Once we were headed in the right direction it didn’t take long to find what we were looking for. As the gas station attendant had told us, the road snaked around until it came nearly to the ocean, where it ended at Silver Strand, Wyndham’s estate. Both Dex and I were struck dumb at the sight of the place, which was saying a thing: me having been born in luxury and Dex used to putting a façade up and his nose in where it did not belong.
You could see the house from the place where the road met the grounds, but only just. Right at the water’s edge, Wyndham’s country place was a modern mansion, with gardens, a pool and garages for the motion picture star’s cars. Away from the ocean, it looked as though the estate might go back for miles and board-fenced paddocks housed Arabian horses who frolicked in equine abandon, their tails held high in the air. I watched the horses play as we followed a long tree-lined drive-way. When we came to the house Dex pulled our borrowed car under the porte cochere. I looked around for some lurking servant in a uniform but didn’t see one, though it was the kind of swank joint where a liveried footman or six wouldn’t have been out of place.
There was no activity—no cars coming or going, no planes on the airstrip we could see beyond the pasture, no horses being taken to or from the barn—so we left the car where it was and headed for the door.
That door was massive. Easily twice my height and made of wood that was a deep mahogany in color and heavily figured. It looked to me like it might have been cut from a single ancient redwood, felled for the very purpose of the creation of the new California. I wasn’t sure if that made me sad.
We looked around for some type of ringing or knocking device and, seeing nothing, Dex extended his hand and gave the door a good rap with his knuckles. It hurt my ears just listening to the bone hit the wood, but Dex didn’t even blink.
We stood there for a long time. I became aware of the scrawny sun heading toward a noonday sky and the taste of salt in the air. It’s always cooler by the ocean than it is even a few miles inland, and I noticed that now, wishing for the protection of a light coat or even a cardigan on my bare arms.
A minute passed. Maybe two. I could feel Dex preparing himself to move off when the door scraped against its frame as someone pulled it open from the other side. The sound of wood against too-much wood, the door perhaps swollen due to the humidity that comes off the ocean.
The door didn’t swing wide—it opened only a foot or so—but I still got an instant whiff of what was beyond. It sailed out on a slender column as though it had been waiting for the opportunity. It took me a while to name what it was.
It was dark in there—I could see that as well as feel it—and dank. The fingers of a chill. I’m being dramatic. I know that. Yet what I saw directly after didn’t alleviate those feelings at all.
“Yes.” It was a single word, not formed into a question. Spoken by a woman. We could not see her face. The voice was neither old nor young, but it was deeply used.
“Miss Duvall?” Dex found his voice first, directed it at the opening that wasn’t nearly big enough to support a conversation. “How do you do? I’m Dexter J. Theroux and this is … this is my associate, Miss Katherine Pangborn.”
I murmured a greeting. Dex pressed on.
“Miss Duvall, I don’t know if you’ve had contact with your husband over the last few days …”
“Laird?” the voice said softly, making me wonder if she actually had so many husbands that she needed to verify the identity of this one.
“That’s right,” Dex said reassuringly, as though he were perhaps trying to gentle one of those frolicking horses. “He gave us this address and told us we’d find you here.”
“You’re here to talk to me?” she sounded as though she didn’t quite believe it. And it was hard to judge her voice. Did she sound glad at the prospect? Or frightened? Or wary? Maybe it was a generous mixture of all three. “Why would he want you to talk to me?”
“Can we come in, Miss Duvall?” Dex said. “If we could have a few minutes of your time, we’ll explain everything.” I looked at Dex, trying to catch his eye while keeping the panic out of mine. Did we really want to go in there? Just a slender broad I could almost hear Dex say. Nothing to be afraid of. And yet.
The door opened wide and we could see her fully for the first time, but that single look at her brought it all back. Though she hadn’t made a motion picture in five years or more, I could recall a time when she was both a great beauty and a significant star. She had always been cast as that girl: the delicate flower, the girl left behind or the one who suffered in silence while the world moved on. She was almost painfully thin, with a swanlike neck and the trademark mop of yellow curls for which she had been known. In her youth, the combination had heightened her vulnerability and legendary beauty.Now it combined to create a look that was at once delicate, breakable and slightly odd.
She brought us into a foyer that under different circumstances and perhaps a few years earlier might have been beautiful. Cobalt blue tiles lined the floor. Beautiful tiles. The ceiling was coffered in dark-stained beams and soared to a height that was at least twice that of a normal room. The proportions, the dimensions, the appointments were all elegant and lovely. The overriding feeling, however, was one of confinement and lack of space. Newspapers and old books were stacked precariously high in every corner. The windows were grimy. The pictures on the wall were not askew, but the unkempt nature of everything around them made it feel as though they were, as though everything in the space might topple down in a dirty heap at any second.
That was not the worst, however. What was worse, by far, was the smell. Now that we were inside, we were getting the full force of what had only been hinted at on the stoop.
I couldn’t place it at first. Until I was right inside the foyer and the door had been closed behind us. Then I recognized it as the smell of cats. Not a few but many. And it wasn’t the smell of cats themselves, but the deposits they leave behind. I’ve got nothing at all against cats. I’ve quite liked them when I’ve encountered them. But this was something beyond two or three or even four pet felines. My eyes would have told me that even if my nose had not.
Four cats reclined in various poses on the stairway we passed as we followed Lorena Duvall to the drawing room. I could feel sharp, green eyes regarding me without much curiosity as we moved out of sight. Two more lounged on an antique breakfront in a hallway. When we got there, the huge and well-appointed drawing room held at least fifteen. They were on overstuffed horsehair chairs, on settees, on rugs in front of the fireplace and one with a tidily marked black and white body perched on the piano keyboard seemed to regard us with a smirk as we entered the room. Under different circumstances, I might have smirked back. As it was, and with perhaps two score eyes watching us, I felt an odd little finger of fear.
As Lorena Duvall tried to make space for us—gently suggesting to the cats on the sofa that they move, trying in vain to remove cat hair from even a single piece of furniture in the room, clearing away stacks of newspapers and books—I tried to align the idea of Laird Wyndham—vital, vibrant, virile and very much of the world—with this woman, his wife. It was impossible to imagine the two of them together, even at a dinner or a party, never mind sharing life. That accounted for the fact that they seldom seemed to spend time together any longer. Wyndham had told us she had withdrawn. From the little I had so far seen, it appeared to be so much more than that.
With the sofa cleared, she offered us tea or a drink. Dex and I declined hastily, perhaps neither of us prepared to drink from a cup or glass that had spent any time at all in this house. With all these cats.
She indicated we should sit on the newly emptied sofa, then perched awkwardly in an armchair against a large calico cat who had been unwilling to move.
“You said,” she started. Then stopped. Cleared her throat. Started again. “You said you were here to talk about… talk about my husband. Has something happened?”
“You haven’t heard from him at all?�
�� Dex asked, drawing out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Miss Duvall, who declined with a barely perceptible shake of her head, both the smoke and the question.
“Well then,” Dex said, “I’m afraid this may come as something of a shock. I’m not going to pad it, though. You’re a grown woman, after all, and have a right to know. Miss Duvall,I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that Mr. Wyndham is being held for murder.”
At the sound of the word, one of her pale little paws flew to her mouth. It was a theatrical gesture—something the woman in the silent film would do if she discovered the same thing about a loved one. Considering her background, I suppose she’d come by it honestly.
“Murder,” she repeated now breathlessly and, though it really wasn’t funny, I had to steel myself not to laugh.
“Yes, yes,” Dex said, lighting his smoke with a careless match that he tossed into the ashtray on the table in front of us. “That’s right. So first of all we wanted to ask if this is something you know about.”
“No, of course not,” Lorena said. Dex looked professionally skeptical. It’s a knack he has. For my part, I had no trouble at all believing her and I didn’t care if she could tell that from my face.
“When’s the last time you were in the city?” Dex asked.
“Los Angeles?”
Dex just nodded. With a grunt.
Lorena cast her eyes ceilingward, deep in thought. I followed her eyes, then forced them back down again. The reality of the massive cobwebs right above our heads was a little too much to take.
“Three, perhaps four months. I remember, more or less, because it’s been that long since I had a driver.”
“You don’t drive, Miss Duvall?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and childlike, odd in a face no longer young. “I never had reason to learn.”
“But you’re all alone up here?” This was Dex and he said it as though pressing home a point.
Miss Duvall surprised me by smiling at him. The smile warmed her entire face. She pulled a cat from the floor next to her, tucking it comfortably onto her lap. “Hardly alone, Mr. Theroux.”
“Quite,” Dex agreed dryly. I wondered what was eating him and what he thought he was up to. This wasn’t getting us anyplace fast.
“But, yes: I’m mostly alone. Laird fixed it so I have someone come in and see to the horses and someone comes to do the pool. But they answer to him, not me. I… well I’m off people just now.”
“Ah,” Dex said conversationally. I couldn’t find anything to say at all.
“Did he do it?” she asked suddenly, thankfully alleviating the need for the construction of small talk.
“Do what?” Dex asked.
“You said my husband is accused of murder.” She stroked the cat now curled tightly into her lap. If it was a nervous gesture, she gave no sign.
“Ah. That. We think he did not.”
“And who,” she stopped again. Cleared her throat again. “Who is he supposed to have murdered?”
“A girl,” Dex answered. Then corrected. “A young woman.”
Duvall’s eyebrows arched but she didn’t say anything. I thought I saw something in the look, but I didn’t quite know what.
“You don’t look surprised,” Dex said without a question in his voice.
“Don’t I?” she said thoughtfully, still stroking. “It’s too far away. I’d be very surprised if I discovered such a thing were true. Laird may be many things, but he’s no killer, least of all of young women.” She allowed herself a small smile. I wondered at its source. “But the life he leads? In the thick of things, as it were. That’s what robs my surprise.”
“That was once your life,” I pointed out.
“Was it?” she said as though considering. “I suppose it was, in a way. And yet, it never was.”
“That’s very cryptic,” I said softly, willing Dex not to interject. “Was that what you intended?”
“You’re observant,” she said. “I like you. Him I’m not so sure about,” she said, looking at Dex, though she smiled to take the bite out of her words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to be cryptic, though you’re right: I probably was. It’s just… it’s not a part of my life I speak easily about, me and Laird. I don’t even think about it much anymore.”
“You talk about it like it’s all in the past,” I said. “He’s still your husband. You’re still his wife.”
“Till death,” she said so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard.
“Are you … are you estranged?” I said, suddenly bold. What did we have to lose? And we’d come such a long way, the question needed to be asked. Dex seemed to know I was the one to do the asking. He sat quietly on his side of the sofa and smoked.
“No, no. Nothing like that. We’re friends. Friendly. You understand.” She said this with a sophisticated little wave of her hand. An insouciant toss of her head. Yet I felt myself dangerously close to something painful. Perhaps it was because she was acting, I thought, as though I could suddenly see beyond the mask.
“Not quite,” I said, still softly. “You’re not estranged, yet you don’t live together as husband and wife. You say you’re friendly, yet there are other women.”
She laughed at that. The laughter wasn’t something bitter, something that stung. “Other women were never the problem,” she said, looking me full in the face. “Other people is what it always was with Laird.”
I had the feeling there was something I should have understood then, but to my shame, I did not. I thought it was words only and I was aware of Dex on the other side of me, mashing out his smoke. And I knew I was out of time.
“Miss Duvall,” Dex said now, “here’s the long and the short of it: Your husband has hired us to try and prove his innocence. Do you know of any reason why we wouldn’t be able to do that?”
She shook her head. “Not off hand. No.”
“So you don’t think he’s capable of murder?”
“That’s not a real question,” she said with a distracted air. The calico had come from behind and joined the other cat in her lap. It was a small lap and it was now very full. “Or maybe it’s a philosophical one. Which one of us is not capable of murder? Under the wrong circumstances. I would say Laird no more or less than most.”
Her voice had a rare calming quality. Almost like a purring. I had to force myself to focus on the words she spoke, not the shape of them, or the way they fell on the room.
If Dex was similarly affected, he gave no sign. “That’s not really much of an answer, Miss Duvall,” he said.
“Why, whatever do you mean? Of course it’s an answer. The only one I’ve got.”
He tried a different approach.
“Is your husband a violent man, Miss Duvall?”
Lorena looked at Dex closely before answering. “I would not characterize him that way, no.”
“Is he … is he capable of violence?” I tried.
“Again, Miss Pangborn. Who among us is not?”
“Indeed,” I said, “but have you seen signs of it in Laird?”
She took her time about answering, and when she did, her words surprised us. “Have you talked to Steward? Asked him that question?”
“Your husband’s mouthpiece? Why would we talk to him? What are you saying?” Dex wanted to know.
“I’m not saying anything. Just asking, is all. Or suggesting, maybe. If there’s things that need knowing, Steward is the one to ask. He tends … he tends to know things.”
“What kinds of things, Miss Duvall?” I asked.
The smile she focused on first me and then Dex was beatific. Combined with that mop of hair, it was like the sun had come out. I knew then that she had no intention of answering our questions.
“Ta da,” she trilled, spreading her hands wide in a theatrical gesture that indicated quite clearly that our interview was over. “Thank you so much for your visit, both of you. But I’m tired now. I must retire.” When she stood, both cats dropped to the ground, one looked surprised
, the other annoyed and Lorena herself unconcerned. “You can see yourselves out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“WHAT DO YOU make of her?” The noonday sun slashed at the car and the fields we drove through. It reflected off the swaying sugar beets and the white ribbon of highway. I knew that, if we stopped for a moment and I stood beside the car, I’d feel the sun on my shoulder, on my head. I’d feel the sun and maybe I’d feel warm again. But just then, for whatever reason, I felt fingers of damp; a chill. I felt cold.
“Nothing to make,” I said. “She’s nuttier than Marjorie’s fruitcake.”
Dex laughed. “You know, I haven’t had that pleasure—your Marjorie’s fruitcake, that is. But I would imagine it’s a nutty delight.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
“Please don’t,” Dex begged. “I have a hard enough time with her already. So,” he said at length, “do we think about what she said?”
“What Marjorie said?”
“No. Silly goose. Forget the fruitcake for a minute. Or think about a different one: Wyndham’s wife.”
“Do we think about what she said about Steward Sterling, you mean?”
Dex grunted his reply.
I considered before answering. “Thing is, I’m still confused about what she meant, are you?”
Dex nodded. “Like, did she mean Steward did it or did she mean Steward would know if Laird did it?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Like that.”
“Well, either way, I figure she’s barking up the wrong tree.” Dex held the wheel with both hands. His knuckles were white. But he looked calm in all other regards. Calm and completely in control of the big car.
“Could be. Still, she’s the one that was married to Wyndham. That’s why we went to see her, right? She has reason to know more than we do. I think you have to talk to Steward.”
Another grunt. “I think you’re right,” he changed tracks. “Could be she was always a fruitcake.”
Death Was in the Picture Page 15