It was a bright and happy room, big but not actually appearing to be big. One wall was shelves holding record albums, hundreds upon hundreds of them, all indexed and alphabetized. A custom-built phonograph in a carved rosewood cabinet stood in a recess across the room, a solid row of windows beyond it. There was a concert grand piano with a bust of Mozart on a wide scarf, and busts of other fast boys with a piano were scattered tastefully about the place. There was a large fireplace across from the records. The usual assortment of tables, chairs, couchs and desks—all rosewood and fragile—were placed about the room. This was the music room—probably one of twelve in a place this size.
She was sitting on a window seat near the phonograph, one leg drawn under her, wearing an afternoon frock in figured white. Her blonde hair had a plain gold barrette holding it off her face. She wore very little make-up and a single, very short strand of pearls at her neck—wedding and engagement rings were on the correct hand. A smart woman would want to be photographed looking exactly that way. And then I remembered that Eve Griswold didn’t like being photographed.
If she was frightened or worried it didn’t show. Her smile was cordial but reserved. I thought her eyes looked a little tired. Perhaps she had been up all night clipping bond coupons.
“I know you,” she said, after we had looked at each other for a long moment. “I’m sorry but I’d forgotten your name. You’re the man who plunged at roulette last night.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Griswold. I’m the one.”
She laughed. Musically, not long and not loudly. “I couldn’t imagine. Granger said it was about a roulette wheel. We don’t have one, although my husband has put enough on them to own hundreds.”
I smiled politely and looked slowly around the room. She said, “Do sit down. Here, next to me.”
I sat on the other end of the window seat. She eyed me with frank interest. “What happened to your eye? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“A man hit it. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Of course not. May I have one, too?”
We blew smoke, on a friendly basis. Outside I could see a sliver of the lake beyond a clump of sprawling oaks and four tennis courts behind wire. Off to one side was an oblong swimming pool, country-club size, and a cluster of red-roofed dressing rooms.
I said, “I’m a private detective, Mrs. Griswold. I hope you don’t mind entertaining me in that capacity.”
“Heavens, no! Why should I?” Her blue eyes got very round but she was laughing behind them. “You’re not going to serve me with papers, or whatever men in your line do, are you?”
“No. Just that I need a little light thrown on a matter and I think maybe you can throw it.”
“Well! This is exciting. I’ll do what I can.”
“I understand you worked at the Tropicabana prior to your marriage,” I said. “I’m checking on a couple of girls employed there at the time.”
“Who are they? Of course, Steve O’Flynn could probably tell you much more than I can.”
“Not what I want to know, he can’t. Mary Conrad is one.”
Her eyes narrowed a little. “Mary? Why, she’s still out there. One of the chorus.”
“You know her well?”
“Oh, I guess so. As well as show girls ever get to know one another.”
“I heard it a little different,” I said. “You roomed with her at one time, didn’t you?”
The question didn’t seem to bother her. “Well, yes. But only briefly and a long time back.”
“Would that be on Surf Street?”
“It might have been,” she said carelessly. “Around that part of town anyway. That was the time I did a lot of moving around. Four or five places in as many months. Why not ask Mary? She might recall.”
She was either one hell of an actress or she was neither of the two girls I was trying to find, and Stuart Whitney had told her nothing. “Mary is past recalling,” I said. “She’s dead. Murdered.”
Her eyes turned blank with horror and surprise. “How . . . awful! I can hardly believe it When did it happen?”
“Yesterday,” I said, feeling I was telling her something she had known all along. “Around three in the afternoon.”
“And I saw her only a few nights ago.” She shivered a little. “Did they get the man who did it?”
I stared steadily into her eyes. “Did a man kill her, Mrs. Griswold?”
Some of the friendliness faded from her face. “I don’t know, naturally. This is the first I’ve heard of it. What did happen?”
“She was strangled with a stocking. In her own apartment. A woman did the job.”
“And why have you come to tell me about it?”
“You were one of her best friends. I’m surprised you weren’t notified by somebody from the club. I had an idea you might know of some woman who had a reason to do her in.”
She drew deeply on her cigarette. Her expression was growing a trifle strained. “Certainly not. I doubt if Mary had an enemy in the world.”
“She must have had some funny friends,” I said. “You should have seen her.”
She shuddered openly. “I’m glad I didn’t. Would you care for a drink? I think I need one.”
“Thanks. Anything at all.”
She leaned forward to press a button behind the phonograph. “I’m sorry if I seem a little heartless about this. I’m not, really. But Mary and I have had nothing in common for a long time.”
“She was 3 Lesbian, I understand,” I said, making it sound very casual.
She lifted one of her solid eyebrows at me. “She may have been. I hope you don’t think I have any of that about me.”
“It would be a horrible waste if you were.”
She almost grinned. The door opened and a brown-haircd slip of a girl in a maid’s uniform came in. “Yes, madame?”
“Highballs, Irene. Scotch will do, I think. You may as well bring in a cart.”
“Yes, madame.” She went out the door, closing it like the baby was asleep.
I flicked ash in the ash stand drawn up in front of us and said, “About Mary Conrad. She had a friend named Purcell —Ellen Purcell. That jog anything in you?”
“Purcell?” she repeated. “It sounds vaguely fam—” Her head went back sharply. “Why, that’s the girl who was —who was—”
“-—also murdered,” I said, finishing it for her. “Yeah. This begin to take on a meaning to you now?”
“Exactly what meaning is it supposed to take on?” Her voice was rising slightly.
“Ellen was another member of the old crowd, Mrs. Griswold. Ellen Purcell, Mary Conrad, Bonnie Field, Grace Rehak, Laura Fremont. You remember Grace, don’t you?”
The door opened again and Irene came in, wheeling what might have been an oversize tea cart, but was actually a miniature bar. I watched her put together two tall drinks, using pinch-bottle Scotch and charged water, with ice cubes from a freezing unit inside. She put one glass in Eve Griswold’s hand and the other in mine. It had a cool, friendly feel, like a lake breeze on a sultry night.
When the door closed I drank some of my drink and waited for Eve Griswold to do the same. She lowered her glass and stared at me round-eyed. “Where were we?”
“Talking about Grace Rehak.”
“Who is Grace Rehak?”
“A former hooker. She may be almost anything today.”
“What’s a hooker?”
“I thought you used to work in a night-club?”
“Oh, you mean a prostitute?”
“Yeah. That was Gracie. A two-buck broad.”
Her shrug indicated distaste for the subject. “I can’t say I think much of your kind of job.”
“I never had a chance to marry money,” I said.
Anger darkened her cheeks. It made her look even better.
“Perhaps you’d better leave,” she said haughtily. “I don’t like remarks like that.”
“Then don’t call for them. I chose my type of work of my own free w
ill.”
She glowered at me, then leaned into her drink like Ted Williams leaning into a fast ball. Her throat muscles rippled smoothly and her firm breasts pushed against the figured material of her dress. When she lowered the glass it was empty of everything except ice cubes.
She reached for one of the bottles. “It may interest you to know I love my husband, Mr. Pine. Let me make you another drink.”
“Love is why women marry at all, isn’t it i’” I said. “Not too much Scotch; it’s a little early in the day for serious guzzling.”
She put in enough to float an anvil, giving herself the same treatment. What with the ice, there was hardly enough room for soda. She leaned sideways and handed me the glass, her arm brushing mine. Her nails were long, pointed and very red.
We drank. The warmth of the liquor crawled up from my belly and tried to lift my head like a balloon.
“I’d like another cigarette,” she said huskily.
I gave her one and held a match. Our hands touched. My skin tingled. She smiled slowly and her eyes were almost luminous.
“You were telling me how much you love your husband,” I said. “How does he feel about it?”
“There’s no other woman for him. He trusts me completely and God help anybody that tries to hurt me.”
“Why tell me?”
Her eyes wavered. “Why not? We’re just talking.”
We drank. Deeply. I said, “Tell me about Stuart Whitney, Mrs. Griswold.”
She looked down into her glass and hesitated just long enough for me to realize she was hesitating. When she looked up again her expression was open and a little puzzled.
“Stu? What about him? I thought you knew Stu.”
“Only to nod to. How long have you known him?”
“Why . . . I don’t know exactly. It’s been months and months.”
“How long has he lived at the Barryshire?”
She moved a shoulder. “Three months—maybe four.”
“Where did he live before that?”
She laughed shortly. “Why all this interest in Stu Whitney? Has he been up to something?”
“It’s too early to tell. Where did he live when you first met him?”
“Some small residential hotel on Winthrop, near Devon,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. Why not take this up with him?”
“I know those hotels,” I said. “Sixty-five a month buys the best they’ve got to otter.”
We finished our drinks and this time I made new ones. I gave her time to test the mixture, then said, “Let’s talk about him some more. Whitney, I mean. How did you happen to meet him?”
She looked at me sideways, a thoughtful line in the clear skin above her eyes. “Nothing unusual about it. I was singing in a small night club out on Belmont Avenue. Stu used to drop in and one night we got to talking over a drink or two. Right after that he introduced me to some of the girls working at the Tropicabana. That led to an introduction to Steve O’Flynn and Steve put me on.”
We drank again. The liquor was beginning to let me know that Scotch was thicker than water. I shook my head slightly to clear it and took up the chase. “You still see quite a bit of him?”
One of her eyebrows arched. “Why not? Stu’s a lot of fun. He squires me around now and then when Larry gets tied up.”
“How does your husband feel about it?”
Her lips flattened with annoyance. “Oh, come off it, Pine! Larry knows Stu Whitney means nothing to me other than as an occasional escort.”
I said, “I don’t get it. I really don’t. Any guy who’s working at his fourth marriage should know something about women. Yet he lets you gallop around with some slick-haired playboy who likes a well-turned curve as well as the next and never quivers a whisker. No wonder he can’t hang on to a woman.”
She polished off what was left in her glass and grabbed the bottle again. What she took almost emptied it but there was another full one three inches away.
“You’re missing the point,” she said. She slurred the second word a fraction; the stuff was beginning to take a toehold on her. “Larry’s first wife was all right, from what I hear. She died six, seven years ago and it tore hell out of him. He tried to cure the pain by getting another wife fast. She was a gold-digging little bitch and shook him down quick and got out with half a million bucks as a settlement. Six months later he reached in the grab bag again and did even worse. That one faded even faster and Larry’s bankroll got another dent in it. Then he went overboard for me.
“But here’s where the story gets different, Pine. I went all out for him. If he hadn’t had a dime I’d have felt the same way. Nobody believes it—nobody! I get the quirked eyebrow from every two-bit bum I pass in the street. They know all the answers, do the so-smart little people. ‘Torcher marries millionaire. Love? don’t make me laugh!’ They don’t have to say it out loud; I can read it in their smug faces.”
Half of it was the liquor talking. The flush in her face deepened as I watched. The brittle, high-society air she had thrown at me when I first arrived had gone down for the third time in pinch-bottle Scotch and I was getting pure nightclub singer with a burden of bitterness to unload.
“There’s more, Pine—one hell of a lot more! When I walked into this art gallery I found it loaded with old family retainers that had spent so much time looking down their noses at Larry’s previous two wives there wasn’t any way for them to get over it. To them I was just another cat that wanted her claws gold-plated.”
She tore into her glass again. The stuff would be coming out of her ears next. I tilted my own glass from force of bad habit and said nothing at all.
“Far as the servants go, it was easy,” Eve Griswold said moodily. “I fired the lot of them and got in some people that could call me ‘madame’ without straining it through their teeth. But then I got handed the tough one—and I’ve never been able to lick it.”
Her lovely face turned a little sad, a little hard. She shifted her position on the window seat and crossed her knees carelessly. I saw a long length of the best in legs in the best of nylon.
She said, “There’s a stepdaughter. She’d love to spread my guts on a windy hill. I don’t say I blame her, after the kind of specimens Larry usually dragged up to his bed. I did my damnedest to show her I was in this because I thought as much of her old man as she did—every bit as much! You think she’d even give me a chance to prove it? Not a nickel’s worth. I swear to Christ, Pine, there’s something wrong with that girl. She thinks every woman Larry gives a kind word to is going to be her new stepmother the following week. I got a bellyful of her quick. Now she keeps away from me and I keep away from her. Thank God the place is big enough!”
She stopped to drink again. I felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if I was watching a cripple take a bath. I said, “Well, you never know. Seeing your party at the Tropicabana last night I had an idea Lawrence Griswold might be getting ready for a new Mrs. Griswold. Like that redhead with the notebook, for instance.”
“Ruth?” She stared at me emptily. “Hell, she’s a vegetable! I figured I could use a social secretary and Stu Whitney dug her up for me somewhere. She knows her business but that’s all I can say for her.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Her and Whitney, huh?”
She made a derisive sound that was half hiccough. “Are you serious? Ruth Abbott? She wouldn’t sit in the same room with a man unless somebody else was around. Larry accidentally brushed a hand against her hip one day in the library. I thought she was going to climb the wall.”
She swung up her glass and emptied it down her throat. I expected her to fall off the seat after that one. Instead she reached for the bottle. She knocked over two glasses and the ice tongs, but she got it. She poured in plenty, forgetting to add water. A strand of her golden-blonde hair slipped its moorings and dropped down over one eye. She shoved it back, dislodging more hair in the process. She looked like an angel—a drunken angel whose halo had slipped.
Eve Griswold put her head back against one of the window frames and stared silently at me. I finished what was in my glass, put it down and leaned back next to one of her flawless shoulders. Our faces were inches apart. Her thin nostrils flared ever so slightly and the bodice of her dress stirred under uneven breathing. Her eyes seemed to mist over, to deepen almost to blackness.
”Why did you come here?” she said abruptly. “What are you after?"
“You already know,” I said thickly. “You knew before I came in that door. And you’ve been shivering inside ever since. Even a gallon of the best Scotch hasn’t been able to warm you.”
“You’re crazy,” she said through stiffened lips. “You goddam snoop, you’re crazy. Go away.”
I kept on looking into her eyes. She twisted her head away and drank. Straight whisky—enough to curl armor plate. She shuddered violently and almost dropped the glass. I took it from her and set it next to mine on the bar top. I turned and took hold of her shoulders and brought my face close to hers. Her breath was warm and moist, as breath should be ; her lips were ever so slightly parted and waiting; the odor of clean cared-for skin came up from under the neckline of her dress.
I put my mouth hard against hers. For a moment it was like kissing a warmed-over corpse. And then the lips came to life under mine and soft arms lifted and slid around my neck. Her body strained up hard against me, the heat of her firm unbound breasts filtered through my shirt . . . and this was no longer an experiment.
She drew away with a sudden hard movement and looked at me out of drugged eyes. “Damn you,” she muttered. “What are you trying to prove? That you’re irresistible or that I can be had?”
Halo in Brass Page 17