The butler reached a door and opened it against voices and stood aside and I went in. It was a nice room with large chesterfields and lounging chairs done in pale yellow leather arranged around a fireplace in front of which, on the glossy but not slippery floor, lay a rug as thin as silk and as old as Aesop’s aunt. A jet of flowers glistened in a corner, another on a low table, the walls were of dull painted parchment, there was comfort, space, coziness, a dash of the very modern and a dash of the very old, and three people sitting in a sudden silence watching me cross the floor.
One of them was Anne Riordan, looking just as I had seen her last, except that she was holding a glass of amber fluid in her hand. One was a tall thin sad-faced man with a stony chin and deep eyes and no color in his face but an unhealthy yellow. He was a good sixty, or rather a bad sixty. He wore a dark business suit, a red carnation, and looked subdued.
The third was the blonde. She was dressed to go out, in a pale greenish blue. I didn’t pay much attention to her clothes. They were what the guy designed for her and she would go to the right man. The effect was to make her look very young and to make her lapis lazuli eyes look very blue. Her hair was of the gold of old paintings and had been fussed with just enough but not too much. She had a full set of curves which nobody had been able to improve on. The dress was rather plain except for a clasp of diamonds at the throat. Her hands were not small, but they had shape, and the nails were the usual jarring note—almost magenta. She was giving me one of her smiles. She looked as if she smiled easily, but her eyes had a still look, as if they thought slowly and carefully. And her mouth was sensual.
“So nice of you to come,” she said. “This is my husband. Mix Mr. Marlowe a drink, honey.”
Mr. Grayle shook hands with me. His hand was cold and a little moist. His eyes were sad. He mixed a Scotch and soda and handed it to me.
Then he sat down in a corner and was silent. I drank half of the drink and grinned at Miss Riordan. She looked at me with a sort of absent expression, as if she had another clue.
“Do you think you can do anything for us?” the blonde asked slowly, looking down into her glass. “If you think you can, I’d be delighted. But the loss is rather small compared with having any more fuss with gangsters and awful people.”
“I don’t know very much about it really,” I said.
“Oh, I hope you can.” She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
I drank the other half of my drink. I began to feel rested. Mrs. Grayle rang a bell set into the arm of the leather chesterfield and a footman came in. She half pointed to the tray. He looked around and mixed two drinks. Miss Riordan was still playing cute with the same one and apparently Mr. Grayle didn’t drink. The footman went out.
Mrs. Grayle and I held our glasses. Mrs. Grayle crossed her legs, a little carelessly.
“I don’t know whether I can do anything,” I said. “I doubt it. What is there to go on?”
“I’m sure you can.” She gave me another smile. “How far did Lin Marriott take you into his confidence?”
She looked sideways at Miss Riordan. Miss Riordan just couldn’t catch the look. She kept right on sitting. She looked sideways the other way. Mrs. Grayle looked at her husband. “Do you have to bother with this, honey?”
Mr. Grayle stood up and said he was very glad to have met me and that he would go and lie down for a while. He didn’t feel very well. He hoped I would excuse him. He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.
He left. He closed the door softly, as if he was afraid to wake a sleeper. Mrs. Grayle looked at the door for a moment and then put the smile back on her face and looked at me.
“Miss Riordan is in your complete confidence, of course.”
“Nobody’s in my complete confidence, Mrs. Grayle. She happens to know about this case—what there is to know.”
“Yes.” She drank a sip or two, then finished her glass at a swallow and set it aside.
“To hell with this polite drinking,” she said suddenly. “Let’s get together on this. You’re a very good-looking man to be in your sort of racket.”
“It’s a smelly business,” I said.
“I didn’t quite mean that. Is there any money in it—or is that impertinent?”
“There’s not much money in it. There’s a lot of grief. But there’s a lot of fun too. And there’s always a chance of a big case.”
“How does one get to be a private detective? You don’t mind my sizing you up a little? And push that table over here, will you? So I can reach the drinks.”
I got up and pushed the huge silver tray on a stand across the glossy floor to her side. She made two more drinks. I still had half of my second.
“Most of us are ex-cops,” I said. “I worked for the D. A. for a while. I got fired.”
She smiled nicely. “Not for incompetence, I’m sure.”
“No, for talking back. Have you had any more phone calls?”
“Well—” She looked at Anne Riordan. She waited. Her look said things.
Anne Riordan stood up. She carried her glass, still full, over to the tray and set it down. “You probably won’t run short,” she said. “But if you do—and thanks very much for talking to me, Mrs. Grayle. I won’t use anything. You have my word for it.”
“Heavens, you’re not leaving,” Mrs. Grayle said with a smile.
Anne Riordan took her lower lip between her teeth and held it there for a moment as if making up her mind whether to bite it off and spit it out or leave it on a while longer.
“Sorry, afraid I’ll have to. I don’t work for Mr. Marlowe, you know. Just a friend. Good-by, Mrs. Grayle.”
The blonde gleamed at her. “I hope you’ll drop in again soon. Any time.” She pressed the bell twice. That got the butler. He held the door open.
Miss Riordan went out quickly and the door closed. For quite a while after it closed, Mrs. Grayle stared at it with a faint smile. “It’s much better this way, don’t you think?” she said after an interval of silence. I nodded. “You’re probably wondering how she knows so much if she’s just a friend,” I said. “She’s a curious little girl. Some of it she dug out herself, like who you were and who owned the jade necklace. Some of it just happened. She came by last night to that dell where Marriott was killed. She was out riding. She happened to see a light and came down there.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Grayle lifted a glass quickly and made a face. “It’s horrible to think of. Poor Lin. He was rather a heel. Most of one’s friends are. But to die like that is awful.” She shuddered. Her eyes got large and dark.
“So it’s all right about Miss Riordan. She won’t talk. Her father was chief of police here for a long time,” I said.
“Yes. So she told me. You’re not drinking.”
“I’m doing what I call drinking.”
“You and I should get along. Did Lin—Mr. Marriott—tell you how the holdup happened?”
“Between here and the Trocadero somewhere. He didn’t say exactly. Three or four men.”
She nodded her golden gleaming head. “Yes. You know there was something rather funny about that holdup. They gave me back one of my rings, rather a nice one, too.”
“He told me that.”
“Then again I hardly ever wore the jade. After all, it’s a museum piece, probably not many like it in the world, a very rare type of jade. Yet they snapped at it. I wouldn’t expect them to think it had any value much, would you?”
“They’d know you wouldn’t wear it otherwise. Who knew about its value?”
She thought. It was nice to watch her thinking. She still had her legs crossed, and still carelessly.
“All sorts of people, I suppose.”
“But they didn’t know you would be wearing it that night? Who knew that?”
She shrugged her pale blue shoulders. I tried to keep my eyes where they belonged. “My maid. But she’s had a hundred chances. And I trust her—”
“Why?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know. I just trust some people. I trust you.”
“Did you trust Marriott?”
Her face got a little hard. Her eyes a little watchful. “Not in some things. In others, yes. There are degrees.” She had a nice way of talking, cool, half-cynical, and yet not hard-boiled. She rounded her words well.
“All right—besides the maid. The chauffeur?”
She shook her head, no. “Lin drove me that night, in his own car. I don’t think George was around at all. Wasn’t it Thursday?”
“I wasn’t there. Marriott said four or five days before in telling me about it. Thursday would have been an even week from last night.”
“Well, it was Thursday.” She reached for my glass and her fingers touched mine a little, and were soft to the touch. “George gets Thursday evening off. That’s the usual day, you know.” She poured a fat slug of mellow-looking Scotch into my glass and squirted in some fizz-water. It was the kind of liquor you think you can drink forever, and all you do is get reckless. She gave herself the same treatment.
“Lin told you my name?” she asked softly, the eyes still watchful.
“He was careful not to.”
“Then he probably misled you a little about the time. Let’s see what we have. Maid and chauffeur out. Out of consideration as accomplices, I mean.”
“They’re not out by me.”
“Well, at least I’m trying,” she laughed. “Then there’s Newton, the butler. He might have seen it on my neck that night. But it hangs down rather low and I was wearing a white fox evening wrap; no, I don’t think he could have seen it.”
“I bet you looked a dream,” I said.
“You’re not getting a little tight, are you?”
“I’ve been known to be soberer.”
She put her head back and went off into a peal of laughter. I have only known four women in my life who could do that and still look beautiful. She was one of them.
“Newton is okey,” I said. “His type don’t run with hoodlums. That’s just guessing, though. How about the footman?”
She thought and remembered, then shook her head. “He didn’t see me.”
“Anybody ask you to wear the jade?”
Her eyes instantly got more guarded. “You’re not fooling me a damn bit,” she said.
She reached for my glass to refill it. I let her have it, even though it still had an inch to go. I studied the lovely lines of her neck.
When she had filled the glasses and we were playing with them again I said, “Let’s get the record straight and then I’ll tell you something. Describe the evening.”
She looked at her wrist watch, drawing a full length sleeve back to do it. “I ought to be—”
“Let him wait.”
Her eyes flashed at that. I liked them that way. “There’s such a thing as being just a little too frank,” she said.
“Not in my business. Describe the evening. Or have me thrown out on my ear. One or the other. Make your lovely mind up.”
“You’d better sit over here beside me.”
“I’ve been thinking that a long time,” I said. “Ever since you crossed your legs, to be exact.”
She pulled her dress down. “These damn things are always up around your neck.”
I sat beside her on the yellow leather chesterfield. “Aren’t you a pretty fast worker?” she asked quietly.
I didn’t answer her.
“Do you do much of this sort of thing?” she asked with a sidelong look.
“Practically none. I’m a Tibetan monk, in my spare time.”
“Only you don’t have any spare time.”
“Let’s focus,” I said. “Let’s get what’s left of our minds—or mine—on the problem. How much are you going to pay me?”
“Oh, that’s the problem. I thought you were going to get my necklace back. Or try to.”
“I have to work in my own way. This way.” I took a long drink and it nearly stood me on my head. I swallowed a little air.
“And investigate a murder,” I said.
“That has nothing to do with it. I mean that’s a police affair, isn’t it?”
“Yeah—only the poor guy paid me a hundred bucks to take care of him—and I didn’t. Makes me feel guilty. Makes me want to cry. Shall I cry?”
“Have a drink.” She poured us some more Scotch. It didn’t seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.
“Well, where have we got to?” I said, trying to hold my glass so that the whiskey would stay inside it. “No maid, no chauffeur, no butler, no footman. We’ll be doing our own laundry next. How did the holdup happen? Your version might have a few details Marriott didn’t give me.”
She leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hand. She looked serious without looking silly-serious.
“We went to a party in Brentwood Heights. Then Lin suggested we run over to the Troc for a few drinks and a few dances. So we did. They were doing some work on Sunset and it was very dusty. So coming back Lin dropped down to Santa Monica. That took us past a shabby looking hotel called the Hotel Indio, which I happened to notice for some silly meaningless reason. Across the street from it was a beer joint and a car was parked in front of that.”
“Only one car—in front of a beer joint?”
“Yes. Only one. It was a very dingy place. Well, this car started up and followed us and of course I thought nothing of that either. There was no reason to. Then before we got to where Santa Monica turns into Arguello Boulevard, Lin said, ‘Let’s go over the other road’ and turned up some curving residential street. Then all of a sudden a car rushed by us and grazed the fender and then pulled over to stop. A man in an overcoat and scarf and hat low on his face came back to apologize. It was a white scarf bunched out and it drew my eyes. It was about all I really saw of him except that he was tall and thin. As soon as he got close—and I remembered afterwards that he didn’t walk in our headlights at all—”
“That’s natural. Nobody likes to look into headlights. Have a drink. My treat this time.”
She was leaning forward, her fine eyebrows—not daubs of paint—drawn together in a frown of thought. I made two drinks. She went on:
“As soon as he got close to the side where Lin was sitting he jerked the scarf up over his nose and a gun was shining at us. ‘Stickup,’ he said. ‘Be very quiet and everything will be jake.’ Then another man came over on the other side.”
“In Beverly Hills,” I said, “the best policed four square miles in California.”
She shrugged. “It happened just the same. They asked for my jewelry and bag. The man with the scarf did. The one on my side never spoke at all. I passed the things across Lin and the man gave me back my bag and one ring. He said to hold off calling the police and insurance people for a while. They would make us a nice smooth easy deal. He said they found it easier to work on a straight percentage. He seemed to have all the time in the world. He said they could work through the insurance people, if they had to, but that meant cutting in a shyster, and they preferred not to. He sounded like a man with some education.”
“It might have been Dressed-Up Eddie,” I said. “Only he got bumped off in Chicago.”
She shrugged. We had a drink. She went on.
“Then they left and we went home and I told Lin to keep quiet about it. The next day I got a call. We have two phones, one with extensions and one in my bedroom with no extensions. The call was on this. It’s not listed, of course.”
I nodded. “They can buy the number for a few dollars. It’s done all the time. Some movie people have to change their numbers every month.”
We had a drink.
“I told the man calling to take it up with Lin and he would represent me and if they were not too unreasonable, we might deal. He said okey, and from then on I guess they just stalled long enough to watch us a little. Finally, as you know, we agreed on eight thousand dollars and so forth.”
“Could you recognize any of them?”
“O
f course not.”
“Randall know all this?”
“Of course. Do we have to talk about it any more? It bores me.” She gave me the lovely smile.
“Did he make any comment?”
She yawned. “Probably. I forget.”
I sat with my empty glass in my hand and thought. She took it away from me and started to fill it again.
I took the refilled glass out of her hand and transferred it to my left and took hold of her left hand with my right. It felt smooth and soft and warm and comforting. It squeezed mine. The muscles in it were strong. She was a well built woman, and no paper flower.
“I think he had an idea,” she said. “But he didn’t say what it was.”
“Anybody would have an idea out of all that,” I said.
She turned her head slowly and looked at me. Then she nodded. “You can’t miss it, can you?”
“How long have you known him?”
“Oh, years. He used to be an announcer at the station my husband owned. KFDK. That’s where I met him. That’s where I met my husband too.”
“I knew that. But Marriott lived as if he had money. Not riches, but comfortable money.”
“He came into some and quit radio business.”
“Do you know for a fact he came into money—or was that just something he said?”
She shrugged. She squeezed my hand.
“Or it may not have been very much money and he may have gone through it pretty fast.” I squeezed her hand back. “Did he borrow from you?”
“You’re a little old-fashioned, aren’t you?” She looked down at the hand I was holding.
“I’m still working. And your Scotch is so good it keeps me half-sober. Not that I’d have to be drunk—”
“Yes.” She drew her hand out of mine and rubbed it. “You must have quite a clutch—in your spare time. Lin Marriott was a high-class blackmailer, of course. That’s obvious. He lived on women.”
“He had something on you?”
Farewell, My Lovely Page 11