A: I must’ve met her. (Pause) Yes. I’ve met her… several times.
Q: (Ringow) Then you hadn’t seen Arthea Simpson for some time?
A: No, I hadn’t.
Q: You’re sure of that?
A: Yes. I’m sure.
Q: What was she doing in your apartment so late at night?
A: I have no idea.
Q: (by Overland) Didn’t you invite Arthea Simpson to visit you?
A: No. I didn’t invite her. I didn’t have any notion she was there.
Q: (by Ringow) How could Arthea Simpson have gotten into your apartment without your knowing it?
A: I don’t know how she got in.
Q: No idea at all?
A: Absolutely none.
The intercom buzzed on my desk. Lydia Gorham’s voice said, “Robert Knox just called. Before I could transfer him over to you, he said he was on his way down to see you—and he wanted Ivy Lorents here, too.”
“That’s odd,” I told her.
“He sounded pretty angry,” Lydia replied.
I was puzzled. I don’t like anyone giving ultimatums, but I decided to go along with it. I told Lydia to take a cab, go out and pick up Ivy, then return with her to my office.
Lydia and Ivy arrived several minutes before Robert Knox. The shining and benign expression was absent from his face as Knox strode into my office and accosted me. Paying no attention to Ivy, who was seated near my desk, Knox waved an extra-edition copy of the Los Angeles Register. “Have you seen this?” he demanded.
I hadn’t seen it. Only the regular morning copy. The extra carried a headline: KNOX DOUGH BACKING IVY? I quickly scanned the story, and noticed that it had been written by the reporter named Jack Barker. As calmly as I could, I told Knox to sit down. “Let’s find out what happened,” I suggested.
Knox flashed an angry glance at Ivy, but he didn’t take a chair. “How’d the paper get this? And who’s this reporter—Jack Barker?”
“I hardly know Barker,” I told Knox, “but probably he worked on the bail lead harder than the regular man—Truman. Most of the story is basically innuendo. How he dug up the basis for it, I have no idea. But it’s possible he may have picked up your connection with Iver, Sawyer, and Monroe.”
“That firm has been my family’s attorneys for years. They’d never say anything!”
“Possibly they didn’t have to. If you’ll recall, Mr. Knox, it was necessary for them to release some of your securities. If Barker knew what he was looking for—the attorneys could lead to you.”
Knox’s face was flushed. “Somebody had to give Barker a lead!”
“I assure you it wasn’t my office.”
“I’ll sue Barker and his paper!” Knox rolled up the newspaper and threw it, angrily, into the wastebasket.
“I don’t advise it. You’ll only make matters worse as far as publicity is concerned. And besides,” I pointed out, “it’s the truth.”
Knox made an effort to regain his composure. He sank down into a chair and began to speak more calmly. “I only agreed to get into this and help Ivy on condition that my interests and my family’s interests were protected.”
His deep resonant voice sank lower. “But as long as the agreement hasn’t been kept, I think that I should get out of… this mess… entirely!”
“A contract is binding, Mr. Knox,” I stared at him levelly, “even an oral one. However, I’m not interested in holding you to it—except within certain limitations.”
Knox ran his hand through his fine, golden hair, then tugged nervously at his black knitted tie. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, but you’ve indirectly threatened me about refusing to pay the balance of my fee. All right, I’ll waive it. I’ll continue to represent Miss Lorents under any circumstances.” I paused to let it sink in.
Knox refused to look at Ivy. My easy acquiescence seemed to confuse him. “All right…”
Without raising my voice, I lowered the boom. “However, I don’t recommend that you withdraw Miss Lorents’ bail. That, I’m sure, would cause a great deal of very unpleasant publicity.”
Knox’s assurance faded. He stared at me, starting to speak, then changing his mind. Finally, he said, “The harm’s been done, anyway.” Then, as if regaining confidence, he turned to glare at Ivy, “Please see that she doesn’t call me again!”
I probably showed my surprise. “I didn’t know that she had called you.”
“Yes. Day before yesterday.”
“I called you, Mr. Knox, on that day. My secretary left a message for you to call back. And you did, yesterday.”
“No. I received your message… and there was another one from Ivy. Servants have a way of talking, too, you know…” He sat straighter in his chair. “Incidentally, what did you want?”
“I wanted you to substantiate an important statement made by Miss Lorents.”
“What was that?”
“That she’d received anonymous phone calls… during the weeks preceding the shooting of Arthea Simpson.”
“I don’t remember her saying anything about it,” Knox told me, coldly.
Ivy started to protest, but my glance silenced her, and I turned my attention back to Knox. “Try hard to remember. You, evidently, are her only witness to the calls. The calls were threatening in nature, and they frightened her. It’s possible when she spoke to you about them, she may’ve made light of the situation.”
From across my office, Ivy watched Knox, her face tense and expectant. Knox however, again ignored her presence; he replied slightingly, “Ivy was always trying to impress me with her popularity. Phone calls… and the rest of it. Possibly she did mention someone had called her.” He shrugged.
I could feel my own resentment hardening to his attitude. “This is vital to her defense. Whether she was trying to impress you or not, do you remember such an occurrence?”
As I’d found out before, Knox was a strange combination of character. Imperceptibly the mask of diffidence slipped over him, and he smiled in apology. “Really, Mr. March. I’d like to help her…”
“If you can remember, it will help her.” I held control of my anger. “If you’re worried about having to take the witness stand to testify, you’re rightly concerned.”
“You promised that I wouldn’t.”
“I promised only that I wouldn’t bring you in—unless it was necessary to help Miss Lorents,” I corrected him. “After this morning’s story in the paper, I’m sure that the D.A.’s office will subpoena you as a witness, whether I do or not. As a witness for the state, Mr. Knox, I have the right to cross-examine you. And I’ll do it!”
“So you did plant that story!” Knox accused me.
“I didn’t!” I denied flatly. “Now it doesn’t make any difference who calls you—either Willard or myself. But it’d look better for you, Mr. Knox, both as a man and a minister, if you were generous and sympathetic… if you tried to give Miss Lorents all the support you can. She’s going to need it.”
Knox’s attitude became more relaxed. He rose to his feet. “I’ll try to remember… recall those phone calls, but I can’t lie about it, you know,” he said with piety.
“No one wants you to lie!”
Knox smoothed down the dark jacket to his suit. He looked at me, then glanced at Ivy. For a second, their eyes met. Knox gave a slight nod. “Goodbye.” Politely, he turned and walked from my office.
After he had left, I turned to Ivy. “I didn’t know that you had tried to call him.”
“Yes… I did,” she admitted.
“I don’t think it was a good idea. I’ve cautioned you against using the phone… especially if there’s a switchboard.”
“I know,” she told me, contrite. “I called from my apartment, while I was waiting to go to the beach.”
“Why did you want to talk to him?”
“It was about those threats.” She paused. “I thought… if I asked him… he might be… more cooperative.” Ivy gestured hopelessly, “You can
see for yourself… how unpredictable he is…”
I was still wondering where the leak had been in the bail story. I couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t believe that Ivy had been responsible, either. While I was thinking it over, she rose from her chair and walked to my desk. She looked at me, her expression serious, then continued past my chair and to the window.
Looking down into the street, she spoke to me over her shoulder. “Did you mean… what you said to Robert? About defending me?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
She lapsed into silence, and I could hear her faint breathing behind me. Finally she said, “Twenty-five thousand dollars… that’s a lot of money to lose…”
“You’re not exactly a charity case,” I told her, keeping it light.
But she didn’t play up to the mood. “Why did you do it?” she asked.
“I refuse to make this an important subject. If you must know—it isn’t often I get a chance to tell off someone like Robert Knox. The privilege came cheap.”
She caught her breath in a soft laugh. “All right,” she said. I swung my chair around, and she turned to face me.
“It’s awful… going back there. Just sitting and sitting… Couldn’t I go out someplace… just for dinner, tonight? Perhaps… your secretary could go with me.”
I thought it over. “You could come out to my house. Would you like that?”
“Yes!”
I wrote out my address. “Drive out in a cab from the Claymore,” I told her. “Make it about seven.”
She tucked the note in her purse and smiled. “I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cyrus March lived in a conservative, and once highly fashionable, area of the city. The neighborhood still clung to a tradition of large, well-kept houses, tree-shaded streets, and a strict respect for privacy.
March had purchased his home during the early months of his marriage to Beatrice.
At the sudden death of his wife, in a traffic accident two years after their marriage, he had thought he would move away. But when the first shock of Beatrice’s death had passed, March found himself reluctant to leave the house. He liked its coolness in the summer heat, the solitude, and the comfort which it offered. Month by month, he had postponed its sale until eventually he discarded the idea. March accepted its loneliness and learned to live with it. The house remained the only remaining link to the past, and he had come, finally, to regard it as a friend, stumbling back to its security after his periodic bouts and debaucheries.
March had never thrown one of the parties, for which he was famous, in the house. A strange, moral inhibition prevented him. In his excesses, he had been unable to forget Beatrice and her connection with the house. Consequently, he had protected the ideal, which the house represented, from both his professional and social life.
Shaved, and freshly dressed for dinner, March descended the flight of Spanish-tiled stairs to the first floor when he heard the door chimes. Mrs. Fisher, the housekeeper, had opened the door for Ivy Lorents before he could reach it.
A moment of awkwardness came over him, as he stood looking down into the great green eyes. Ivy eased the moment by exclaiming, “It’s charming! This is the first… really old California house I’ve been in.”
“Would you like to look around?” asked March. When Ivy assented, the two moved down the long hallway, at the end of which heavy louvered doors opened to a garden at the rear of the house. “It’ll still be a little while before dinner,” he said. “How about a cocktail?”
“Are you going to join me?” Ivy asked.
“No,” March told her, “I’m on the wagon.” He held the louvered door open. “But that doesn’t prevent you from having a drink if you want one.”
“It doesn’t really make any difference.”
“Well, I suggest a frozen daiquiri. I’ll have one sent outdoors for you.”
In the protected shadows of the patio walls and the deep angles of the house, tall feathery ferns spread emerald lace, while birds-of-paradise plants displayed their brilliant blues and oranges, streaked with pale green. Behind the patio a line of graceful palm trees stood erect as classic columns. Through the arched gate in the wall, the still, darkening blue water of the tiled pool reflected the rays of the setting sun. Ivy was enchanted.
March took the daiquiri from the housekeeper and handed it to Ivy. Together they sat on a heavy, carved mission bench. The light was fading quickly, and the dusk powdered Ivy’s face with delicate shadows. “This is the time of day,” March said, “which is both beautiful and terrible. This is when all my personal furies come home to roost.” His tone held only a faint trace of banter as he watched Ivy’s face.
“My furies come, too,” Ivy replied. She took a sip of the daiquiri, and nodded in pleased approval. Turning slightly on the bench, she faced March. “I’ve been thinking about the meeting today—with Robert.”
“I’d forgotten it.”
She shook her head slowly in disagreement. “It was important. You were too generous.” She looked at him levelly. “There’s more to it.”
“Is there?” March lit a cigarette. He told her, smiling, “To paraphrase… a little feminine intuition is a dangerous thing.”
She returned his smile, then fell into seriousness again. “You know that I can’t possibly ever pay you back the… twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“You might hit it big some night in Vegas,” March told her lightly.
She continued to stare at him. Her face held an almost oriental air of serenity. “You don’t mean that,” she said.
“All right. I’ll stop the fencing. Obviously it has shown every time I’ve seen you.” March shrugged. “I love you.”
Only her fingers moved, caressing the thin stem of the glass. She was very quiet. Finally she said, “If a person loves someone, it should make him happy. You don’t seem very happy about it.”
March arose from the bench impatiently. Faced with a moment of utmost importance, March felt suddenly impotent to grasp the situation. He had passed off his admission in the manner of an embarrassed youth.
He turned back to the bench, standing before her. “I tell myself that I shouldn’t love you. Not now, at least. You are in no… condition… or situation… to return it.”
“How do you know?” She raised her eyes to March.
He waved aside her reply. “And you can’t afford it, either,” he told her bluntly. He hunched his shoulders, fighting his own opposition. “Ivy…” his voice was suddenly imploring, “as a matter of… ethics… no good defense attorney becomes emotionally involved with a client. It changes him… and changes his decisions… just as it would affect a surgeon, or doctor, operating on a member of his own family.”
“It would seem to me, that it would simply make… everything more important,” Ivy replied with calm logic.
“But it doesn’t work out that way!”
“Ethics? Morals?”
“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. Moral… simply implies a conformity to standards of right and wrong.” March thought a moment, then continued, “But… ethics… in this instance implies my conformity with… an ideal, elaborate code of legal principles. A code which has been developed for everyone’s protection!”
“You are convincing yourself?”
“At this point,” March told her desperately, “I should offer to get you another… impartial, uninvolved attorney.…”
“I don’t want another lawyer,” Ivy replied simply.
The elongated shadow of Mrs. Fisher fell across the stones of the patio, as the lights from the house flooded behind her. She announced dinner. March helped Ivy from the bench, and they started back.
At dinner, March had a very small glass of wine.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
That evening after dinner I took Ivy back to her hotel early, and returned home. I had told her that I loved her, but as I thought about our short conversation I was unable to decide how she felt a
bout me. Certainly, she had not told me that she loved me, too. At first, I cursed myself for having impetuously declared my feelings at the wrong time and place, but after further consideration, it seemed to me that Ivy, herself, had somehow managed to turn up the conversation.
Unless it had been sheer vanity, she had wanted me to tell her that I loved her. And I didn’t believe it had been vanity on her part. She was dependent on me to protect her life and freedom; she also needed me for about the only human company she now had. I could understand why she might hesitate to become emotionally involved again. But, at the same time, it did not lessen her need to be loved, to know that someone cared for her—and was trying to help her.
I hoped, too, that eventually, she would love me. Perhaps after the trial… In the meantime, I loved her—that was my own responsibility. It has always seemed to me that a man loves a woman for what his love is worth; it is not a matter of trading emotions. He loves her because she can give him more satisfaction, more pleasure, more happiness than anyone else on earth. He loves her, and then he takes what’s coming back… good, bad, or both. But he doesn’t measure it out—emotion for emotion, love for love.
However, I still had to prepare for trial which was coming up all too quickly. There was a great amount of work—almost too much—to do. Sometimes it seemed that day and night ran into each other. One of the first things which I had to do was go over Ivy’s apartment inch by inch, measuring distances, fixing positions and locations exactly. Ivy gave me her key, and with a carpenter’s tape and a pad, Bert Taylor and I measured off the rooms and then arranged to have them drawn to scale, and I memorized them until I could see them in my mind simply by closing my eyes. While we were working in her apartment, I found a second key which opened her front door. When we left, I took the key with me.
I also arranged for Tim Nordeen to search out all the witnesses—both friendly and hostile. Following Nordeen’s leads, I personally interviewed them. Particularly those witnesses who would appear for the defense. And I attempted to establish a closer relationship with them. But it didn’t take me long to realize that the defense had very few witnesses we could use to any advantage.
Not I, Said the Vixen Page 9