Michael abandoned his compress long enough to look over my shoulder and agree that, yes, the comics were singularly innocent, all things considered.
“I wonder why,” he mused, disappearing again under the washcloth. “I think it’s more apt to be lack of nerve, not lack of experience.”
No way to tell, really, I thought. Not my generation or my gender. I just filed away my gut impression that the Ichabod Dilley who’d drawn these pictures hadn’t left Kansas very far behind.
“A penny for them,” Michael said, and I realized I must have fallen silent for rather a long time.
“Just wondering what Dilley might have done if he’d lived longer,” I said. “The kid had talent; you can see that in every drawing, and he was getting better all the time. If the issues weren’t numbered, I bet I could have figured out the order by seeing how his skill increased. Talent. And training. By the eleventh or twelfth issue, you’d need a few hundred words of description to say what he can show in one panel, in the arch of a courtier’s eyebrow, or the way Porfiria casts a come-hither look over her shoulder. Most artists don’t get that good without years of practice, including a lot of life-drawing classes. And this was only his progress over a year. Imagine what he could have done if he’d lived to keep getting better.”
“And this relates to the murder…how?” Michael asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s fascinating, but it’s not getting me anywhere. I was hoping it might prove useful if I could figure out which issue the drawing had come from.”
“And search everyone’s rooms for a torn comic book?”
“No, it’s too much to hope that the murderer would still be carrying it around. But I thought if the issue was important enough for the murderer to take it to that final, fatal confrontation, maybe the theme of the issue would give me a clue to the murderer.”
“Which it hasn’t, I gather.”
“No, my scrap isn’t from any of the twelve published issues. Maybe Cordelia isn’t pulling my leg, and there really was a lost thirteenth issue.”
“Is there supposed to be?”
I shrugged, and then realized he couldn’t see me.
“Who knows?” I said aloud. “Maybe it’s just the kind of rumor that always swirls around an artist who dies young.”
“You could show the scrap to Cordelia,” he suggested. “If she’s an expert in Dilley…”
“I’m not sure I’d want to, even if I hadn’t promised Foley to keep quiet about it,” I said. “She’d probably laugh at me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What if I’m being fooled by an obvious imitation?”
“Do you think it’s an imitation?”
“No, but I can’t prove it. Maybe I’ll show her when Foley lifts the embargo. Oh, have you got a moment?”
“For you, any number of moments,” he said, pulling off the washcloth. “Though if you were planning to ravish me while I’m in a weakened condition, I should point out that your timing stinks; I’m due back in the ballroom in ten minutes.”
“I’ll try to plan better next time. For now, just sign this photo, will you? Here’s the inscription they want.”
“We’ll always have West Covina,” Michael read aloud. “West Covina? Where is that? I assume it’s a where; it sounds like a where.”
“I have no idea where it is, but if I hadn’t bribed Cordelia with the promise of a personalized photo for one of her best customers, who lives there, she would never have let me borrow the comics.”
“Shameless, the way you exploit me,” Michael said. “I will exact compensation after dinner.”
While Michael signed, I slipped the last comic back in its acid-free archival-quality plastic cover, pulled off the gloves, and breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t mangled any of them. And then I headed back to the dealers’ room while Michael freshened up for his coming panel.
“So?” Cordelia asked, when I returned the comics. “Did you find anything?”
“I won’t know until I check a few other things,” I said. “Do you know anything about Dilley’s life?”
“I know everything there is to know,” she said. “Not that there’s that much of it. He was only twenty-one when he died, you know.”
“How did he die?” I asked.
“Mysteriously,” she said.
“I was talking the method, not the mood,” I said. “I heard it was drugs.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t straightforward. There were rumors that it wasn’t an accident.”