The Collected Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

  Haines put his empty glass down and reached into his buttoned shirt pocket. He passed me a dog-eared piece of paper. I unfolded it carefully. It was written in pencil.

  I’d rather be dead than live with you any longer, you lousy cheater—Beryl. That was what it said.

  “Wasn’t the first time,” Haines said, with a rough chuckle. “Just the first time I got caught.” He laughed. Then he scowled again. I gave him back his note and he buttoned it up in the pocket. “What the hell am I tellin’ you for?” he growled at me.

  A bluejay scolded at a big speckled woodpecker and the woodpecker said “Cr-racker!” just like a parrot.

  “You’re lonely,” I said. “You need to get it off your chest. Have another drink. I’ve had my share. You were away that afternoon—when she left you?”

  He nodded moodily and sat holding the bottle between his legs. “We had a spat and I drove on over to the north shore to a guy I know. I felt meaner than flea dirt. I had to get good and soused. I done that. I got home maybe two A.M.—plenty stinko. But I drive slow account of this trick pin. She’s gone. Just the note left.”

  “That was a week ago last Friday, huh? And you haven’t heard from her since?”

  I was being a little too exact. He gave me a hard questioning glance, but it went away. He lifted the bottle and drank moodily and held it against the sun. “Boy, this is damn near a dead soldier,” he said. “She scrammed too.” He jerked a thumb towards the other side of the lake.

  “Maybe they had a fight.”

  “Maybe they went together.”

  He laughed raucously. “Mister, you don’t know my little Beryl. She’s a hell cat when she starts.”

  “Sounds as if they both are. Did Mrs. Haines have a car? I mean, you drove yours that day, didn’t you?”

  “We got two Fords. Mine has to have the foot throttle and brake pedal over on the left, under the good leg. She took her own.”

  I stood up and walked to the water and threw my cigarette stub into it. The water was dark blue and looked deep. The level was high from the spring flood and in a couple of places the water licked across the top of the dam.

  I went back to Haines. He was draining the last of my whisky down his throat. “Gotta get some more hooch,” he said thickly. “Owe you a pint. You ain’t drunk nothing.”

  “Plenty more where it came from,” I said. “When you feel like it I’ll go over and look at that cabin.”

  “Sure. We’ll walk around the lake. You don’t mind me soundin’ off that way at you—about Beryl?”

  “A guy sometimes has to talk his troubles to somebody,” I said. “We could go across the dam. You wouldn’t have to walk so far.”

  “Hell, no. I walk good, even if it don’t look good. I ain’t been around the lake in a month.” He stood up and went into the cabin and came out with some keys. “Let’s go.”

  We started towards the little wooden pier and pavilion at the far end of the lake. There was a path close to the water, winding in and out among big rough granite boulders. The dirt road was farther back and higher up. Haines walked slowly, kicking his right foot. He was moody, just drunk enough to be living in his own world. He hardly spoke. We reached the little pier and I walked out on it. Haines followed me, his foot thumping heavily on the planks. We reached the end, beyond the little open band pavilion, and leaned against a weathered dark green railing.

  “Any fish in here?” I asked.

  “Sure. Rainbow trout, black bass. I ain’t no fish-eater myself. I guess there’s too many of them.”

  I leaned out and looked down into the deep still water. There was swirl down there and a greenish form moved under the pier. Haines leaned beside me. His eyes stared down into the depths of the water. The pier was solidly built and had an underwater flooring—wider than the pier itself—as if the lake had once been at a much lower level, and this underwater flooring had been a boat landing. A flat-bottomed boat dangled in the water on a frayed rope.

  Haines took hold of my arm. I almost yelled. His fingers bit into my muscles like iron claws. I looked at him. He was bent over, staring like a loon, his face suddenly white and glistening. I looked down into the water.

  Languidly, at the edge of the underwater flooring, something that looked vaguely like a human arm and hand in a dark sleeve waved out from under the submerged boarding, hesitated, waved back out of sight.

  Haines straightened his body slowly and his eyes were suddenly sober and frightful. He turned from me without a word and walked back along the pier. He went to a pile of rocks and bent down and heaved. His panting breath came to me. He got a rock loose and his thick back straightened. He lifted the rock breast high. It must have weighed a hundred pounds. He walked steadily back out on the pier with it, game leg and all, reached the end railing and lifted the rock high above his head. He stood there a moment holding it, his neck muscles bulging above his blue shirt. His mouth made some vague distressful sound. Then his whole body gave a hard lurch and the big stone smashed down into the water.

  It made a huge splash that went over both of us. It fell straight and true through the water and crashed on the edge of the submerged planking. The ripples widened swiftly and the water boiled. There was a dim sound of boards breaking underwater. Waves rippled off into the distance and the water down there under our eyes began to clear. An old rotten plank suddenly popped up above the surface and sank back with a flat slap and floated off.

  The depths cleared still more. In them something moved. It rose slowly, a long, dark, twisted something that rolled as it came up. It broke surface. I saw wool, sodden black now—a sweater, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes, and something that bulged shapeless and swollen over the edges of the shoes. I saw a wave of blond hair straighten out in the water and lie still for an instant.

  The thing rolled then and an arm flapped in the water and the hand at the end of the arm was no decent human hand. The face came rolling up. A swollen, pulpy, gray-white mass of bloated flesh, without features, without eyes, without mouth. A thing that had once been a face. Haines looked down at it. Green stones showed below the neck that belonged to the face. Haines’ right hand took hold of the railing and his knuckles went as white as snow under the hard brown skin.

  “Beryl!” His voice seemed to come to me from a long way off, over a hill, through a thick growth of trees.

  4: THE LADY IN THE LAKE

  A large white card in the window, printed in heavy block capitals, said: KEEP TINCHFIELD CONSTABLE. Behind the window was a narrow counter with piles of dusty folders on it. The door was glass and lettered in black paint: Chief of Police. Fire Chief. Town Constable. Chamber of Commerce. Enter.

  I entered and was in what was nothing but a small one-room pineboard shack with a potbellied stove in the corner, a littered roll-top desk, two hard chairs, and the counter. On the wall hung a large blueprint map of the district, a calendar, a thermometer. Beside the desk telephone numbers had been written laboriously on the wood in large deeply bitten figures.

  A man sat tilted back at the desk in an antique swivel chair, with a flat-brimmed Stetson on the back of his head and a huge spittoon beside his right foot. His large hairless hands were clasped comfortably on his stomach. He wore a pair of brown pants held by suspenders, a faded and much washed tan shirt buttoned tight to his fat neck, no tie. What I could see of his hair was mousy-brown except the temples, which were snow-white. On his left breast there was a star. He sat more on his left hip than his right, because he wore a leather hip holster with a big black gun in it down inside his hip pocket.

  I leaned on the counter and looked at him. He had large ears and friendly gray eyes and he looked as if a child could pick his pocket.

  “Are you Mr. Tinchfield?”

  “Yep. What law we got to have, I’m it—come election anyways. There’s a couple good boys running against me and they might up and whip me.” He sighed.

  “Does your jurisdiction extend to Little Fawn Lake?”

  “What was that
, son?”

  “Little Fawn Lake, back in the mountains. You cover that?”

  “Yep. Guess I do. I’m deppity sheriff. Wasn’t no more room on the door.” He eyed the door, without displeasure. “I’m all them things there. Melton’s place, eh? Something botherin’ there, son?”

  “There’s a dead woman in the lake.”

  “Well, I swan.” He unclasped his hands and scratched his ear and stood up heavily. Standing up he was a big, powerful man. His fat was just cheerfulness. “Dead, you said? Who is it?”

  “Bill Haines’ wife, Beryl. Looks like suicide. She’s been in the water a long time, Sheriff. Not nice to look at. She left him ten days ago, he said. I guess that’s when she did it.”

  Tinchfield bent over the spittoon and discharged a tangled mass of brown fiber into it. It fell with a soft plop. He worked his lips and wiped them with the back of his hand.

  “Who are you, son?”

  “My name is John Dalmas. I came up from Los Angeles with a note to Haines from Mr. Melton—to look at the property. Haines and I were walking around the lake and we went out on the little pier the movie people built there once. We saw something down in the water underneath. Haines threw a large rock in and the body came up. It’s not nice to look at, Sheriff.”

  “Haines up there?”

  “Yeah. I came down because he’s pretty badly shaken.”

  “Ain’t surprised at that, son.” Tinchfield opened a drawer in his desk and took out a full pint of whiskey. He slipped it inside his shirt and buttoned the shirt again. “We’ll get Doc Menzies,” he said. “And Paul Loomis.” He moved calmly around the end of the counter. The situation seemed to bother him slightly less than a fly.

  We went out. Before going out he adjusted a clock card hanging inside the glass to read—Back at 6 p.m. He locked the door and got into a car that had a siren on it, two red spotlights, two amber foglights, a red-and-white fire plate, and various legends on the side which I didn’t bother to read.

  “You wait here, son. I’ll be back in a frog squawk.”

  He swirled the car around in the street and went off down the road towards the lake and pulled up at a frame building opposite the stage depot. He went into this and came out with a tall, thin man. The car came slowly swirling back and I fell in behind it. We went through the village, dodging girls in shorts and men in trunks, shorts and pants, most of them naked and brown from the waist up. Tinchfield stood on his horn, but didn’t use his siren. That would have started a mob of cars after him. We went up a dusty hill and stopped at a cabin. Tinchfield honked his horn and yelled. A man in blue overalls opened the door.

  “Get in, Paul.”

  The man in overalls nodded and ducked back into the cabin and came out with a dirty lion hunter’s hat on his head. We went back to the highway and along to the branch road and so over to the gate on the private road. The man in overalls got out and opened it and closed it after our cars had gone through.

  When we came to the lake, smoke was no longer rising from the small cabin. We got out.

  Doc Menzies was an angular yellow-faced man with bug eyes and nicotine-stained fingers. The man in blue overalls and the lion hunter’s hat was about thirty, dark, swarthy, lithe, and looked underfed.

  We went to the edge of the lake and looked towards the pier. Bill Haines was sitting on the floor of the pier, stark naked, with his head in his hands. There was something beside him on the pier.

  “We can ride a ways more,” Tinchfield said. We got back into the cars and went on, stopped again, and all trooped down to the pier.

  The thing that had been a woman lay on its face on the pier with a rope under the arms. Haines’ clothes lay to one side. His artificial leg, gleaming with leather and metal, lay beside them. Without a word spoken Tinchfield slipped the bottle of whiskey out of his shirt and uncorked it and handed it to Haines.

  “Drink hearty, Bill,” he said casually. There was a sickening, horrible smell on the air. Haines didn’t seem to notice it, nor Tinchfield and Menzies. Loomis got a blanket from the car and threw it over the body, then he and I backed away from it.

  Haines drank from the bottle and looked up with dead eyes. He held the bottle down between his bare knee and his stump and began to talk. He spoke in a dead voice, without looking at anybody or anything. He spoke slowly and told everything he had told me. He said that after I went he had got the rope and stripped and gone into the water and got the thing out. When he had finished he stared at the wooden planks and became as motionless as a statue.

  Tinchfield put a cut of tobacco in his mouth and chewed on it for a moment. Then he shut his teeth tight and leaned down and turned the body over carefully, as if he was afraid it would come apart in his hands. The late sun shone on the loose necklace of green stones I had noticed in the water. They were roughly carved and lusterless, like soapstone. A gilt chain joined them. Tinchfield straightened his broad back and blew his nose hard on a tan handkerchief.

  “What you say, Doc?”

  Menzies spoke in a tight, high, irritable voice. “What the hell do you want me to say?”

  “Cause and time of death,” Tinchfield said mildly.

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Jim,” the doctor said nastily.

  “Can’t tell nothing, eh?”

  “By looking at that? Good God!”

  Tinchfield sighed and turned to me. “Where was it when you first seen it?”

  I told him. He listened with his mouth motionless and his eyes blank. Then he began to chew again. “Funny place to be. No current here. If there was any, ’twould be towards the dam.”

  Bill Haines got to his foot, hopped over to his clothes and strapped his leg on. He dressed slowly, awkwardly, dragging his shirt over his wet skin. He spoke again without looking at anybody.

  “She done it herself. Had to. Swum under the boards there and breathed water in. Maybe got stuck. Had to. No other way.”

  “One other way, Bill,” Tinchfield said mildly, looking at the sky.

  Haines rummaged in his shirt and got out his dog-eared note. He gave it to Tinchfield. By mutual consent everybody moved some distance away from the body. Then Tinchfield went back to get his bottle of whiskey and put it away under his shirt. He joined us and read the note over and over.

  “It don’t have a date. You say this was a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Two weeks come Friday.”

  “She left you once before, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” Haines didn’t look at him. “Two years ago. I got drunk and stayed with a chippy.” He laughed wildly.

  The sheriff calmly read the note once more. “Note left that time?” he inquired.

  “I get it,” Haines snarled. “I get it. You don’t have to draw me pictures.”

  “Note looks middlin’ old,” Tinchfield said gently.

  “I had it in my shirt ten days,” Haines yelled. He laughed wildly again.

  “What’s amusing you, Bill?”

  “You ever try to drag a person six feet under water?”

  “Never did, Bill.”

  “I swim pretty good—for a guy with one leg. I don’t swim that good.”

  Tinchfield sighed. “Now that don’t mean anything, Bill. Could have been a rope used. She could have been weighted down with a stone, maybe two stones, head and foot. Then after she’s under them boards the rope could be cut loose. Could be done, son.”

  “Sure. I done it,” Haines said and roared laughing. “Me—I done it to Beryl. Take me in, you —— s —— s!”

  “I aim to,” Tinchfield said mildly. “For investigation. No charges yet, Bill. You could have done it. Don’t tell me different. I ain’t saying you did, though. I’m just sayin’ you could.”

  Haines sobered as quickly as he had gone to pieces.

  “Any insurance?” Tinchfield asked, looking at the sky.

  Haines started. “Five thousand. That does it. That hangs me. Okay. Let’s go.”

  Tinchfield turned slowly to Loomis. “Go
back there in the cabin, Paul, and get a couple of blankets. Then we better all get some whiskey inside our nose.”

  Loomis turned and walked back along the path that skirted the lake towards the Haines cabin. The rest of us just stood. Haines looked down at his hard brown hands and clenched them. Without a word he swept his right fist up and hit himself a terrible blow in the face.

  “You —— ——!” he said in a harsh whisper.

  His nose began to bleed. He stood lax. The blood ran down his lip, down the side of his mouth to the point of his chin. It began to drip off his chin.

  That reminded me of something I had almost forgotten.

  5: THE GOLDEN ANKLET

  I telephoned Howard Melton at his Beverly Hills home an hour after dark. I called from the telephone company’s little log-cabin office half a block from the main street of Puma Point, almost out of hearing of the .22’s at the shooting gallery, the rattle of the ski balls, the tooting of fancy auto horns, and the whine of hillbilly music from the dining room of the Indian Head Hotel.

  When the operator got him she told me to take the call in the manager’s office. I went in and shut the door and sat down at a small desk and answered the phone.

  “Find anything up there?” Melton’s voice asked. It had a thickish edge to it, a three-highball edge.

  “Nothing I expected. But something has happened up here you won’t like. Want it straight—or wrapped in Christmas paper?”

  I could hear him cough. I didn’t hear any other sounds from the room in which he was talking. “I’ll take it straight,” he said steadily.

  “Bill Haines claims your wife made passes at him—and they scored. They got drunk together the very morning of the day she went away. Haines had a row with his wife about it afterwards, and then he went over to the north shore of Puma Lake to get drunk some more. He was gone until two A.M. I’m just telling you what he says, you understand.”

  I waited. Melton’s voice said finally: “I heard you. Go on, Dalmas.” It was a toneless voice, as flat as a piece of slate.