Death Before Bedtime by Gore Vidal Page A

All of my clients seemed reasonably pleased and the few problems which had arisen in my absence were settled over the phone with Miss Flynn. “I trust you will soon return to New York now that your client Senator Rhodes has been Gathered Up,” said Miss Flynn ceremoniously.
    “As soon as the police let us go,” I said. “We’re all in quite a spot.”
    “Washington!” said Miss Flynn with a note of disgust: next to Hollywood she regarded it as the end, the absolute moral end of a country which was rapidly degenerating into something Roman and horrid.
    After I had finished with Miss Flynn, I called my old editor at the
Globe
and I managed to extort a considerable sum for a series of articles on the death of Senator Rhodes. I need not now recall the details of this transaction; enough to say that I did pretty well, considering the depressed state of the dollar.
    My business over, I strolled downstairs to the second floor. At one end of the corridor, on the left, was the blanketed and guarded entrance to the study. Three bedrooms opened off that corridor. The one nearest the study was occupied by the Pomeroys. Across from it was Walter Langdon’s and, next to his, was Rufus Hollister’s room. To the right of the landing was another hall with four bedrooms opening off it. They were the rooms, I knew, of Senator Rhodes, of Mrs. Rhodes, of Ellen and Miss Pruitt. My room on the third floor was definitely in the outfield, up where the servants lived. On an impulse I went to Ellen’s room and opened the door, without knocking.
    Had I been half an hour later, I should probably have witnessed as fine a display of carnality as our Puritan country has to offer; happily, for my own modesty, I found Walter Langdon and Ellen still clothed in spite of a steaming embrace on the bed which broke abruptly when they heard me. Langdon leaped to his feet like a track star warming up for the high hurdles; Ellen, an old hand at this sort of discovery, sat up more slowly and straightened her hair. “A pin just stabbed me in the back of the neck,” she announced irritably, rubbingher neck. “Why the hell don’t you knock?” Then, before I could answer she turned to Langdon angrily and said, “I thought you said you locked the door?”
    “I … I thought I did. I guess I turned the key over in the lock.” He was blushing furiously and I could see that my ex-fiancé had aroused him. Embarrassed he trotted into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.
    “A cooling-off period at this point in an affair is often considered very sound,” I said smoothly. “It gives both parties an opportunity to determine whether or not their needs can be served only through sin.”
    “Oh, shut up! Where do you think you are? in a railroad station? We were just talking, that’s all … and now look what you’ve done.”
    “What have I done?”
    “Embarrassed the poor little thing to death. It may take me days to get him back to where I had him before you came in.”
    “He’s not that much of a baby,” I said. “And your methods are foolproof anyway.”
    “Hell!” said Ellen, in a mood of complete disgust and dejection.
    “Anyway I want to talk to you.”
    “What about?”
    Before I could answer, Langdon came back into the bedroom noticeably soothed. “I’ll see you later,” he said calmly and left the room.
    “
Now
look what you’ve done!”
    “You can finish your dirty work tonight,” I said. “I want to talk to you about the murder.”
    “Well, what about it?” She was still angry. She went over to her dressing table and sat down, repairing her blurred make-up. I ambled about the room, looking at the bookcasefull of girls’ stories and passionate adult novels, at the rather unfeminine décor.
    “Was this always your room?”
    She nodded. “Up until I got married it was.”
    “Where did you go after the marriage was annulled?”
    “To a finishing school in New York. When I was thrown out of that, I stayed in New