Charlie Gibbs, an inoffensive, unambitious truck-driver, had no idea what he was marrying. Eve’s temper and hard little soul crushed him as effectively as if he had been fed through a wringer. She soon tired of keeping house for him and after a series of nightmare scenes which haunted Charlie for years after, she packed her bag and returned to the Brooklyn hotel.
It was not long before she became the mistress of a well-to- do business man who gave her a small apartment and visited her whenever he happened to be in the locality. He soon began to regret his choice. Eve was too much of a rebel to be at the beck and call of an elderly man who believed, quite wrongly, that he was still physically attractive. Her temper became ungovernable and the least little thing he did that annoyed her caused her to smash everything within reach. Finally the business man grew tired of her unreliable moods and giving her a generous sum of money, he got rid of her.
Having no background, no anchor, no idea of ethics, she naturally drifted to the bad. Prostitution was an antidote for her inferiority complex. So long as men came to her, she must have felt that she could not be as dull and stupid as she imagined she was. She still made a pretence to find work, but as time went on, she became more and more dependent on men for a living, until, finally, she took the little house in Laurel Canyon Drive and set up in business as a full time professional.
So much for the history of Eve which has no special point of interest with the exception of her inferiority complex. It is a story that any woman of the streets might tell you, only Eve makes it interesting because of her psychological reaction to life.
It is obvious that, in spite of the brutalizing effects of the beatings, convent life had instilled in Eve a streak of respectability which had never been entirely eradicated. She lived — and for all I know still lives — in two worlds: the sordid existence of her profession, and the make-believe existence that her secret urge to be respectable makes her wish were true.
Jack Hurst, whom she claimed to be her husband, was not a mining engineer. He was a professional gambler who lived by his wits and his skill at cards. Eve and he had met at a party and had been immediately attracted to each other. This had happened a year or so after she had set up in Laurel Canyon Drive. Hurst was married to a woman who had grown tired of his reckless gambling and his sadistic, domineering ways. She had left him a few months before he met Eve. He was not the type of man to bother with the complicated intricacies of divorce and even if he had taken the trouble to get rid of his wife legally, I do not believe that he would have married Eve. A man has to be very sure of himself to marry a prostitute and although he found her intriguing and associated with her for such a long time, he did not appear anxious to make her his wife.
Even now I do not quite understand why Hurst remained Eve’s lover for so long. He was, of course, a sadist. I knew he was that when Eve had told me of his behaviour when she had twisted her ankle. To have left her sitting on the curb and to have driven her from her bed the next morning when she could scarcely walk to get him coffee was obviously an act of a sadist.
There were other times, so the red head told me, when he treated Eve abominably, but the worse he treated her the more she seemed to admire him. There was nothing he could do that would turn her against him. She was his slave. It seems scarcely credible that Eve, in spite of her own ruthlessness and strength of character, should be a masochist beneath her wooden exterior. It is doubtful, however, whether any other man but Hurst could have roused in her this twisted heritage of a brutalized childhood. That he had done so explains why he continued the association.
Apart from Hurst, no other man stood a chance with Eve. She was simply an empty shell, devoid of any feeling, except for those twisted emotions inspired by Hurst. For ten years she had lived on men. She knew all their tricks, all their subterfuges and all their weaknesses. This existence killed her feminine instincts as surely as arsenic will kill weeds. It killed her instinct for love. I do not believe she even loved Hurst. She was drawn to him because he was the only man she had ever met who mastered her and I believe there were times when she actually hated him. The astonishing thing was that she did not show in her face the brutalizing life that she led, but there can be no doubt that it scarred her mind. She had nothing to look forward to, nothing to look back upon. Little wonder then that she tried to build around herself a world of illusion. She liked to believe that she was married to a professional man. She liked to believe that she did not live in two rooms but had a house in Los Angeles. She liked to believe that every Monday she went to the bank and put half her earnings away for the time when Hurst and she would buy their road-house. Although these fancies never materialized they made her existence possible and soothed the running sore of her inferiority complex.
I had no way of finding out whether she paraded these fancies before her other clients. No doubt she did. I now realized that the week-end we had spent together had been a week-end of lies. She had lied cleverly and I had not suspected for a moment that she was telling me anything but the truth. Perhaps the most artistic of her lies had been when she listed the number of luxury restaurants which she could not be seen in with me in case her ‘husband’s’ friends might tell him that she was going around with strange men.
As I sat on the terrace, a bottle of Scotch at my elbow, and the moon like a dead man’s face, shedding its silver light on the hills, I tried to reconstruct Eve’s character now that I knew so much more about her.
So well had she created her make-believe background that even now I wondered whether the red headed girl had been telling me the truth. Eve had been so emphatic that Jack Hurst did not know of the existence of the house in Laurel Canyon Drive and that he did not know how she had earned her living. I remembered her saying, “He’d kill me if he knew. But I suppose he will find out one day. I always say my sins will find me out and they will too. Then I’ll have to run to you for protection.”
Was she lying when she had said that? It would be easy to trap her now. I had only to telephone the house in Laurel Canyon Drive to find out if she were still there.
I poured myself out another whisky, drank it and then looked at my wrist watch. It was twelve fifteen.
I stood up. My legs were a little unsteady, but my brain was clear. I went along the terrace to my study and opening the french windows I entered and turned on the light. I had forgotten the red head in the sitting room so absorbed had I become in stripping aside the curtain of secrecy that Eve had erected. I sat at the desk and dialled her number. The bell rang for a long time and as I was about to hang up, thinking that after all I had guessed wrong and that the house was empty, there was a sudden click and Eve said, “Hello?”
So it was true. I need not have spoken but I could not resist letting her know that I had found her out.
“Did I wake you?” I asked.
“Oh, Clive, can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?” Her voice was thick and blurred.
“You’re tight,” I said.
She giggled. “Beautifully tight. I’ve drunk everything in the world tonight.”
“I like the look of your husband.”
“Everyone likes him. But go away, Clive. I can’t talk now.”
“Is he with you?”
“Hm-hm . . . he’s here all right.”
“I thought he didn’t know you had that place,” I said.
There was a pause and I could not help smiling to myself. I would have liked to have seen her face. She must have realized that she had talked too much.”
“I was tight . . . I brought him here without thinking,” she said, at last, almost as if she were trying to convince herself. “He’s furious . . . I guess it’s all over with us now.”
I nearly laughed. “You can’t mean that, Eve,” I said, trying to assume an anxious note in my voice. “Whatever will you do?”
“I don’t know.” She tried to sound worried, but she did not succeed. “Please hang up, Clive. I’ve got an awful head and things are all going wrong.”
“Is he staying long?”
“No . . . no . . . not after this. He’ll go tomorrow.”
“So he knows everything now?” I asked, determined to give her no respite.
“I can’t talk now.” Her voice had sharpened and I could imagine those two furrows above her nose knitted in a frown. “I must go . . . he is calling,” and she hung up.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” the red head said from the door.
I got to my feet. “I’ll drive you back,” I said, determined to get rid of her at once. “Come on, let’s go.”
She stared. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “I’m going to bed. To hell with going all that way back. I’m tired. You told me you wanted me to stay the night and I’m damn well going to stay.”
Now that she had told me what I wanted to know about Eve I could not wait to see the last of her. To have brought such a woman into my home had been the craziest thing I had yet done.
“Oh no, you’re not,” I said sharply. “I shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. I’ll get you home in an hour. Let’s go—”
She sat down heavily in an armchair and kicked off her shoes. “I’m not going,” she said obstinately.
I stood over her, cold with anger and alarm. “Don’t be a slut,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
She smiled. “You should have thought of that before,” she said and yawned. She had a lot of gold work in her mouth. “And don’t look like that. I can take care of myself and I’m not scared of you.”
I suddenly wanted to get my hands round her soft fat throat, but I turned away.
“What’s the matter with you?” she went on, watching me suspiciously. “Don’t you want a good time? Why have you got sore all of a sudden?”
I faced her. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “I’ll give you one more chance. Are you going quietly or do you want me to use force?”
We eyed each other for a long moment and then she shrugged.
“All right,” she said and called me a bad name. “Give me a drink and I’ll go.”
I went onto the terrace for a bottle of Scotch.
John Coulson was sitting on the wooden seat at the bottom of the garden. As I watched him, he turned and the moonlight lit his face. He was laughing at me.
I filled a glass with whisky and drank it standing.
“You haven’t anything to laugh at,” I said. “You may think you have, but you haven’t. The laugh’s on you, but you’re such a poor dumb cluck you don’t even know it.”
I went back to the study, but the red head wasn’t there.
I stood staring round the empty room for several minutes. Whisky fumes clouded my brain and I began to wonder whether I had imagined that the red head had been in this room. I began to wonder, after I had taken another drink, whether she had ever been in this cabin and after a few moments I had an obstinate idea at the back of my mind that I had never met her at all.
As I crossed the room to the settee I lurched against a table and sent it over with a crash. A cutglass ash tray and a big vase of carnations smashed on the carpet.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “I know you are hiding somewhere.”
I stumbled into the lobby and called again. “Come out, wherever you are. Come-on-out!”
I waited, but the cabin was silent. Then I knew where she was. It was only because I was drunk that I hadn’t thought of it before. She was in Carol’s and my bedroom. I felt a great surge of hot blood rise to my head and I walked down the passage to my bedroom and turned the door knob. The door was locked.
“Come out,” I shouted, hammering on the panels. “Do you hear? Come out!”
“Go away,” she called. “I want to go to sleep.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t come out,” I said, a vicious, desperate note in my voice.
“I’m going to sleep,” the red head shouted back. “I’m not coming out for you or any other tight fisted punk.”
I went on hammering on the door for several minutes until my hands throbbed and burned.
Then I had an idea. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you’ll go home,” I said, with my head against the panel of the door.
“Honest?” I heard her scramble out of bed.
“Honest.”
“Push it under the door and I’ll believe you.”
“Here you are,” I said and I began to force the notes under the narrow space between the carpet and the door.
She could not wait to get it that way and she jerked open the door.
I stepped back, staring at her in horror. She had wedged her big soft body into a pair of Carol’s pyjamas and over her heavy shoulders was Carol’s short ermine coat.
I let the rest of the money slip out of my fingers and I stood there unable to move or unable to say anything. She bent down and began to gather up the money. As she did so her knees burst through the thin silk of the pyjamas.
She giggled. “Your wife must be a skinny bitch,” she said, not pausing as she grabbed at the money.
Then something made me look round.
Carol was standing in the lobby, watching us. Her eyes looked like two big holes cut in a sheet. She drew in a sharp, shuddering breath and the red head looked up. She stared at Carol and then at me.
“What the hell do you want?” she snapped, standing up and trying to cover her heavy breasts with the ermine coat. “Me and my boy friend are engaged.”
I shall never forget the look on Carol’s face. I took a step towards her, but turning swiftly, she ran down the short passage and the front door slammed.
I went after her.
As I jerked open the door, I heard her car start up and I was in time to see the red tail light flashing down the long winding drive.
I blundered out into the moonlight and began running after the car.
“Come back, Carol,” I shouted after her. “Come back . . . don’t leave me, Carol,” I shouted after her’ . . . come back!”
The red tail light disappeared round the corner where the drive entered the road.
I raced on to the gate and stood panting in the middle of the road that led to San Bernardino. The road ran straight for a mile and then turned sharply with the curve of the mountain.
I could see the red tail light moving like a ruby fired from a gun. Carol was driving very fast . . . too fast. I knew the road better than she did and I suddenly began to run again, shouting after her.
“You’re going too fast,” I yelled. “Look out, Carol, my darling. You’re going too fast. You won’t make the turn . . . slow down! Carol!! You won’t make the—”
Even from that distance I heard the tires squeal on the road as the mountain curve suddenly sprang at her from out of the darkness. I saw her headlights swing out to the left and I could hear stones rattling inside the mudguards as the tires skidded.
I stopped running and fell on my knees. The noise of the tyres rose to a high pitched scream and then the car suddenly leaped off the road and went straight through the white palings. I heard a crunching, ripping noise and I watched the car hang for a second in mid-air, then it went down through the darkness into the valley.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT was Eve. From the very beginning it had been Eve. If it had not been for her none of this would ever have happened.
I walked down Laurel Canyon Drive and passed her house. There were no lights showing. I paused, then retraced my steps. A distant clock struck midnight. Perhaps she was asleep; perhaps she was still out; perhaps she was at the back of the house. I would have to find out.
I looked up and down the street, but there was no one in sight except John Coulson. He stood in the shadows across the road, his hands in his pockets and his head a little on one side, watching me.
I stood outside Eve’s house and again looked up and down the street. It was quiet, even the distant traffic sounded muffled. I pushed open the gate and groped my way down the path.
I fumbled my way around to the back of the house and kicked against a number of bottles that were stacked against the wall. One of them rolled and smashed against something in the dark. I stood still and listened. The back of the house was in darkness. No one called out so I edged forward cautiously until I reached a window. It was half open. I pushed it right up and listened. No sound came from inside the house.
I leaned inside the window and struck a match. I was looking in at the small kitchen and it was as well that I had a light because the sink, full of dirty crockery, was immediately under the window.
I threw the match away and stepped onto the window sill. Then I struck another match. I climbed over the sink and lowered myself to the floor.
There was a faint smell of stale cooking and a fainter smell of Eve’s perfume in the room. The smell of that perfume gave me a cold feeling of hate deep in my guts. I went to the door, opened it and stood in the passage. I listened, but I could hear nothing.
I was sure now that the house was empty, but I was still cautious. I edged my way to her bedroom. The door was open and I stood outside, holding my breath and listening. I stood like that for a long time until I was sure there was no one in the room. Then I went in and turned on the light.
By her bed was a large photograph. It was turned face down on the little table. I picked it up. Jack Hurst looked at me. It was a good portrait and I studied it for some minutes, then in a sudden spasm of rage, I nearly smashed it against the wall. I stopped myself in time. That would be the first thing she would miss when she entered the room. I put the photograph back as I had found it and as I did so I wondered whether Hurst would care when he heard that Eve was dead. I wondered too with a sense of malice whether the police would suspect that it might have been Hurst who had killed her.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked softly. It was twenty minutes past twelve. Any moment now, I could expect her to return. In this quiet little room, I had no feeling of time and I sat down on the bed and picked up her dressing gown. I buried my face in it, smelling her scent and the faint odour of her body.
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