“How’d she seem to you?”
“Wired. Chatty,” Charlie said. “Her daughter is back from the wilderness. They’re going to do some housecleaning. And Janet is in a swivet about the mess we left. Another citizen complaint.”
Chapter 18
JANET WORLEY WAS FLUSTERED when she came to the door.
“Yes? Oh. Right. Come in. I expect you want to speak with Nicole.”
Conklin and I went with Janet through the front rooms to the kitchen, where Nigel Worley was cleaning fingerprint powder off the stove.
Janet said, “I can tell you Nicole knows nothing. She wasn’t even here.”
“We understand,” Conklin said. “We want her impressions and so forth.”
“She’s in her flat. Nigel, ring her up, will you?”
I said, “Mrs. Worley, what can you tell us about Harry Chandler?”
“Would you like tea?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
We took seats at a kitchen table with a view of the evidence tent in the garden. Water from last night’s rain dripped from the canopy onto the bricks.
Janet said stiffly, “What do you wish to know about Mr. Harry?”
I told Janet Worley to tell me about his personality, his character, and she did. He was honest, she told me. He was rich, of course, but according to Janet, Harry Chandler was very normal for such a famous person.
Normal?
Harry Chandler was to the movies what O. J. Simpson was to football.
Janet said, “After Mrs. Chandler disappeared, during the year and a half when Mr. Chandler was indisposed, we became almost like his family. We moved from our flat in number two into the main house so that the place wouldn’t go cold.
“Mr. Chandler appreciated that. He has always been very generous,” Janet said. “He paid for Nicole’s education. He gave us things. Gave us a car one year, didn’t he, Nigel?”
“His dead wife’s car.”
“Yes. It was secondhand, but we still have it.”
I asked, “When did you see Mr. Chandler last?”
“Three months ago. Yes. He came for dinner on Christmas. I always find Mr. Chandler charming, although maybe a little distracted. Always rehearsing something in his mind, I expect.”
Something crashed against the stove behind us.
I turned. Nigel Worley’s face looked like a furrowed field.
He said, “Rehearsing? Distracted? Yes, he was distracted. He’s a bloody womanizer,” Nigel Worley said. “Well, it was in all the papers, Jan. Don’t look at me like I drowned the baby in the bath.”
“He was a ladies’ man,” Janet conceded.
“Harry Chandler is what you might call an equal-opportunity ladies’ man. He liked all types,” Nigel went on. “Actresses mostly, but he fancied the odd waitress or even women of a certain age.”
Janet’s stiff expression tightened.
“I don’t think he ever met a woman he didn’t like,” said Nigel Worley, turning his eyes directly to me for the first time. “Harry Chandler would like you.”