Free Jealous Woman by James M. Cain Page A

my grief.”
    “Mine either.”
    “This is one time we can spectate.”
    “That’s it. Just take it easy.”

Part Three:
THE WILLING WIDOW

8
    T HE INQUEST WAS NEXT night at a mortuary on Sixth Street, and Jane wasn’t a witness, but the cops had asked her to attend, as something might come up, and they wanted her there in case. So we drove the maid over, and Keyes was already there, with Mrs. Sperry, a big-shot lawyer in town named Morton Lynch, and a squinty-eyed number named Biggs that kept fingering a trick derby he had, that seemed to be Sperry’s valet, and that corresponded, in looks at least, to the guy named in the eye’s report on who didn’t come out of the room that night. Mrs. Sperry was in black, with a veil, but one you could see through. She didn’t look at Jane or the maid, but after we had sat down she nodded at me with a sad little smile, and reached over and gave my hand a grip. Some newspaper men were there, with three or four other guys that weren’t newspaper men but tried to look like they were. They work for the adjusters, so I knew there was an insurance angle. Some cops were at a table, and on the other side of a counter was the undertaker, but back there on a table you could see part of a sheet, with something under it. The whole room wasn’t much bigger than my private office, and we all sat on folding chairs that had been set up in rows with an aisle down the middle. Every time somebody would come in they’d start to sit in the first two rows on the right-hand side, but the cops would wave them to other seats. It turned out, when some more cops came in with them, where they’d been rounding them up, these two rows were for the jury.
    The coroner was Dr. Hudson, that I had met once or twice, and the cops all stood up when he came in. He was a squatty little guy, and after he had sat down and taken some papers out of his briefcase and studied them, the same sergeant as had come to see Jane banged on the table with the flat of his hand for us to stop talking. Then he asked all who had been summoned to testify to raise their right hands and the maid did and quite a few others did and he gave them the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and they all mumbled they would. Then he called the maid and the valet to view the body and when they had he asked them if they knew the deceased and they said they did and he was Richard Sperry and lived on the island of Bermuda. Then he asked if there was anybody else who wished to view the body, corroborate the identification, contest it, or add anything to this part of the inquest, and he looked at Mrs. Sperry, but she shook her head no and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then he had two cops tell how they had got the call in their car, and all the rest of it, how it had happened that night, anyway from their end of it. Then the ambulance doctor that had certified the death testified. Then two autopsy doctors went on, and they told a lot of compound occipital stuff, but all it seemed to add up to was that he died of a bashed-in head. Then he had a huddle with the sergeant and called the maid. She told it about like she had told it to the cops. Then he looked around and asked if anybody else had any knowledge of the case. He didn’t expect any answer, you could tell that, because he was already putting his papers back in the briefcase. And Keyes didn’t either, you could tell from the way he was whispering to Lynch. And his head couldn’t have snapped around quicker if a gun had been fired in his ear than it did when Mrs. Sperry rose up like a ghost coming out of the floor, stepped into the aisle, did a slow march to the chair they had put out for the witness, and said: “I have.”
    “You know something of this, Mrs. Sperry?”
    “I do.”
    “Something more than you told the police?”
    “I told the police only the barest facts—that I spent the evening in my suite, that I was not with my husband at the time he