by L. J. Greene
“You found it, my darling,” was all he said. I felt the cold metal warm rapidly between our hands, and he leaned forward and kissed me gently on the forehead.
Alice said nothing, only worked away at my wound. “Your migraine, Alice,” I said, remembering. “I don’t want you to make it any worse.”
She quirked her mouth. Leo gave a fond, watery laugh and kissed my palm. “Oh, lover. There’s simply no subterfuge in you at all.”
Alice kept working. Her hands were deft, and I tried to say as much to her. But my mouth wouldn’t seem to work right, and I slurred it out.
“I volunteered at the local hospital during the war,” she said with a smile. “I was just thirteen years old, patching up poor foolish boys every day and sending them back to the front to be killed. It was awfully demoralizing.” She gave her bandage a little pat. “There we are. Now off to bed with you. You’re just about drooling on the sofa as it is.” She went so far as to prise my eyelids wide to check my pupils.
“Can’t move,” I said. In fact, I couldn’t feel my body at all, and I looked at Leo accusingly. “You,” I said. “You…”
He raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong with him?”
“You,” I said insistently. “Whiskey. Drugged.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” he said with an irritated sigh.
“It’s probably the shock,” Alice said. “Don’t try to move him. Just make him comfortable here. And Leo—stay with him, won’t you?”
The last thing I heard as I drifted off was his reply.
“I won’t leave his side.”
But when I woke, I was alone.
Chapter 42
My cheek was glued to the satin cushion by, as Alice had predicted, my own drool. I could move again, but my pulse thumped in my ear and the burn over my heart ached. I shoved myself up and had to wait for my head to stop spinning. Whatever Leo had given me—and I had no doubt he had given me something—it was hanging on to me, trying to suck me back under into sleep. But I was awake.
Something had woken me.
I made my way to the side bar and got some seltzer water in a tumbler. Three glasses later, I felt less like I was moving under the weight of an ocean. My stomach settled.
Something had woken me.
I set down the glass and went to the door, quietly as I could. I don’t know what it was made me sneak like that, and crack the door slowly, but all my pussyfooting only made it worse when I saw what was waiting for me.
At the foot of the double staircase on the other side of foyer, haphazard limbs at odd and inexplicable angles, lay the Marquess of Holford, Lord Reginald Cresswickham. He was dead; of that I was sure. His cheek was waxy white against a small puddle of blood, a discordantly cheerful bright red stain seeping over the marble floor. His arms and legs were at fantastical angles. Numbly, I realized that his head was twisted much too far around. I went closer, my heart bashing against my ribs and blocking out all other sounds, and finally took in his eyes, colder even than they had been in life. They were fixed and glassy, but suddenly I could’ve sworn I saw his eyelid flicker.
I gave a horrified shout and stumbled away, knocking into a vase that promptly teetered on its stand, fell and shattered. I kept my eyes on it instead, trying to swallow down my threatening stomach, until something caught my eye. I glanced up to see Gabriel coming towards me from under the archway, frowning and puzzled, and I knew he would shriek before it came out of him, deranged and unreal, echoing around the foyer. I sprang at him and slapped his face, and he cut off mid-cry like the needle had jumped off the record.
“For Christ’s sake, quit yowling like that!” I told him.
At the top of the double staircase I heard footsteps, and, Betts and Leo appeared from the east and west wings as though by stage direction. They came closer to the landing rails, each staring down in horrified fascination.
“Is he…” Betts said, his voice hoarse. Alice appeared silently behind him, barefoot, wrapped in white silk and lace, blinking sleepily until she realized what it was at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, no, no,” she wailed, and Betts grabbed her, pulling her face into his neck so she didn’t have to see. It was futile, of course. I knew I’d never rid myself of the image. I doubted any of us ever would.
“Check him, Cole,” Leo said, a curious lilt to his voice. “Just in case?”
I didn’t want to go anywhere near that grotesquerie, but even from a distance I felt Leo’s will bending mine. I knelt and pressed my fingers to the distorted neck. The skin felt warm to the touch, and I turned my face away, holding my breath. At last I snatched my hand away, shaking my head up at the audience on the landing. “He’s done,” I said, and then turned to Gabriel, who had wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. “Go call an ambulance, kid. And the police, I guess.” And what, I wondered dully, what was Gabriel still doing at the mansion near midnight?
“Hold on,” Leo called from above. “Gabriel, hold on. I’ll make the call. You go and get a sheet so we can cover the—cover his Lordship.” Gabriel darted gratefully away. I couldn’t take my eyes off Leo, still standing on the landing above, his hand on the bannister. “Betts,” he continued, looking at me, “take Alice to her room, at once. Give her a brandy.”
And so we were left alone, eyeing each other like adversaries. Leo was the first to move, walking to the top of the western stairs down which the unfortunate Englishman had taken his tumble. He stared down at the body, and then at me.
“You should go. You’ll be difficult to explain to the police when they arrive. Best if you’re simply not here.”
I skirted the remains of Lord Reginald Cresswickham and made my way slowly up towards the landing, keeping my eyes on Mancini, and stopped at the top stair. “Did you…” I began, and stopped.
“Did I what?” An age passed between us, but then he shook his head at me. “Turn around.”
I stayed where I was.
“Turn around,” he said again, his voice soft and dangerous. He reached a hand up to grasp me by the back of my neck, and turned me himself. “Do you see that?” With his other hand, he pointed over my shoulder at the body lying below. “That, sweetheart, is an accident. Serendipitous to us, perhaps, but an accident nonetheless.”
Even from this angle, Lord Reginald Cresswickham’s pale eyes stared sightlessly at me, his mouth slightly open and a smear of blood on his cheek. I shuddered.
“Let go of me.”
But he turned me back by the neck and smiled into my face, stroking my hair like he was soothing a nervous dog. “Just do as I say and everything will be alright. Go back to Chateau Marmont and wait there for me in our bungalow. I kept it open for us, just like we agreed.”
He slid his hand from my neck to my shirtfront, resting above my heart, over my burned skin, and for a wild moment I expected him to give me a shove. But then he kissed me, passionate and sloppy, breathing hard into my mouth like he was drowning in me. He wrapped me up in his arms so I couldn’t move, and I didn’t dare try to push him off despite the pain of my scorched flesh. Struggling might have unbalanced me and sent me plunging down the stairs after the dead man.
When he let me go, I gripped the bannister hard, and he gave my cheek a light pinch. His eyes sparkled into mine. “I’ll see you soon, my own true love. At the bungalow.”
“Alright,” I said, my heart hammering fit to burst from my chest.
“I’ll walk you down. These stairs are dangerous.”
“Evidently,” I said, and we made our way down to the corpse lying below. I was put in mind of the staircase scene from Gone With the Wind, only there was no Rhett Butler to greet us at the bottom, just the morbid result of murder.
For it was murder; of course it was murder. I had no proof, but I knew someone had ended a life with a well-placed shove. Chance is too merciless to perform such acts of generosity. Someone had given chance a helping hand.
Someone? I knew the culprit. I just couldn’t let the thought complete itself, not bef
ore I’d figured out how to react to it.
“You—you might need an alibi,” I stammered, when we reached the front door.
He raised an eyebrow. “Why on earth would I need an alibi for an accident? Goodbye for now, lover.” He touched his fingers to my lips like an absolution, and then shut the door in my face. The night air was still and calm. I heard, faintly, his footsteps retreating, and a faint ting has he lifted the telephone receiver in the foyer.
I imagined him speaking to the police, surveying his handiwork with satisfaction, and I had to lean over the side rail to empty my stomach into the bushes.
Part IX
Night of the Hunter
Chapter 43
I set off towards Sunset and hoped to come across a phone box to call a cab. Nothing doing. The people of Bel-Air liked to keep their telephones inside and off the street. By and by, a bevy of siren-flashing cops sped by, followed by an ambulance at a more leisurely pace. I kept my head down and returned to my thoughts.
Dead. The tormentor, the jailer, the sadist: dead and gone, and I was free again. Mancini was free. Free as long as the police didn’t nose around too much. Had he really been so cold-blooded as to push Cresswickham down that staircase? The uncertainty of the outcome made me wonder. Leo was a man whose every action seemed calculated. A hand in the back and a tumble seemed a less than certain method to rid himself of a nuisance. But then, as he’d pointed out to me, it was one of the easiest ways to make it look like an accident.
The household was asleep, after all. Some of us, in fact, had been drugged. Maybe he thought it safe enough. Maybe he was willing to finish the job if the fall didn’t work out in his favor. I thought about that mad, twisted neck and shuddered.
Drugged, I thought again: Cresswickham had been drugged. Alice had given him something. That meant Mancini would’ve had to carry the man, or drag him to the head of the grand double staircase and pick a side and—I shook my head to get rid of the thought.
It was done. Whatever he’d done, it was done.
I’d made it to Sunset by then, but I still had a long walk ahead of me and my branded skin was throbbing. The neighborhood started changing. Telephone booths were springing up like mushrooms, and I flagged down a passing taxicab. I got him to drop me at Schwab’s, still paranoid about being followed back to the bungalow. I was exhausted by the time I limped up Marmont Lane, making for the private entrance. I could think of nowhere else to go but where Leo had instructed me, and only hoped I’d shaken any tail I might’ve had. At least in the bungalow I could gather some old clothes and plan my next move—a train ticket, or bus in a pinch.
But I didn’t have the nerve yet to present myself to Monsieur Antoine at the front desk and ask for a key. It was beginning to occur to me that fleeing the scene of the crime and returning to the Chateau might not have been the smartest move. If Leo needed a patsy, why, he could just point my way and give the police the bungalow address, neat and tidy. Yet here I was, and I could go no further, not tonight.
The gate was locked, but I shimmied painfully over it and stood in the shadows of the garden that had once been so familiar. The blinds on the bungalow were all drawn. For the moment, I decided to pretend I was home again; that I was waiting hopefully for Leo; that I could stroll back into my bungalow any time I pleased and drink my bourbon, listen to jazz, write my book.
My book. Christ.
I found a crumpled, near-empty packet of Gauloises in my pocket and smoked one, staring at the moon. She stared implacably back.
Wait for him, he’d said. Wait for him to what? All I could think of was that fresh corpse—something that had been human a few hours ago and was now just a broken heap of bones and flesh and cooling blood. There would be an autopsy, I supposed.
A sudden cracking noise made me jump. I put out my cigarette and was about to tail it back over the fence when I heard another crack, like something hitting glass, and then a scream, choked off. It was coming from next door—from the Magnolia Girl’s bungalow.
The fence dividing my yard from Bella’s was tall, but easy enough to get over for a man with a purpose. Under the full moon I could see clear enough, but I heard no more noise. Her yard was similar to mine, and her bungalow seemed to be the same set-up, but a mirror image. I approached the sliding door but could see nothing amiss, no broken glass. It was dark inside, but just as I reached the door, a white figure spun out of the blackness and slammed up against the glass. I tripped over my own feet as I stumbled back in surprise, and landed painfully on my backside.
She stared straight at me, my Magnolia Girl, white-clad and terrified as she fumbled for the latch. But then she saw me, and she froze. We stared at each other, and then out of the shadows behind her an arm slung around her neck, and she was dragged away.
I crawled quickly to the sliding door and yanked myself to my feet again. She’d managed to flick the lock, and the door flowed open silently. My heart thundered in an irregular beat like it was going to fail me. Inside it was dark, but I followed the sound of frantic struggles; panting, banging, something shattering. I rounded the bedroom doorway just as a sharp echoing crack sounded, and I slapped at the light switch.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you fucking bitch!”
Under the yellow light the scene looked unreal. Bella was standing on the other side of the room, backed up against the wall between the bed and the closet, gasping for breath. Her white satin slip and peignoir were torn and stained with red smears. In her shaking hand she held a small caliber handgun, dainty as a toy but deadly if it was used right. She’d used it wrong, though; only winged the fellow menacing her. He was backing up from her, clutching at his left bicep, his face pressed into his shoulder so it took a moment before I saw him properly.
But I already knew him. I would have known that voice anywhere. He glared at me, snarling, but dropped it for a weak smile when he recognized me.
“Mate,” Fred King said with a desperate chuckle. “It’s not how it looks.”
I wish I could say I was surprised, but all I felt was a sick understanding. “Freddie,” I said, nodding like we were passersby on a street. And when I added, “Fancy meeting you here,” it sounded ironic, stoic. I only said it because I couldn’t think what else to say. Bella pointed the gun at me then, but looked back at Freddie, trying to decide which of us was the greater threat.
My manner made King relax, and he gave an easy laugh, like I was only there to back him up. “Fucking bitch shot me,” he said. He gave Bella a fierce grin, and she swept the gun towards him again. “Easy!” he said, and took a few more steps back. He hit the wall and slumped down it to sit on the carpet.
“Over here,” I said to Bella. She glared, but I could tell she wanted to trust me. "Come on," I added gently. "You gotta play the cards you're dealt. So pick a card."
She scrambled over the bed towards me. King watched her go under hooded lids. I took the gun from her, unpeeling her fingers from it while I kept an eyeball on King. He’d turned his attention to the wound in his arm. It was oozing red, thick and steady.
Bella grabbed onto my shoulder so hard I winced. It did help me steady the gun, though, when I trained it on King. “What the Sam Hill’s going on here?” I demanded.
“He attacked me,” Bella said shrilly. “He jumped me and tried to strangle me—”
“I was just trying to make you see sense,” he groaned. “Shut you up for five bloody seconds and make you listen. You know, she pulled that gun on me right after she invited me in? Not very polite.”
“I saw you,” I said. “I saw you attacking her.”
He gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’m the one with a hole through me, mate. Christ.”
“You killed her,” Bella hissed. “You murdered my best friend, and you came after me too.”
He gave a rueful screwing up of his colorless lips. He looked straight at Bella and said, “Alright, fair cop. I’m damned sorry about the whole thing, if it makes any difference.”
Bella hocked u
p and spat an impressively large globule over my shoulder towards King before attempting to spring at him. I held her back, afraid that King might finish the job despite his injury. She struggled like a cat with a firework tied to its tail, so I pushed her out of the room and slammed the door shut on her, leaning against it so she couldn’t open it again. After a moment or two of shoving at it, she gave up, and I was stuck in the bedroom with a murderer.
I made my way slowly round the bed to look at King. Fred King, my manager; my only friend in LA ever since I’d decided I preferred the company of bourbon to all others. King, who’d done me wrong and got me wrapped up in this whole business.
Fred King: the Incubus?
I tried to wrap my head around the facts as I stared at him. “I guess I’ll call the ambu—” I started, but he interrupted me.
“Don’t you bloody dare. This night’s not ending with sirens and flashing lights. I'd rather die on my own terms—if I have to.” When he looked at me I wasn’t sure I’d ever really had a friend in him after all.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked. “Jesus, Freddie, why?”
He pressed his lips together.
I tried again. “You say tonight’s not ending with a hospital, and maybe you’re right. So do you want to die with a lie on your soul as well as murder? Lighten the load.”
“There’s other ways tonight could go. Ain’t we mates?”
I considered him, bunched up on the floor with an unspoken suggestion hanging on his lips.
Even I wasn’t wide-eyed enough to miss his meaning.
Chapter 44
How was it, I wondered, that I kept finding myself in line for these murder proposals?
I shook my head. “I don’t do murder, Freddie, not even for mates. And Bella’s done nothing but defend herself.”
