Leave Her to Hell (2 page)

“I know. I’ve thought of that, and it’s something that Constance might possibly have done, as I remember her.”

“How do you remember her?”

“Well, as I said, she was intense. She was always excited or depressed, and I could never quite understand what she was excited or depressed about. Ideas that occurred to her or were passed on to her by someone. Impressions and suggestions. Things like that. Little things that would never have influenced most people in the least. She was pretty, in a way, but it took quite a while before you realized it. She had a kind of delicacy or fragility about her, but I don’t believe that she was actually fragile physically. It was just an impression. She didn’t appeal to men, and I never thought that men appealed to her. In the year we lived together, she never went out with a man that I can recall. Her parents had money. That’s why I lived with her. I had practically no money at all then, and she took a fancy to me and wanted to rent an apartment for us, and so she did, and I stayed with her until near the end of the school year. I married a boy who also had money. Never mind me, though. The point is, we went away from school, and I didn’t see Constance again. She was angry with me and refused to say good-bye. I’ve always been sorry.”

“How did she happen to meet and marry Graham Markley?”

“I don’t know. Graham is susceptible to variety in women. Probably her particular kind of prettiness, her fragility or something, happened to appeal to him at the time they met I imagine their marriage was one of those sudden things that usually should never happen.”

“I see. How did you learn so much about her? Not back there in the beginning. I mean after she married Markley. About her baby, her affair with Lawler, those things.”

“Oh, I picked up bits from various sources, but most of it I learned from Maria. She was maid to Constance, you see, when Constance and Graham were living together. When I came along and moved into this apartment, I sort of acquired her. Graham still had her and didn’t know what to do with her, so he sent her over to me. Isn’t that strange?”

“Convenient, I’d say. Did Maria see Constance Markley the night of her disappearance?”

“Yes. She helped Constance dress. Apparently she was the last person that Constance spoke to.”

“May I speak with her for a moment?”

“If you wish. I’ll get her.”

She got up and walked barefooted off the terrace into the black-and-white tiled room, and I drank the last of my gin and tonic and wished for another, and in about three minutes, not longer, she returned with Maria. She sat down again and told Maria that she could also sit down if she pleased, but Maria preferred to stand. Her small brown face was perfectly composed.

“What do you want me to tell you?” she said.

“I want you to answer a few questions about Mrs. Markley,” I said. “Constance Markley, that is. Will you do that?”

“If I can.”

“Miss Salem says that you saw Mrs. Markley the night she disappeared. Is that so?”

“It’s so. I helped her dress for the evening.”

“Did she go out alone?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Do you know where she was going?”

“I assumed that she was going to see Mr. Lawler. She didn’t tell me.”

“Did she go to see Mr. Lawler often?”

“Twice a week, maybe. Sometimes three.”

“How do you know? Did she confide in you?”

“More in me than anyone else. She had to talk to someone.”

“I see. Were you devoted to Mrs. Markley?”

“Yes. She was very kind, very unhappy. I pitied her.”

“Because of the death of her child?”

“Partly because of that. I don’t know. She was not happy.”

“Did you approve of her affair with Mr. Lawler?”

“Not approve, exactly. I understood it. She needed a special kind of love. A kind of attention.”

“Mr. Lawler gave her this?”

“He must have given it to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone on with him. That’s reasonable.”

“Yes, it is. It’s reasonable. And so are you, Maria. You’re a very reasonable woman. Tell me. What was your impression of her the night she disappeared?”

“Pardon?”

“Her emotional state, I mean. Was she depressed? Cheerful?”

“Not depressed. Not cheerful. She was eager. There’s a difference between eagerness and cheerfulness.”

“That’s true. Besides being reasonable, Maria, you are also perceptive. Did she seem excessively agitated in any way?”

“Just eager. She was always eager when she went to see Mr. Lawler.”

“Do you think that Mr. Markley was aware of the relationship between his wife and Lawler?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t show much interest in anything Mrs. Markley did. Not even when the child died.”

“All right. Just one more question, Maria. What time did Mrs. Markley leave here?”

“About eight. Perhaps a few minutes before or after.”

“Thank you, Maria.”

Maria turned her still brown face toward Faith Salem, who smiled and nodded. The maid nodded in return, three times, and went away. Faith Salem stood up abruptly, standing with her legs spread and her hands rammed into the patch pockets of the short white coat.

“Well?” she said.

“It looks hopeless,” I said. “You’d be wasting your money.”

“Perhaps so. If I don’t waste it on you, I’ll waste it on someone else.”

“In that case, it might as well be me.”

“You agree, then? You’ll take the job?”

Looking up at her, I was beginning to feel dominated, which was not good, so I removed the feeling by standing.

“Tentatively,” I said.

“What do you mean, tentatively?”

“I’ll make a preliminary investigation. If anything significant or interesting comes out of it, I’ll go ahead. If not, I’ll quit. You’ll pay my expenses and twenty-five dollars a day. Are those terms acceptable?”

“Yes. I accept.”

“Another thing. I’m to be allowed to talk with whomever I think necessary. Is that also agreed?”

“Yes, of course.” She hesitated, her soft lower lip protruding again in the darkly brooding expression. “You mean Graham, I suppose. I’d prefer, naturally, that he not know whom you’re working for.”

“I won’t tell him unless I think it’s advisable. I promise that much.”

“That’s good enough. I have confidence in your word, Mr. Hand.”

“Ethical. Someone told you, and you believe it, and that’s what I am. I’ll begin my investigation, if you don’t mind, by asking you one more question. What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid? I’m afraid of nothing. I honestly believe that I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life.”

“I’m ready to concede that you probably haven’t. Let me put it differently. What disturbs you about Constance Markley’s disappearance?”

“I’ve explained that. I don’t like loose ends. Graham has asked me to marry him. For my own reasons, I want to accept. First, however, he has to get a divorce. He can get it, I suppose, on grounds of desertion. I only want to know that it really was desertion.”

“That’s not quite convincing. What alternative to desertion, specifically, do you have in mind?”

“You said you would ask one more question, Mr. Hand. You’ve asked two.”

“Excuse me. You can see how dedicated I become to my work.”

“I should appreciate that, of course, and I do. I honestly have no specific alternative in mind. I just don’t like the situation as it stands. There’s another thing, however. I knew Constance, and I liked her, and now by an exceptional turn of events I’m in the position of appropriating something that was hers. I want to know that it’s all right. I want to know where she went, and why she went wherever she did, and that everything is all right there and will be all right here, whatever happens.”

I believed her. I believed everything she told me. She was a woman I could not doubt or condemn or even criticize. If I had been as rich as Graham Markley, I’d have taken her away, later if not then, and I’d have kept her, and there would have been between us, in the end, more than the money which would have been essential in the beginning.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Do you have a photograph of Constance Markley that I can take along?”

“Yes. There’s one here that Maria brought. I’ll get it for you.”

She went inside and was gone for a few minutes and came back with the photograph. I took it from her and put it into the side pocket of my coat without looking at it. There would be plenty of time later to look at it, and now, in the last seconds of our first meeting, I wanted to look at Faith Salem.

“Good-bye,” I said. “I’ll see you again in a few days and let you know if I intend to go ahead.”

“Call before you come,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Certainly.”

“I’ll see you to the door.”

“No. Don’t bother. You’d better stay here in the sun. In another half hour, it’ll be gone.”

“Yes. So it will.” She looked up at the white disk in the sky beyond a ridge of tooled stone. “Good-bye, then. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

She offered me her hand, and I took it and held it and released it. In the middle of the black-and-white acre, I paused and looked back. She had already removed the short white coat and was lying on her stomach on the yellow pad. Her face was buried in the crook of an elbow.

I went on out and back to my office and put my feet on the desk and thought about her lying there in the sun. There was no sun in my office. In front of me was a blank wall, and behind me was a narrow window, and outside the narrow window was a narrow alley. Whenever I got tired of looking at the wall I could get up and stand by the window and look down into the alley, and whenever I got tired of looking into the alley I could sit down and look at the wall again. And whenever I got tired of looking at both the wall and the alley, which was frequently, I could go out somewhere and look at something else. Now I simply closed my eyes and saw clearly behind the lids a lean brown body interrupted in two places by the briefest of white hiatuses.

This was pleasant but not of the first importance. It was more important, though less pleasant, to think about Graham Markley. Conceding the priority of importance, I began reluctantly to think about him, and after a few minutes of reluctant thinking, I lowered my feet and reached for a telephone directory. After locating his name and number, I dialed the number and waited through a couple of rings, and then a voice came on that made me feel with its first careful syllable as if I’d neglected recently to bathe and clean my fingernails.

“Graham Markley’s residence,” the voice said.

“This is Percival Hand,” I said. “I’m a private detective. I’d like to speak with Mr. Markley.”

Ordinarily I use the abbreviated version of my name, just plain Percy, but I felt compelled by the voice to be as proper and impressive as possible. As it was, in the exorbitantly long pause that followed, I felt as if I had been unpardonably offensive.

“If you will just hold the wire,” the voice said at last, “I shall see if Mr. Markley is at home.”

Which meant, of course, that Mr. Markley was certainly at home, but that it remained to be seen if he would be so irresponsible as to talk with a private detective on the telephone, which was surely unlikely. I held the wire and waited. I inspected my nails and found them clean. I tried to smell myself and couldn’t. Another voice came on abruptly, and it was, as it developed, the voice of Graham Markley.

“Graham Markley speaking. What can I do for you, Mr. Hand?”

“I’d like to make an appointment to see you personally.”

“About what?”

I had already considered the relative advantages in this particular instance of candor and deception, and I had decided that there was probably little or nothing to choose between them. In cases where deception gains me nothing, I’m always prepared to be candid, and that’s what I was now.

“About your wife. Your third wife, that is.”

“I can’t imagine why my wife should be a point of discussion between you and me, Mr. Hand.”

“I thought you might be able to give me some useful information.”

There was a moment of waiting. The wire sang softly in the interim.

“For what purpose?” he said. “Am I to understand that you’re investigating my wife’s disappearance?”

“That’s right.”

“At whose request?”

“I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.”

“Come, Mr. Hand. If you expect any co-operation from me, you’ll have to be less reticent.”

“I haven’t received any co-operation from you yet, Mr. Markley.”

“It was reasonably apparent to everyone, including the police and myself, why my wife went away. I confess that I can’t see any use in stirring up an unpleasant matter that I had hoped was forgotten. Do you know anything that would justify it?”

Again I evaluated the advantages of candor and deception, and this time I chose deception. The advantages in its favor seemed so palpable, as a matter of fact, that the evaluation required no more than a second.

“I’ve learned something,” I lied, “that I think will interest you.”

“Perhaps you had better tell me what it is.”

“Sorry. I’d rather not discuss it over the telephone.”

“I can’t see you today. It’s impossible.”

“Tomorrow will do. If you’ll set a time, I’ll be happy to call on you.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll come to your office.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Thank you for your consideration. However, I prefer to see you in your office. How about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

“Good. I’ll be expecting you.”

I told him where my office was, and we said good-bye and hung up. Rocking back in my chair, I elevated my feet again and closed my eyes. Faith Salem was still lying in the sun. I watched her for a few moments and then opened my eyes and lit a cigarette and began thinking about Regis Lawler. I didn’t accomplish much by this, for I didn’t have much material for thought to start with. I had met him casually a few times quite a while ago, in this or that place we had both gone to, but most of what I knew about him was incidental to what I knew about his brother, who was older and generally more important and had more about him worth knowing.

The brother’s name was Silas. After long and precarious apprentice years in a number of illegal operations, he had begun slowly to achieve a kind of acceptance, even respectability, that increased in ratio to the measure of his security. Now he was the owner of a fine restaurant. At least, it was a restaurant among other things, and it was that equally, if not primarily. When you went there, it was assumed that you had come for good food, and that’s what you got. You got it in rich and quiet surroundings to the music of a string quartet that sometimes played Beethoven as well as Fritz Kreisler and Johann Strauss. The chefs were the best that Lawler could hire, and the best that Lawler could hire were as good as any and better than most. On the correct principle that good food should tolerate no distractions, the service was performed by elderly colored waiters who were artists in the difficult technique of being solicitous without being obtrusive.

If you wanted distractions, you went downstairs, below street level. This was known as the Apache Room, a little bit of the Left Bank transplanted, and it was phony and made no pretense of being anything else, and it was frankly for people who liked it that way. There were red-checked cloths on the tables, pretty girls with pretty legs who serviced the tables, and a small orchestra with the peculiar quality that is supposed to be peculiarly Parisian. Around the walls were murals of girls in black stockings doing the can-can alternating with other murals of other girls being maltreated by Apaches and always showing quite a lot of one white thigh above a fancy garter in the deep slit of a tight skirt.

On the floor above the restaurant, up one flight of carpeted stairs, you could go to gamble if you chose. In a series of three large rooms muffled in drapes and carpets, you could play roulette or poker or blackjack or shoot dice, and sometimes you might even win at one or the other or all, but more often, of course, you lost and were expected to lose graciously. If you did not, as sometimes happened, you were escorted outside by a brace of hard-handed gentlemen in evening clothes, and you were thereafter
persona non grata
until you received absolution and clearance from Silas Lawler himself. The games were reputed to be honest, and they probably were.

In the basement, you could dance and make moderate love and get drunk, if you wished, on expensive drinks. In the restaurant, you did not get drunk or dance or make love or look at naughty murals. In the game rooms, you gambled quietly with no limit except your own judgment and bank account, and you saved everything else for some other place and some other time. Patrons passed as they pleased from one level to another, but the atmosphere was never permitted to go with them. The basement never climbed the stairs, nor did the upper floors descend.