“Coming from you,” I said, “I guess that’s meant to be a compliment.”
Her eyes smiled, then got grave again. “I lied to you,” she said softly. “I—I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“I know. I was over there. Forget it. Don’t think about it.”
“People are always telling you to forget unpleasant things. But you never do. It’s so kind of silly to tell you to, I mean.”
“Okay,” I said, pretending to be hurt. “I’m silly. How about making some more sleep?”
She turned her head until she was looking into my eyes. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand.
“Will the police come here?” she asked.
“No. And try not to be disappointed.”
She frowned. “You must think I’m an awful fool.”
“Well—maybe.”
A couple of tears formed in her eyes and slid out at the corners and rolled gently down her cheeks.
“Does Mrs. Murdock know where I am?”
“Not yet. I’m going over and tell her.”
“Will you have to tell her—everything?”
“Yeah, why not?”
She turned the head away from me. “She’ll understand,” her voice said softly. “She knows the awful thing I did eight years ago. The frightful terrible thing.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s why she’s been paying Vannier money all this time.”
“Oh dear,” she said, and brought her other hand out from under the bedclothes and pulled away the one I was holding so that she could squeeze them tightly together. “I wish you hadn’t had to know that. I wish you hadn’t. Nobody ever knew but Mrs. Murdock. My parents never knew. I wish you hadn’t.”
The nurse came in at the door and looked at me severely. “I don’t think she ought to be talking like this, Mr. Marlowe. I think you should leave now.”
“Look, Miss Lymington, I’ve known this little girl two days. You’ve only known her two hours. This is doing her a lot of good.”
“It might bring on another—er—spasm,” she said severely, avoiding my eyes.
“Well, if she has to have it, isn’t it better for her to have it now, while you’re here, and get it over with? Go on out to the kitchen and buy yourself a drink.”
“I never drink on duty,” she said coldly. “Besides somebody might smell my breath.”
“You’re working for me now. All my employees are required to get liquored up from time to time. Besides, if you had a good dinner and were to eat a couple of the Chasers in the kitchen cabinet, nobody would smell your breath.”
She gave me a quick grin and went back out of the room. Merle had been listening to this as if it was a frivolous interruption to a very serious play. Rather annoyed.
“I want to tell you all about it,” she said breathlessly. “I—”
I reached over and put a paw over her two locked hands. “Skip it. I know. Marlowe knows everything—except how to make a decent living. It doesn’t amount to beans. Now you’re going back to sleep and tomorrow I’m going to take you on the way back to Wichita—to visit your parents. At Mrs. Murdock’s expense.”
“Why, that’s wonderful of her,” she cried, her eyes opening wide and shining. “But she’s always been wonderful to me.”
I got up off the bed. “She’s a wonderful woman,” I said, grinning down at her. “Wonderful. I’m going over there now and we’re going to have a perfectly lovely little talk over the teacups. And if you don’t go to sleep right now, I won’t let you confess to any more murders.”
“You’re horrid,” she said. “I don’t like you.” She turned her head away and put her arms back under the bedclothes and shut her eyes.
I went towards the door. At the door I swung around and looked back quickly. She had one eye open, watching me. I gave her a leer and it snapped shut in a hurry.
I went back to the living room, gave Miss Lymington what was left of my leer, and went out with my suitcase.
I drove over to Santa Monica Boulevard. The hockshop was still open. The old Jew in the tall black skullcap seemed surprised that I was able to redeem my pledge so soon. I told him that was the way it was in Hollywood.
He got the envelope out of the safe and tore it open and took my money and pawn ticket and slipped the shining gold coin out on his palm.
“So valuable this is I am hating to give it back to you,” he said. “The workmanship, you understand, the workmanship, is beautiful.”
“And the gold in it must be worth all of twenty dollars,” I said.
He shrugged and smiled and I put the coin in my pocket and said goodnight to him.
32
The moonlight lay like a white sheet on the front lawn except under the deodar where there was the thick darkness of black velvet. Lights in two lower windows were lit and in one upstairs room visible from the front. I walked across the stumble stones and rang the bell.
I didn’t look at the little painted Negro by the hitching block. I didn’t pat his head tonight. The joke seemed to have worn thin.
A white-haired, red-faced woman I hadn’t seen before opened the door and I said: “I’m Philip Marlowe. I’d like to see Mrs. Murdock. Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock.”
She looked doubtful. “I think she’s gone to bed,” she said. “I don’t think you can see her.”
“It’s only nine o’clock.”
“Mrs. Murdock goes to bed early.” She started to close the door.
She was a nice old thing and I hated to give the door the heavy shoulder. I just leaned against it.
“It’s about Miss Davis,” I said. “It’s important. Could you tell her that?”
“I’ll see.”
I stepped back and let her shut the door.
A mockingbird sang in a dark tree nearby. A car tore down the street much too fast and skidded around the next corner. The thin shreds of a girl’s laughter came back along the dark street as if the car had spilled them out in its rush.
The door opened after a while and the woman said: “You can come in.”
I followed her across the big empty entrance room. A single dim light burned in one lamp, hardly reaching to the opposite wall. The place was too still, and the air needed freshening. We went along the hall to the end and up a flight of stairs with a carved handrail and newel post. Another hall at the top, a door open towards the back.
I was shown in at the open door and the door was closed behind me. It was a big sitting room with a lot of chintz, a blue and silver wallpaper, a couch, a blue carpet and french windows open on a balcony. There was an awning over the balcony.
Mrs. Murdock was sitting in a padded wing chair with a card table in front of her. She was wearing a quilted robe and her hair looked a little fluffed out. She was playing solitaire. She had the pack in her left hand and she put a card down and moved another one before she looked up at me.
Then she said: “Well?”
I went over by the card table and looked down at the game. It was Canfield.
“Merle’s at my apartment,” I said. “She threw an ing-bing.”
Without looking up she said:. “And just what is an ing-bing, Mr. Marlowe?”
She moved another card, then two more quickly.
“A case of the vapors, they used to call it,” I said. “Ever catch yourself cheating at that game?”
“It’s no fun if you cheat,” she said gruffly. “And very little if you don’t. What’s this about Merle? She has never stayed out like this before. I was getting worried about her.”
I pulled a slipper chair over and sat down across the table from her. It put me too low down. I got up and got a better chair and sat in that.
“No need to worry about her,” I said. “I got a doctor and a nurse. She’s asleep. She was over to see Vannier.”
She laid the pack of cards down and folded her big gray hands on the edge of the table and looked at me solidly.
“Mr. Marlowe,” she said, “you and I had better have something out. I made a mistake
calling you in the first place. That was my dislike of being played for a sucker, as you would say, by a hardboiled little animal like Linda. But it would have been much better, if I had not raised the point at all. The loss of the doubloon would have been much easier to bear than you are. Even if I had never got it back.”
“But you did get it back,” I said.
She nodded. Her eyes stayed on my face. “Yes. I got it back. You heard how.”
“I didn’t believe it.”
“Neither did I,” she said calmly. “My fool of a son was simply taking the blame for Linda. An attitude I find childish.”
“You have a sort of knack,” I said, “of getting yourselves surrounded with people who take such attitudes.”
She picked her cards up again and reached down to put a black ten on a red jack, both cards that were already in the layout. Then she reached sideways to a small heavy table on which was her port. She drank some, put the glass down and gave me a hard level stare.
“I have a feeling that you are going to be insolent, Mr. Marlowe.”
I shook my head. “Not insolent. Just frank. I haven’t done so badly for you, Mrs. Murdock. You did get the doubloon back. I kept the police away from you—so far. I didn’t do anything on the divorce, but I found Linda—your son knew where she was all the time—and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with her. She knows she made a mistake marrying Leslie. However, if you don’t think you got value—”
She made a humph noise and played another card. She got the ace of diamonds up to the top line. “The ace of clubs is buried, darn it. I’m not going to get it out in time.”
“Kind of slide it out,” I said, “when you’re not looking.”
“Hadn’t you better,” she said very quietly, “get on with telling me about Merle? And don’t gloat too much, if you have found out a few family secrets, Mr. Marlowe.”
“I’m not gloating about anything. You sent Merle to Vannier’s place this afternoon, with five hundred dollars.”
“And if I did?” She poured some of her port and sipped, eyeing me steadily over the glass.
“When did he ask for it?”
“Yesterday. I couldn’t get it out of the bank until today. What happened?”
“Vannier’s been blackmailing you for about eight years, hasn’t he? On account of something that happened on April 26th, 1933?”
A sort of panic twitched in the depths of her eyes, but very far back, very dim, and somehow as though it had been there for a long time and had just peeped out at me for a second.
“Merle told me a few things,” I said. “Your son told me how his father died. I looked up the records and the papers today. Accidental death. There had been an accident in the street under his office and a lot of people were craning out of windows. He just craned out too far. There was some talk of suicide because he was broke and had fifty thousand life insurance for his family. But the coroner was nice and slid past that.”
“Well?” she said. It was a cold hard voice, neither a croak nor a gasp. A cold hard utterly composed voice.
“Merle was Horace Bright’s secretary. A queer little girl in a way, over timid, not sophisticated, a little girl mentality, likes to dramatize herself, very old-fashioned ideas about men, all that sort of thing. I figure he got high one time and made a pass at her and scared her out of her socks.”
“Yes?” Another cold hard monosyllable prodding me like a gun barrel.
“She brooded and got a little murderous inside. She got a chance and passed right back at him. While he was leaning out of a window. Anything in it?”
“Speak plainly, Mr. Marlowe. I can stand plain talk.”
“Good grief, how plain do you want it? She pushed her employer out of a window. Murdered him, in two words. And got away with it. With your help.”
She looked down at the left hand clenched over her cards. She nodded. Her chin moved a short inch, down, up.
“Did Vannier have any evidence?” I asked. “Or did he just happen to see what happened and put the bite on you and you paid him a little now and then to avoid scandal—and because you were really very fond of Merle?”
She played another card before she answered me. Steady as a rock.
“He talked about a photograph,” she said. “But I never believed it. He couldn’t have taken one. And if he had taken one, he would have shown it to me—sooner or later.”
I said: “No, I don’t think so. It would have been a very fluky shot, even if he happened to have the camera in his hand, on account of the doings down below in the street. But I can see he might not have dared to show it. You’re a pretty hard woman, in some ways. He might have been afraid you would have him taken care of. I mean that’s how it might look to him, a crook. How much have you paid him?”
“That’s none—” she started to say, then stopped and shrugged her big shoulders. A powerful woman, strong, rugged, ruthless and able to take it. She thought. “Eleven thousand one hundred dollars, not counting the five hundred I sent him this afternoon.”
“Ah. It was pretty darn nice of you, Mrs. Murdock. Considering everything.”
She moved a hand vaguely, made another shrug. “It was my husband’s fault,” she said. “He was drunk, vile. I don’t think he really hurt her, but, as you say, he frightened her out of her wits. I—I can’t blame her too much. She has blamed herself enough all these years.”
“She had to take the money to Vannier in person?”
“That was her idea of penance. A strange penance.”
I nodded. “I guess that would be in character. Later you married Jasper Murdock and you kept Merle with you and took care of her. Anybody else know?”
“Nobody. Only Vannier. Surely he wouldn’t tell anybody.”
“No. I hardly think so. Well, it’s all over now. Vannier is through.”
She lifted her eyes slowly and gave me a long level gaze. Her gray head was a rock on top of a hill. She put the cards down at last and clasped her hands tightly on the edge of the table. The knuckles glistened.
I said: “Merle came to my apartment when I was out. She asked the manager to let her in. He phoned me and I said yes. I got over there quickly. She told me she had shot Vannier.”
Her breath was a faint swift whisper in the stillness of the room.
“She had a gun in her bag, God knows why. Some idea of protecting herself against men, I suppose. But somebody—Leslie, I should guess—had fixed it to be harmless by jamming a wrong size cartridge in the breech. She told me she had killed Vannier and fainted. I got a doctor friend of mine. I went over to Vannier’s house. There was a key in the door. He was dead in a chair, long dead, cold, stiff. Dead long before Merle went there. She didn’t shoot him. Her telling me that was just drama. The doctor explained it after a fashion, but I won’t bore you with it. I guess you understand all right.”
She said: “Yes. I think I understand. And now?”
“She’s in bed, in my apartment. There’s a nurse there. I phoned Merle’s father long distance. He wants her to come home. That all right with you?”
She just stared.
“He doesn’t know anything,” I said quickly. “Not this or the other time. I’m sure of that. He just wants her to come home. I thought I’d take her. It seems to be my responsibility now. I’ll need that last five hundred that Vannier didn’t get for expenses.”
“And how much more?” she asked brutally.
“Don’t say that. You know better.”
“Who killed Vannier?”
“Looks like he committed suicide. A gun at his right hand. Temple contact wound. Morny and his wife were there while I was. I hid. Morny’s trying to pin it on his wife. She was playing games with Vannier. So she probably thinks he did it, or had it done. But it shapes up like suicide. The cops will be there by now. I don’t know what they will make of it. We just have to sit tight and wait it out.”
“Men like Vannier,” she said grimly, “don’t commit suicide.”
“Tha
t’s like saying girls like Merle don’t push people out of windows. It doesn’t mean anything.”
We stared at each other, with that inner hostility that had been there from the first. After a moment I pushed my chair back and went over to the french windows. I opened the screen and stepped out on to the porch. The night was all around, soft and quiet. The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.
The trees down below cast heavy shadows under the moon. In the middle of the garden there was a sort of garden within a garden. I caught the glint of an ornamental pool. A lawn swing beside it. Somebody was lying in the lawn swing and a cigarette tip glowed as I looked down.
I went back into the room. Mrs. Murdock was playing solitaire again. I went over to the table and looked down.
“You got the ace of clubs out,” I said.
“I cheated,” she said without looking up.
“There was one thing I wanted to ask you,” I said. “This doubloon business is still cloudy, on account of a couple of murders which don’t seem to make sense now that you have the coin back. What I wondered was if there was anything about the Murdock Brasher that might identify it to an expert—to a man like old Morningstar.”
She thought, sitting still, not looking up. “Yes. There might be. The coin-maker’s initials, E. B., are on the left wing of the eagle. Usually, I’m told, they are on the right wing. That’s the only thing I can think of.”
I said: “I think that might be enough. You did actually get the coin back, didn’t you? I mean that wasn’t just something said to stop my ferreting around?”
She looked up swiftly and then down. “It’s in the strong room at this moment. If you can find my son, he will show it to you.”
“Well, I’ll say good night. Please have Merle’s clothes packed and sent to my apartment in the morning.”
Her head snapped up again and her eyes glared. “You’re pretty highhanded about all this, young man.”
“Have them packed,” I said. “And send them. You don’t need Merle any more—now that Vannier is dead.”
Our eyes locked hard and held locked for a long moment. A queer stiff smile moved the corners of her lips. Then her head went down and her right hand took the top card off the pack held in her left hand and turned it and her eyes looked at it and she added it to the pile of unplayed cards below the layout, and then turned the next card, quietly, calmly, in a hand as steady as a stone pier in a light breeze.
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