as he made for the phone booths. The hell with her, too. She’d have plenty to yack about soon enough.

By the time he was through phoning in his report of the service, the cortege of glittering black Cadillacs had departed for the cemetery. Layton strolled out of the funeral home, stifling an impulse to whistle. The bulk of the mob had dispersed; the police were coiling the ropes. To his surprise, Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins were standing disconsolately on the sidewalk.

“Hi, kids,” Layton said, looking from one to the other.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Layton.” Young Mission’s tone was glum. The girl’s plump cheeks were smeary and her marbly little eyes were swollen from weeping. “Aren’t you going to Forest Lawn, either?”

“I’m not high on cemeteries, Wayne. But how come you two didn’t go?”

“We forgot to ask in advance. They didn’t assign us to a car, and I couldn’t get my father’s heap for today.”

“Who cares?” Nora Perkins said sullenly. “I’m sorry I even came for the service.”

“That’s great, that’s a fine thing to say,” Wayne snapped.

“It would look nice, wouldn’t it, if the president and vice president of Tutter King’s original fan club didn’t show up for his funeral! Sometimes I don’t dig you at all, Nora.”

“So you don’t! Anyway, I’m going home.”

“Don’t you think you’d better go back to school?” Layton asked.

“Oh, we got excused for today,” the boy muttered. “Well — see you, Mr. Layton.”

“Wait a minute,” Layton said. “Where do you two live?”

“I’m on Asbury, twenty-nine hundred block. Nora’s on Elm. They’re out in the Highland Park district, off San Fernando Road.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mr Layton,” the girl said with a trace of interest. “We’ll take the bus.”

“Come on, both of you.”

“Gosh, Mr. Layton, this is awfully nice of you...”

The niceness was in the kids, Layton thought as he headed for the downtown Freeway interchange. The professional mourners could wring their hands over juvenile degeneration in the atomic age, but the fact was that kids like these displayed sturdier qualities of character and worth than the clay-footed idols they worshiped. They knew faith and they practiced loyalty. It was the so-called grown-up world that broke them down and embittered enough of them to create a social problem.

“What did you think of the funeral?” Layton said.

“It was horrible.” Nora shivered. “I don’t ever want to go to one again.”

“That minister saying all those things about Tutter,” Wayne said. “How would he know? He didn’t know Tutter.”

Neither did you, Layton said, but not aloud. And maybe that’s just as well.

He was turning into the Pasadena Freeway when Wayne Mission said suddenly, “People are rats. Where were all the big shots Tutter knew from show business? His friends — stars!” The boy snorted. “They’re crums, that’s all they are. Rats jumping off the sinking ship... I don’t care what anybody, says. Tutter was real cool. He was sure nice to Nora and me.”

“Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t,” the girl said in a tight voice.

The goggled boy shook his head. “How do you like that! Nora’s sore, Mr. Layton, because Tutter was married. So what? It didn’t make any difference to me.”

“It wouldn’t,” the girl retorted. “You’re not a woman.”

“Well, neither are you!”

Nora sank back, furious but silenced.

After a while young Mission stirred. “That inquest yesterday, Mr. Layton.”

“What about it?”

“Why was all that stuff brought up about murder?”

“Because,” Layton said, gently and carefully, “some people thought it might have been. The way Tutter died... people don’t often commit suicide that way.”

“Yeah,” the boy said thoughtfully, “that bothered me, too. But who’d want to kill a wonderful person like Tutter? So it must have been suicide, the way the jury said.”

“He shouldn’t have done it, he shouldn’t!” Nora said passionately. “He had so much to live for.”

“Wait a minute, Nora! Mr. Layton, what did you think?”

“Look, can’t we talk about something else?” Layton said lightly. “The verdict is in, Tutter’s dead and being buried—”

“No, I mean it, Mr. Layton,” Wayne Mission said. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and it doesn’t add up, somehow. Did you think it was murder?”

Layton sighed. “Well, there were some possible motives. And, of course, a number of people had the opportunity—”

“That’s one of the things been bugging me. I read all the testimony, and I don’t see this opportunity stuff at all. The news-break intermission was only ten minutes all told, and some of that was taken up by Tutter’s leaving Studio A and going to his dressing room — of course, it’s only a few steps, but even a few steps take time — and then having to cross the hall to dressing room 1 and all... What I mean, except for Mr. Stander I myself didn’t see a soul, and I was out there in the hall must have been a good four minutes.”

“You were in the hall four minutes?” Layton asked. “You must be mistaken, Wayne.”

“No,” Wayne protested.

“But you told Sergeant Trimble that you and Nora went to Tutter’s dressing room, looked in, he wasn’t there, and then you returned to the studio. That couldn’t have taken four minutes.”

“Well, of course, not that part of it,” the boy said. “What took up most of the time was I had to wait for Nora.” He glanced philosophically at the girl, who glared back at him. “You know girls when they have to go to the john. It’s a wonder I’m not standing there yet.”

“Wayne Mission,” the girl hissed, her face flaming, “you’re impossible! Isn’t anything sacred?”

“Well, I had to explain, didn’t I?”

“Just a moment,” Layton said. “Which john are you talking about, Wayne?”

“The ladies’ room right outside Studio A. You know, Mr. Layton. It’s the only one in that corridor.”

“I don’t know why we have to discuss things like that,” Nora Perkins said. “I’m sure there must be more acceptable subjects for conversation.”

“No, wait, Nora,” Layton said. “Why didn’t you mention this to Sergeant Trimble?”

“That I had to visit the ladies’ room?” The girl eyed him coldly.

“It’s all my fault.” Wayne said disgustedly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You certainly won’t!”

“But that might have been important, Nora,” Layton said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the girl said petulantly. “It was no such thing, Mr. Layton. The only person either Wayne or I laid eyes on from the time we left Studio A until we went back in was that Mr. Stander down at the end of the hall, going to the control room of Studio B and C. And we told the detective that. Now can we talk about something else?”