I
It was one of those hot, breathless July mornings, nice if you’re in a swim-suit on the beach with your favourite blonde, but hard to take if you’re shut up in an office as I was.
The sound of the mid-morning traffic on Orchid Boulevard, the drone of aircraft circling the beach and the background murmur of the surf drifted in through the open windows. The air-conditioning plant, hidden somewhere in the bowels of Orchid Buildings, coped efficiently with the rising temperature. Sunshine, hot and golden, made patterns on the office rug Paula had bought to impress the customers, and which always seemed to me too expensive to walk on.
I sat behind the flat-topped desk on which I had scattered a few old letters to convince Paula if she should come in suddenly that I was working. A highball, strong enough to crack concrete, hid behind a couple of impressive-looking law books, and clinked ice at me whenever I reached for it.
It was now just over three and a half years since I founded Universal Services: an organization which undertook any job from exercising a pet poodle to stamping on a blackmailer feeding on a client’s bankroll. It was essentially a millionaire’s service, as our rates came high, but then, in Orchid City, millionaires were almost as numerous as grains of sand on a beach. During those three and a half years we had fun and games, made a little money and had a variety of jobs: even murder we had taken in our stride.
For the past few days business had been as quiet as a spinster eating a bun in a lecture-hall. The routine stuff was coming in all right, but Paula Bensinger took care of that. It was only when something out-of-the-way reared its head that I and my leg-man, Jack Kerman, went to work. And nothing out-of-the-way had reared its head, so we were just sitting around waiting and punching holes in a bottle of Scotch and making out to Paula we were busy.
Sprawled out in the armchair reserved for clients, Jack Kerman, long, lean and dapper, with a broad streak of white in his thick black hair and a Clark Gable moustache, rubbed the frosted glass of his highball against his forehead and relaxed. Immaculate in an olive-green tropical suit and a yellow and red striped tie, his narrow feet gaudy in white buckskin shoes with dark green explosions, he looked every inch a fugitive from the pages of Esquire.
Out of a long, brooding silence, he said: “What a dish! Take her arms off and she’d have knocked Venus for a loop.” He shifted into a more comfortable position and sighed. “I wish someone had taken her arms off. Boy! Was she strong! And I was sucker enough to think she was a pushover.”
“Don’t tell me,” I pleaded, reaching for my highball. “That opening has a familiar ring. The last thing I want to hear on a morning like this is an extract from your love-life. I’d rather read Krafft-Ebing.”
“That old goat won’t get you anywhere,” Kerman said scornfully. “He wrote all the nifty bits in Latin.”
“And you’d be surprised at the number of guys who learned Latin just to find out what he said. That’s what I call killing two birds with one stone.”
“That brings us right back to my blonde,” Kerman said, stretching out his long legs. “I ran into her last night in Barney’s drug store…”
“I’m not interested in blondes,” I said firmly. “Instead of sitting around here talking about women, you should be out trying to hustle up new business. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I pay you for.”
Kerman considered this, a surprised expression on his face.
“Do you want any new business?” he asked eventually. “I thought the idea was to let Paula do all the work, and we live on her.”
“That’s the general set-up, but once in a while it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to do something to earn your keep.”
Kerman looked relieved.
“Yeah; once in a while. For a moment I thought you meant now.” He sipped his highball and closed his eyes. “Now this blonde I keep trying to tell you about. She’s a cute trick if ever there was one. When I tried to date her up she said she didn’t run after men. Know what I said?”
“What did you say?” I asked, because he would have told me anyway, and if I didn’t listen to his lies, who was going to listen to mine?
Kerman chortled.
“Lady,’ I said, “maybe you don’t run after men, but a mousetrap doesn’t have to run after mice, either.’ Smart, huh? Well, it killed her. You needn’t look so damned sour. Maybe you have heard it before, but she hadn’t, and it knocked her dead.”
Then before I could hide the highball the door jerked open and Paula swept in.
Paula was a tall, dark lovely, with cool, steady brown eyes and a figure full of ideas my ideas, not hers. She was quick on the uptake, ruthlessly efficient and a tireless worker. It had been she who had encouraged me to start Universal Services, and had lent the money to tide me over for the first six months. It was entirely due to her ability to cope with the administrative side of the business that Universal Services was an established success. If I were the brains of the set-up, you could call her the backbone. Without her the organization would have folded in a week.
“Haven’t you anything better to do than sit around and drink?” she demanded, planting herself before the desk, and looking at me accusingly.
“What is there better to do?” Kerman asked, mildly interested.
She gave him a withering stare and turned her bright brown eyes on me again.
“As a matter of fact, Jack and I were just going out to beat up some new business,” I said, hastily pushing back my chair. “Come on, Jack. Let’s go and see what we can find.”
“And where are you going to look—Finnegan’s bar?” Paula asked scornfully.
“That’s a bright idea, sourpuss,” Kerman said. “Maybe Finnegan will have something for us.”
“Before you go you might like to look at this,” Paula said, and flourished a long envelope at me. “The janitor brought it up just now. He found it in one of the pockets of that old trenchcoat you so generously gave him.”
“He did?” I said, taking the envelope. “That’s odd. I haven’t worn that trenchcoat for more than a year.”
“The cancellation stamp bears you out,” Paula said with ominous calm. “The letter was posted fourteen months ago. I suppose you couldn’t have put it in your pocket and forgotten all about it? You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you?”
The envelope was addressed to me in a neat, feminine handwriting, and unopened.
“I can’t remember ever seeing it before,” I said.
“Considering you don’t appear to remember anything unless I remind you, that comes as no surprise,” Paula said tartly.
“One of these days, my little harpie,” Kerman remarked gently, “someone is going to haul off and take at slap at your bustle.”
“That won’t stop her,” I said, ripping open the envelope. “I’ve tried. It only makes her worse.” I dipped in a finger and thumb and hoisted out a sheet of note-paper and five onehundred-dollar bills.
“Suffering Pete!” Kerman exclaimed, starting to his feet. “Did you give that to the janitor?”
“Now don’t you start,” I said, and read the letter.
Crestways, Foothill Boulevard, Orchid City. May 15th, 1948. Will you please make it convenient to see me at the above address at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon? I am anxious to obtain evidence against someone who is blackmailing my sister. I understand you undertake such work. Please treat this letter as confidential and urgent. I enclose five hundred dollars as a retainer. Janet Crosby.
There was a long and painful silence. Even Jack Kerman hadn’t anything to say. We relied on recommendations to bring in the business, and keeping five hundred dollars belonging to a prospective client for fourteen months without even acknowledging it is no way to get a recommendation.
“Urgent and confidential,” Paula murmured. “After keeping it to himself for fourteen months he hands it to the janitor to show to all his little playmates. Wonderful!”
“You shut up!” I snarled. “Why didn’t she call up and ask for an explanation? She must have guessed the letter had gone astray. But wait a minute. She’s dead, isn’t she? One of the Crosby girls died. Was it Janet?”
“I think it was,” Paula said. “I’ll soon find out.”
“And dig up everything we’ve got on Crosby, too.”
When she had gone into the outer office, I said: “I’m sure she’s dead. I guess we’ll have to return this money to her estate.”
“If we do that,” Kerman said, always reluctant to part with money, “the press may get wind of it. A story like this will make a swell advertisement for the way we run our business. We’ll have to watch our step, Vic. It might be smarter to hang on to the swag and say nothing about it.”
“We can’t do that. We may be inefficient, but at least let’s be honest.”
Kerman folded himself down in the armchair again.
“Safer to let sleeping dogs lie. Crosby’s something in oil, isn’t he?”
“He was. He’s dead. He was killed in a shooting accident about a couple of years back.” I picked up the paper-knife and began to punch holes in the blotter. “It beats me how I came to leave the letter in my trenchcoat like that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Kerman, who knew Paula, grinned sympathetically.
“Slosh her in the slats if she nags,” he said helpfully. “Am I glad it wasn’t me!”
I went on punching holes in the blotter until Paula returned with a fistful of newspaper clippings.
“She died of heart failure on May 15th, the same day as she wrote the letter. No wonder you didn’t hear from her,” she said as she shut the office door.
“Heart failure? How old was she then?”
“Twenty-five.”
I laid down the paper-knife and groped for a cigarette.
“That seems mighty young to die of heart failure. Anyway, let’s have the dope. What have you got?”
“Not a great deal. Most of it we know already,” Paula said, sitting on the edge of the desk.
“Macdonald Crosby made his millions in oil. He was a hard, unlovable old Quaker with a mind as broad as a tightrope. He married twice. Janet, the elder by four years, was by his first wife. Maureen by his second. He retired from business in 1943 and settled in Orchid City. Before that he lived in San Francisco. The two girls are as unalike as they can be. Janet was studious and spent most of her time painting. Several of her oils are hung in the Arts Museum. She seems to have had a lot of talent, a retiring nature and a sharp temper. Maureen is the beauty of the family. She’s wild, woolly and wanton. Up to Crosby’s death she was continually getting herself on the front page of the newspapers in some scandal or other.”
“What kind of scandal?” I asked.
“About a couple of years ago she knocked down and killed a fellow on Centre Avenue.
Rumour has it she was drunk, which seems likely as she drank like a fish. Crosby squared the police and she got off with a heavy fine for dangerous driving. Then another time she rode along Orchid Boulevard on a horse without a stitch on. Someone betted her she hadn’t the nerve, but she did it.”
“Let me get that straight,” Kerman said, sitting up excitedly. “Was it the horse or the girl who hadn’t a stitch on?”
“The girl, you dope!”
“Then where was I? I didn’t see her.”
“She only got about fifty yards before she was pinched.”
“If I’d been around she wouldn’t have got that far.”
“Don’t be coarse, and be quiet!”
“Well, she certainly sounds a grand subject for blackmail,” I put in.
Paula nodded.
“You know about Crosby’s death. He was cleaning a gun in his study, and it went off and killed him. He left three-quarters of his fortune to Janet with no strings tied to it, and a quarter to Maureen in trust. When Janet died, Maureen came into the whole vast estate, and seems to be a reformed character. Since she lost her sister she hasn’t once been mentioned in the press.”
“When did Crosby die?” I asked.
“March 1948. Two months before Janet died.”
“Convenient for Maureen.”
Paula raised her eyebrows.
“Yes. Janet was very upset by her father’s death. She was never very strong, and the press say the shock finished her.”
“All the same it’s very convenient for Maureen. I don’t like it, Paula. Maybe I have a suspicious mind. Janet writes to me that someone is blackmailing her sister. She then promptly dies of heart failure and her sister comes into her money. It’s too damned convenient.”
“I don’t see what we can do,” Paula said, frowning. “We can’t represent a dead client.”
“Oh, yes, we can.” I tapped the five onehundred-dollar bills. “I have either to hand this money back to the estate or try to earn it. I think I’ll try to earn it.”
“Fourteen months is a long time,” Kerman said dubiously. “The trail will be cold.”
“If there is a trail,” Paula said.
“On the other hand,” I said, pushing back my chair, “if there’s anything sinister about Janet’s death, fourteen months provides a pleasant feeling of security, and when you feel secure, you’re off your guard. I think I’ll call on Maureen Crosby and see how she likes spending her sister’s money.”
Kerman groaned.
“Something tells me the brief spell of leisure is over,” he said sadly. “I thought it was too good to last. Do I start work now or wait until you get back?”
“You wait until I get back,” I said, moving towards the door. “But if you’ve made a date with that mousetrap of yours, tell her to go find another mouse.”
II
Crestways, the Crosby’s estate, lurked behind low, bougainvillea-covered walls above which rose a tall, clipped, Australian pine hedge, and back of this was a galvanized cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Heavy wooden gates, with a Judas window set in the right-hand gate, guarded the entrance.
There were about half a dozen similar estates strung along Foothill Boulevard and backing on to Crystal Lake desert. Each estate was separated from its neighbour by an acre or so of a no-man’s-land of brushwood, wild sage, sand and heat.
I lolled in the pre-war Buick convertible and regarded the wooden gates without much interest. Apart from the scrolled sign on the wall that declared the name of the house, there was nothing particularly different about it from all the other millionaire estates in Orchid City. They all lurked behind impregnable walls. They all had high, wooden gates to keep out unwelcomed visitors. They all exuded the same awed hush, the same smell of flowers and well-watered lawns. Although I couldn’t see beyond the gates, I knew there would be the same magnificent swimming-pool, the same aquarium, the same rhododendron walk, the same sunken rose garden. If you own a million dollars you have to live on the same scale as the other millionaires or else they’ll think you are punk. That’s the way it was, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’ll always be—if you own a million dollars.
No one seemed to be in a hurry to open the gates, so I dragged myself out of the car and hung myself on to the end of the bell chain. The bell had been muffled, and rang timorously.
Nothing happened. The sun beat down on me. The temperature hoisted itself up another knotch. It was too hot even for such a simple exercise as pulling a bell chain. Instead, I pushed on the gate, which swung creakily open under my touch. I looked at the stretch of lawn before me that was big enough for tank manoeuvres. The grass hadn’t been cut this month, nor for that matter the month before. Nor had the two long herbaceous borders on either side of the broad carriageway received any attention this spring, nor for that matter last autumn either. The daffodils and tulips made brown patterns of untidiness among the dead heads of the peonies. Shrivelled sweet william plants mingled with unstaked and matted delphiniums. A fringe of straggling grass disgraced the edges of the lawn. The tarmac carriageway sprouted weeds. A neglected rose rambler napped hysterically in the lazy breeze that came off the desert. An unloved, uncared-for garden, and looking at it I seemed to hear old man Crosby fidgeting in his coffin.
At the far end of the carriageway I could see the house: a two-storey, coquina-built mansion with a red tile roof, green shutters and an overhanging balcony. Sunblinds screened the windows. No one moved on the green tile patio. I decided to walk up there rather than wrestle with the gates to bring in the Buick.
Halfway up the weed-strewn tarmac I came upon one of those arbor things covered with a flowering vine. Squatting on their heels in the shade were three chinamen shooting craps. They didn’t bother to look up as I paused to stare, just as they hadn’t bothered for a long, long time to look after the garden: three dirty, mindless men, smoking yellow-papered cigarettes with not a care in the world.
I tramped on.
The next bend in the tarmac brought me to the swimming-pool. There had to be a swimming-pool, but not necessarily one like this one. There was no water in it, and weeds grew out of the cracked tile floor. The concrete surround was covered with a brownish, burned-up moss. The white awning which must have looked pretty smart in its day had come loose from its moorings and flapped querulously at me.
At right angles to the house was a row of garages, their double doors closed. A little guy in a pair of dirty flannel trousers, a singlet and a chauffeur’s cap sat on an oil drum in the sun, whittling wood. He looked up to scowl at me.
“Anyone at home?” I asked, searching for a cigarette and lighting it when I found one. It took all that time before he worked up enough strength to say: “Don’t bother me, Jack. I’m busy.”
“I can see that,” I said, blowing smoke at him. “I’d love to sneak up on you when you’re relaxing.”
He spat accurately at a tub of last summer’s pelargoniums from which no one had bothered to take cuttings, and went on with his whittling. As far as he was concerned I was now just part of the uncared-for landscape.
I didn’t think I would get anything useful out of him, and besides, it was too hot to bother, so I went on to the house, climbed the broad steps and leaned my weight on the bell-push.
A funereal hush hung over the house. I had to wait a long time before anyone answered my ring. I didn’t mind waiting. I was now in the shade, and the drowsy, next-year-will-do atmosphere of the place had a kind of hypnotic influence on me. If I had stayed there much longer I would have begun whittling wood myself.
The door opened, and what might have passed for a butler looked me over the way you look someone over who’s wakened you up from a nice quiet nap. He was a tall, lean bird, lantern-jawed, grey-haired, with close-set, yellowish eyes. He wore one of those waspcoloured vests and black trousers that looked as if he had slept in them, and probably had, no coat, and his shirt sleeves suggested they wanted to go to the laundry, but just couldn’t be bothered.
“Yes?” he said distantly, and raised his eyebrows.
“Miss Crosby.”
I noticed he was holding a lighted cigarette, half-concealed in his cupped hand.
“Miss Crosby doesn’t receive now,” he said, and began to close the door.
“I’m an old friend. She’ll see me,” I said, and shifted my foot forward to jam the door.
“The name’s Malloy. Tell her and watch her reaction. It’s my bet she’ll bring out the champagne.”
“Miss Crosby is not well,” he said in a flat voice, as if he were reading a ham part in a hammier play. “She doesn’t receive any more.”
“Like Miss Otis?”
That one went past him without stirring the air.
“I will tell her you have called.” The door was closing. He didn’t notice my foot. It startled him when he found the door wouldn’t shut.
“Who’s looking after her?” I asked, smiling at him.
A bewildered expression came into his eyes. For him life had been so quiet and gentle for so long he wasn’t in training to cope with anything out of the way.
“Nurse Gurney.”
“Then I’d like to see Nurse Gurney,” I told him, and leaned some of my weight on the door.
No exercise, too much sleep, cigarettes and the run of the cellar had sapped whatever iron he had had in his muscles. He gave way before my pressure like a sapling tree before a bulldozer.
I found myself in an over-large hall, facing a broad flight of stairs which led in a wide, half-circular sweep to the upper rooms. On the stairs, halfway up, was a white-clad figure: a nurse.
“All right, Benskin,” she said. “I’ll see to it.”
The tall, lean bird seemed relieved to go. He gave me a brief, puzzled stare, and then cat-footed across the hall, along a passage and through a baize-covered door.
The nurse came slowly down the stairs as if she knew she was good to look at, and liked you to look at her. I was looking all right. She was a nurse right out of a musical comedy; the kind of nurse who sends your temperature chart haywire every time you see her. A blonde, her lips scarlet, her eyes blue-shaded: a very nifty number: a symphony of curves and sensuality; as exciting and as alive and as hot as the flame of an acetylene torch. If ever she had to nurse me I would be bed-ridden for the rest of my days.
By now she was within reaching distance, and I had to make a conscious effort not to reach. I could tell by the expression in her eyes that she was aware of the impression she was making on me, and I had an idea I interested her as much as she interested me. A long, tapering finger pushed up a stray curl under the nurse’s cap. A carefully plucked eyebrow climbed an inch. The red painted mouth curved into a smile. Behind the mascara the green-blue eyes were alert and hopeful.
“I was hoping to see Miss Crosby,” I said. “I hear she’s not well.”
“She isn’t. I’m afraid she isn’t even well enough to receive visitors.” She had a deep, contralto voice that vibrated my vertebrae.
“That’s too bad,” I said, and took a swift look at her legs. Betty Grable’s might have been better, but there couldn’t have been much in it. “I’ve only just hit town. I’m an old friend of hers. I had no idea she was ill.”
“She hasn’t been well for some months.”
I had the impression that as a topic of conversation Maureen Crosby’s illness wasn’t Nurse Gurney’s idea of fun. It was just an impression. I could have been wrong, but I didn’t think so.
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Well, not serious. She needs plenty of rest and quiet.”
If she had had any encouragement this would have been her cue for a yawn.
“Well, it’s quiet enough here,” I said, and smiled. “Quiet for you, too, I guess?”
That was all she needed. You could see her getting ready to unpin her hair.
“Quiet? I’d as soon be buried in Tutankhamen’s tomb,” she exclaimed, and then remembering she was supposed to be a nurse in the best Florence Nightingale tradition, had the grace to blush. “But I guess I shouldn’t have said that, should I? It isn’t very refined.”
“You don’t have to be refined with mc,” I assured her. “I’m just an easygoing guy who goes even better on a double Scotch and water.”
“Well, that’s nice.” Her eyes asked a question, and mine gave her the answer. She giggled suddenly. “If you have nothing better to do…”
“As an old pal of mine says, ‘What is there better to do?’”
The plucked eyebrow lifted.
“I think I could tell him if he really wanted to know.”
“You tell me instead.”
“I might, one of these days. If you would really like a drink, come on in. I know where the Scotch is hidden.”
I followed her into a large room which led off the hall. She rolled a little with each step, and had weight and control in her hips. They moved under the prim-looking white dress the way a baseball flighted with finger-spin moves. I could have walked behind her all day watching that action.
“Sit down,” she said, waving to an eight-foot settee. “I’ll fix you a drink.”
“Fine,” I said, lowering myself down on the cushion-covered springs. “But on one condition. I never drink alone. I’m very particular about that.”
“So am I,” she said.
I watched her locate a bottle of Johnny Walker, two pint tumblers and a bottle of Whiterock from the recess in a Jacobean Court cupboard.
“We could have ice, but it’ll mean asking Benskin, and I guess we can do without Benskin right now, don’t you?” she said, looking at me from under eyelashes that were like a row of spiked railings.
“Never mind the ice,” I said, “and be careful of the Whiterock. That stuff can ruin good whisky.”
She poured three inches of Scotch into both glasses and added a teaspoonful of Whiterock to each.
“That look about right to you?”
“That looks fine,” I said, reaching out a willing hand. “Maybe I’d better introduce myself.
I’m Vic Malloy. Just plain Vic to my friends, and all good-looking blondes are my friends.”
She sat down, not bothering to adjust her skirts. She had nice knees.
“You’re the first caller we have had in five months,” she said. “I was beginning to think there was a jinx on this place.”
“From the look of it, there is. Straighten me out on this, will you? The last time I was here it was an estate, not a blueprint for a wilderness. Doesn’t anyone do any work around here any more?”
She lifted her shapely shoulders.
“You know how it is. Nobody cares.”
“Just how bad is Maureen?”
She pouted.
“Look, can’t we talk about something else? I’m so very tired of Maureen.”
“She’s not my ball of fire either,” I said, tasting the whisky. It was strong enough to raise blisters on the hide of a buffalo. “But I knew her in the old days, and I’m curious. What exactly’s the matter with her?”
She leaned back her blonde head and lowered most of the Scotch down her creamy-white, rather beautiful throat. The way she swallowed that raw whisky told me she had a talent for drinking.
“I shouldn’t tell you,” she said, and smiled. “But if you promise not to say a word…”
“Not a word.”
“She’s being tapered off a drug jag. That’s strictly confidential.”
“Bad?”
She shrugged.
“Bad enough.”
“And in the meantime when the cat’s in bed the mice’ll play, huh?”
“That’s about right. No one ever comes near the place. She’s likely to be some time before she gets around again. While she’s climbing walls and screaming her head off, the staff relaxes. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
“Certainly is, and they certainly can relax.”
She finished her drink.
“Now, let’s get away from Maureen. I have enough of her nights without you talking about her.”
“You on night duty? That’s a shame.”
“Why?” The green-blue eyes alerted.
“I thought it might be fun to take you out one night and show you things.”
“What things?”
“For a start I have a lovely set of etchings.”
She giggled.
“If there’s one thing I like better than one etching it’s a set of etchings.” She got up and moved over to the whisky bottle. The way her hips rolled kept me pointing like a gun-dog.
“Let me freshen that,” she went on. “You’re not drinking.”
“It’s fresh enough. I’m beginning to get the idea there are things better to do besides drinking.”
“Are you? I thought perhaps you might.” She shot more liquor into her glass. She didn’t bother with the Whiterock this time.
“Who looks after Maureen during the day?” I asked as she made her way back to the settee.
“Nurse Fleming. You wouldn’t like her. She’s a man-hater.”
“She is?” She sat beside me, hip against hip. “Can she hear us?”
“It wouldn’t matter if she did, but she can’t. She’s in the left wing, overlooking the garages. They put Maureen there when she started to yell.”
That was exactly what I wanted to know.
“To hell with all man-haters,” I said, sliding my arm along the back of the settee behind her head. She leaned towards me. “Are you a man-hater?”
“It depends on the man.” Her face was close to mine so I let my lips rest against her temple.
She seemed to like that.
“How’s this man for a start?”
“Pretty nice.”
I took the glass of whisky out of her hand and put it on the floor.
“That’ll be in my way.”
“It’s a pity to waste it.”
“You’ll need it before long.”
“Will I?”
She came against me, her mouth on mine. We stayed like that for some time. Then suddenly she pushed away from me and stood up. For a moment I thought she was just a kiss-and-good-bye girl, but I was wrong. She crossed the room to the door and turned the key.
Then she came back and sat down again.
III
I parked the Buick outside the County Buildings at the corner of Feldman and Centre Avenue, and went up the steps and into a world of printed forms, silent passages and old-young clerks waiting hopefully for deadmen’s shoes.
The Births and Deaths Registry was on the first floor. I filled in a form and pushed it through the bars to the redheaded clerk who stamped it, took my money and waved an airy hand towards the rows of files.
“Help yourself, Mr. Malloy,” he said. “Sixth file from the right.”
I thanked him.
“How’s business?” he asked, and leaned on the counter, ready to waste his time and mine.
“Haven’t seen you around in months.”
“Nor you have,” I said. “Business is fine. How’s yours? Are they still dying?”
“And being born. One cancels out the other.”
“So it does.”
I hadn’t anything else for him. I was tired. My little session with Nurse Gurney had exhausted me. I went over to the files. C file felt like a ton weight, and it was all I could do to heave it on to the flat-topped desk. That was Nurse Gurney’s fault, too. I pawed over the pages, and, after a while, came upon Janet Crosby’s death certificate. I took out an old envelope and a pencil. She had died of malignant endocarditis, whatever that meant, on 15th of May 1948.
She was described as a spinster, aged twenty-five years. The certificate had been signed by a Doctor John Bewley. I made a note of the doctor’s name, and then turned back a dozen or so pages until I found Macdonald Crosby’s certificate. He had died of brain injuries from gunshot wounds. The doctor had been J. Salzer; the corner, Franklin Lessways. I made more notes, and then, leaving the file where it was, tramped over to the clerk who was watching me with lazy curiosity.
“Can you get someone to put that file back?” I asked, propping myself up against the counter. “I’m not as strong as I thought I was.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Malloy.”
“Another thing: who’s Dr. John Bewley, and where does he live?”
“He has a little place on Skyline Avenue,” the clerk told me. “Don’t go to him if you want a good doctor.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
The clerk lifted tired shoulders.
“Just old. Fifty years ago he might have been all right. A horse-and-buggy doctor. I guess he thinks trepanning is something to do with opening a can of beans.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
The clerk laughed.
“Depends on whose head we’re talking about.”
“Yeah. So he’s just an old washed-up croaker, huh?”
“That describes him. Still, he’s not doing any harm. I don’t suppose he has more than a dozen patients now.” He scratched the side of his ear and looked owlishly at me. “Working on something?”
“I never work,” I said. “See you some time. So long.”
I went down the steps into the hard sunlight, slowly and thoughtfully. A girl worth a million dies suddenly and they call in an old horse-and-buggy man. Not quite the millionaire touch. One would have expected a fleet of the most expensive medicine men in town to have been in on a kill as important as hers.
I crawled into the Buick and trod on the starter. Parked against the traffic, across the way, was an olive-green Dodge limousine. Seated behind the wheel was a man in a fawn-coloured hat, around which was a plaited cord. He was reading a newspaper. I wouldn’t have noticed him or the car if he hadn’t looked up suddenly and, seeing me, hastily tossed the newspaper on to the back seat and started his engine. Then I did look at him, wondering why he had so suddenly lost interest in his paper. He seemed a big man with shoulders about as wide as a barn door. His head sat squarely on his shoulders without any sign of a neck. He wore a pencil-lined black moustache and his eyes were hooded. His nose and one ear had been hit very hard at one time and had never fully recovered. He looked the kind of tough you see so often in a Warner Brothers’ tough movie: the kind who make a drop-cloth for Humphrey Bogart.
I steered the Buick into the stream of traffic and drove East, up Centre Avenue, not hurrying, and keeping one eye on the driving-mirror.
The Dodge forced itself against the West-going traffic, did a U-turn while horns honked and drivers cursed and came after me. I wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to have done that on Centre Avenue and get away with it, but apparently the cops were either asleep or it was too hot to bother.
At Westwood Avenue intersection I again looked into the mirror. The Dodge was right there on my tail. I could see the driver lounging behind the wheel, a cheroot gripped between his teeth, one elbow and arm on the rolled-down window. I pulled ahead so I could read his registration number, and committed it to memory. If he was tailing me he was making a very bad job of it. I put on speed on Hollywood Avenue and went to the top at sixty-five. The Dodge, after a moment’s hesitation, jumped forward and roared behind me. At Foothills Boulevard I swung to the kerb and pulled up sharply. The Dodge went by. The driver didn’t look in my direction. He went on towards the Los Angeles and San Francisco Highway.
I wrote down the registration on the old envelope along with Doc Bewley’s name and stowed it carefully away in my hip pocket. Then I started the Buick rolling again and drove down Skyline Avenue. Halfway down I spotted a brass plate glittering in the sun. It was attached to a low, wooden gate which guarded a small garden and a double-fronted bungalow of Canadian pine wood. A modest, quiet little place; almost a slum beside the other ultramodern houses on either side of it.
I pulled up and leaned out of the window. But, at that distance it was impossible to read the worn engraving on the plate. I got out of the car and had a closer look. Even then it wasn’t easy to decipher, but I made out enough to tell me this was Dr. John Bewley’s residence.
As I groped for the latch of the gate, the olive-green Dodge came sneaking down the road and went past. The driver didn’t appear to look my way, but I knew he had seen me and where I was going. I paused to look after the car. It went down the road fast and I lost sight of it when it swung into Westwood Avenue.
I pushed my hat to the back of my head, took out a packet of Lucky Strike, lit up and stowed the package away. Then I lifted the latch of the gate and walked down the gravel path towards the bungalow.
The garden was small and compact, and as neat and as orderly as a barrack-room on inspection day. Yellow sunblinds, faded and past their prime, screened the windows. The front door could have done with a lick of paint. That went for the whole of the bungalow, too.
I dug my thumb into the bell-push and waited. After a while I became aware that someone was peeping at me though the sunblinds. There was nothing I could do about that except put on a pleasant expression and wait. I put on a pleasant expression and waited.
Just when I thought I would have to ring again I heard the kind of noise a mouse makes in the wainscotting, and the front door opened.
The woman who looked at me was thin and small and bird-like. She had on a black silk dress that might have been fashionable about fifty years ago if you lived in isolation and no one ever sent you Vogue. Her thin old face was tired and defeated, her eyes told me life wasn’t much fun.
“Is the doctor in?” I asked, raising my hat, knowing if anyone would appreciate courtesy she would.
“Why, yes.” The voice sounded defeated, too. “He’s in the garden at the back. I’ll call him.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I’d as soon go around and see him there. I’m not a patient. I just wanted to ask him a question.”
“Yes.” The look of hope which had begun to climb into her eyes faded away. Not a patient. No fee. Just a healthy young husky with a question. “You won’t keep him long, will you? He doesn’t like being disturbed.”
“I won’t keep him long.”
I raised my hat, bowed the way I hoped in her better days men had bowed to her, and retreated back to the garden path again. She closed the front door. A moment later I spotted her shadow as she peered at me through the front window blinds.
I followed the path around the bungalow to the garden at the back. Doc Bewley might not have been a ball of fire as a healer, but he was right on the beam as a gardener I would have liked to have brought those three Crosby gardeners to look at this garden. It might have shaken up their ideas.
At the bottom of the garden, standing over a giant dahlia was a tall old man in a white alpaca coat, a yellow panama, yellowish-white trousers and elastic side-boots. He was looking at the dahlia the way a doctor looks down your throat when you say ‘ Ah-aa’, and was probably finding it a lot more interesting.
He looked up sharply when I was within a few feet of him. His face was lined and shrivelled, not unlike the skin of a prune, and he had a crop of coarse white hair sprouting out of his cars. Not a noble or clever face, but the face of a very old man who is satisfied with himself, whose standards aren’t very high, who has got beyond caring, is obstinate, dull-witted, but undefeated.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Surgery hours are from five to seven, young man,” he said in a voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “I can’t see you now.”
“This isn’t a professional call,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the dahlia. It was a lovely thing: eight inches across if it was an inch, and flawless. “My name’s Malloy. I’m an old friend of Janet Crosby.”
He touched the dahlia gently with thick-jointed fingers.
“Who?” he asked vaguely, not interested: just a dull-witted old man with a flower.
“Janet Crosby,” I said. It was hot in the sun, and the drone of the bees, the smell of all those flowers made me a little vague myself.
“What of her?”
“You signed the death certificate.”
He dragged his eyes away from the dahlia and looked at me.
“Who did you say you were?”
“Victor Malloy. I’m a little worried about Miss Crosby’s death.”
“Why should you be worried?” he asked, a flicker of alarm in his eyes. He knew he was old and dull-witted and absent-minded. He knew by keeping on practicing medicine at his age he ran the risk of making a mistake sooner or later. I could see he thought I was going to accuse him of making that mistake now.
“Well, you see,” I said mildly, not wanting to stampede him, “I’ve been away for three or four years. Janet Crosby was a very old friend. I had no idea she had a bad heart. It was a great shock to me to hear she had gone like that. I want to satisfy myself that there was nothing wrong.”
A muscle in his face twitched. The nostrils dilated.
“What do you mean—wrong? She died of malignant endocarditis. The symptoms are unmistakable. Besides, Dr. Salzer was there. There was nothing wrong. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. What exactly is malignant endocarditis?”
He frowned blankly, and, for a moment, I thought he was going to say he didn’t know, but he got hold of himself, stirred his old withered memory and said slowly as if he were conjuring up a page from some medical dictionary, “It’s a progressive microbic infection of the heart valves. Fragments of the ulcerating valves were carried by the blood stream all over her body. She hadn’t a chance. Even if they had called me in sooner, there was nothing I could have done.”
“That’s what’s worrying me, doc,” I said, and smiled to let him know I was on his side.
“Just why did they call you in? You weren’t her doctor, were you?”
“Certainly not,” he said, almost angrily. “But it was quite proper to call me in. I live close by. It would have been unethical for Dr. Salzer to have issued the certificate.”
“Just who is Dr. Salzer?”
He began to look vague again, and his fingers went yearningly towards the dahlia. I could see he wanted to be left alone, to let his brain sleep in the peaceful contemplation of his flowers, not to be worried by a husky like me who was taking up his time for nothing.
“He runs one of those crank sanatoriums, right next door to the Crosby estate,” he said finally. “He’s a friend of the family. His position is such he couldn’t ethically issue a certificate. He is not a qualified practitioner. I was very flattered they asked for my help.”
I could imagine that. I wondered what they paid him.
“Look, doc,” I said. “I’d like to get this straight. I’ve tried to see Maureen Crosby, but she isn’t well. I’m going away, but before I go I want to get a picture of this thing. All I’ve heard is that Janet died suddenly. You say it was heart trouble. What happened? Were you there when she died?”
“Why, no,” he said, and alarm again flickered in the dim eyes. “I arrived about half an hour after she was dead. She had died in her sleep. The symptoms were unmistakable. Dr. Salzer told me she had been suffering from the disease for some months. He had been treating her. There was nothing much one can do with such cases except rest. I can’t understand why you’re asking so many questions.” He looked hopefully towards the house to see if his wife wanted him. She didn’t.
“It’s only that I want to satisfy myself,” I said, and smiled again. “You arrived at the house, and Salzer was there. Is that it?”
He nodded, getting more worried every second.
“Was there anyone else there?”
“Miss Crosby. The younger one. She was there.”
“Maureen?”
“I believe that’s her name.”
“And Salzer took you to Janet’s room? Did Maureen come, too?”
“Yes. They both came with me into the room. The the young woman seemed very upset.
She was crying.” He fingered the dahlia. “Perhaps there should have been a postmortem,” he said suddenly. “But I assure you there was no need. Malignant endocarditis is unmistakable. One has to consider the feelings of those who are left.”
“And yet, after fourteen months, you are beginning to think there should have been a postmortem?”
I put a slight edge to my voice.
“Strictly speaking, there should have been, because Dr. Salzer had been treating her, and, as he explained to me, he is a Doctor of Science, not Medicine. But the symptoms…”
“Yeah… are unmistakable. One other thing, doc. Have you ever seen Janet Crosby before? I mean, before she died?”
He looked wary, wondering if I were springing a trap.
“I’ve seen her in her car, but not to speak to.”
“And not close enough to notice if she showed any symptoms of heart trouble?”
He blinked.
“I didn’t get that.”
“I understand she was suffering from this disease for some months. You say you saw her in her car. How long ago was this: that you saw her? How long before she died?”
“A month, maybe two. I don’t remember.”
“What I’m trying to get at,” I said patiently, “is that with this disease she would have shown symptoms you might have recognized if you had seen her before she died.”
“I don’t think I should.”
“And yet the symptoms are unmistakable?”
He licked his thin lips.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and began to back away. “I can’t give you any more of my time. It is valuable. I must ask you to excuse me.”
“That’s all right, doc,” I said. “Well, thanks. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. But you know how it is. I just wanted to put my mind at rest. I liked that girl.”
He didn’t say anything, but continued to back away towards the rose beds.
“There’s just one other thing, doc,” I said. “How was it that Dr. Salzer signed Macdonald Crosby’s certificate when he was accidentally shot? Wasn’t that unethical for a non-qualified quack to do that?”
He looked at me the way you look at a big spider that has fallen into your bath.
“Don’t worry me,” he said in a quavering voice. “Ask him : don’t bother me.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s a good idea. Thank you, doc. I will.”
He turned and moved off down the path towards his roses. From the back he looked even older than he was. I watched him pick off a dead rose and noticed his hand was very shaky. I was afraid I had spoilt his afternoon.
The small bird-like woman was standing on the porch of the front door, hopefully, when I arrived back at the house. She pretended not to see me.
“I’m afraid I’ve taken up a lot of the doctor’s time,” I said, raising my hat. “He tells me it is valuable. Would five dollars cover it?”
The tired eyes brightened. The thin face lit up.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said, and looked furtively down the garden at the old bent back and the yellow panama hat.
I slipped the bill into her hand. She snapped it up the way a lizard snaps up a fly. I had an idea the old man at the bottom of the garden wouldn’t ever set eyes on it. At least, I hadn’t spoilt her afternoon.
IV
I pushed open my office door and marched in. Jack Kerman was dozing in the armchair by the window. Paula was sitting at my desk working on one of her hundreds of card indexes: indexes that kept our fingers on the pulse of Orchid City, that told us who was who, who was in town and who had left town, who had married who, and so on. Although she had four girls working continuously on the cards, she insisted on keeping the key-cards up-to-date herself.
She moved out of the desk-chair as I tossed my hat at Kerman, waking him. He gave a startled grunt, rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“What’s it like—working?” he asked. “Or haven’t you started yet?”
“I’ve started,” I said, and sat down, reached for a cigarette, lit it, shot my cuffs and plunged into the tale. I gave them all the details with the exception of my session with Nurse Gurney. I skirted over that, knowing Paula wouldn’t have approved and Kerman would have got too excited to think straight. “Not much,” I concluded, “but enough to make me think it’s worth while going on with. Maybe there’s nothing wrong; maybe there is. If there is the less commotion we make the better. We don’t want to tip anyone off just yet.”
“If this guy in the Dodge was tailing you, it seems to me someone’s tipped off already,” Kerman pointed out.
“Yeah, but we can’t be sure of that. Maybe my face interested him. Maybe he was practicing to be a detective.”
I reached for the telephone. “Give me police headquarters,” I told the exchange girl.
“You got his number?” Paula asked, fluttering through the stack of cards in her hands.
“Checking it now,” I said. “Give me Lieutenant Mifflin,” I went on when an unenthusiastic voice announced Police Headquarters. There was a plop on the line, and Mifflin’s gritty voice asked, “Hello?”
Tim Mifflin was a good tough cop, and we had worked together off and on for some time. Whenever I could I helped him, and whenever he could he helped me. He had a great respect for my hunches when playing the horses, and, by following my tips, he had had the luck to make himself a little folding money.
“Malloy here,” I said. “How are you, Tim?”
“What do you care?” he snapped. “You’ve never been interested in my health and you never will be. What do you want this time?”
“Who owns an olive-green Dodge; licence number, O.R.3345?”
“The way you use Headquarters for financial gain slaughters me,” Mifflin said. “If Brandon ever finds out what I do for you he’ll screw me.”
“Well, I won’t tell him, so it’s up to you,” I said, and grinned, “and another thing, talking about financial gain, if you want to make yourself a piece of change, put your shirt on Crab Apple for a win. Tomorrow; four-thirty.”
“You really mean my shirt?”
“I’ll say I do. Sell up your home; hock your wife; break into Brandon’s safe. As good as that. Two gets you six. The only thing that’ll stop that horse is for someone to shoot it.”
“Maybe someone will,” Mifflin said, who was always over cautious. “Well, if you say so.”
“It’s the safest bet you’ll ever have. How about that number?”
“Sure, sure. Hang on. I’ll have it for you in ten seconds.”
While I was waiting I saw Jack Kerman busily dialling on the other phone.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“Getting my bookie. That Crab Apple sounds good.”
“Forget it. I’m just telling him what someone told me. It’s a safe enough tip for a copper, but not for a friend.”
Kerman replaced the receiver as if it had bitten him. “Suppose he sells up his home and hocks his wife? You know what a dope he is on these things.”
“Have you seen his home and wife? Well, I have. I’ll be doing him a favour.” As Mifflin’s voice came on the line, I said, “What have you got?”
“O.R.3345, did you say?”
“Yeah.”
“The car’s registered in the name of Jonathan Salzer, The Sanatorium, Foothill Boulevard. That what you want to know?”
I kept the excitement out of my voice. “Maybe. Who’s Salzer? Know anything about him?”
“Not much. He runs a crank’s home. If you have a pain in your belly he fills you up with fruit juices and lets you ferment. He does all right.”
“Nothing crooked on the side?”
“For crying out loud! He doesn’t need to be crooked. He’s making a hell of a lot of dough.”
“Well, thanks, Tim.”
“You’re sure about that horse?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said, and winked at Kerman. “Put your shirt on it.”
“Well, I’ll spring five bucks, but no more.” I hung up.
“Five bucks! The gambler!”
“Salzer’s car, huh?” Kerman said.
I nodded.
“Maybe we did tip our hand.” I looked at Paula. “Have you anything on Salzer?”
“I’ll see.” She put a card down before me. “That might interest you. It’s all the information we have on Janet Crosby.”
I read the details while she went into the card-index room that led off the outer office.
“Dancing, tennis and golf,” I said, looking across the desk at Kerman. “Doesn’t sound like someone with heart disease. Intimate friends, Joan Parmetta and Douglas Sherrill. A couple of years back she was engaged to Sherrill, but broke it off. No reason given. Who’s Sherrill anyway?”
“Never heard of him. Want me to find out?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you went along and saw this Parmetta girl and Sherrill. Tell them you used to be an old friend of Janet in her San Francisco days. You’ll have to get the background in case they try and trip you. Paula will get that for you. What I want, Jack, is their reaction to her having heart trouble. Maybe she did have a wacky heart, but if she didn’t, then we really have something to work on.”
“Okay,” Kerman said.
Paula came in.
“Nothing much,” she said. “Salzer started his sanatorium in 1940. It’s a luxury place. Two hundred dollars a week.”
“Nice profit,” I said enviously.
“Some people must be crazy. Imagine paying all that dough for a glass of fruit juice,” Kerman said, horrified. “It sounds the kind of racket we should be in.”
“Nothing else?”
“He’s married. Speaks French and German fluently. Has a Doctor of Science degree. No hobbies. No children. Age fifty-three,” Paula said, reading from the card. “That’s all, Vic.”
“Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. “Give Jack a hand, will you? He wants the dope on this Parmetta girl and Sherrill. I’m going downstairs to have a word with Mother Bendix. I want to check on the Crosbys’ staff. That butler struck me as a phoney. Maybe she got him the job.”
V
At first glance, and come to that, even at second glance, Mrs. Martha Bendix, executive director of the Bendix Domestic Agency, could easily have been mistaken for a man. She was big and broad shouldered and wore her hair cut short, a man’s collar and tie, and a man’s tweed coat. It was only when she stood up and moved away from her desk you were surprised to see the tweed skirt, silk stockings and heavy brogue shoes. She was very hearty, and, if you weren’t careful to keep out of her reach, she had a habit of slapping you violently on the back, making you feel sick for the next two or three hours. She also had a laugh as loud as the bang of a twelve-bore shot-gun, and if you weren’t watching for it, you jumped out of your skin when she let it off. A woman I wouldn’t want to live with, but a good-hearted soul, generous with her money, and a lot more interested in nervous, frail little blondes than a big husky like me.
The timid bunny-faced girl who showed me into Mrs. Bendix’s cream and green office edged away from me as if I were full of bad intentions, and gave Mrs. Bendix a coy little smile that could have meant something or nothing depending on the state of your mind.
“Come on in, Vic,” Mrs. Bendix boomed from across a paper-littered desk. “Sit down. Haven’t seen you in days. What have you been doing with yourself?”
I sat down and grinned at her.
“This and that,” I told her. “Keeping the wolf from the door. I’ve looked in for a little help, Martha. Done any business with the Crosbys?”
“Not for a long time.” She leaned down and hoisted up a bottle of Scotch, two glasses and half a dozen coffee beans. “Make it snappy,” she went on. “I don’t want to shock Mary. She doesn’t approve of drinking in office hours.”
“That Mary with the rabbit teeth?”
“Never mind about her teeth. She’s not going to bite you with them.” She handed me a glass half full of Scotch and three of the coffee beans. “You mean the Crosbys on Foothill Boulevard?”
I said I meant the Crosbys on Foothill Boulevard.
“I did a job for them once, but not since. That was about six years ago. I fixed the whole of their staff then. Since Janet Crosby died they cleared out the old crowd and put in a new lot. They didn’t come to me for the new lot.”
I sampled the Scotch. It was smooth and silky, and had plenty of authority.
“You mean they sacked everybody?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“What happened to them?”
“I fixed them up elsewhere.”
I chewed this over.
“Look, Martha, between you and me and the coffee beans, I’m trying to get the lowdown on Janet’s death. I’ve had a tip, and it might or might not be worth working on. I’m not entirely sold on the idea she died of heart failure. I’d like to talk it over with some of the old staff. They may have seen something. The butler, for instance. Who was he?”
“John Stevens,” Mrs. Bendix said after a moment’s thought. She finished her drink, tossed three beans into her mouth, put her glass and the Scotch out of sight and dug her thumb into a bell-push on her desk. The bunny-faced girl crept in.
“Where’s John Stevens working now, honey?”
The bunny-faced girl said she would find out. After a couple of minutes she came back and said Stevens worked for Gregory Wainwright, Hillside, Jefferson Avenue.
“How about Janet’s personal maid? Where’s she now?” I asked.
Mrs. Bendix waved the bunny-faced girl away. When she had gone, she said, “That bitch? She’s not working any more, and I wouldn’t give her a job if she came to me on bended knees.”
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked, hopefully pushing my empty glass forward. “Let’s be matey, Martha. One drink is no use to big, strong boys like you and me.”
Mrs. Bendix sniggered, hoisted up the bottle again and poured.
“What’s the matter with her?” I repeated, when we had saluted each other.
“She’s no good,” Mrs. Bendix said, and scowled. “Just a goddamn lazy bum.”
“We haven’t got our lines crossed, have we? I’m talking about Janet Crosby’s personal maid.”
“So am I,” Mrs. Bendix said, and fed three more coffee beans into her mouth. “Eudora Drew. That’s her name. She’s gone haywire. I wanted a good personal maid for Mrs. Randolph Playfair. I took the trouble to contact Drew to tell her I could fix her up. She told me to jump in a cesspit. That’s a nice way to talk, isn’t it? She said she wasn’t ever going to do any more work, and if one cesspit wouldn’t hold me anyone would dig me another if I told them what it was for.” Mrs. Bendix brooded darkly at the insult. “At one time I thought she was a good, smart girl. Just shows you can’t trust them further than you can throw them, doesn’t it? It’s my bet she’s living on some man. She’s got a bungalow in Coral Gables, and lives in style.”
“Where in Coral Gables?”
“On Mount Verde Avenue. You interested?”
“I might be. What happened to the rest of the staff?”
“I fixed them all up. I can give you addresses if you want them.”
I finished my drink.
“I may want them. I’ll let you know. How soon after Janet’s death did this Drew girl get the sack?”
“The next day. All the staff went before the funeral.”
I eat a coffee bean.
“Any reason given?”
“Maureen Crosby went away for a couple of months. The house was shut up.”
“Not usual to sack all the staff when you go away for a couple of months, is it?”
“Of course it isn’t usual.”
“Tell me more about this Drew girl.”
“The things you want to know,” Mrs. Bendix said, and sighed. “Give me that glass unless you want another.”
I said I didn’t want another, and watched her hide the Scotch and the two glasses. Then she dug her thumb into the bell-push again.
The bunny-faced girl came in and gave her another coy smile.
“Dig out Eudora Drew’s card, honey,” Mrs. Bendix said. “I want to have a look at it.”
The bunny-faced girl came back after a while with a card. She gave it to Mrs. Bendix the way an adoring Bobbysoxer might give Frank Sinatra a posy.
When she had gone, Mrs. Bendix said, “I don’t know if this is what you want. Age twenty-eight. Home address, 2243 Kelsie Street, Carmel. Three years with Mrs. Franklin Lambert.
Excellent references. Janet Crosby’s personal maid from July 1943. Any good to you?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. Could be. I think I’d better go and talk to her. What makes you think she’s living with a man?”
“How else does she get her money? She’s not working. It’s either a man or a lot of men.”
“Janet Crosby might have left her a legacy.”
Mrs. Bendix lifted her bushy eyebrows.
“I hadn’t thought of that. She might, of course. Yes, come to think of it, it might be the answer.”
“Well, okay,” I said, getting up. “Thanks for the drinks. Come and see us some time for a change. We have drinks too.”
“Not me,” Mrs. Bendix said firmly. “That Bensinger girl doesn’t approve of me. I can see it in her eyes.”
I grinned.
“She doesn’t approve of me, either. I don’t let that worry me. It shouldn’t worry you.”
“It doesn’t. And don’t kid yourself, Vic. That girl’s in love with you.”
I considered this, then shook my head.
“You’re wrong. She isn’t in love with anyone. She isn’t the type to fall in love.”
Mrs. Bendix pursed up her lips and made a loud, rude noise.
VI
Coral Gables is the Dead End district of Orchid City, a shack town that has grown up around the harbour where an industry of sponge and fish docks, turtle crawls and markets plus a number of shady characters flourish. The water-front is dominated by Delmonico’s bar, the toughest joint on the coast, where three or four fights a night is the normal routine, and where the women are more often tougher than the men.
Monte Verde Avenue lies at the back of Coral Gables: a broad, characterless road lined on either side by cabin-like houses, all more or less conforming to the same pattern. As a district it is perhaps one step above Coral Gables, but that isn’t saying a great deal. Most of the cabin-like houses are occupied by professional gamblers, light ladies, flashy-looking toughs who lounge on the water-front during the day and mind their own business after dark, and the betting boys and their dolls. The only two-storeyed house in the road is owned by Joe Betillo, mortician and embalmer, coffin maker, abortionist and fixer of knife and bullet wounds.
I drove the Buick along the road until I came to Eudora Drew’s cabin on the right and about three-quarters of the way down. It was a white and blue five-room wood cabin with a garden that consisted of a lawn big enough to play halma on and two tired-looking hydrangea plants in pots either side of the front door.
I stepped over the low wooden gate and rapped with the little brass knocker that hadn’t been cleaned in months.
There was about a ten second delay: no more, and then the door jerked open. A solid young woman in grey-green slacks and a white silk blouse, her dark hair piled to the top of her head, looked me over with suspicious and slightly bloodshot eyes. She wasn’t what you’d call a beauty, but there was an animal something about her that would make any man look at her twice, and some even three times.
Before I could open my mouth:
“Spare your breath if you’re selling anything,” she said in a voice a little more musical than a tin can being thrown downstairs, but not much. “I never buy at the door.”
“You should have that put on the gate,” I said cheerfully, “look at the time it would save. Are you Miss Drew?”
“What’s it to you who I am?”
“I have business with Miss Drew,” I said patiently. “Important business.”
“Who are you?”
“The name’s Vic Malloy. I’m an old friend of Janet Crosby.”
A muscle in her upper lip suddenly twitched, but otherwise there was no reaction.
“So what?”
“Does that make you Miss Drew or doesn’t it?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I was hoping you might help me,” I said, resting one hand on the wall and leaning on it. “The fact is I’m not entirely satisfied about Miss Crosby’s death.”
This time a wary expression came into her eyes.
“Excavating ancient history, aren’t you? She’s been dead long enough. Anyway, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Were you there when she died?”
She took hold of the front door and drew it against her side.
“I tell you I don’t know anything about it, and I haven’t the time to waste on something that doesn’t concern me.”
I studied the hard, suspicious face.
“Miss Drew, do you know what makes scarcely any noise but can be heard a mile away?” I asked, and smiled knowingly at her.
“You screwy or something?”
“Some people can hear it two miles away. Have a guess?”
She lifted her solid shoulders impatiently.
“Okay, I’ll buy it—what?”
“A hundred-dollar bill, folded in two and rustled gently between finger and thumb.”
The sullen look went from her face. Her eyes opened a trifle wider.
“Do I look as if a hundred-dollar bill would be of any use to me?” she said scornfully.
“Even Pierpoint Morgan could use a hundred dollars,” I said. “Still, I might raise the ante if you have anything worth buying.”
I could see her brain at work. At least now we were talking the same language. She stared past me, down the path into a world of dollar signs and secrets. She smiled suddenly, a half smirk, not directed at me, but at a thought that had come into her mind.
“What makes you think there’s anything wrong about her death?” she asked abruptly, her eyes shifting back to me.
“I didn’t say I thought there was something wrong. I said I wasn’t entirely satisfied. I have an open mind about it until I have talked to people who were with her about the time she died. Did you notice if she suffered from heart trouble?”
“It’s a long time ago, mister,” she said, and smirked. “I have a lousy memory for things like that. Maybe if you come back at nine tonight I’ll have had time to remember, and it’s no use coming back with a hundred dollars. I’m a big girl now and I have big ideas.”
“How big?” I asked politely.
“More like five. It would be worth my while to shake up my memory for five, but not for a nickle less.”
I made believe to consider this.
“Nine o’clock tonight?” I said.
“About then.”
“I wouldn’t want to spend all that money unless I was sure the information was of value.”
“If I can get my memory working,” she said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the information was of value.”
“See you at nine, then.”
“Bring the money with you, mister. It has to be cash on the line.”
“Sure. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
She gave me a long, thoughtful stare and then closed the door in my face. I walked slowly back up the path, climbed over the gate and got into the Buick.
Why nine o’clock? I wondered as I trod on the starter. Why not now? Of course the money had something to do with it, but she wasn’t to know I hadn’t come heeled with five hundred dollars. She didn’t ask. This was a smooth, bright baby: a baby who knew all the answers, and could make four and four add up to nine. I sent the Buick down the road so the speedometer needle flickered up to seventy after the first hundred yards. At the bottom of the road I crammed on the brakes to make the turn into Beach Road, gave an elderly gentleman about to cross the street three different kinds of heart disease, straightened out of the skid and went on until I saw a drug store. I swung to the kerb, ran across the sidewalk into the store and into a phone booth.
Paula answered the phone after the second ring.
“This is Universal Services,” she said in her gentle, polite voice. “Good evening.”
“And this is your old pal Vic Malloy calling from a drug store in Coral Gables. Grab your car, bright eyes, and come arunning. You and me are going to hold hands and make love. How does it sound?”
There was a momentary pause. I’d have given a lot to have seen her expression.
“Where exactly are you?” she said, and sounded as unexcited as if I had asked her the time.
“Beach Road. Come as fast as you can,” I said, and hung up.
I left the Buick outside the drug store and walked to the corner of Beach Road. From there I could see Eudora Drew’s cabin. I propped myself up against a lamp standard and kept my eyes on the gate of the cabin.
Nine o’clock. I had three hours to wait, and I wished I had asked Paula to bring some Scotch and a sandwich to help while away the time.
For the next twenty minutes I lolled against the lamp standard and never took my eyes off the cabin. Nobody came out. Nobody went in. Several tough-looking homhres emerged from other cabins and either walked away or drove away. Three girls, all blondes, all with strident voices, came out of the cabin next to Eudora’s and strolled down the road towards me swinging their hips and ogling anything in trousers within sight. As they passed me they all looked my way, but I kept my eyes firmly on the cabin.
A nice neighbourhood this, I thought. Not the kind of road Mrs. Bendix’s bunny-faced pal would care to walk down.
Paula’s smart little two-seater came bustling out of Princess Street and headed towards me. It pulled up and the door swung open. Paula looked very trim and slightly glacial in her grey, pin-head suit. She was hatless, and her brown eyes looked at me enquiringly.
“Where now?” she asked, as I settled beside her.
“Drive up here nice and slow and stop on the bend. Eudora’s place is that white and blue abomination on the right,” I said, and as the car moved forward I rapidly told her what had happened. “I have an idea she might communicate with someone,” I concluded. “I may be wrong, but I think it’ll be worth while keeping on eye on her for the next couple of hours. The only way to watch the house without getting the neighbours in an uproar is for us to be a courting couple. That’s something they all understand in this district.”
“Pity you had to pick on me,” Paula said coldly.
“Well, I couldn’t very well pick on Kerman,” I said, a little peeved. “Let me tell you some girls would jump at the opportunity.”
“Can I help it if some girls have queer tastes?” she asked, pulling up on the bend. “Is this right?”
“Yeah. Now for the love of mike, relax. You’re supposed to be enjoying this.” I slid my arm round the back of her neck. She leaned against me and stared moodily down the road at the cabin. I might just as well have necked with a dressmaker’s dummy. “Can’t you work up a little enthusiasm?” And I tried to nibble her ear.
“That may go down big with your other girl friends,” she said icily, jerking away, “but it doesn’t with me. If you’ll open the glove compartment you’ll find some whisky and a couple of sandwiches in there. That might keep you more suitably employed.”
I unwound my arm from her neck and dived into the glove compartment.
“You think of everything,” I said, beginning to munch. “This is the only thing in the world that’d stop me kissing you.”
“I knew that,” she said tartly. “That’s why I brought it.”
I was working on the second sandwich when an olive-green Dodge limousine came tearing down the road. I didn’t have to look twice to see it was the same olive-green Dodge and the same big tough driving it.
I wormed myself down in the seat to be out of sight.
“That’s the guy who’s been tailing me,” I said to Paula. “Keep an eye on him and see where he goes.”
“He’s stopped outside Eudora’s place, and he’s getting out,” she told me.
Cautiously I lifted my head until my eyes were level with the windshield. The Dodge had stopped as Paula had said outside the blue and white cabin. The big tough got out, slammed the door with so much force he nearly knocked the car on its side, and went pounding down the path to the front door. He didn’t knock, but turned the handle and marched in: a man in a hurry.
“And that, bright eyes, is called a hunch,” I said to Paula. “I thought she would either go out or telephone. Well, she telephoned. Big Boy has arrived for a consultation. It certainly looks as if I’ve tipped my hand. What happens from now on should be interesting.”
“What will you do when he leaves?”
“I’ll go in and tell her I couldn’t raise five hundred. Then we’ll see how she plays it.”
I had finished the sandwich and was just starting on the whisky when the front door of the cabin opened and Big Boy came out. He had been inside eleven and a half minutes by the clock on the dashboard. He looked to right and left, scowled at Paula’s parked car, but was too far away to see who was in it, walked leisurely up the path, vaulted over the gate, climbed into the Dodge and drove quietly away.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” I said. “If everyone transacted business as fast as that there’d be an awful lot more work done. Come on, honey, we may as well make the call. At least, you drive me over and wait outside. I wouldn’t like her to get nervous.”
Paula started the car and drove up to the gate of the blue and white cabin. I got out.
“You may or may not hear screams,” I said. “If you do, think nothing of it. It’ll only be Eudora impressed by my personality.”
“I hope she hits you over the head with a flat iron.”
“She may. She’s one of those unpredictable types. I like them that way.”
I climbed over the gate and walked down the path to the front door. I rapped and waited, whistling softly under my breath. Nothing happened. The house was as quiet as a mouse watching a cat.
I rapped again, remembering how Big Boy had looked up and down the road, and seeing in that memory a sudden sinister significance. I touched the door, but it was locked. It was my turn now to look up and down the road. Apart from Paula and the car it was as empty as the face of an old man who is out of tobacco and has no money. I lifted the knocker and slammed it down three times, making quite a noise. Paula peered out of the car window and frowned at me.
I waited. Still nothing happened. The mouse was still watching the cat. Silence brooded over the house.
“Drive down to Beach Road,” I said to Paula. “Wait for me there.”
She started the engine and drove away without looking at me. That’s one of the very good things about Paula. She knows an emergency when she sees one, and obeys orders without question.
Again I looked up and down the road, wondering if anyone was peeping at me from behind the curtains of the many houses within sight. I had to take that risk. I wandered around to the back of the house. The service door stood open, and moving quietly I peered into a small kitchen. It was the kind of kitchen you would expect to find in a house owned by a girl like Eudora Drew. She probably had a monthly wash-up. Everywhere, in the sink, on the table, on the chairs and floor, were dirty saucepans, crockery and glasses. The trash bin was crammed with empty bottles of gin and whisky. A frying-pan full of burnt grease and bluebottle flies leered up at me from the sink. There was a nicely blended smell of decay, dirt and sour milk hanging in the air. Not the way I should like to live, but then tastes differ.
I crossed the kitchen, opened the door and peered into the small, untidy hall. The doors opened on to the hall— presumably the living-room and the dining-room. I gumshoed to the right-hand door, peered into more untidiness, more dust, more slipshod living. Eudora wasn’t in there; nor was she in the dining-room. That left the upstairs rooms. I mounted the stairs quietly, wondering if she might be having a bath, and that was the reason why she hadn’t answered my ring, but decided it was unlikely. She wasn’t the type to take sudden baths.
She was in the front bedroom. Big Boy had made a thorough job of it, and she had done her best to protect herself. She lay across the tumbled bed, her legs sprawled out, her blouse ripped off her back. Knotted around her throat was a blue and red silk scarf—probably hers. Her eyes glared out of her blue-black face; her tongue lay in a little bed of foamy froth. She wasn’t a pretty sight, nor had death come to her easily.
I shifted my eyes away from her, and looked around the room. Nothing had been disturbed. It was as untidy and as dusty as the other rooms, and reeked of stale perfume.
I stepped quietly to the door, not looking at the bed again, and moved out of the room and into the passage. I was careful not to touch anything, and on my way downstairs I rubbed the banister rail with my handkerchief. I went into the smelly, silent little kitchen, pushed open the screen door that had swung to in the hot breeze, on down the garden path to the gate, and walked without haste to where Paula was waiting.