Sleeping Beauty

by Ross Macdonald

  “You know my daughter Laurel, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know her slightly.”

  “And you like her, don’t you?”

  “I like her very much.”

  “Would you be willing to do Laurel a service? I’m not asking you to do it for me, but for her.”

  “I’ve been trying to, as you know. I’ve been looking for her since Wednesday night.”

  “You can stop looking. My wife just told me that Laurel came home last night. I found out in the same minute that my daughter was alive and my father was dead.” He spoke with a kind of egocentric sentimentality, as if he saw himself as a figure in a drama.

  My heart was beating hard. “Where has she been?”

  “Wandering around, I gather. Trying to get up the nerve to turn herself in.”

  “What kind of shape is she in?”

  “Not too good. Marian had to put her under sedation. Laurel’s still not over the idea of hurting herself.”

  There was a silence between us. Lennox lay very still with his arms stretched out at his sides, as if he was trying to share and understand his daughter’s predicament.

  “Did Laurel hurt anyone else?” I said.

  “Yes. I’m afraid she did.”

  “Did she push Nelson Bagley over the cliff?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “We have a cliffside patio with a low wall, and Laurel was sitting there trying to clean the oil off some kind of bird. Bagley must have seen her from the road and wandered down there. He took her by surprise, and she pushed him over.”

  “Did Harold Sherry see this happen?”

  “I don’t think so. He was up the road in his car. Laurel’s mother was the only witness, fortunately. But Sherry figured out what had happened—I couldn’t keep Laurel quiet, and she was yelling and sobbing—and he asked for a hundred thousand to forget it. I had to go along with it. There were other matters involved, going back a good many years.”

  “Do you want to tell me about those other matters?”

  “No, I don’t. I was willing to pay a hundred thousand to keep the whole thing quiet, and I still am.”

  “Who suggested the kidnapping ploy?”

  “I did. It fitted in with what the family knew about Sherry. And I couldn’t think of any other way to raise the money.”

  “It had another advantage,” I said. “If you had managed to kill Sherry yesterday, nobody would have blamed you.”

  He gave me a sharply interested look, but kept his mouth shut. I said:

  “I still don’t understand why Laurel pushed Bagley over the cliff.”

  “Neither do I, really. My wife thinks Laurel may have remembered him from the time that she was a little girl. Maybe she even saw him shoot Allie Russo.”

  “Was Laurel in the Russo house when the shooting occurred?”

  “It’s possible that she was. Allie Russo used to baby-sit for Laurel.”

  “Did Allie baby-sit for Laurel the night she was killed?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It was the night before you went to sea on the Canaan Sound. You should be able to remember what happened your last night ashore.”

  “Maybe I should, but I don’t. I was drinking all day. They practically had to pour me on board the ship.”

  “If your daughter was at the Russo house that night, somebody must have taken her there. Did you?”

  “I said I don’t remember.”

  “Wasn’t Allie Russo your girl at the time?”

  “No. She was not.”

  “If Allie wasn’t your girl, why did you shoot Nelson Bagley?”

  Lennox sat up abruptly. “Has Somerville been talking?”

  “It doesn’t matter who’s been talking. The question is why you shot Bagley.”

  He grimaced and peered from side to side like a man entrapped in the maze of his own nature. “So it was Somerville. Too bad for Somerville. All right. Allie was my girl for a short time while I was waiting for sea duty. When I went aboard the ship in Long Beach that night, I didn’t know she’d been killed. And I didn’t find out for several weeks, when our first mail came aboard in Asiatic waters. They’d made me the mail officer, so I got to it fast. Somebody sent me a newspaper clipping about Allie’s murder, and it gave a full description of the main suspect.”

  “Which fitted Bagley.”

  “That’s right. Whoever sent the clipping to me sent one to Somerville, too. It made him so jittery that he accidentally ruptured one of the gas tanks. And I can tell you it did nothing for me. I called Bagley up to the communications shack and got a forty-five out of the safe and held it on him while I asked him some questions. He admitted he was there at her house that night. When I showed him the newspaper clipping, he broke and ran. I followed him, and without really intending to, I squeezed off a shot. It hit him, and the flash set fire to the ship. But the fire was really Somerville’s fault—he was the one that ruptured the gas tank. If Somerville wants to make an issue of it at this late date, he’s the one who has a lot to lose. I’m the head of the company as of this morning.”

  But Lennox looked around like a dauphin who had waited too long and was already weary at his coronation. I wondered how long he would exercise the power his father had had, and I thought not long. I said:

  “Who sent those clippings to you and Somerville?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were there any messages with them?”

  “Not in mine.”

  “Any writing on the envelope?”

  “No. The address was typed.”

  “Fleet Post Office address?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why were those clippings sent to you, do you think?”

  “To make us suffer,” he said.

  “Then whoever sent them must have known that you and Somerville had been close to Allie Russo, isn’t that right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “How many people knew you were her lover?”

  “Nobody knew.”

  “What about the children? Laurel and Tom?”

  Lennox leaned toward me, his eyes wide, as if he had been hit by a long shot fired from below the curve of time. “You think that little boy sent the clippings? Or Laurel? She was only three, and the boy wasn’t too much older.”

  “They were both old enough to talk.”

  Lennox lay back and absorbed the idea. His face became pale and anxious. He gnawed his lips.

  “Have you thought of someone they might have talked to?” I said.

  “No. There isn’t anyone.” He turned restlessly on the bed. “I asked you before if you’d do a service for my daughter.”

  “You haven’t told me what it is.”

  “Would you be willing to take care of her for a bit, maybe take her on a little trip?”

  “I’d have to think about it.”

  “There’s no time to think about it. I’m talking about right now, this morning. I can provide you with a jet and pilot, and I’ll pay you well.”

  “Where do you want me to take her?”

  “Out of the country. Central America would probably be best—we have connections down there.”

  “It isn’t a good idea,” I said. “If Laurel killed Bagley, it’s better for her to stay here and face her day in court. Given the circumstances, and her emotional condition, she isn’t likely to be convicted of murder.”

  “What will they do to her?”

  “I can’t predict that. With the kind of lawyers and doctors you can afford, you should be able to get the charge reduced, maybe have her put on probation in her husband’s custody.”

  “Would her husband take that kind of responsibility?”

  “I think he would. He loves her.”

  “But wouldn’t everything have to come out in the papers?”

  “Everything will anyway. Especially if you try to fly Laurel out of the country.”

  Lennox was silent for a long minute. “You’re right, that wouldn’t be a good i
dea. But there’s still something I want you to do for me. For Laurel. I want you to go and look after her, starting now. I can’t make it myself, and Laurel and Marian aren’t on good terms. They haven’t been since Laurel was a teen-ager and started living a life of her own. Will you take over from Marian for me?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  On my way out through the hospital lobby, I met Sylvia Lennox coming in. She looked like the survivor of an almost fatal illness. Her face was carved thin and her eyes were very bright.

  “You haven’t found Laurel?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How is Jack?”

  “He seems much stronger,” I said.

  “My husband, William Lennox, was killed this morning; did you know that?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too, which rather surprises me. I’ve been full of malice towards him, wishing him dead.”

  “He wasn’t killed by a wish.”

  “I know that, Mr. Archer. I’m not losing my mind, though I may have given that impression yesterday afternoon.” She drew in her breath. “Yesterday I seemed to have reached the end of my life, the end of my nature. But just now I’ve discovered that I haven’t. I’m sorry about William’s death. I can even feel some compassion for the woman.”

  “Why don’t you tell her that?”

  “I don’t feel that much compassion,” she said dryly. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because you’re a witness. You saw me at my dead end yesterday. I wanted you to know that I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in that state.” She moved closer to me and lowered her voice: “But I can’t get over what happened to Tony Lashman. Why do you think he was killed?”

  “To keep him quiet. He was a witness, too. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Lennox, I should be on my way.”

  There was one more thing to witness.

  chapter 42

  I parked on the road near Jack Lennox’s mailbox. Before I approached the house, I got the .38 out of the trunk of my car, loaded it, and put it in my pocket. I moved down the driveway cautiously, studying the lay of the land. It was the first I’d seen of it by daylight.

  The house was low, built into the rim of the cliff and partly cantilevered over it. Extending from the house on the right was the patio with the wall over which Bagley had fallen to his death.

  A dead grebe covered with oil lay on the patio. Beyond it was an empty field which had been plowed to keep the weeds down. Shore birds driven off the beaches were foraging in the dirt.

  Workboats moved back and forth on the water, spraying the unshrinking edges of the oil slick with chemicals and straw. Smoke hung in the sky above them like a dark reflection of the oil on the sea. When I moved closer to the rim of the cliff, I could see the multiple sources of the smoke. Up and down the shoreline great fires were crackling, fed by oil-soaked straw which dozens of men were raking up from the black stony beach.

  I envied the men on the boats and on the beaches. I envied anyone who didn’t have my errand to perform.

  I knocked on the front door. Marian Lennox must have been watching me from inside the house. She spoke through the door:

  “Go away. My husband told me not to let anyone in.”

  “Your husband sent me here. You remember me, Mrs. Lennox. My name is Archer.”

  “Why?” she said in a high thin voice. “Why did he send you here?”

  “He wants me to look after Laurel.”

  “I’m perfectly competent—” She caught herself. “Laurel isn’t here.”

  “Your husband says she is. You might as well let me in, Mrs. Lennox. We have some things to discuss.”

  Abruptly she opened the door. The morning light fell harshly on her face. Her hair was ragged and streaked with white, as if time had run his ashy fingers through it.

  The gun with the telescopic sight was standing in the corner of the hallway. I moved past Mrs. Lennox and took possession of it. She didn’t try to stop me but simply stood and looked at me with eyes in which the long night still persisted. I disarmed the gun and set it back in the corner.

  “Where’s Laurel?”

  “In her room. I gave her some sleeping pills, and she went to sleep.”

  “What happened to the sleeping pills she had? The Nembutals?”

  “She flushed them down the toilet in the Somervilles’ garage. She told me she was on the point of taking all of them. But then she decided to live.” The woman’s eyes were bright and watchful. “It was a brave decision.”

  “To go on living?”

  “I think so. She has so much to face up to. Didn’t my husband tell you what she did?” Her long face lengthened. I thought she was going to cry, but only words came out of her downturned mouth: “She killed a man last night—no, the night before last. She pushed him off our patio and he fell down on the rocks. But you know that.”

  “How do you happen to know it, Mrs. Lennox?”

  “I saw her do it. She ran at him and pushed him with all her force. He went flying over the wall.”

  She mimicked the action she was describing, pushing her hands out violently in front of her. But the expression on her face, widemouthed and horrified, seemed to be that of the man falling.

  “Why did Laurel kill him?”

  “I don’t know. There have been a lot of things I don’t understand.”

  “Did she remember Bagley from the old days, when she was a little girl?”

  “Yes, I believe she did.” She picked up the idea. “As a matter of fact, he murdered her baby-sitter when she was three. He shot and killed her.”

  “And Laurel saw this happen?”

  “Maybe she did. She was in the house at the time. She was supposed to be sleeping, and so was little Tom, but maybe she did.”

  “How do you know these things, Mrs. Lennox?”

  “I have my ways of knowing. People try to keep things from me, but I find out.”

  “Were you in the Russo house the night Allie was shot?”

  She nodded. “I went there to bring Laurel home. That was all I did. Jack was supposed to meet me at the club but he didn’t come and he didn’t come, so I went and brought Laurel home.”

  “Was Allie dead when you went there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look in the bedroom. I didn’t know about her death until I saw it in the paper.”

  “When was this?”

  “Several days later. Little Tom was alone with her all that time. But I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it.”

  “I believe you, Mrs. Lennox. Nobody but a ghoul would leave a child alone with his mother’s body.”

  “I’m not a ghoul.” She was appalled by the name. “Anyway, he wasn’t my child. He belonged to that filthy woman.”

  “Why do you call her that?”

  “Because she was. She was no better than a prostitute. But Jack chose to spend his last night ashore with her. He went to drop off Laurel at her house and never came back. I went there and found him lying drunk in her—”

  She clapped a hand to her face. It incompletely masked her widened eyes and mouth.

  “Did you shoot her, Mrs. Lennox?”

  She spoke after a silence. “If I did, I had good reason.”

  “Did you, though?”

  “I’m not going to answer that,” she said behind her hand. “I have a right not to answer. Besides, we know that Nelson Bagley shot her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It came out in the News. The neighbors saw him sneaking around the house that night, and they gave his description to the police.”

  “All this was printed in the News?”

  “It certainly was. I still have the clipping somewhere if you want to see it.”

  “Did you have more than one copy of the clipping?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. I thought it was important.”

  “What did you do with the other copies?”

  “I sent them to certain people who w
ould be interested.”

  “Like your husband and your brother-in-law?”

  “Yes. I wanted them to know.”

  “You wanted them to know what you had done, but not that you had done it.”

  She breathed profoundly, as if she had been holding her breath all night. The walls of the hallway seemed to be closing in. Once again, it reminded me of a cell where prisoners were held without hope of release.

  She said, “Why should I be the only one to suffer? You men have all the fun. And then you leave the women alone to suffer.”

  “Is that what your husband did to you?”

  “Again and again,” she said. “I told you, he even spent his last night ashore with her.”

  “So you shot her.”

  “I’m not admitting anything.”

  “You admitted that you sent your husband the clipping from the News.”

  “That was no crime. They can’t do anything to me for sending him a clipping. It seemed to me he had a right to know about her death.” She spoke with a kind of remembered grief, but her grief had long since turned malign. “I used to imagine the look on his face when he opened that envelope with the clipping in it and found out she was dead.”

  “Why did you send one to Somerville?”

  “She was his girl first. He passed her on to Jack.” She looked at me with loathing. “You men are dirty creatures, all of you. I’m glad all this has come out. I’ve been sick of this filthy pretense of a marriage for years.”

  “Why did you push Nelson Bagley over the cliff?”

  “He remembered me. He saw me at the woman’s house that night. He was the one who phoned me and told me my husband was with her.”

  “And you went there and shot her?”

  “I’m not admitting anything,” she said.

  But she looked at me with the realization that there was hardly anything left to admit.

  “Did Laurel see you push him over the cliff?”

  “Yes. She ran away. But she came back last night.”

  “Did she speak to you about it?”

  “Yes, she did. She said I ought to call the police and make a full confession.”

  “Are you willing to do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid. What will they do to me? I’ve killed three people.” Her face opened as if she was falling again.