1949 - You're Lonely When You Dead (13 page)

‘He’s trying to find an excuse for her. She’s been giving her money to her lovers.’

‘All right. I’ll have another talk to Barclay.’

‘You’ve seen him?’ Her eyebrows came down in a sharp frown.

‘I get around, Miss Cerf. Does your father know about Barclay?’

She shook her head.

‘Did he tell you he found a suitcase in her cupboard full of knick-knacks taken from his friends?’ I said.

‘He didn’t have to tell me. She stole some of my things. She is a thief.’

‘You hate her, don’t you?’

The thin hands, like the claws of a bird, clenched into fists.

‘I don’t like her,’ she said in a carefully controlled voice.

‘The suitcase could have been planted in her cupboard. It’s been done before.’

‘You are a fool if you believe that. She’s a thief. Even Franklin has missed things from his room. We all know she’s a thief.’

‘Has Mills missed anything?’

Her mouth tightened and a flash of anger showed in her eyes.

‘He may have.’

‘But he would have told you, wouldn’t he?’

‘He would have told Franklin.’

‘Mills acted as Mrs. Cerf’s chauffeur, didn’t he?’

A faint spot of colour came into the pinched cheeks.

‘What if he did?’

‘Well, she’s attractive. He seems to have plenty of spare cash. I was wondering if they got together at any time.’

‘Got together for what?’ she asked, a little hiss in her voice.

‘I should have thought you would have been told about the facts of life by now, Miss Cerf.’

She took a handkerchief from under her pillow and began to nibble at it. Her lipstick made little red smears on the white cambric.

‘I don’t like your manner,’ she said.

‘Few people do, but they get used to it,’ I returned, wondering if I had imagined a slight movement of the long drapes that covered the window near the bed. I was careful not to look in that direction but I began to listen intently.

She said, ‘When you find her, are you going to hand her over to the police?’

‘Is that what you want me to do?’

‘That’s not the point. Are you or aren’t you?’

‘If I’m sure she shot Dana Lewis, I shall. But I’ll have to be sure first.’

‘Aren’t you sure?’ She sounded surprised.

‘I haven’t discovered the motive. Why should she shoot her? Tell me that and I might be convinced.’

‘My father’s settled money on her. In two years’ time, if she is still with him, she is to come in to a great deal of money.’ She lifted her head to look at me, and her long, dark tresses fell back from her face. ‘Isn’t that good enough for a motive?’

‘You mean Barclay would be evidence for a divorce, and she would lose the money, and that’s why Dana was shot?’

‘It’s plain enough, isn’t it?’

‘But Barclay has money.’

‘Not enough. You don’t know her like I do. She wouldn’t want to be dependent on Barclay: not if she could help it.’

‘It still doesn’t make sense.’ I was sure now I could hear someone breathing behind the curtained recess. I felt a creepy sensation run up my spine. ‘If she was so determined to have the money she would have come back here after the shooting. By going to Bannister she’s gypped herself out of it.’

‘She wouldn’t have gone to Bannister unless something had gone wrong: unless she had been seen.’

‘For someone who can’t get around, Miss Cerf, you seem to keep very well informed.’

‘Yes.’ She met my eyes calmly. ‘As I can’t get about I take precautions. I hope you will think over what I have told you. I want to go to sleep now. I’m tired.’ She switched on the tired, lonely look. ‘You should thank me. I’ve told you who murdered your friend. You should be able to do the rest.’ She waved her hand to the door. ‘Franklin will show you the way out. I don’t want to talk anymore.’

‘If you get any other ideas about Mrs. Cerf you might let me know. So far, you’re doing fine,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to talk anymore,’ she repeated firmly and closed her eyes, withdrawing her hands from above the sheet and hiding them from sight.

By now I had enough experience of her ways not to waste any more time on her. Anyway I was tired too. It had been a long day and a longer night. I crossed the room to the door.

As I opened it I took a quick look at the window recess.

I couldn’t see much because of the shadows, but I did catch a glimpse of something that glittered: something that could have been a shiny toe-cap of a knee-boot: the kind of boot Comrade Mills liked to wear. I wondered if Natalie knew he was there, and decided
she probably did.

In the distance a car backfired, making me jump. The sound reminded me of gunfire, and I told myself irritably that if I was going to start jumping out of my skin every time a car backfired I’d better give up my job and become a dancing master at an academy for young ladies. And as soon as the idea dropped into my mind, I wondered if I wouldn’t be a lot better off.

I sat in the car, bumping over the uneven beach road that led to my cabin. I was in no hurry and drove slowly. There was a moon like a grapefruit hanging in the sky, no stars and no clouds. The heat from the sun still clung to the sandy road, but there was a faint breeze coming off the sea that kept the temperature pleasant. The headlights of my car made a big white glare that bounced on the sand and came back at me.

I had been doing a lot of heavy thinking while I drove from the Santa Rosa Estate, and I was beginning to get a few ideas: the first tangible ideas I had had since the murder. I thought it would be nice to get home, mix myself a long drink with plenty of ice in it and sit out on the verandah and sort these ideas over. I wasn’t tired anymore. I decided to see the dawn come up over the hills, think over my ideas and then go to bed. On the face of it it seemed a pretty good programme, and I speeded up the car and went jolting over the sandy road, past the other beach cabins that were in darkness, along the half-mile of vacant building plots that separated my cabin from the rest of them, up the sharp little hill where I had a clear view of my cabin in the moonlight.

A light streamed out from my open verandah doors.

When I had left the place with Miss Bolus I had turned off the lights and locked the doors. Now the lights were on and the doors open. It occurred to me as I pulled up outside the gate that if this sort of thing was going to continue I might just as well have a hotel sign hoisted on the roof. I thought maybe Jack Kerman had got back from Los Angeles or Paula was waiting to talk to me or even Benny had come back from Frisco with news. I didn’t think anything was wrong until I reached the steps to the verandah, then I came to an abrupt halt.

Grey smoke hung in the air, drifted out through the open doorway: smoke that smelt of gunpowder. I remembered the car that had backfired, and felt suddenly spooked.

I climbed the steps to the verandah like an old man with gout: tiptoed to the open door.

The smell of gunpowder was strong in the room. On the carpet by the open window was a .45 Colt automatic. That was the first tiring I saw. I looked from the Colt to the casting couch at the far end of the room and the hairs at the back of my neck bristled. Lying on the couch was a blonde woman in a white silk blouse and brick-red slacks. Blood flowed from a hole in her forehead and soaked into the big yellow cushion that had supported a number of female heads in its time. By tire looks of it now the cushion wasn’t likely to support any more heads.

I went slowly across the room and stood over her. She was dead of course. A .45 does a job of work. It is a little crude, a little too heavy and needs a strong wrist, but in the right hands it does do a job of work. Terror still lurked in her eyes.

A face framed in blood isn’t pretty: not even Anita Cerf’s beauty could ride above the smashed forehead and the blood.

I was staring down at her when the shadow of a man appeared on the opposite wall: the shadow of a man in a slouch hat, his arm raised and a blunt something in his fist. It all happened very quickly. I saw the shadow and heard the swish of the descending sap simultaneously and I ducked; but much, much too late. Then the top of my head seemed to fly off, and I felt myself falling.

T
he sun crept around the edges of the blind and lay across the floor in two long, bright bands. In the hot, airless room there was a smell of whisky strong enough to get tight on, and it seemed to come from me: an overpowering smell as if I had fallen into a vat of the stuff and had taken a swim in it.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like myself. My head felt like hell.

The bed on which I was lying was too soft and too hot. I kept thinking of a woman’s face framed in blood with a hole in her forehead through which you could stick your finger, and I didn’t like that either.

I looked at the two bright bands of sunlight on the floor. I wasn’t focusing well, but the carpet seemed familiar. There were holes in it burned by the cigarettes I had dropped on it.

There was a ragged tear in it near the window where Benny’s spaniel pup had chewed it. It wasn’t much of a carpet, but it was a relief to see it, for it meant I was in my room and on my bed and the woman’s face framed in blood was probably a nightmare. Probably...

A man’s voice said, ‘He stinks like a distillery, and he’s as soused as a mackerel.’ A voice that sent a chill down my spine. Brandon’s voice. ‘Who’s the woman out there?’ the voice went on. ‘Ever seen her before?’

Mifflin said, ‘She’s a new one on me.’

I looked through my eyelashes. They were there all right.

Brandon was sitting on a chair and Mifflin stood at the foot of the bed.

I kept still and sweated. The back of my head felt as if the bone had been removed. It felt pulpy and soft as if there was a hole there: a hole that let in the draught that suddenly played about my pillow.

Mifflin had opened a window by my bed. He had pulled the blind aside to get at the window and a lot of hot, bright sunshine fell on my face, sending shooting pains into my skull.

I thought of Anita Cerf lying out there on the casting couch and the bloodstained yellow cushion and the Colt automatic. A beautiful setup for Brandon to walk into. A red-handed, no alibi, God’s gift to a lazy cop setup. Even Brandon wouldn’t look far for the killer. I thought of the way he had looked at me when he was questioning me about Dana’s death.

‘But she had to pass your place to get to where she was killed, didn’t she? It seems funny to me she didn’t look in on you.’

If a little thing like that seemed funny to him, imagine the bang he was getting out of a setup like this.

The same gun. Dana, Leadbetter and now Anita. All shot through the head. The same method; the same killer.

Motive? I didn’t kid myself that a little thing like a motive would stop Brandon. Ever since he had been in office the police administration had been sagging like a bed with worn-out springs. If he wanted to stop awkward questions, muzzle the Press, quiet the flutterings of the men who had put him in the job he had to solve these murders quick. He’d cook up some motive. He wouldn’t miss out on a chance like this.

‘Hey! Malloy! Wake up!’ Mifflin bawled. His heavy hand fell on my shoulder and shook me. Bright lights burst before my eyes, and the pain in my head went shooting down to my heels and back to my head like a runaway roller-coaster.

I threw off his hand and sat up, only to clap my hands to my head and bend over, groaning.

‘Snap out of it!’ Mifflin urged. ‘We want to talk to you. Hey! Malloy! Pull yourself together!’

‘What do you think I’m doing - a fan dance?’ I snarled, and swung my feet to the floor.

‘What have you been up to?’ Brandon demanded, leaning forward to peer at me. ‘What kind of drunk-up is this?’

I squeezed my aching head between fingertips and peered back at him. He looked fat, well fed and well shaven. His linen was immaculate; his shoes gleamed in the sunshine, and he looked every inch the corrupt policeman. In comparison I must have looked like hell. My fingers rasped my unshaven jaw, the awful stink of whisky fumes made me feel sick and my evening dress shirt stuck to my chest.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know. ‘Who let you in?’

‘Never mind who let us in,’ he barked and brandished his half-smoked cigar at me. It smelt as if he had picked it out of an ashcan on his way over. ‘What’s going on here? Who’s that woman out there?’

Not quite the right note, I thought, puzzled. Maybe these two birds were hard-boiled, but not so hard-boiled that they could be calm about a killing like the killing in the other room. And they were calm: disapproving, censorious and smug, like neither of them had ever touched a drop in their lives, but calm.

‘Is there a woman out there?’ I asked.

Not very bright, but the best I could manage under the circumstances. At least it was non-committal.

‘What’s the matter with this guy?’ Brandon demanded, and looked over at Mifflin.

‘He’s drunk,’ Mifflin said stolidly. ‘There’s nothing else the matter with him.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ Brandon said. ‘Get that woman in here.’

It came out of me before I could stop it.

‘No! I don’t want to see her! I don’t...’

The kind of voice you hear gangsters use on the movies when they’ve been cornered and are about to get the works. I snapped it off short, but it must have been pretty good because it brought Brandon to his feet and turned Mifflin as still as the Graven Image.

Then a voice said from the doorway. ‘What are you doing with him? Can’t you see he has the shakes?’

And there was Miss Bolus in a fawn linen frock, her red hair caught up with a green ribbon, and her chink eyes moving from Brandon to Mifflin and to me and back again.

‘I told you not to barge in on him,’ she went on, leaning her hips against the door frame, one hand touching her hair, pushing it into place. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone?’ She turned her head slightly to look at me. ‘Would you like a drink, honey? Or has the dog bitten you too hard?’

‘He doesn’t want a drink,’ Brandon said. ‘What did he mean, saying he didn’t want to see you? What goes on around here?’

I thought maybe my mind had given way. Right behind Miss Bolus, in the other room, was the casting couch. From where she stood, if she looked over her shoulder, she could see it. She must have seen what was on it as she came to my bedroom door. Brandon must have seen it. Mifflin must have seen it. And yet here they were as calm as three oysters on the ocean bed, making no attempt to put on the hand-cuffs, telling me I was drunk, and even offering me more drink.

Brandon was saying something as I pushed myself off the bed. But I didn’t listen. I had to see what was going on in the other room. I hoisted myself to my feet. I felt like a diver trying to walk on the floor of the sea without the sea being there.

Brandon suddenly stopped talking. None of them moved.

Maybe they sensed something of what was going on in my mind. Maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If I looked anything like the way I felt I must have been something to see. They watched me crawl across the room. Captain Webb on the last lap of his Channel swim had nothing on me; but I got to the door.

Miss Bolus put her hand on my arm. Her fingers dug into my muscles, but I wasn’t in the mood for warnings and I shoved her aside. All I wanted to do was to look into the other room; to look at Anita Cerf lying on my casting couch with her face framed in blood and a hole in her head big enough for me to poke my finger in.

I looked into the other room and I looked at the casting couch and I felt the breath whistle through my locked teeth, and sweat start out on my face the way a boxer sweats when he has been hit far south of the line.

There was no Colt automatic lying on the carpet and no blonde woman on the casting couch. I here was no yellow cushion soaked in bloo
d. No nothing — nothing at all.