“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 softly.
“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.
TWENTY-EIGHT
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.”
“Well, that’s a normal human impulse,” he said. “I’ve killed dozens.” He didn’t smile.
She lifted her lip and moved her head around for him.
“You know you don’t have to do that,” he said, quite gently. “You feel a twitch of the nerves here and there and you proceed to build it up and dramatize it. You can control it, if you want to.”
“Can I?” she whispered.
“If you want to,” he said. “You don’t have to. It doesn’t make any difference to me either way. Nothing pains at all, eh?”
“No.” She shook her head.
He patted her shoulder and walked out to the kitchen. I went after him. He leaned his hips against the sink and gave me a cool stare. “What’s the story?”
“She’s the secretary of a client. A Mrs. Murdock in Pasadena. The client is rather a brute. About eight years ago a man made a hard pass at Merle. How hard I don’t know. Then—I don’t mean immediately—but around that time he fell out of a window or jumped. Since then she can’t have a man touch her—not in the most casual way, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.” His pop eyes continued to read my face. “Does she think he jumped out of the window on her account?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Murdock is the man’s widow. She married again and her second husband is dead too. Merle has stayed with her. The old woman treats her like a rough parent treats a naughty child.”
“I see. Regressive.”
“What’s that?”
“Emotional shock, and the subconscious attempt to escape back to childhood.
If Mrs. Murdock scolds her a good deal, but not too much, that would increase the tendency. Identification of childhood subordination with childhood protection.”
“Do we have to go into that stuff?” I growled.
He grinned at me calmly. “Look, pal. The girl’s obviously a neurotic. It’s partly induced and partly deliberate. I mean to say that she really enjoys a lot of it. Even if she doesn’t realize that she enjoys it. However, that’s not of immediate importance. What’s this about killing a man?”
“A man named Vannier who lives in Sherman Oaks. There seems to be some blackmail angle. Merle had to take him his money, from time to time. She was afraid of him. I’ve seen the guy. A nasty type. She went over there this afternoon and she says she shot him.”
“Why?”
“She says she didn’t like the way he leered at her.”
“Shot him with what?”
“She had a gun in her bag. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But if she shot him, it wasn’t with that. The gun’s got a wrong cartridge in the breech. It can’t be fired as it is. Also it hasn’t been fired.”
“This is too deep for me,” he said. “I’m just a doctor. What did you want me to do with her?”
“Also,” I said, ignoring the question, “she said the lamp was turned on and it was about five-thirty of a nice summery afternoon. And the guy was wearing his sleeping suit and there was a key in the lock of the front door. And he didn’t get up to let her in. He just sort of sat there sort of leering.”
He nodded and said: “Oh.” He pushed a cigarette between his heavy lips and lit it. “If you expect me to tell you whether she really thinks she shot him, I can’t do it. From your description I gather that the man is shot. That so?”
“Brother, I haven’t been there. But that much seems pretty clear.”
“If she thinks she shot him and isn’t just acting—and God, how these types do act!—that indicates it was not a new idea to her. You say she carried a gun. So perhaps it wasn’t. She may have a guilt complex. Wants to be punished, wants to expiate some real or imaginary crime. Again I ask what do you want me to do with her? She’s not sick, she’s not loony.”
“She’s not going back to Pasadena.”
“Oh.” He looked at me curiously. “Any family?”
“In Wichita. Father’s a vet. I’ll call him, but she’ll have to stay here tonight.”
“I don’t know about that. Does she trust you enough to spend the night in your apartment?”
“She came here of her own free will, and not socially. So I guess she does.”
He shrugged and fingered the sidewall of his coarse black mustache. “Well, I’ll give her some nembutal and we’ll put her to bed. And you can walk the floor wrestling with your conscience.”
“I have to go out,” I said. “I have to go over there and see what has happened. And she can’t stay here alone. And no man, not even a doctor is going to put her to bed. Get a nurse. I’ll sleep somewhere else.”
“Phil Marlowe,” he said. “The shop-soiled Galahad. Okay. I’ll stick around until the nurse comes.”
He went back into the living room and telephoned the Nurses’ Registry. Then he telephoned his wife. While he was telephoning, Merle sat up on the davenport and clasped her hands primly in her lap.
“I don’t see why the lamp was on,” she said. “It wasn’t dark in the house at all. Not that dark.”
I said: “What’s your dad’s first name?”
“Dr. Wilbur Davis. Why?”
“Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”
At the telephone Carl Moss said to me: “Tomorrow will do for that. This is probably just a lull.” He finished his call, hung up, went to his bag and came back with a couple of yellow capsules in his hand on a fragment of cotton. He got a glass of water, handed her the capsules and said: “Swallow.”
“I’m not sick, am I?” she said, looking up at him.
“Swallow, my child, swallow.”
She took them and put them in her mouth and took the glass of water and drank.
I put my hat on and left.
On the way down in the elevator I remembered that there hadn’t been any keys in her bag, so I stopped at the lobby floor and went out through the lobby to the Bristol Avenue side. The car was not hard to find. It was parked crookedly about two feet from the curb. It was a gray Mercury convertible and its license number was 2X1111. I remembered that this was the number of Linda Murdock’s car.
A leather keyholder hung in the lock. I got into the car, started the engine, saw that there was plenty of gas, and drove it away. It was a nice eager little car. Over Cahuenga Pass it had the wings of a bird.
TWENTY-NINE
Escamillo Drive made three jogs in four blocks, for no reason that I could see. It was very narrow, averaged about five houses to a block and was overhung by a section of shaggy brown foothill on which nothing lived at this season except sage and manzanita. In its fifth and last block, Escamillo Drive did a neat little curve to the left, hit the base of the hill hard, and died without a whimper. In this last block were three houses, two on the opposite entering corners, one at the dead end. This was Vannier’s. My spotlight showed the key still in the door.
It was a narrow English type bungalow with a high roof, leaded front windows, a garage to the side, and a trailer parked beside the garage. The early moon lay quietly on its small lawn. A large oak tree grew almost on the front porch. There was no light in the house now, none visible from the front at least.
From the lay of the land a light in the living room in the daytime did not seem utterly improbable. It would be a dark house except in the morning. As a love nest the place had its points, but as a residence for a blackmailer I didn’t give it very high marks. Sudden death can come to you anywhere, but Vannier had made it too easy.
I turned into his driveway, backed to get myself pointed out of the dead end, and then drove down to the corner and parked there. I walked back in the street because there was no sidewalk. The front door was made of iron-bound oak planks, bevelled where they joined. There was a thumb latch instead of a knob. The head of the flat key projected from the lock. I rang the bell, and it rang with that remote sound of a bell ringing at night in an empty house. I walked around the oak tree and poked the light of my pencil flash between the leaves of the garage door. There was a car in there. I went back around the house and looked at a small flowerless yard, walled in by a low wall of fieldstone. Three more oak trees, a table and a couple of all metal chairs under one of them. A rubbish burner at the back. I shone my light into the trailer before I went back to the front. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the trailer. Its door was locked.
I opened the front door, leaving the key in the lock. I wasn’t going to work any dipsy-doodle in this place. What ever was, was. I just wanted to make sure. I felt around on the wall inside the door for a light switch, found one and tilted it up. Pale flame bulbs in pairs in wall brackets went on all around the room, showing me the big lamp Merle had spoken of, as well as other things. I went over to switch the lamp on, then back to switch the wall light off. The lamp had a big bulb inverted in a porcelain glass bowl. You could get three different intensities of light. I clicked the button switch around until I had all there was.
The room ran from front to back, with a door at the back and an arch up front to the right. Inside that was a small dining room. Curtains were half drawn across the arch, heavy pale green brocade curtains, far from new. The fireplace was in the middle of the left wall, bookshelves opposite and on both sides of it, not built in. Two davenports angled across the corners of the room and there was one gold chair, one pink chair, one brown chair, one brown and gold jacquard chair with footstool.
Yellow pajama legs were on the footstool, bare ankles, feet in dark green morocco leather slippers. My eyes ran up from the feet, slowly, carefully. A dark green figured silk robe, tied with a tasseled belt. Open above the belt showing a monogram on the pocket of the pajamas. A handkerchie
f neat in the pocket, two stiff points of white linen. A yellow neck, the face turned sideways, pointed at a mirror on the wall. I walked around and looked in the mirror. The face leered all right.
The left arm and hand lay between a knee and the side of the chair, the right arm hung outside the chair, the ends of the fingers touching the rug. Touching also the butt of a small revolver, about .32 caliber, a belly gun, with practically no barrel. The right side of the face was against the back of the chair, but the right shoulder was dark brown with blood and there was some on the right sleeve. Also on the chair. A lot of it on the chair.
I didn’t think his head had taken that position naturally. Some sensitive soul had not liked the right side of it.
I lifted my foot and gently pushed the footstool sideways a few inches. The heels of the slippers moved reluctantly over the jacquard surface, not with it. The man was as stiff as a board. So I reached down and touched his ankle. Ice was never half as cold.
On a table at his right elbow was half of a dead drink, an ashtray full of butts and ash. Three of the butts had lipstick on them. Bright Chinese red lipstick. What a blond would use.
There was another ashtray beside another chair. Matches in it and a lot of ash, but no stubs.
On the air of the room a rather heavy perfume struggled with the smell of death, and lost. Although defeated, it was still there.
I poked through the rest of the house, putting lights on and off. Two bedrooms, one furnished in light wood, one in red maple. The light one seemed to be a spare. A nice bathroom with tan and mulberry tiling and a stall shower with a glass door. The kitchen was small. There were a lot of bottles on the sink. Lots of bottles, lots of glass, lots of fingerprints, lots of evidence. Or not, as the case may be.
I went back to the living room and stood in the middle of the floor breathing with my mouth as far as possible and wondering what the score would be when I turned this one in. Turn this one in and report that I was the fellow who had found Morningstar and run away. The score would be low, very low. Marlowe, three murders. Marlowe practically kneedeep in dead men. And no reasonable, logical, friendly account of himself whatsoever. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The minute I opened up I would cease to be a free agent. I would be through with doing whatever it was I was doing and with finding out whatever it was I was finding out.