Francis turned his eyes back to the investigator. The eyes were pale blue, complementing his pale hair, the wide remote eyes of a dreamer.
“It was just as Father said. Mother tripped and fell. She just came flying down.”
There was a long, sighing sound that was the sound of Mr. Etheridge’s breath being released in the shadows.
“If you saw your mother fall,” he said, “why didn’t you come out to help her?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid, I guess. It was so sudden and so terrible that it frightened me. I don’t know why. Then you came down, and I heard you calling the doctor, and so I just went out the back way and sat in the mulberry tree.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” The investigator shrugged at Mr. Etheridge. “Kids are odd little animals.”
“Yes,” Mr. Etheridge said, “they are, indeed. Now you will please return to your room, Francis. Thank you for speaking up.”
“You’re welcome,” Francis said.
He went back into his room and closed the door and sat on the floor in a swath of sunlight. There was a large book there that he had been looking at earlier, and he began now to look at it again. It contained thousands of colored pictures of almost every imaginable thing, and Francis was still looking at the pictures about a quarter of an hour later when his father opened the door and came into the room and stood staring down at him.
“What are you looking at, Francis?” Mr. Etheridge said.
Francis looked up from the bright pictures to his father’s gray stone face. His pale blue eyes had a kind of soft sheen on them. The sunlight gathered and caught fire in his pale hair.
“It’s a catalog,” he said. “There are so many beautiful things in the catalog that I’ve always wanted. Are we going to get a lot of money from the insurance company? If we are, maybe we could get some of the things. Maybe even a piano that I could take lessons on.
The soft sheen gave to his eyes a look of blindness. He did not seem to see his father at all.
“Yes,” Mr. Etheridge said. “Maybe even a piano.”
FOR MONEY RECEIVED
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1964.
The rain came straight down into the alley, and I sat with my back to my desk and watched the rain. It was not an afternoon for being out and doing something. Besides, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. If I had somewhere to go more often, and something to do when I got there, I would be able to watch the rain come down past a front window instead of a back, into a street instead of an alley. Provided, of course, that I went where I went and did what I did for clients who paid me a great deal more than my clients usually paid.
My name is Percy Hand, and I’m a private detective. My privacy is rarely invaded. This makes the rent a problem, but it gives me plenty of time to watch the rain come down into the alley on rainy days.
Someone was coming down the hall. My ears are big and my hearing is acute, so I tried to establish certain facts, just for fun, about the person approaching. It was apparent from the sharp, quick rhythm of the steps that the person was a woman, probably young. I decided from a more esoteric suggestion in the sound that this woman, whoever she was exactly, was a woman of pride and even arrogance. In her purse, moreover, was a checkbook in which she could write, if she chose, a withdrawal of six figures. To the left, I mean, of the decimal point. These last two deductions were wholly unwarranted by the evidence, and probably explain why I am not the best detective in the world, although not the worst. They assumed, that is, that poor women cannot be proud, which is palpably untrue. Anyhow, if she was rich, chances were a hundred to one that she was not coming to see me.
But I was wrong. My reception room door from the hall opened and closed, releasing between the opening and the closing a brief, angry exclamation from a buzzer. The buzzer is cheaper than a receptionist, even though it is not as amusing, especially on rainy days. I got around my desk and out there in a hurry, before this client had time to walk out.
She was wearing a belted raincoat and holding in one hand a matching hat. Her hair was black and short and curling in the damp. She could look over a short man’s head and a tall man’s shoulder, excluding basketball players. At the end of nice legs was a pair of sensible brown shoes with flat heels. Inasmuch as I had heard her clearly in the hall, the shoes had to have leather heels.
“Are you Mr. Percy Hand?” she asked.
Her voice was modulated and musical, now with a quality of calculated coolness that could instantly change, I suspected, to calculated warmth or coldness as the occasion required.
After admitting that I was Percy Hand, I asked, “What can I do for you?” I scrutinized her curiously.
“I’m not certain.” She looked around the shabby little room with obvious reservations. “I expected something different. Do all private detectives have offices like this?”
“Some do, some don’t. It depends on how much money they make.”
“I don’t know that I like that. It must mean that you don’t have many clients, and there is surely a reason. Why aren’t you more successful?” She pointedly questioned.
“Happiness comes before success, I always say.”
“It’s a nice philosophy if you can afford it. On the other hand, you may be unsuccessful because you’re honest. I have a notion that private detectives, in general, are not very reliable. Can you tell me if that is so?”
“Professional ethics prevents my answering.”
“I heard that about you. That you’re honest. Someone told me.”
“My thanks to someone. Who, precisely?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter. A woman I know for whom you did something. She said that you were perfectly reliable, although not brilliant.”
“My thanks is now qualified. I maintain that, properly motivated, I can be brilliant for short periods.”
“Well, I’m not especially concerned about that. What I need is someone, on whose discretion I can rely, to do a simple job.”
“I’m your man. Simple, discreet jobs are those at which I’m best.”
“In that case, I’d better stay and tell you about it.”
She began to unbuckle her belt, and I stepped forward, like a discreet and reliable gentleman, to help her off with her raincoat. Then I gestured toward the door to my office, and she went through the door ahead of me and helped herself to the chair at the end of the desk. She was wearing a simple brown wool dress that verified my intuitive conclusion that she was, if not actually rich, at least substantially endowed. She crossed her legs and showed her knees, and I saw, just before sinking into my own chair behind the desk, that the knees were good.
“And now,” I asked, “what is it that you want me to do, discreetly and simply?”
“First, I’d better tell you who I am. I haven’t told you, have I?”
“You haven’t.”
“I’m Mrs. Benedict Coon. The third. My Christian name is Dulce, if it matters.”
“It doesn’t. Not yet. Chances are, it never will.”
“My husband and I live at 15 Corning Place. Do you know who the Coons are?”
“Canned food for dogs and cats?”
“They’re the ones. Isn’t it absurd?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m very hesitant about criticizing anything so profitable.”
“Well, never mind. It’s true that too much money, from whatever source, can cause one to do foolish things and get one into a great deal of trouble. That’s why I’m here. My husband has been seeing another woman, and I want you to find out who she is and where she lives.”
“Excuse me.” I was already parting sadly from a fee that might have been fat. “I don’t do divorce work. I can refer you to another operator, if you like.”
She laughed softly. “Such admirable scruples! No wonder you’re so poor. But you misunderstand me. I have no wish for a divorce. I’m far too fond of being Mrs. Benedict Coon III. Do you think for a mome
nt that I would voluntarily give up my position because of a ridiculous peccadillo on the part of my husband?”
I relaxed and recovered hope. The fat fee again became feasible.
“All right. Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
“I’m trying to, if you will only quit being difficult about things. Benedict is being blackmailed by the woman he has been seeing. I don’t know why exactly, but I want you to find a way to stop it. That will be your job.”
“What’s this woman’s name?”
“I heard him call her Myrna. That’s all I know.”
“You heard him? You mean you’ve seen him with her?”
“No, no. Nothing of the sort. I heard him talking with her on the telephone. I just happened to come home unexpectedly and pick up the downstairs extension while they were talking. That’s how I know about the meeting tomorrow.”
“What meeting? When? Where?”
“You know, I’m beginning to think you may be more capable than you seemed at first. From the way you go directly after the pertinent facts, I mean. Well, anyhow, they arranged to meet at three o’clock tomorrow in the Normandy Lounge. That’s in the Hotel Stafford.”
“I know where it is. What’s the purpose of the meeting?” I asked.
“I’m coming to that as fast as I can. She has something that he wants to get back. Neither he nor she said what. Whatever it is, however, it’s the reason he’s been paying her money. Quite a lot of money, I gather. Now he wants to pay her a much larger amount for its final return, to end things once and for all. She agreed to meet him and talk about it.”
“At the Normandy Lounge?”
“They’ll meet there. Probably they’ll go on to somewhere else.”
“At three o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Why not let him pay the amount, however much, and get the blackmail gimmick back, whatever it is? He can afford it.”
“Of course he can. If it works out that way, I’m prepared to forget the whole thing. But how can I be sure that it will? If it falls through, if she’s up to more tricks, I want to know who she is and where she lives, and how I can get Benedict free of her.”
“Have you discussed this with your husband?”
“Oh, no! Certainly not! That would never do. He’d go all to pieces and spoil the chances of doing anything whatever. He’s weak, you see, besides being a hopeless liar.”
“You want me to be at the lounge and follow them if they leave?”
“Or follow her if she leaves without him. Will you do it?”
“Why not? Divorce is one thing, blackmail another.”
“It’s settled, then.” She dug into her purse again and came out with a thin packet of lovely treasury notes which she laid on my desk, and which I picked up at once just to get the feel of them. “There’s five hundred dollars there, a fair fee for an afternoon’s work. If there’s more work later, there will be more money. We’ll discuss it if there is.”
“How will I recognize your husband?”
“He’s medium height, has blond hair. Not particularly distinctive, so you’d better know exactly what he’ll be wearing. I’ll be watching when he leaves the house, and I’ll call immediately and give you a description. Will you be in your office?”
“I’ll make a point of it.”
She stood up and headed for the door. I followed her into the reception room and helped her on with her raincoat. When the hall door had closed behind her, I stood and listened with my big, acute ears to the sound of her receding footsteps. Then I returned to my office and stood at the window and looked through the rain, still falling, at the brick wall across the alley from me.
What order of events, I thought, had sent Dulce Coon here? What strange chance had put into my hands more money than they had held at once for a long, long time?
* * * *
There were two approaches to the Normandy Lounge; one was directly from the street, an inducement to susceptible pedestrians, and the other was through the lobby of the Hotel Stafford and down a shallow flight of stairs. I entered from the street, filled with bright light after a gray day, and stopped just inside, while the door swung shut behind me with a soft pneumatic whisper. I waited until my pupils had dilated in adjustment to thick, scented darkness that was pricked here and there by points of light, and then I navigated slowly between tiny tables to an upholstered seat against the wall. Above the bar and behind the bartender was the illuminated dial of an electric clock. I ordered a glass of beer from a waitress who came to see what I wanted.
The clock said ten minutes till three. A canary was singing softly in a juke box, and the canary was so in love. Two men and a woman were lined up on stools at the bar. The woman was between the men, but she only talked with the one on her right, and the one on her left just sat and stared at his shadow in the mirror. Half a dozen men and women were scattered one to one at tables, holding hands and rubbing knees, and the murmur of their voices made a kind of choral accompaniment to the love-sick canary. Trade was slow, but the time was wrong. In a couple of hours, with the closing of offices and shops, things would pick up. The waitress delivered my glass of beer, and I began to nurse it.
He was wearing, Dulce Coon had said, a brown plaid jacket and brown slacks. His shirt was white, button-down collar, and his tie was fashionably narrow. He was medium height and his hair was blond, and so was the mustache that I might miss unless my eyes were as good as my ears. I couldn’t miss him, she said, but I begged to differ. Jacket and slacks and all the rest were not distinctive and might apply to someone else. Not likely, she said, to someone else who would appear at three or shortly before. Not at all likely, she added, to someone else who would be joined in the lounge by a woman. I conceded, and here I was, Percy Hand on the alert, and there he was, sure enough, coming down the steps from the lobby at exactly two minutes till three by the clock.
He crawled onto a stool near the lobby entrance and ordered something in water, probably scotch or bourbon. I could see only his back, with a glancing shot at his profile now and then as his head turned. I tried to focus on the mirror for a better look, but there were bottles and glasses in the way, and faces there, besides, were only shadows. He was the one, though. No question about it. It was evident in his subtle suggestion of tense expectancy, his too-frequent references to the clock as the two minutes till three went to ten minutes past. His right hand held his glass. His left hand kept moving out to a bowl of salted peanuts on the bar. He was Benedict Coon III, and he was waiting for a woman named Myrna who was also, by informal indictment, a blackmailer. It was another drink and a quarter of a pound of peanuts later before she came. But then there she was, all at once, beside him.
She was onto the next stool before I was aware of her. Once aware, however, I was aware in spades, and if Benedict had been indiscreet with Myrna, I was not the one to blame him. You didn’t even have to see her face to know that inciting indiscretions was, with her, a natural effect of observable causes. A little taller than average, she possessed, without going into censorable details, a full inventory of quality stock. Her hair, just short of her shoulders, was pale blond, almost white, and I would have sworn that it was natural, although it is impossible to tell, actually, in these days of superior artifice. She was wearing a dark red suit with a tight and narrow skirt, and the skirt rode well above her knees on nylon as she perched on the stool and crossed her legs. Suffice it to say that even the vital juices of Percy Hand came instantly to a simmer.
I preferred the scenery from where I was, but I had a job to do with priority over pleasure, and I had a bank account of five hundred dollars, minus pocket money, to remind me of it. So, ethical if nothing else, I moved with my glass to the bar. Leaving a pair of stools between me and them, I ordered another beer and cocked an acute ear, but I might as well have been wearing plugs. They said little to each other, and what they said, was said too softly to be understood. Naturally, I thought. They were scarcely on terms
of innocent and amiable conversation, and nothing that was to pass between them could be passed openly in a public cocktail lounge. I wanted to turn my head and look at them directly, but I didn’t think I’d better. I tried from closer range to see her clearly in the mirror, but I could only see enough of her face to know that the rest of her had no cause to be ashamed of it.
She was holding in her left hand, I saw sidewise, a pair of dark glasses that she had removed in the shadowy lounge—the Hollywood touch. She had ordered a martini, and she drank the martini slowly and ate the olive afterward. He said something to her, and she said something to him, and suddenly, in unison, they slipped off their stools and went up the shallow flight of stairs into the lobby. When I got there after them, they were headed directly for the doors on the far side. Her high, thin heels tapped out a brisk cadence as they crossed a border of terrazzo beyond a thick rug.
Outside, they crossed the street at an angle in the middle of the block, and I assumed that they were going to a garage, convenient to the hotel, where he must have left his car. My own, such as it was, was down the block in the opposite direction, occupying a slot at the curb that I had found by luck. I went down to it, got in and started the engine, and waited. They would have to come past me, I knew, because it was a one-way street. In a few minutes they came, in a gray sedan. I swung in behind it and tagged along.
They were in no hurry, scrupulously minding the posted limits. They never got separated from me by more than an intruding car or two, and I was able to make all the lights that they made, although I had to run a couple on the yellow. We passed through the congested downtown area, turning east after a while onto an east-west boulevard.
Their car picked up speed, moving briskly down a gauntlet of fancy apartment buildings. I had a notion that one of them might be the sedan’s destination, but I was wrong in my notion, which is not rare. It ran the gauntlet without stopping or turning, and it came pretty soon to an oblique intersection with a northeast-southwest thoroughfare. A red light held it there in the left-turn lane, and I waited behind it in the same lane. Between us were two cars that had slipped into the traffic along the way.
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 21