Lay Her Among the Lilies vm-2

by James Hadley Chase

  “Why did she hate you?”

  She stared down at the garden for a long time without saying anything. I drank some of the whisky and smoked. If she was going to tell me she would in her own time. She wasn’t the type to be rushed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “If I tell you why she hated me I’ll be putting myself entirely at your mercy. You could ruin me.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. “But if I don’t tell you,” she went on, clenching her fists, “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this mess. I must have someone I can trust.”

  “Haven’t you a lawyer?” I said, for something to say.

  “He would be worse than useless. He’s my trustee. By the terms of my father’s will if I get involved in a scandal I lose everything. And I’m up to my ears in what would be a horrific scandal if it got out.”

  “You mean with Sherrill?” I said. “Did you finance the Dream Ship?”

  She stiffened, turned, stared at me. “You know that?”

  “I don’t know it. I’m making a guess. If it got out you were behind the Dream Ship it would make a scandal.”

  “Yes.” She suddenly moved along the seat so she was close to me. “Janet was in love with Douglas. I was crazy about him, too. I stole him from her. She tried to shoot me, but father saved me. He was shot instead of me,” she blurted out and hid her face in her hands.

  I sat as still as a stone man, waiting. I wasn’t expecting this, and I was startled.

  “It was hushed up,” she went on after a long pause. “Never mind how. But it preyed on Janet’s mind. She— she poisoned herself. That was hushed up, too. We were afraid it would come out why she killed herself. It was easy enough to hush up. The doctor was old. He thought it was heart failure. Then, when I came into the money, and there was a lot of it, Douglas showed himself for what he is. He said unless I gave him the money to buy Dream Ship he would circulate the story that I had stolen him from Janet and she had tried to kill me, but killed father, and had poisoned herself: all because of me. You can imagine what the papers would have made of that, and I should have lost everything. So I gave him the money for his beastly ship, but that didn’t satisfy him. He keeps coming to me for more money, and he watches every move I make. He found out you had started to make inquiries. He was afraid you would uncover the story, and, of course, if you did, he would lose his hold on me. He did everything he could to stop you. When he heard Stevens was meeting you, he kidnapped him. And now he’s going to wipe you out. I don’t know what to do! I’ve got to go somewhere and hide. I want you to help me. Will you help me? Will you?” She was clutching my hands now. “Will you promise you won’t give me away? I’ll do anything for you in return. I mean it! Will you help me?”

  There was a slight sound behind us, and we both turned. A tall, powerfully-built man with dark curly hair, dressed in a scarlet sleeveless sweatshirt and dark blue slacks stood just behind us. He held a .38 automatic in his hand and it pointed directly at me. There was a cheerful, patronizing smile on his tanned face as if he was enjoying a private joke that was a little too deep for the average intelligence.

  “She tells a pretty tale, doesn’t she?” he said in one of those ultra-masculine voices. “So she wants to run away and hide? Well, so she shall. She’ll be hidden all right, where no one will ever find her, and that goes for you, too, my inquisitive friend.”

  I was calculating the distance between us, wondering if I could get up and reach him before he fired, when I heard the all too familiar swish of a descending cosh and the inside of my head seemed to explode.

  The last sound I heard was Maureen’s wild, terrified scream.

  Chapter IV

  I

  The room was big and airy, and the walls and ceiling were a dead Chinese white. Cold, white plastic curtains were drawn across the windows, and a shaded lamp made a pool of light over the opposite bed.

  There was a man sitting up in the bed. He was reading. His small-boned face with its high, wide forehead gave the impression of a young student reading for an examination.

  I watched him through half-closed eyes for some minutes, wondering in a vague, detached sort of way who he was and what he was doing in this room with me. There was something odd about the book he was reading. It was a big volume, and the print was close set and small. It was only when he turned a page and I saw a chapter heading that I realized he was holding the book upside down.

  I wasn’t surprised to find myself in this room. I had a vague idea I had been in it for some time: perhaps days, perhaps weeks. The feel of the narrow high bed I was lying in was familiar: almost as familiar as the feel of my own bed in my beach cabin which now seemed as remote as last year’s snow.

  I knew in an instinctive kind of way—I was quite sure I hadn’t been told—that I was in hospital, and I tried to remember if I had been knocked down by a car, but my mind was working badly. It refused to concentrate, and kept jumping across the room to the man in the opposite bed. Its only interest was to find out why he was holding his book the wrong way up, for it seemed to me the book looked dry and complicated enough without adding to the difficulty of reading it.

  The man in the bed was young; not more than twenty-four or so, and his thick fair hair was over long and silky-looking. He had very deep-set eyes, and the lamp cast shadows in them so they seemed to be two dark holes in his face.

  I suddenly became aware that he was also watching me, although he pretended to be reading; watching furtively from under his eyelids; watching as he turned a page slowly with a concentrated frown on his face.

  “You’ll find it easier if you turn the book the right way up,” I said, and was surprised how far away my voice sounded, as if I were speaking in another room.

  He glanced up and smiled. He was a nice-looking youngster : a typical collegian, more at home with a baseball bat than a book.

  “I always read books this way up,” he said; his voice was unexpectedly high pitched. “It’s more fun, and it’s just as easy once you get the knack of it, but it does take a lot of practice.”

  He laid the book down. “Well, how do you feel, Mr. Seabright? I’m afraid you have had a pretty rotten time. How’s the head?”

  It was a funny thing, but now he mentioned it I discovered my head ached and an artery was pounding in my temple.

  “It aches,” I said. “Is this a hospital?”

  “Well, not exactly a hospital. I think they call it a sanitarium.”

  “You mean a sanatorium, don’t you? A sanitarium is a nut foundry.”

  He smiled and nodded his blond head.

  “That’s it exactly: a nut foundry.”

  I closed my eyes. Thinking was difficult, but I made the effort. It took me several minutes to remember the swish of a descending cosh, the man in the scarlet sweatshirt, and Maureen’s wild, terrified scream. A sanitarium. I felt a little prickle of apprehension run up my spine like spider’s legs. A sanitarium!

  I sat up abruptly. Something held my left wrist, pinning it to the bed. I turned to see what it was. A bright nickle-plated, rubber-lined handcuff gripped my wrist. The other cuff was fastened to the rail of the bed.

  The blond man was watching me with mild interest.

  “They think it’s safer for us to be chained up like that,” he said. “Ridiculous, really, but I have no doubt they mean well.”

  “Yes,” I said and lay back. More spider’s legs ran up my spine. “Who runs this place?”

  “Why, Dr. Salzer, of course. Haven’t you met him? He’s quite charming. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”

  Then I remembered the man in the scarlet sweatshirt had said he would hide me away where no one would ever find me. An asylum, of course, was a pretty fool-proof hiding-place. But Salzer didn’t run an asylum. His place was a retreat for the over-fed: Nurse Gurney had said so.

  “But I thought Salzer ran a kind of Nature Cure racket,” I said carefully. “Not a nut foundry.”

  “So he does,
but there’s a wing set aside for the mentally sick,” the blond man explained.

  He walked two fingers along the edge of the night table. “It is not usually talked about.” He walked his fingers back again. “It’s so much more pleasant for relatives to say you are having a health cure than that you’re locked up in a padded cell.”

  “Is that where we are?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. The walls are padded. They don’t look like it, but try punching them. It’s quite fun.” He leaned out of bed and hit the wall. His fist made no sound. “It’s rubber, I think. By the way, my name’s Duncan Hopper. You may have heard of my father: Dwight Hopper.”

  As far as I could remember, Dwight Hopper was something big in the paint and distemper trade. I didn’t know he had a son.

  “I’m Malloy,” I said. “Victor Malloy.”

  He cocked his head on one side and regarded me fixedly.

  “Who?”

  “Malloy.”

  “Are you sure?” He smiled slyly now. “They tell me your name is Edmund Seabright.”

  “No; Malloy,” I said, again feeling spider’s legs run up my spine.

  “I see.” He began once more to walk his fingers along the edge of the night table. He seemed to like doing that. “I wonder if you would mind if I called you Seabright? Bland calls you Seabright. Dr. Salzer calls you Seabright. Seabright is the name on your papers. I know, because I persuaded Bland to let me look at them. You are described as a manic depressive. Did you know?”

  My mouth suddenly went dry.

  “A—what?”

  “Manic depressive. I dare say it’s nonsense.”

  “Yes, it’s nonsense.” I found it increasingly difficult to speak and think calmly.

  “I’m so glad. Depressives can be so tiresome. I didn’t think you were, and I told Bland so. But Bland is very stupid; a very uneducated person. He never listens to what I say. I’m afraid you won’t like him. He says I am a paranoiac, but that’s complete nonsense. We had a terrific argument about it this morning, and he lent me this book. It tells you about paranoia. Really quite interesting. But I haven’t one single symptom. There’s quite an interesting chapter on manic depressives.” He walked his fingers along the table edge before saying, “Do you have hallucinations?”

  I said I didn’t have hallucinations.

  “I’m so glad.” He seemed genuinely pleased. “But it is odd you think your name is Malloy, isn’t it? Or perhaps you don’t think so?”

  I said very distinctly and slowly, “It isn’t odd because Malloy happens to be my name.”

  “I see.” He reached for the book and began to flip over the pages. “Then if you are not Edmund Seabright why are you here?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, and it seemed to me to be suddenly tremendously important to make this blond man believe me. If he didn’t, who else would? “I am a sort of private investigator and I am engaged on a case. I have found out Dr. Salzer is responsible for the murder of Eudora Drew. It’s too involved to go into now, but because of what I have found out I have been kidnapped.” I don’t know how I got those last words out. It sounded terrible, but to save my life I couldn’t have put it any better. A little spark of panic began to well up inside me as I saw the look of polite incredulity on Hopper’s face.

  “Dr. Salzer?” he said, and gave his charming smile. “A murder? That’s interesting. And you are some sort of detective? Is that right?”

  “Now, look,” I said, struggling up in bed. “I know what you are thinking. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Seabright,” he said gently. “I don’t think anything of the kind. I know you aren’t very well, but not crazy: definitely and certainly not.”

  I licked my dry lips.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course.”

  But I saw by the amused sly expression in the deep-set eyes that he was lying.

  II

  Hopper told me that around nine o’clock Bland would come in to turn out the light.

  “In about five minutes,” he said, consulting his wrist-watch. “Bland lets me have this watch because I give him a hundred cigarettes a week. My father sends them in to me, and, of course, I am not allowed to smoke. They seem to think I would set fire to the bed.” He laughed, showing small, even, white teeth. “Ridiculous, of course, but I suppose they mean well.”

  Under cover of the sheet I had been trying to work my hand out of the handcuff. If I could once get free, I told myself, nothing, not even a machine-gun, would stop me getting out of this place. But the cuff was shaped to my wrist, and, short of cutting off my hand or having the key, there was no way out of it.

  “What day is it?” I asked suddenly.

  Hopper opened a drawer in the night table and consulted a diary.

  “It’s the 29th of July. Don’t you keep a diary? I do. Tomorrow is an anniversary. I have been here three years.”

  But I wasn’t listening. I had to think long and carefully before I remembered that it had been the 24th of July when Maureen had taken me to her retreat. Five days! Paula and Kerman would be searching for me. Would they think to look here? Even if they thought I was here, how could they get at me? Salzer had Brandon’s protection, and Brandon wouldn’t pay attention to anything Kerman said.

  If Sherrill—and I was sure the man in the scarlet sweatshirt had been Sherrill—hadn’t been absolutely sure that no one could get at me here, wouldn’t he have put a slug through my head and chucked me into the sea? Why hadn’t he done that, anyway? Perhaps he stopped at murder. Stevens hadn’t been murdered. His death had been an accident. But Salzer didn’t stop at murder; unless Dwan had exceeded his orders. It might even he better, I thought, to be murdered than left locked up in a padded cell for the rest of my days.

  Pull yourself together, Malloy, I said to myself. Snap out of it! All right, you have been bashed on the head and by the woolly feeling behind your eyes and in your mouth you have had a cart-load of drug pushed into you, but that’s no excuse to go off at half-cock now. Paula and Kerman will get you out of this. Hang on, and take it easy until they do.

  The door opened suddenly and silently, and a short, dark man came in. He had a pair of shoulders you would expect to find on a gorilla, and his round red face was freckled and creased in a fixed, humourless grin. He was dressed in a white lap-over short coat, white trousers and white, rubber-soled shoes. He carried a tray covered with a towel, and he moved as silently and as lightly as a feather settling on the floor.

  “Hello, Hoppie,” he said, putting the tray on a table by the door. “Beddy-byes now. How are you? Did you get any dope out of that book?”

  Hopper waved his hand towards my bed.

  “Mr. Seabright is with us now,” he said.

  Bland—for this must be Bland—came to the foot of my bed and stared at me. The smile was still there: a little wider if anything. The greenish eyes were as hard and as cold and as sharp as ice-chips.

  “Hello, baby,” he said. He had a curious whispering voice; hoarse and secretive, as if something was wrong with his larynx. “I’m Bland. I’m going to look after you.”

  I found myself starting to clutch hold of the sheet, but I stopped that. Take it easy, I told myself. Relax. Don’t rush things.

  “Hello,” I said, and my voice sounded as tight as a piano wire. “You don’t have to look after me. Where’s Salzer? I want to talk to him.”

  “Doctor Salzer, baby,” Bland said reprovingly. “Don’t be disrespectful.” He gave Hopper a long, slow wink. “You’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “I want to see him now,” I said steadily.

  “Tomorrow, baby. The Doc has to have a little time off. If there’s anything you want, you tell me. I’m boss of this floor. What I say goes.”

  “I want Salzer,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control.

  “Tomorrow, baby. Now, settle down. I gotta little shot for you, and then you’ll sleep.”

  “He thinks
he’s a detective,” Hopper said, suddenly scowling. “He says Dr. Salzer has murdered someone.”

  “Very disrespectful, but what does it matter?” Bland said, taking a hypodermic syringe from its case.

  “But it does matter. That’s hallucinations,” Hopper said crossly. “It says so in this book. I don’t see why I should have him in with me. I don’t like it. He may be dangerous.”

  Bland gave a short barking laugh.

  “That’s funny, coming from you. Button up, baby; I gotta lot to do.” He screwed in the needle and filled the syringe with colourless liquid.

  “I shall complain to Dr. Salzer,” Hopper said. “My father wouldn’t like it.”

  “Nuts to your father, and double nuts to you,” Bland said impatiently. He came over to me. “All right, let’s have your arm: the right one.”

  I sat up abruptly.

  “You don’t stick that in me,” I said.

  “Don’t be that way, baby. It won’t get you anywhere,” Bland said, his fixed grin widening. “Lie down, and take it easy.”

  “Not in me you don’t,” I said.

  He caught hold of my wrist in his right hand. His short thick fingers clamped into my flesh like a vice.

  “If you want it the hard way,” he said, his red. freckled face close to mine, “it’s okay with me.”

  I exerted my muscles in a quick twist, hoping to break his hold, but instead I nearly broke my arm. I heaved forward, trying to hit him in the chest with my shoulder, but that didn’t work either.

  He retained his grip, grinning at me, waiting to see what else I would do. I didn’t keep him waiting long, and tried to kick my legs free of the sheet, but that wasn’t possible. The sheet was as tough as canvas, and had been tucked in so tightly there was no shifting it.

  “Finished, baby?” he asked, almost cheerfully. “I’m going to stick the needle in now, and if you struggle it’ll break off in you, so watch your step.”