“Shove it, George. I might get an answer in three months. I want one in five days.”
“You have a thought there, pal. Anything else?”
“One thing more. They keep all their vital records over there in a place they call Somerset House. I want to know if he figures there in any connection—birth, marriage, naturalization, anything at all.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Who’s paying the bill?”
“Suppose the names don’t show?”
“Then I’m stuck. If they do, I want certified copies of anything your man turns up. How much you soaking me?”
“I’ll have to ask Carne. He may thumb it out altogether. We don’t want the kind of publicity you get. If he lets me handle it, and you agree not to mention the connection, I’d say three hundred bucks. Those guys over there don’t get much by dollar standards. He might hit us for ten guineas, less than thirty bucks. On top of that any expenses he might have. Say fifty bucks altogether and Carne wouldn’t open a file for less than two-fifty.”
“Professional rates.”
“Ha, ha. He never heard of them.”
“Call me, George. Want to eat dinner?”
“Romanoff’s ?”
“All right,” I growled, “if they’ll give me a reservation—which I doubt.”
“We can have Carne’s table. I happen to know he’s dining privately. He’s a regular at Romanoff’s. It pays off in the upper brackets of the business. Carne is a pretty big boy in this town.”
“Yeah, sure. I know somebody—and know him personally—who could lose Carne under his little fingernail.”
“Good work, kid. I always knew you would come through in the clutch. See you about seven o’clockin the bar at Romanoff’s. Tell the head thief you’re waiting for Colonel Carne. He’ll clear a space around you so you don’t get elbowed by any riffraff like screenwriters or television actors.”
“See you at seven,” I said.
We hung up and I went back to the chess board. But The Sphynx didn’t seem to interest me any more. In a little while Peters called me back and said it was all right with Carne provided the name of their agency was not connected with my problems. Peters said he would get a night letter off to London at once.
FORTY-ONE
Howard Spencer called me on the following Friday morning. He was at the Ritz-Beverly and suggested I drop over for a drink in the bar.
“Better make it in your room,” I said.
“Very well, if you prefer it. Room 828. I’ve just talked to Eileen Wade. She seems quite resigned. She has read the script Roger left and says she thinks it can be finished off very easily. It will be a good deal shorter than his other books, but that is balanced by the publicity value. I guess you think we publishers are a pretty callous bunch. Eileen will be home all afternoon. Naturally she wants to see me and I want to see her.”
“I’ll be over in half an hour, Mr. Spencer.”
He had a nice roomy suite on the west side of the hotel. The living room had tall windows opening on a narrow iron-railed balcony. The furniture was upholstered in some candy-striped material and that with the heavily flowered design of the carpet gave it an old-fashioned air, except that everything you could put a drink down on had a plate glass top and there were nineteen ash trays spotted around. A hotel room is a pretty sharp indication of the manners of the guests. The Ritz-Beverly wasn’t expecting them to have any.
Spencer shook hands. “Sit down,” he said. “What will you drink?”
“Anything or nothing. I don’t have to have a drink.”
“I fancy a glass of Amontillado. California is poor drinking country in the summer. In New York you can handle four times as much for one half the hangover.”
“I’ll take a rye whiskey sour.”
He went to the phone and ordered. Then he sat down on one of the candy-striped chairs and took off his rimless glasses to polish them on a handkerchief. He put them back on, adjusted them carefully, and looked at me.
“I take it you have something on your mind. That’s why you wanted to see me up here rather than in the bar.”
“I’ll drive you out to Idle Valley. I’d like to see Mrs. Wade too.”
He looked a little uncomfortable. “I’m not sure that she wants to see you,” he said.
“I know she doesn’t. I can get in on your ticket.”
“That would not be very diplomatic of me, would it?”
“She tell you she didn’t want to see me?”
“Not exactly, not in so many words.” He cleared his throat. “I get the impression that she blames you for Roger’s death.”
“Yeah. She said that right out—to the deputy who came the afternoon he died. She probably said it to the Sheriffs homicide lieutenant that investigated the death. She didn’t say it to the coroner, however.”
He leaned back and scratched the inside of his hand with a finger, slowly. It was just a sort of doodling gesture.
“What good would it do for you to see her, Marlowe? It was a pretty dreadful experience for her. I imagine her whole life had been pretty dreadful for some time. Why make her live it over? Do you expect to convince her that you didn’t miss out a little?”
“She told the deputy I killed him.”
“She couldn’t have meant that literally. Otherwise—”
The door buzzer rang. He got up to go to the door and open it. The room service waiter came in with the drinks and put them down with as much flourish as if he was serving a seven course dinner. Spencer signed the check and gave him four bits. The guy went away. Spencer picked up his glass of sherry and walked away as if he didn’t want to hand me my drink. I let it stay where it was.”
“Otherwise what?” I asked him.
“Otherwise she would have said something to the coroner, wouldn’t she?” He frowned at me. “I think we are talking nonsense. Just what did you want to see me about?”
“You wanted to see me.”
“Only,” he said coldly, “because when I talked to you from New York you said I was jumping to conclusions. That implied to me that you had something to explain. Well, what is it?”
“I’d like to explain it in front of Mrs. Wade.”
“I don’t care for the idea. I think you had better make your own arrangements. I have a great regard for Eileen Wade. As a businessman I’d like to salvage Roger’s work if it can be done. If Eileen feels about you as you suggest, I can’t be the means of getting you into her house. Be reasonable.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Forget it. I can get to see her without any trouble. I just thought I’d like to have somebody along with me as a witness.”
“Witness to what?” he almost snapped at me.
“You’ll hear it in front of her or you won’t hear it at all.”
“Then I won’t hear it at all.”
I stood up. “You’re probably doing the right thing, Spencer. You want that book of Wade’s —if it can be used. And you want to be a nice guy. Both laudable ambitions. I don’t share either of them. The best of luck to you and goodbye.”
He stood up suddenly and started towards me. “Now just a minute, Marlowe. I don’t know what’s on your mind but you seem to take it hard. Is there some mystery about Roger Wade’s death?”
“No mystery at all. He was shot through the head with a Webley Hammerless revolver. Didn’t you see a report of the inquest?”
“Certainly.” He was standing close to me now and he looked bothered. “That was in the eastern papers and a couple of days later a much fuller account in the Los Angeles papers. He was alone in the house, although you were not far away. The servants were away, Candy and the cook, and Eileen had been uptown shopping and arrived home just after it happened. At the moment it happened a very noisy motorboat on the lake drowned the sound of the shot, so that even you didn’t hear it.”
“That’s correct,” I said. “Then the motorboat went away, and I walked back from the lake edge and into the house,
heard the doorbell ringing, and opened it to find Eileen Wade had forgotten her keys. Roger was already dead. She looked into the study from the doorway, thought he was asleep on the couch, went up to her room, then out to the kitchen to make some tea. A little later than she did I also looked into the study, noticed there was no sound of breathing, and found out why. In due course I called the law.”
“I see no mystery,” Spencer said quietly, all the sharpness gone from his voice. “It was Roger’s own gun, and only the week before he had shot it off in his own room. You found Eileen struggling to get it away from him. His state of mind, his behavior, his depressions over his work—all that was brought out.”
“She told you the stuff is good. Why should he be depressed over it?”
“That’s just her opinion, you know. It may be very bad. Or he may have thought it worse than it was. Go on. I’m not a fool. I can see there is more.”
“The homicide dick who investigated the case is an old friend of mine. He’s a bulldog and a bloodhound and an old wise cop. He doesn’t like a few things. Why did Roger leave no note—when he was a writing fool? Why did he shoot himself in such a way as to leave the shock of discovery to his wife? Why did he bother to pick the moment when I couldn’t hear the gun go off? Why did she forget her house keys so that she had to be let in to the house? Why did she leave him alone on the day the help got off? Remember, she said she didn’t know I would be there. If she did, those two cancel out.”
“My God,” Spencer bleated, “are you telling me the damn fool cop suspects Eileen?”
“He would if he could think of a motive.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why not suspect you? You had all afternoon. There could have been only a few minutes when she could have done it—and she had forgotten her house keys.”
“What motive could I have?”
He reached back and grabbed my whiskey sour and swallowed it whole. He put the glass down carefully and got a handkerchief out and wiped his lips and his fingers where the chilled glass had moistened them. He put the handkerchief away. He stared at me.
“Is the investigation still going on?”
“Couldn’t say. One thing is sure. They know by now whether he had drunk enough hooch to pass him out. If he had, there may still be trouble.”
“And you want to talk to her,” he said slowly, “in the presence of a witness.”
“That’s right.”
“That means only one of two things to me, Marlowe. Either you are badly scared or you think she ought to be.”
I nodded.
“Which one?” he asked grimly.
“I’m not scared.”
He looked at his watch. “I hope to God you’re crazy.”
We looked at each other in silence.
FORTY-TWO
North through Coldwater Canyon it began to get hot. When we topped the rise and started to wind down towards the San Fernando Valley it was breathless and blazing. I looked sideways at Spencer. He had a vest on, but the heat didn’t seem to bother him. He had something else to bother him a lot more. He looked straight ahead through the windshield and said nothing. The valley had a thick layer of smog nuzzling down on it. From above it looked like a ground mist and then we were in it and it jerked Spencer out of his silence.
“My God, I thought Southern California had a climate,” he said. “What are they doing—burning old truck tires?”
“It’ll be all right in Idle Valley,” I told him soothingly. “They get an Ocean breeze in there.”
“I’m glad they get something besides drunk,” he said. “From what I’ve seen of the local crowd in the rich suburbs I think Roger made a tragic mistake in comingout here to live. A writer needs stimulation—and not the kind they bottle. There’s nothing around here but one great big suntanned hangover. I’m referring to the upper crust people of course.”
I turned off and slowed down for the dusty stretch to the entrance of Idle Valley, then hit the paving again and in a little while the Ocean breeze made itself felt, drifting down through the gap in the hills at the far end of the lake. High sprinklers revolved over the big smooth lawns and the water made a swishing sound as it licked at the grass. By this time most of the well-heeled people were away somewhere else. You could tell by the shuttered look of the houses and the way the gardener’s truck was parked smack in the middle of the driveway. Then we reached the Wades’ place and I swung through the gateposts and stopped behind Eileen’s Jaguar. Spencer got out and marched stolidly across the flagstones to the portico of the house. He rang the bell and the door opened almost at once. Candy was there in the white jacket and the dark good-looking face and the sharp black eyes. Everything was in order.
Spencer went in. Candy gave me a brief look and nearly shut the door in my face. I waited and nothing happened. I leaned on the bell and heard the chimes. The door swung wide and Candy came out snarling.
“Beat it! Turn blue. You want a knife in the belly?”
“I came to see Mrs. Wade.”
“She don’t want any part of you.”
“Out of my way, peasant. I got business here.”
“Candy!” It was her voice, and it was sharp.
He gave me a final scowl and backed into the house. I went in and shut the door. She was standing at the end of one of the facing davenports, and Spencer was standing beside her. She looked like a million. She had white slacks on, very high-waisted, and a white sport shirt with half sleeves, and a lilac-colored handkerchief budding from the pocket over her left breast.
“Candy is getting rather dictatorial lately,” she said to Spencer. “It’s so good to see you, Howard. And so nice of you to come all this way. I didn’t realize you were bringing someone with you.”
“Marlowe drove me out,” Spencer said. “Also he wanted to see you.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said coolly. Finally she looked at me, but not as if not seeing me for a week had left an emptiness in her life. “Well?”
“It’s going to take a little time,” I said.
She sat down slowly. I sat down on the other davenport. Spencer was frowning. He took his glasses off and polished them. That gave him a chance to frown more naturally. Then he sat on the other end of the davenport from me.
“I was sure you would come in time for lunch,” she told him, smiling.
“Not today, thanks.”
“No? Well, of course if you are too busy. Then you just want to see that script.”
“If I may.”
“Of course. Candy! Oh, he’s gone. It’s on the desk in Roger’s study. I’ll get it.”
Spencer stood up. “May I get it?”
Without waiting for an answer he started across the room. Ten feet behind her he stopped and gave me a strained look. Then he went on. I just sat there and waited until her head came around and her eyes gave me a cool impersonal stare.
“What was it you wanted to see me about?” she asked curtly.
“This and that. I see you are wearing that pendant again.”
“I often wear it. It was given to me by a very dear friend a long time ago.”
“Yeah. You told me. It’s a British military badge of some sort, isn’t it?”
She held it out at the end of the thin chain. “It’s a jeweler’s reproduction of one. Smaller than the original and in gold and enamel.”
Spencer came back across the room and sat down again and put a thick pile of yellow paper on the corner of the cocktail table in front of him. He glanced at it idly, then his eyes were watching Eileen.
“Could I look at it a little closer?” I asked her.
She pulled the chain around until she could unfasten the clasp. She handed the pendant to me, or rather she dropped it in my hand. Then she folded her hands in her lap and just looked curious. “Why are you so interested? It’s the badge of a regiment called the Artists Rifles, a Territorial regiment. The man who gave it to me was lost soon afterwards. At Andalsnes in Norway, in the spring of that terrible year—1940.
” She smiled and made a brief gesture with one hand. “He was in love with me.”
“Eileen was in London all through the Blitz,” Spencer said in an empty voice. “She couldn’t get away.”
We both ignored Spencer. “And you were in love with him,” I said.
She looked down and then raised her head and our glances locked. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “And there was a war. Strange things happen.”
“There was a little more to it than that, Mrs. Wade. I guess you forget how much you opened up about him. ‘The wild mysterious improbable kind of love that never comes but once.’ I’m quoting you. In a way you’re still in love with him. It’s darn nice of me to have the same initials. I suppose that had something to do with your picking me out.”
“His name was nothing like yours,” she said coldly. “And he is dead, dead, dead.”
I held the gold and enamel pendant out to Spencer. He took it reluctantly. “I’ve seen it before,” he muttered.
“Check me on the design,” I said. “It consists of a broad dagger in white enamel with a gold edge. The dagger points downwards and the flat of the blade crosses in front of a pair of upward-curling pale blue enamel wings. Then it crosses in back of a scroll. On the scroll are the words: WHO DARES WINS.”
“That seems to be correct,” he said. “What makes it important?”
“She says it’s a badge of the Artists Rifles, a Territorial outfit. She says it was given to her by a man who was in that outfit and was lost in the Norwegian campaign with the British Army in the spring of 1940 at Andalsnes.”
I had their attention. Spencer watched me steadily. I wasn’t talking to the birds and he knew it. Eileen knew it too. Her tawny eyebrows were crimped in a puzzled frown which could have been genuine. It was also unfriendly.
“This is a sleeve badge,” I said. “It came into existence because the Artists Rifles were made over or attached or seconded or whatever the correct term is into a Special Air Service Outfit. They had originally been a Territorial regiment of infantry. This badge didn’t even exist until 1947. Therefore nobody gave it to Mrs. Wade in 1940. Also, no Artists Rifles were landed at Andalsnes in Norway in 1940. Sherwood Foresters and Leicestershires, yes. Both Territorial. Artists Rifles, no. Am I being nasty?”
The Long Goodbye Page 28