Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge

the real truth is—” Nevertheless, in all innocence. This time, “I happen to know the police think—” But without pretension, in all innocence.
    â€œI suppose so,” Pam said and, before Alice uttered a diminished “Oh,” thought herself unkind. “I thought, since it was Jerry’s party it happened at—” Alice said, hope dying slowly.
    â€œThey think probably it was just a crazy person with a gun,” Pam said. She considered; there would hardly be any secrecy about Brozy. “They caught one,” Pam said, “but they’re having to throw him back, Bill says. A hotel thief named—”
    She told Alice Draycroft, who was understandably delighted with his name, about Ambrose Light.
    â€œHe must have felt he’d hit the jackpot without even pulling the lever,” Alice said. “The poor darling. But they still think it was somebody like that? I mean—” She let it hang, looked beyond Pam. Her expressive face expressed delight. She said, projecting, “ Faith . Faith darling . We’re over here.”
    For the second time within less than twenty-four hours, Pam was surprised when she looked at Faith Constable, walking toward them—shimmering toward them. At the center of her surprise was the conviction that Faith Constable should be bigger. On stage she was, somehow, never small—rather, she seemed to be any height she chose to be, needed to be. But she was, coming now between tables at Sardi’s, surely not more than five feet tall and she moved as if she weighed nothing whatever. And, it was preposterous for her to be the age she so obviously had to be.
    There was a second reason, a quite different reason, for Pamela North’s surprise. It was that Faith Constable, onetime wife of the late Anthony Payne, was not herself at all surprised, but shimmered toward them precisely as if she had expected to find both of them there, waiting, at a corner table at Sardi’s. Pam looked quickly at Alice Draycroft, who looked back with surpassing innocence. “Isn’t this nice , darling?” Alice said. “The nicest things just happen, I always think.”
    Chance met at Sardi’s. How actors love to act, Pam thought. How much more likely things are to happen if properly nudged. Why?
    Pam had indeed met Faith Constable. Of course Faith remembered Pamela North. There was indeed room at the table for a third; Henri (darling) would see that the daiquiri was very dry.
    â€œWe were talking about poor Tony, darling,” Alice Draycroft said, and Faith continued to look entirely unsurprised. She nodded her head.
    â€œWho isn’t?” she said. “He’d be so pleased. Under other circumstances, of course. Or shouldn’t I say that?”
    The question appeared to be directed to Pam North, who could think of no answer better than a smile and a slight lifting of the shoulders.
    â€œThe police still think it was what they call a sniper,” Alice said, bringing her chance-met friend up to date. “They got one but he wasn’t right, darling. He was named Ambrose Light.”
    Faith Constable smiled in a slightly abstracted fashion.
    â€œAmbrose Light ship , darling,” Alice said, and Faith nodded mild appreciation, and seemed to remain at some distance. The daiquiri came. She sipped it, and looked over it at Pam.
    â€œWe’re not taking you in, are we, Mrs. North?” Faith said. “I asked Alice to arrange this. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
    â€œWell,” Pam said, “you didn’t seem astonished to find us here.”
    And she was again surprised. On stage, Faith Constable was notably oblique. “Mrs. Constable’s attack is never frontal,” one critic had written, rather recently. “This is one of the charms of her highly individual method. All effects are, as it were, outflanked. As a result even what should have been evident often