Sure enough the door of 1354A was pulled open and a small bright-eyed woman looked out at me. Her dark hair had been washed and waved and was an intricate mass of bobby pins.
“You want Mrs. Teager?” she shrilled.
“Mr. or Mrs.”
“They gone away last night on their vacation. They loaded up and gone away late. They had me stop the milk and the paper. They didn’t have much time. Kind of sudden, it was.”
“Thanks. What kind of car do they drive?”
The heartrending dialogue of some love serial came out of the room behind her and hit me in the face like a wet dishtowel.
The bright-eyed woman said: “You a friend of theirs?” In her voice, suspicion was as thick as the ham in her radio.
“Never mind,” I said in a tough voice. “All we want is our money. Lots of ways to find out what car they were driving.”
The woman cocked her head, listening. “That’s Beula May,” she told me with a sad smile. “She won’t go to the dance with Doctor Myers. I was scared she wouldn’t.”
“Aw hell,” I said, and went back to my car and drove on home to Hollywood.
The office was empty. I unlocked my inner room and threw the windows up and sat down.
Another day drawing to its end, the air dull and tired, the heavy growl of homing traffic on the boulevard, and Marlowe in his office nibbling a drink and sorting the day’s mail. Four ads; two bills; a handsome colored postcard from a hotel in Santa Rosa where I had stayed for four days last year, working on a case; a long, badly typed letter from a man named Peabody in Sausalito, the general and slightly cloudy drift of which was that a sample of the handwriting of a suspected person would, when exposed to the searching Peabody examination, reveal the inner emotional characteristics of the individual, classified according to both the Freudian and Jung systems.
There was a stamped addressed envelope inside. As I tore the stamp off and threw the letter and envelope away I had a vision of a pathetic old rooster in long hair, black felt hat and black bow tie, rocking on a rickety porch in front of a lettered window, with the smell of ham hocks and cabbage coming out of the door at his elbow.
I sighed, retrieved the envelope, wrote its name and address on a fresh one, folded a dollar bill into a sheet of paper and wrote on it: “This is positively the last contribution.” I signed my name, sealed the envelope, stuck a stamp on it and poured another drink.
I filled and lit my pipe and sat there smoking. Nobody came in, nobody called, nothing happened, nobody cared whether I died or went to El Paso.
Little by little the roar of the traffic quieted down. The sky lost its glare. Over in the west it would be red. An early neon light showed a block away, diagonally over roofs. The ventilator churned dully in the wall of the coffee shop down in the alley. A truck filled and backed and growled its way out on to the boulevard.
Finally the telephone rang. I answered it and the voice said: “Mr. Marlowe? This is Mr. Shaw. At the Bristol.”
“Yes, Mr. Shaw. How are you?”
“I’m very well thanks, Mr. Marlowe. I hope you are the same. There’s a young lady here asking to be let into your apartment. I don’t know why.”
“Me neither, Mr. Shaw. I didn’t order anything like that. Does she give a name?”
“Oh yes. Quite. Her name is Davis. Miss Merle Davis. She is—what shall I say?—quite verging on the hysterical.”
“Let her in,” I said, rapidly. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. She’s the secretary of a client. It’s a business matter entirely.”
“Quite. Oh yes. Shall I—er—remain with her?”
“Whatever you think,” I said and hung up.
Passing the open door of the wash cabinet I saw a stiff excited face in the glass.
CHAPTER 27
As I turned the key in my door and opened it Shaw was already standing up from the davenport. He was a tall man with glasses and a high domed bald head that made his ears look as if they had slipped down on his head. He had the fixed smile of polite idiocy on his face.
The girl sat in my easy chair behind the chess table. She wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there.
“Ah, there you are, Mr. Marlowe,” Shaw chirped. “Yes. Quite. Miss Davis and I have been having such an interesting little conversation. I was telling her I originally came from England. She hasn’t—er—told me where she came from.” He was halfway to the door saying this.
“Very kind of you, Mr. Shaw,” I said.
“Not at all,” he chirped. “Not at all. I’ll just run along now. My dinner, possibly—”
“It’s very nice of you,” I said, “I appreciate it.”
He nodded and was gone. The unnatural brightness of his smile seemed to linger in the air after the door closed, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.
I said: “Hello, there.”
She said: “Hello.” Her voice was quite calm, quite serious. She was wearing a brownish linen coat and skirt, a broad-brimmed low-crowned straw hat with a brown velvet band that exactly matched the color of her shoes and the leather trimming on the edges of her linen envelope bag. The hat was tilted rather daringly, for her. She was not wearing her glasses.
Except for her face she would have looked all right. In the first place her eyes were quite mad. There was white showing all around the iris and they had a sort of fixed look. When they moved the movement was so stiff that you could almost hear something creak. Her mouth was in a tight line at the corners, but the middle part of her upper lip kept lifting off her teeth, upwards and outwards as if fine threads attached to the edge of the lip were pulling it. It would go up so far that it didn’t seem possible, and then the entire lower part of her face would go into a spasm and when the spasm was over her mouth would be tight shut, and then the process would slowly start all over again. In addition to this there was something wrong with her neck, so that very slowly her head was drawn around to the left about forty-five degrees. It would stop there, her neck would twitch, and her head would slide back the way it had come.
The combination of these two movements, taken with the immobility of her body, the tight-clasped hands in her lap, and the fixed stare of her eyes, was enough to start anybody’s nerves backfiring.
There was a can of tobacco on the desk, between which and her chair was the chess table with the chessmen in their box. I got the pipe out of my pocket and went over to fill it at the can of tobacco. That put me just on the other side of the chess table from her. Her bag was lying on the edge of the table, in front of her and a little to one side. She jumped a little when I went over there, but after that she was just like before. She even made an effort to smile.
I filled the pipe and struck a paper match and lit it and stood there holding the match after I had blown it out.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” I said.
She spoke. Her voice was quiet, composed. “Oh, I only wear them around the house and for reading. They’re in my bag.”
“You’re in the house now,” I said. “You ought to be wearing them.”
I reached casually for the bag. She didn’t move. She didn’t watch my hands. Her eyes were on my face. I turned my body a little as I opened the bag. I fished the glass case out and slid it across the table.
“Put them on,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I’ll put them on,” she said. “But I’ll have to take my hat off, I think …”
“Yes, take your hat off,” I said.
She took her hat off and held it on her knees. Then she remembered about the glasses and forgot about the hat. The hat fell on the floor while she reached for the glasses. She put them on. That helped her appearance a lot, I thought.
While she was doing this I got the gun out of her bag and slid it into my hip pocket. I didn’t think she saw me. It looked like the same Colt .25 automatic with the walnut grip that I had seen in the top right hand drawer of her desk the day before.
I went back to the davenport and sat down and said: “Well, here we are
. What do we do now? Are you hungry?”
“I’ve been over to Mr. Vannier’s house,” she said.
“Oh.”
“He lives in Sherman Oaks. At the end of Escamillo Drive. At the very end.”
“Quite, probably,” I said without meaning, and tried to blow a smoke ring, but didn’t make it. A nerve in my cheek was trying to twang like a wire. I didn’t like it.
“Yes,” she said in her composed voice, with her upper lip still doing the hoist and flop movement and her chin still swinging around at anchor and back again. “It’s very quiet there. Mr. Vannier has been living there three years now. Before that he lived up in the Hollywood hills, on Diamond Street. Another man lived with him there, but they didn’t get along very well, Mr. Vannier said.”
“I feel as if I could understand that too,” I said. “How long have you known Mr. Vannier?”
“I’ve known him eight years. I haven’t known him very well. I have had to take him a—a parcel now and then. He liked to have me bring it myself.”
I tried again with a smoke ring. Nope.
“Of course,” she said, “I never liked him very well. I was afraid he would—I was afraid he—”
“But he didn’t,” I said.
For the first time her face got a human natural expression—surprise.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t. That is, he didn’t really. But he had his pajamas on.”
“Taking it easy,” I said. “Lying around all afternoon with his pajamas on. Well, some guys have all the luck, don’t they?”
“Well you have to know something,” she said seriously. “Something that makes people pay you money. Mrs. Murdock has been wonderful to me, hasn’t she?”
“She certainly has,” I said. “How much were you taking him today?”
“Only five hundred dollars. Mrs. Murdock said that was all she could spare, and she couldn’t really spare that. She said it would have to stop. It couldn’t go on. Mr. Vannier would always promise to stop, but he never did.”
“It’s a way they have,” I said.
“So there was only one thing to do. I’ve known that for years, really. It was all my fault and Mrs. Murdock has been so wonderful to me. It couldn’t make me any worse than I was already, could it?”
I put my hand up and rubbed my cheek hard, to quiet the nerve. She forgot that I hadn’t answered her and went on again.
“So I did it,” she said. “He was there in his pajamas, with a glass beside him. He was leering at me. He didn’t even get up to let me in. But there was a key in the front door. Somebody had left a key there. It was—it was—” her voice jammed in her throat.
“It was a key in the front door,” I said. “So you were able to get in.”
“Yes.” She nodded and almost smiled again. “There wasn’t anything to it, really. I don’t even remember hearing the noise. But there must have been a noise, of course. Quite a loud noise.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“I went over quite close to him, so I couldn’t miss,” she said.
“And what did Mr. Vannier do?”
“He didn’t do anything at all. He just leered, sort of. Well, that’s all there is to it. I didn’t like to go back to Mrs. Murdock and make any more trouble for her. And for Leslie.” Her voice hushed on the name, and hung suspended, and a little shiver rippled over her body. “So I came here,” she said. “And when you didn’t answer the bell, I found the office and asked the manager to let me in and wait for you. I knew you would know what to do.”
“And what did you touch in the house while you were there?” I asked. “Can you remember at all? I mean, besides the front door. Did you just go in at the door and come out without touching anything in the house?”
She thought and her face stopped moving. “Oh, I remember one thing,” she said. “I put the light out. Before I left. It was a lamp. One of these lamps that shine upwards, with big bulbs. I put that out.”
I nodded and smiled at her. Marlowe, one smile, cheerful.
“What time was this—how long ago?”
“Oh just before I came over here. I drove. I had Mrs. Murdock’s car. The one you asked about yesterday. I forgot to tell you that she didn’t take it when she went away. Or did I? No, I remember now I did tell you.”
“Let’s see,” I said. “Half an hour to drive here anyway. You’ve been here close to an hour. That would be about five-thirty when you left Mr. Vannier’s house. And you put the light off.”
“That’s right.” She nodded again, quite brightly. Pleased at remembering. “I put the light out.”
“Would you care for a drink?” I asked her.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head quite vigorously. “I never drink anything at all.”
“Would you mind if I had one?”
“Certainly not. Why should I?”
I stood up, gave her a studying look. Her lip was still going up and her head was still going around, but I thought not so far. It was like a rhythm which is dying down.
It was difficult to know how far to go with this. It might be that the more she talked, the better. Nobody knows very much about the time of absorption of a shock.
I said: “Where is your home?”
“Why—I live with Mrs. Murdock. In Pasadena.”
“I mean, your real home. Where your folks are.”
“My parents live in Wichita,” she said. “But I don’t go there—ever. I write once in a while, but I haven’t seen them for years.”
“What does your father do?”
“He has a dog and cat hospital. He’s a veterinarian. I hope they won’t have to know. They didn’t about the other time. Mrs. Murdock kept it from everybody.”
“Maybe they won’t have to know,” I said. “I’ll get my drink.”
I went out around the back of her chair to the kitchen and poured it and I made it a drink that was a drink. I put it down in a lump and took the little gun off my hip and saw that the safety was on. I smelled the muzzle, broke out the magazine. There was a shell in the chamber, but it was one of those guns that won’t fire when the magazine is out. I held it so that I could look into the breech. The shell in there was the wrong size and was crooked against the breech block. It looked like a .32. The shells in the magazine were the right size, .25’s. I fitted the gun together again and went back to the living room.
I hadn’t heard a sound. She had just slid forward in a pile in front of the chair, on top of her nice hat. She was as cold as a mackerel.
I spread her out a little and took her glasses off and made sure she hadn’t swallowed her tongue. I wedged my folded handkerchief into the corner of her mouth so that she wouldn’t bite her tongue when she came out of it. I went to the phone and called Carl Moss.
“Phil Marlowe, Doc. Any more patients or are you through?”
“All through,” he said. “Leaving. Trouble?”
“I’m home,” I said. “Four-o-eight Bristol Apartments, if you don’t remember. I’ve got a girl here who has pulled a faint. I’m not afraid of the faint, I’m afraid she may be nuts when she comes out of it.”
“Don’t give her any liquor,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
I hung up and knelt down beside her. I began to rub her temples. She opened her eyes. The lip started to lift. I pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth. She looked up at me and said: “I’ve been over to Mr. Vannier’s house. He lives in Sherman Oaks. I—”
“Do you mind if I lift you up and put you on the davenport? You know me—Marlowe, the big boob that goes around asking all the wrong questions.”
“Hello,” she said.
I lifted her. She went stiff on me, but she didn’t say anything. I put her on the davenport and tucked her skirt down over her legs and put a pillow under her head and picked her hat up. It was as flat as a flounder. I did what I could to straighten it out and laid it aside on the desk.
She watched me sideways, doing this.
“Did you call the police?” she asked so
ftly.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’ve been too busy.”
She looked surprised. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought she looked a little hurt, too.
I opened up her bag and turned my back to her to slip the gun back into it. While I was doing that I took a look at what else was in the bag. The usual oddments, a couple of handkerchiefs, lipstick, a silver and red enamel compact with powder in it, a couple of tissues, a purse with some hard money and a few dollar bills, no cigarettes, no matches, no tickets to the theater.
I pulled open the zipper pocket at the back. That held her driver’s license and a flat packet of bills, ten fifties. I riffled them. None of them brand new. Tucked into the rubber band that held them was a folded paper. I took it out and opened it and read it. It was neatly typewritten, dated that day. It was a common receipt form and it would, when signed, acknowledge the receipt of $500. “Payment on Account.”
It didn’t seem as if it would ever be signed now. I slipped money and receipt into my pocket. I closed the bag and looked over at the davenport.
She was looking at the ceiling and doing that with her face again. I went into my bedroom and got a blanket to throw over her.
Then I went to the kitchen for another drink.
CHAPTER 28
Dr. Carl Moss was a big burly Jew with a Hitler mustache, pop eyes and the calmness of a glacier. He put his hat and bag in a chair and went over and stood looking down at the girl on the davenport inscrutably.
“I’m Dr. Moss,” he said. “How are you?”
She said: “Aren’t you the police?”
He bent down and felt her pulse and then stood there watching her breathing. “Where does it hurt, Miss—”
“Davis,” I said. “Miss Merle Davis.”
“Miss Davis.”
“Nothing hurts me,” she said, staring up at him. “I—I don’t even know why I’m lying here like this. I thought you were the police. You see, I killed a man.”
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 61