“Kind of a Mark Preston.”
“Mark Preston. Nice. So long Mark Preston. You’d better go, or you’ll be late for Sunday school.”
I could feel her mocking eyes on my back all the way down the drive.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS I DROVE BACK the sun was half-way towards the horizon, striking a million sparkles from the deep blue of the water. On the white sands the beach crowd had mostly had enough of the swimming and ball games for today. Instead they were lazing around, reading, sipping at iced drinks. The younger ones were showing the early signs of turning their attentions to other things, things which hadn’t any connection with beach ball. I drove slowly, soaking up the relaxed atmosphere. From such surroundings, there could be all kinds of places I could logically be heading for. Naturally, I went to the morgue. The attendant knew me, and that struck a hollow note. After all, how many people can reasonably expect to be remembered on sight by mortuary attendants?
“Hi, Mr. Preston. Hot ain’t it?”
“Hallo, Sid. You had a customer today. Guy who fell off Indian Point.”
“Sure. He’s in twenty-six. You wanta see him?”
No, I did not want to see him. But I knew I had to. My unwilling feet dragged along the stone passage after Sid.
“This here’s the guy.”
He grabbed a handle and pulled out the drawer-like refrigerated slab. I took my one and only look at Mr. Poetry Brookman, poet, aged 31. The front of his face wasn’t too badly damaged at all, and I was fairly satisfied this was the man I’d been hearing described all afternoon.
“Don’t look too bad now, does he?” queried Sid. “I tell you, these young docs these days, they do a marvellous job. Of course, they couldn’t do a lot with the back of his head. You wanta see?”
I shook my head and walked back outside. Sid came along after me.
“Want you to do something for me, Sid.”
“Any time Mr. Preston. You know that.”
“First, don’t tell the police I was here.”
He screwed up his mouth dolefully.
“You know I have to tell them. Part of my job.”
I held out two tens, and he looked at them with interest.
“Is it that much a part of your job?”
He shook his head stubbornly.
“Like to help you Mr. Preston. And that twenty looks good. But I ain’t chancing my job, and my pension and everything for twenty bucks.”
And I could tell it wouldn’t do any good to increase it either.
“If that’s how you feel,” I shrugged. “At least don’t tell them I asked you not to.”
“Sure not. You don’t imagine I’m here to get people in trouble?”
“No. All right, here’s something you can do. Let me know about anyone who asks to see the body. Excluding policemen and newspaper reporters, that is.”
He thought about it for a moment.
“Doesn’t sound to be no harm in that,” he said dubiously.
“There isn’t,” I assured him. “After all, if I care to park outside the front entrance all day, I’d see for myself, wouldn’t I? All I’m asking you to do is save me from getting baked to death in a car.”
“Yeah. That’s true, you could do that. O.K. Mr. Preston, guess this makes me kind of a special agent, huh?”
“Something like that. I’ll see if I can get you a ranger badge.”
He took the twenty this time.
“It just so happens I can produce some results right off the cuff. Come into the office.”
We went into the partitioned square which he dignified under the description of office, and he rifled importantly at a small tray of white cards.
“Here it is. She was here this afternoon, two o’clock, two-thirty.”
I wrote down “Mrs. Evelyn Prince” and an address way over on the Heights. A man has to be lucky sometimes, the place was less than a mile from Parkside Towers.
“Don’t think it’ll do you any good, mind,” warned Sid.
“How come?”
“She didn’t know him. The reason she came, she thought it could be a relative. Seems this relative went missing one time, and from the description in the paper this Brookman could be the guy. So she just came to check. When she saw the body, she was so happy it was the wrong man she bust out crying right there. I was glad, too.”
That didn’t sound like Sid. He didn’t usually enjoy watching people suffer.
“You were glad she cried?” I asked stiffly.
“Nah. I mean I was glad it wasn’t no relative. She was a lady, a real nice lady. She shouldn’t have no business with relatives like that bum in there. She can’t help you.”
“Well, thanks for saving me a trip.”
I crumpled up the note I’d made and dropped it in the waste bin. Sid nodded with approval. A lady who didn’t have bum relatives had no business being chivvied around by bum private investigators either.
“But if anyone else looks in, you’ll call me, huh?”
“Bet.”
I went back and sat in the car thinking. Then I drove out to the Heights. The Prince house lay back from the road in a tree-lined avenue. It wasn’t Beach End property, but nevertheless way up in the middle income group. I had a feeling somebody was watching me as I walked up the flagged path between neat lawns. I was right too because the door opened before I had a chance to knock. A tall gangling boy leaned in the doorway inspecting me. He was about fifteen years old, with a check shirt and battered jeans covering the skinny frame.
“Well?” he demanded insolently.
He was one of those people I could learn to dislike fast.
“I’d like to see Mrs. Evelyn Prince,” I told him.
“What about?”
He showed no sign of interest in the answer, eyes looking over my shoulder into the road, in case anything more interesting should happen along.
“I’ll discuss it with her, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. You could be some kind of nut or something. You could be just going around cutting up women or like that. A guy has a right to protect his mother.”
“All right little man,” I sighed. “Here.”
I flashed my license just long enough for him to read the part which said boldly “State of California,” without giving him time to get down to the details.
He sneered.
“Fuzz, huh? Well, you better come in. Leave us not keep the guardians of the peace standing out in the rain.”
He took me into a pleasant room overlooking a secluded garden.
“You wait here and I’ll tell her. You don’t want to tell me what it is she’s done, I guess?”
From the way he spoke, he wouldn’t have cared too much if his mother was a multiple murderer.
“Just tell her.”
He went away and I looked round the room. It was the kind of place I didn’t get to see often enough. A room for family life, sitting around talking or reading. A place where people lived, people who had no business with characters who got shot in the head and pushed off cliffs. There were bookshelves along one wall and I studied these idly. Mostly novels, and soft cover reprints, there was one section which made me take a second look. Each book in the section had to do with something artistic. I saw Shelley and a History of the Bolshoi, something about Rembrandt, when a voice said:
“You wished to see me?”
I turned at once, and looked at the woman who had come in. She could be in her late thirties at a guess, tall and dark. Her figure was full and not yet run to seed, the discreet green afternoon dress doing little to conceal the almost aggressive f emininity. She had a strong handsome face, with far too much character in it to be described as beautiful. She had been crying too, despite the fresh make-up around her puffy eyes. Behind her, the boy lounged, waiting to see what went on.
“Mrs. Prince,” I assumed. “This won’t take long. If I could see you alone?”
I nodded towards the kid, who scowled. His mother turned to h
im.
“Harry, go and find something to do.”
“I don’t think I ought. For all we know this guy might start laying into you with a rubber hose. I know all about their dirty little ways.”
“That will do, Harry,” snapped his mother. “Now do as I say.”
To my surprise the boy, after one last insolent shrug, turned and slouched out of the house, slamming the front door.
“You mustn’t mind Harry. He watches too much television,” she smiled. “Please sit down Mr.——”
“Preston. Thank you.”
We sat down, Mrs. Prince arranging her skirt demurely, so that I didn’t see more than I should of the long splendid legs.
“Well now,” she began brightly, “It can’t be a motoring offense. You always send a uniformed officer for those.”
She was uncertain, for some reason. A suburban matron, right in her own backyard, disturbed, but quite determined that nothing would be permitted to interrupt the domestic routine. Whatever it was I wanted, rape, arson, burglary, she would help if possible of course. But I would appreciate I must be gone, like the daily help, by cocktail time. The universal female.
“No ma’am, it has nothing to do with cars. It’s something rather more serious. You’re quite sure your son won’t be able to overhear?”
She smiled briefly.
“You mean Mr. Preston, am I quite sure he won’t eavesdrop. Well, I never met a child who wouldn’t. That’s why I sent him out of the house. He can’t get back in without my hearing. We’re quite safe.”
I thought the description child was rather inadequate for close to six feet of potential, if not actual, delinquent. But I hadn’t come about Harry. To my surprise, she continued speaking.
“You see it’s terribly difficult now that he’s getting older. A boy that size needs a father. Of course I work extra hard with him, but a woman alone is not always an adequate substitute.” She watched anxiously for my response, and that was the first time it dawned on me. She wasn’t concerned for herself at all. She thought darling Harry had probably stuck up a cigar store, or kidnapped a baby or something. Having seen him, I could understand her concern.
“I quite see that Mrs. Prince,” I assured her. “And if you’re thinking my visit has something to do with your son, please put your mind at rest. I’ve never heard a word said against him.”
Which was perfectly true.
Gratitude and relief fought for supremacy on her face.
“You must think I’m awfully silly, jumping to conclusions.”
“Very understandable. But I’m here about something quite different.”
I was beginning to wish I’d followed Sid’s advice. Here I was, getting a mother all worked up over her son, letting her off the hook, then preparing to slam another one in while she was still on the line.
“I’m making enquiries about a man who was murdered last night. I have information that you knew the man.”
Her face set back into tight lines, and each word was inspected carefully before issue.
“What could I possibly know about such people?”
“How do you mean, ‘such people’?” I queried.
She flushed, and spoke more quickly.
“I meant people who get mixed up in that kind of thing. It may be a matter of daily routine for you Mr. Preston, but this is hardly the kind of neighborhood in which we have any contact with those things. I don’t see how I can possibly help you.”
This wasn’t a worried mother any longer. Now that the young were in a place of safety, the female of the species was back to her more accustomed role. Now she was herself, calm, resourceful, watchful.
“Maybe you don’t read the newspapers Mrs. Prince,” I told her. “Murder is no great respecter of persons, or property. I find myself asking questions at addresses like this just as often as I do down Conquest Street. And it is less than two years since a woman a block from here shot her husband, in case you’d forgotten it.”
But her self-assurance was all around her now like a steel wall.
“I’m sure you must have many interesting stories to tell,” she said bitingly. “However, to save you the trouble, I ought to tell you I majored in sociology.”
I’d have to try something more direct.
“Mrs. Prince, we could go on like this all day. When I came here, I had strong doubts whether you could tell me anything which would help very much. By being deliberately evasive, you’re beginning to make me wonder.”
“I can scarcely be responsible for what you think.”
I set my face into lines of disapproval.
“So you refuse to tell me what you know?”
“Not at all,” she was quite unflustered. “It is simply that I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“And you never heard of a man named Brookman?” I pressed.
That was when she overdid it.
“Brookman?” she puzzled. “No, I don’t believe so. What does he do?”
“He doesn’t do anything,” I informed her. “Except lie around on a slab in the city mortuary. If you’ll forgive my mentioning such things in this lovely neighborhood.”
She stood up and walked to the door.
“This is my house, and we don’t have a police state. You can’t force your way in and bully people like this.”
I got up and made a half-bow.
“I was invited in,” I reminded her. “And I was only following up a routine enquiry. If you’d cooperated, you would have been rid of me in five minutes. Now, we’ll have to start to dig. I don’t know what we’ll come up with, but clearly there’s something to be found.”
I walked past her to the street door.
“Mr. Preston.”
She had followed me, and now placed a hand on my arm.
“Yes?”
“Please come back.”
So there we were again, sitting looking at each other. But this time her hands were pressed tightly together over her knees.
“What is it you want to know?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said flatly. “Just anything you happen to know about this, which may or may not be useful.”
She nodded absently, staring beyond me to the book-lined wall. When she spoke, her voice was far away.
“Life can be very lonely for a woman with no husband. She has to develop interests, things which will get her out of the house. Without them, she’d spend all her time alone. When she lets that happen, she may as well shrivel up and die.” That didn’t seem to call for much comment from me. I avoided her eyes and waited.
“But, on the other hand,” she continued, “Such a woman has also to be very careful about her activities. She is a natural readymade subject for scandal. I can’t afford to run the least risk with my reputation, Mr. Preston. I have a position to maintain here, and a son to consider.”
She had suddenly switched from the abstract lecture and started talking about herself.
“There’s always somebody with a nasty tongue.” I replied sympathetically.
There was a quick grateful look on her face.
“I try to find interests where there are a number of other people concerned, so that I’m always merely one of a crowd. I feel it makes me less vulnerable. Play readings, organised tours, things of that nature. That was how I became involved with that man.”
“I see. What were the circumstances, Mrs. Prince?”
She got up and went to the window. She was probably hoping that when she looked round I’d be gone. I wasn’t.
“I was invited to a private recital, a piano recital. There was this young man who was rumoured to be another Paderewski. I am interested in anything like that, so I went. I didn’t much like the look of some of the people there when I arrived, but I couldn’t see that it mattered very much. After all, we were all there to listen. Well, we had this so-called recital. The brilliant soloist turned out to be a barely adequate performer, and had it not been a private affair, quite frankly I would have walked out. Since then,
I’ve always regretted not doing so.”
She paced up and down a couple of times, then came and sat down again.
“Mr. Preston, this is terribly difficult for me. I suppose—I suppose you have to make out a report about everything?”
I shook my head.
“Not at all. The only things I’m interested in are those which have a direct bearing on this murder. The rest I forget.”
She nodded uncertainly, as though anxious to believe me, but finding it difficult.
“I see. Well, as you may know, the usual thing after an event of this kind is for everyone to stay on for a while. There may be a glass of sherry and a sandwich perhaps, and everyone discusses the performance. I expected something of the kind to happen. I can scarcely bring myself to remember what really happened.”
“Things got a little out of hand?” I suggested tactfully.
She laughed briefly and bitterly.
“I’m not going into any details. Everyone seemed to go mad. It was like one of those old Roman orgies one reads about. Some man, I’d never even seen him before, started to. . . .” her voice trailed away. Then she gritted her teeth and inspected the floor. Each word now was uttered slowly and distinctly. “This man began to undress me. I was so shocked and frightened, I lost control of myself. I kicked him, punched him, heaven knows he didn’t seem at all put off by my reaction. In fact he quite obviously enjoyed it. Nobody else in the place, there must have been twenty or twenty-five people there, none of them took the slightest notice. I don’t remember when I’ve been so frightened.”
She broke off for a moment, and there was an uncomfortable silence. I sat absolutely wooden, because Eve Prince was wound up tight, and the slightest distraction from me might cause her to break down.
“The man was wearing me down,” she resumed “And then another man came up and spoke to him. I don’t know what he said, but it was certainly effective. The big one just let go of me and walked away. He didn’t even argue. This new man told me I had no business to be there. He advised me to get out there and then, and believe me I didn’t need to be told. I tried to thank him, but he wasn’t interested. He walked me to the door, made me promise I would say nothing to anyone about what had happened. I’d have promised anybody anything to be free of that terrible place.”
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