Mrs. French said, haltingly, "What? I . . ."
"She was drowned," I said. "Did you push her?"
"No . . . but I thought she must have come to . . . hurt. Fallen in —"
"Not quite like that," I said. "She didn't fall in."
It wasn't enough that I knew, or at least felt sure I knew, who'd killed Melba. I didn't have any real proof, nothing with which to convict — not yet. And I had to get it now. I'd burned my last bridge when that film started.
"You'll note that everything so far is just the way it happened," I said. "So is the rest of it. Now let's watch the murder itself. And the murderer."
I sat down, drenched with perspiration, feeling the heat, my throat getting dry with the strain of waiting. The lights went out, the movie began again at a point just before the film had been stopped. On the screen, Mrs. French whirled, the bottle descended, striking Simon French a glancing blow on the shoulder. He sprang to his feet, bending away from her, turned and ran out of the scene. Yolanda, as Melba, couldn't be seen, but the film showed the bottle rise in the air above her and descend rapidly once, twice, three times. Then a brief shot of Mrs. French's fear-struck face. She dropped the bottle, turned and ran. The camera followed her — but only part way.
As Mrs. French ran out of the scene, the camera stopped, focused on the rear of the Trents' house. At first there was nothing to see, but then movement was noticeable. In the window of that lavish Roman bath next to Mrs. Trent's bedroom, there was movement. That was me, Shell Scott. I was playing the murderer, crawling from the window, racing across the lawn, shoving the still body into the pool, then turning, sprinting toward the house, and climbing back through the window.
But the camera panned left again, to Alan Grant's slack features, his half-closed eyes. He shook his head, rubbed a hand over his face, slumped forward to the grass again. On the screen, odd figures and designs danced a moment as the film ended. The lights came on, brilliant after the darkness.
There wasn't a sound except the air conditioner's hum. I said, "Well, Porter?"
His face was ugly, not with anger but with sickness. But A.A. Porter, who'd made his biggest quick decision there at the window last night and followed it with the irrevocable action of murder, made another quick decision and did fairly well. He composed his features somewhat, rose and faced me. His voice was quiet, controlled, as he said, "You've made a terrible mistake, Scott. And I'll have to take you into court. You must realize that." He ran a hand over the thin strands of hair, wet and matted now like black moss. "This is worse than trying to call me a murderer. This is the most obscene, evil —"
"Hot, isn't it?"
He blinked, looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "What?"
"I said, it's hot, isn't it?"
He shook his head, lack of comprehension on his red face. I said, "Look up above you, Porter. That's why it's hot. Those are lamps. You're a movie man — you were. You should know something about infra-red light. With enough infra-red light and a special fast film, you can take pictures in what appears to be darkness. I know just a little about it, but one of your technicians told me plenty this afternoon."
And at last he was frightened, scared. Scared to death. The fright spread visibly over his face like something poured on his skin.
"Sure," I said. "Only infra-red isn't in the visible spectrum — it's heat, not a light wave but a heat wave. A heat wave you can use for taking pictures. That's why the noisy air conditioner, so we wouldn't roast in here; that, and to cover up the sound of the camera."
He turned away from me, looked at the others, then slowly craned his head toward me again. "You get it now, don't you?" I asked him. "All the time you and the rest of us were watching the film I had run off, a camera was making a filmed record of us all." I pointed to the screen; if you looked for it, you could see the hole, the big lens. "And perfectly timed, Porter, so that every little twitch of expression can be coordinated with the exact scene of the murder picture that caused that expression." I let him think about it, then added, "I'm anxious to see what happened to your face every time the camera panned to the man on the grass, at the base of those bushes — the man who saw you murder Melba. And especially when the film showed me — as you — when I climbed out of that window and shoved the body into the pool. Think about it a little. Eleven people watching the murder film in darkness; no reason to dissemble, or make much effort to hide the expressions of shock or fear or revulsion on your face. Eleven people: Mrs. French, who thought she'd killed Melba, and nine other innocent persons gathered here — and you, Porter, the real murderer. How do you think you'll look in the film we just took with those?" I pointed at the lamps over our heads.
He crumbled. It looked as if he were starting to sag apart, the muscles getting lax under the skin. I gave him the last of it. "This, all of it, was set up just for you. I built it all around you, Porter. The murder re-enaction, the infra-red bit, and even one more thing just to clinch it. Even this is being filmed, Porter, with your guilt and fear all over you. Listen." I walked to the air conditioner, switched it off. In the heavy silence the whir of the camera could be heard, still running. "Everything you've done, almost everything you've thought, since you came into this room, we'll have wrapped up in tin cans by tomorrow. With sound, this time. I had all the facilities of your own studio to work with. You know something, Porter? You're just as dead as Melba."
"Melba," he said. His shoulders slumped and his face lost its twisted look, became quite calm. "She was driving me crazy," he said. "Melba was a beautiful woman. Terribly, horribly attractive. Like a drug, a disease. I was in love with her. I never stopped loving her. I wrote her letters, and she used them to force me to do things. Made me put her in the movie. She . . . humiliated me, told me about other men." His voice was nearly without inflection, a soft, almost casual sound. "I enjoyed killing her. I even waited at the window after I returned to the house, to make sure she didn't have a chance to live. I enjoyed it then for an hour afterward. But not since then. Not since then."
He became quiet, and I glanced around the room at the others. Every eye was on Porter, each face drawn, each frozen in its own fixed expression. I saw it on their faces, not Porter's, and looked back at him.
It was just a little gun, but it was a gun. I didn't see where he'd taken it from. Everybody had been briefly searched before entering the projection room, but Porter had managed to get in here with the gun he now held in his hand. His expression was still the same calm one as he asked me, "How did you know, Scott? How could you be so sure it was I?"
"Alan Grant," I said. He knew what I meant, even if nobody else did yet.
He nodded his big head. "I see. I knew that was a mistake." He raised the gun.
I took a step toward him. "Don't be a fool. Policemen are at both exits." I took another step, hoping I could get close enough to him. "Face it, Porter. There's no way out."
I was wrong. There was one way, and he took it. Before I could stop him he shoved the small gun's muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The sound was muffled, not loud at all. He stood erect for what seemed a long time; then he fell, and the silence ended.
Women screamed, and even men jumped out of their chairs. Everything was mixed up after that. People milled around, police came into the room, Yolanda hugged my arm. In a relatively quiet moment Jay Kennedy drew me aside. He was sober.
"Fine job, Scott," he said. First time he'd called me Scott. "I don't quite understand just how you were so sure it was A.A. I told A.A. the whole story Alan Grant gave us. But it was so confused —"
"That's not the important point about Grant," I said. "It was the fact that Porter tried to kill Grant. Pushed him out the window. Actually that was the crux as far as I was concerned. Grant's been drunk a thousand times, and I couldn't swallow the unbelievable coincidence of his falling out of his window today, of all days. Too convenient. So I figured he was pushed."
He kept frowning. I went on, "Except for me, only two people knew that
Alan saw the murder committed — you and Porter. I told you earlier why I'd eliminated you. That left your co-producer. There were a few other angles. You'd told me he practically forced you to use Melba in Wagon Wheels; if she was such a horrible actress, there had to be some reason other than her ability as an actress. That was enough for me; as long as I felt sure he was guilty, I didn't need to know much about his motive. And I knew Porter could have had the opportunity."
He nodded, clapped me on the back and walked away.
Yolanda squeezed my arm. "Shell."
"Yes?" I looked at her, waiting for the gushing words, ready to say, "Oh, it was nothing much. Not for me." I waited as she smiled up at me. "Shell," she cooed, "didn't I look good?"
"Oh, it was nothing . . . Huh?"
"In the movie. Didn't I look good? Oh, I'm so grateful you let me play the corpse."
"You are, huh?"
"Yes, Shell. It was a real break."
"It was, huh?"
She squeezed my arm. I think I had a premonition then. Well, that about wrapped it up. After a while the hubbub died down. It was all over. . . .
I looked around the office. I sat in my zebra-striped chair, feet propped on my mangrove-root desk. The rent was paid well in advance with the fee from the Melba murder case. That one had caused quite a to-do in Hollywood. The movies all came out beautifully, the whole thing from the murder re-enactment until Porter had shot himself. And, of course, me. Shell Scott in action. Producer, director, writer, and star. Orson Welles crossed with Jack Webb. Hollywood's wonder boy, Shell Scott. But — no Yolanda.
Several prints of my epic had turned up around town and there'd been a good deal of favorable talk, some about me, but it turned out that as an actor I stank like eight-year-old eggs. Some of the talk had been combined with choking laughter. I guess the scene where I shoved Yolanda into the pool and spun about with my eyebrows wig-wagging, lips twitching, might have been a bit overdone. But all the other actors and actresses had got jobs because of the film. And, yes, Yolanda.
Melba's scenes in Wagon Wheels were being shot over, with Yolanda. She was scheduled for a good part in Wagon Tracks. Oh, I saw her once in a while, but not like before, in the office. The place seemed different, lonelier. I pressed the buzzer on the intercom and said, "How about coming in for a bit, Lorene?"
Lorene was blonde, dressed in white. And I'd had the desk in the front office painted black. Those were the only changes. Lorene came in. She didn't enter, and she couldn't yet take dictation like Yolanda had. But she was learning. We talked a while, then Lorene went back to her desk.
I sat with my foot propped on a mangrove pot. It had been a week since the last job. A week. Hollywood has a short memory; what counts is now, not then. So I sat at my desk and waited for a client. And thought about Yolanda.
MURDER'S STRIP TEASE
He died very quickly and quietly, with his mouth open to give me the rest of the story, and the only noise he made was when his head slammed into the hard mahogany of my desk. There wouldn't be much of a bruise or swelling; he was dead before he started toppling forward, out of the best chair in my office, with the neat hole slightly off center in the middle of his forehead staring vacantly at me like a third sightless eye.
That wasn't really where it started; at least as far as I was concerned. It started about five minutes before the bullet roared through his brain and messily out the back of his head.
It was about seven o'clock Friday night when he came in, and I'd just finished feeding some dried shrimp to the guppies I keep in a ten-gallon tank on top of the bookcase in the office; that's short for a kind of tropical fish that makes like rainbows. Yeah, guppies. I like guppies and the hell with you.
The guy was middle-aged and tall. Almost my height, say six-one, and he weighed maybe twenty pounds more than my two hundred and six. The extra twenty pounds was on his belly where he was starting to go to pot. He wore steel-rimmed glasses over eyes that were a washed-out watery blue and he had a square, red face, a weak chin, and a thick neck that wasn't quite comfortable in what must have been a size seventeen collar, at least.
He asked in a surprisingly thin voice, "Mr. Sheldon Scott?"
"That's right."
"Loring. John Loring." He gave me his hand as if it was a tip. The skin was soft and smooth, like a woman's.
I said, "Sit down, Mr. Loring. What can I do for you?"
While he planted the end of his tailbone on the edge of the leather chair before my desk I remembered the name Loring. It was spelled with dollar signs in Los Angeles, but up to now there'd always been a Mrs. in front of it. I'd hardly realized there was a Mr. The Mr. got his tailbone perched satisfactorily and said abruptly, "Mr. Scott, I'll pay you five thousand to get somebody for me."
I wiggled a couple eyebrows at him, coughed quietly, and said, "Slow down, Mr. Loring. I'm a private investigator, not an exterminator. What do you mean, get somebody?"
He grinned quickly, nervously, "Excuse my choice of words, Mr. Scott. I'm somewhat overwrought. I didn't mean you were to kill anyone. At least I don't think that will be necessary." He chuckled without humor and went on, "I want you to get a blackmailer off my back. I'm being blackmailed, and the funny thing is I haven't stepped out of line." He hesitated. "Not really, you know. I told the skunk tonight — just before I came here — that I wouldn't pay anything and if the pressure wasn't removed I'd go to the police. All I got was a laugh in my face. I remembered reading about some of your — ah — exploits, Mr. Scott, so I looked you up in the phone book and came here."
"Why me instead of the police you mentioned?"
"Well, blackmail, you know. I'm not exactly proud of it. I'd like it as quiet and private as possible. That's why I came to a private investigator. It's rather an odd affair and I want to be kept completely out of it if I can. That's important." He fumbled in his coat pocket, drew out a white envelope and handed it to me. "It's worth five thousand dollars to me if you do it my way."
I picked up the envelope, peeled it open and looked fondly at the crisp green C-notes inside.
I closed the envelope, tapped it against the back of my hand and said, "The offer's very attractive, Mr. Loring, but maybe you'd better give me the whole story. Who's blackmailing you? Who'd you have the beef with tonight? Start at the beginning."
He sighed and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses. "Well, it actually started when I became unduly interested in art." He frowned. "Art," he repeated bitterly.
That was the end of the five minutes and from there on in he was dead.
He leaned forward toward me, opened his mouth to speak, and the shot came from the open window behind me. It sounded as if it came right out of my ear.
I saw the neat round hole appear slightly off center in Loring's forehead just before my legs uncoiled and hurled me sideways toward the wall. The gun cracked again and a slug ripped a hole in the carpet a foot from me as I came up on my hands and knees against the wall and leaped toward the corner parallel to the window.
I yanked my revolver out of its shoulder holster and had it ready for action just as Loring's head smacked soddenly into the edge of my desk and he flopped onto the carpet like a sack of cement. At almost the same instant I heard the guy drop off the fire escape and make tracks down the alley behind the building. I got to the window just in time to hear the roar as a car motor was gunned and clashed into gear. The car was gone with a shrill screaming of rubber before I could get a look. . . .
I dug a flash out of the desk and went over the fire escape, finding exactly nothing, then closed the window, locked it, and pulled down the shade before I paid any more attention to Loring. He didn't need any attention; he was slumped carelessly on the floor as if he was all tired out after a hard day's work. I left him resting and called Homicide.
It definitely wasn't my day. Instead of some nice guy like Captain Samson or Lieutenant Brown, I got Kerrigan. Lieutenant Jason Peter Kerrigan, with ears. His voice over the phone was a shrill whine that went through
me like fingernails scraping on a window pane. I gave it to him fast, hung up on his screech, and dug a finger into the ear that had suffered the most.
Then I searched Loring.
He had the usual junk in his pockets: handkerchief, comb, wallet, change. I stuffed everything back except the wallet and went through that. The only things of interest were two cards. They were of interest because they had something to do with art. One was from Massy's, a well-known art store on Grand Street in downtown L. A. that specialized in fine paintings for a price; the other was printed "S. A. Fillson — Learn to Paint — Life Drawing," with an address on Broadway. I appropriated the two cards, illegally, and sat down behind my desk to wait for Kerrigan.
There's just one door into my office — the one that says, "Sheldon Scott, Investigations" on the frosted glass window — and Kerrigan came through it as if he was making a first down.
He stopped short for a moment, bandy legs spread wide while he glared at the body on the floor; then he turned the glare on me. A little perspiration glistened on his fat face and the inevitable dead cigar jutted from between his thick lips. His voice was the same as it had been over the phone five minutes before, only louder.
"So someone shot him from the window, huh? You told me through the window, right, Scott?"
I said wearily, knowing what was coming, "That's right."
"Right through the window. Right through the shade, too?"
"The window was open. I shut it and pulled the shade. Or should I have left it open so the guy could come back and try again?"
"You expect me to swallow that, Scott?"
He didn't like me.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Stop stretching so goddam far, Kerrigan. Okay, so I murdered him. Things were dull."
His face started getting red, and the longer we talked, the redder it got. When it got to the shade where he was ready to book me on suspicion of murder and toss me in the pokey I cooled him off. A little.
Have Gat—Will Travel Page 11
