The Oxford Book of American Det (82 page)

“Go on. Telephone. See you later.”

Steve laughed harshly. “Life must go on and stuff.
And life’s crime’s fool...”
Steve Harnett’s hand wavered halfway to the telephone. As MacDonald left the room he could hear angry squawks coming from the still unanswered receiver.

The lieutenant had never been more wretched on professional business than he was as he drove to the little house in the hills east of Highland, almost in downtown Hollywood.

A baffling case was one thing. That you could sink your teeth into; or if it was too flatly impossible, you could take it to the Chula Negra and watch Nick Noble’s eyes glaze over as he probed to the truth. But something so wretchedly obvious as this...

He had, inadvertently, started it all. He had, quite advertently, foreseen its inevitable outcome. And here it was.

He remembered Steve Harnett, even back at the University, as flashy, clever, plausible, entertaining—but essentially weak. There’d been something (he couldn’t recall the details) about a girl that Mrs. Harnett didn’t quite approve of and how she’d managed to break up the relationship. And there’d been that odd episode when Steve was directing a play: the two girls, both beautiful, both good actresses, both avid for the lead—and Steve’s sudden pneumonia followed by two weeks’ convalescence on the desert while someone else took over the direction and casting...

A psychoanalyst, he reflected, could have fun—probably would have, if there was enough money in the defence. And meanwhile the layman could content himself with the old-fashioned verdict that there were certain people who simply didn’t have the courage to face up to things.

There was, of course, the remote possibility that Lynn might be the actual sender of the strychnine-laden chocolates. But how much did that direct responsibility matter compared with the ultimate responsibility of what Steve had done to both women?

Except, of course, that in that case Lynn would go to the gas chamber and Steve would probably go on writing radio melodramas...

There was no answer to his ring. The door was unlocked, so he didn’t have to worry about skeleton keys.

He didn’t have to worry about Lynn and the gas chamber, either.

She sat in a chair half-facing the door, well lit by the reading lamp which must have been left burning from the night before. Her face grinned at him, in that sardonic welcome which only a strychnine-fed host can provide.

There were smudges of chocolate on the grinning lips, and there was a box of chocolates on the table by the phone.

MacDonald used the phone to call the necessary technicians. Before they arrived he had discovered in the wastebasket the familiar wrapper and the familiar typed label.

“And now,” MacDonald demanded in the fourth booth on the left of the Chula Negra,

“where the hell are we?”

“Hell,” said Nick Noble succinctly and truthfully.

“It made sense before. Steve had made up his mind. He didn’t have the heart or the guts to make a clean cut, so he simply removed the one he didn’t want. It would’ve made the same kind of sense if we’d found only Lynn. But both of them... that switches the motivation altogether. Now we have to look for somebody who wants both women out of Steve Harnett’s life. And who has such a motive?” He paused and tried to answer himself. “I’ve got to look into the secretary. Every so often there’s something in this office-wife business. She’s a dowdy, homely wench, but she probably doesn’t see herself that way.”

“Labels,” said Nick Noble. “Let’s see.”

MacDonald placed them before him:

Mrs Stephen Harnett

11749 Verdugo Drive

Los Angeles 24, Calif.

Mrs Lynn Dvorak

6708 Las Aves Road

Hollywood 28, Calif.

Nick Noble leaned back in the booth and a film seemed to obscure his eyes. “Mrs...?” he said softly.

“Lynn? Divorced. Three years ago. That doesn’t enter in. You’ll notice the postmark, too. Downtown Hollywood. Steve admitted he’d been in to see the advertising agency; but that doesn’t help now. The secretary lives near here—which might be a good reason for not mailing here. And that reminds me: I’m down in this part of town to see her. I’d better—“

“Why?” said Nick Noble.

MacDonald smilingly disregarded the query. “Oh—one odd thing I forgot to tell you about Steve. When that New York call came through he muttered something about life goes on, and added:
Life’s crime’s fool.
I told you he’s a sucker for quotations, but I couldn’t spot this one; it bothered me, so I stopped at the library to use a concordance.

It’s Hotspur’s death speech
in Henry IV, Part I,
the same speech Huxley used for a title a while back, only it’s properly
Life’s time’s fool.
Interesting subconscious twist, don’t you think?”

Nick Noble’s lips moved softly, almost inaudibly:

But thought’s the slave of life, and

life’s time’s fool; And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop...

He broke off, looking almost embarrassed by so long and articulate a speech. “Wife and I,” he explained. “Used to read Shakespeare.
Time... crime... must have a stop.”

“Lieutenant MacDonald?”

This was a strange new voice, deep, with a slight Central European accent. Bitterly remembering what had begun when last a new voice accosted him in the Chula Negra, MacDonald looked up to see a dapper little man waving a sheet of notepaper at him.

“They tell me at your Headquarters,” the little man was saying, “I may possibly find you in this Lokal; so I come. Our friend Stephen Harnett gives me this letter for you long since, but I am first now in Los Angeles with the opportunity to present it.” Puzzled, MacDonald began to read:

Dear Don:

This is to introduce Dr Ferdinand Wahrschein, who is (need I say?) a friend of the sponsor’s wife and who is conducting a technical investigation into American police methods. I’d deeply appreciate (and so would the sponsor) any help which you can give him.

Sincerely,

STEVE

The lieutenant rose, tossing the letter to Nick Noble. “Delighted to meet you, but you catch me just when I am leaving to interview a witness, and I’d sooner do it alone. But I tell you what: if you really want to know how the local department cracks its toughest nuts, you stay right here with The Master.” And he was gone. Dr. Ferdinand Wahrschein stared speculatively at the pinched white face in the booth, then gingerly seated himself and resignedly began,
“Na also!
Is it your finding that anthropometric method—“

“Sherry?” suggested Nick Noble hospitably.

Miss Patricia McVeagh had a room (adjacent bath—no cooking priv.) in what had once been an old family mansion on Bunker Hill. Lieutenant MacDonald walked from the Chula Negra to Third and Hill and there rode up the funicular Angels’ Flight. He was glad he was in plain clothes. The once fashionable Bunker Hill district is now tenanted largely by Mexicans and by Americans of Spanish-Indian descent, many of whom feel they have good reason not to care for uniformed members of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Miss McVeagh opened the door and said, “Lieutenant MacDonald, isn’t it? What on earth...?” Her tone meant (a) she hadn’t seen today’s papers, or (b) such an actress was wasting her time as a secretary.

She hadn’t grown any more glamorous since the martinis in March; but there was something possibly preferable to glamour in the smile of hospitality which managed to conquer her puzzlement.

MacDonald began abruptly, “I don’t need to bother you with the complete fill-in,” which is one of the best known ways of causing witnesses to volunteer their own suggestions. “It’s just a routine matter of checking certain movements in the Harnett household. I gather you weren’t working there today?” Miss McVeagh smiled. “Is that what Mr. Harnett told you? I suppose I shouldn’t...

Look, Lieutenant; I don’t have anything to drink, but how about some Nescafe? I could talk easier with a cup in my hand. Do you mind?” MacDonald did not mind. He liked people to talk easy. And while he waited for the Nescafe, he decided he liked people who lived in cheap rooms and spent the money they saved on a judicious balance of Bach (Johann Sebastian) and Tatum (Art).

Miss McVeagh came back with two cups and a carbon copy of a letter. “If it’s just where do I stand with the Harnett household, this letter ought to clear things up. I mailed it this morning.”

MacDonald read:

Dear Mr. Harnett:

I realise that your financial position since
Pursuit
did not pick up the option makes my regular employment out of the question. But I still feel, as I told you that time when I so mistakenly took a second of your martinis, that a good secretary is also a collaborator.

For that reason, I’d like to offer to place my secretarial services on a speculative basis. The exact terms we can work out if you like the idea; but the general notion would be that I’d work on the usual schedule, but be paid anywhere from $0.00 to $?.?? according to your monthly level.

He stopped reading there and said, “You love him that much?”

“Love?” Her mouth opened wide.

“You’d work for nothing just to try to pull him back on his feet?”

“I would. So where does love come in?”

“It would seem,” MacDonald observed between swallows of Nescafe, “to indicate at least a certain... devotion.”

“Sure,” she nodded. “Devotion to Pat McVeagh. Look, Lieutenant. Steve Harnett’s good. When he does write, he can write like a blue streak. And when he gets himself straightened out, he’s going to hit the big time. What’s radio? What’s five hundred a week... said she blithely on Bunker Hill. But it’s true: it’s the real big time Steve Harnett’s headed for, and when he hits it, I want in.”

“This not being straightened out,” MacDonald ventured. “It’s been bad?”

“It’s been hell,” she said flatly. “I’ll tell you: Last week I was typing some letters on the standard out in the patio. He was supposed to be roughing out a plot in the study on his portable. Comes time for me to go home, he has to sign the letters, he hasn’t emerged, I take a chance on his wrath and knock on the study door. He doesn’t shout.

He just whispers ‘Come in,’ and I come in and there he is. He’s been in there eight hours. He hasn’t done one blessed word. His hands are shaking and his eyes look like he’s going to cry. I give him the letters, he picks up a pen, and it falls out of his fingers. That’s how bad it’s been. Lieutenant; but I’m still sold on him and I’ll take my chances.”

Dr. Ferdinand Wahrschein felt a buzzing in his head. He was not sure whether to attribute it to his first experience with California sherry by the water glass, or to the answers he was receiving to his methodically prepared questionnaire. Nine out of ten of those answers would baffle him completely; but the tenth would cast a lightning flash of clarification on a long obscure problem.

Pleasantly bebuzzed, he sat back and listened to Lieutenant MacDonald’s resume of his conversation with Miss McVeagh. “I’m sold on her, Nick,” MacDonald ended. “Here: read her letter. I’ll swear that’s an absolutely honest expression of just what her interest in Steve Harnett is. And if she’s out on motive, who’s left?” Nick Noble accepted the letter and handed back another paper in exchange.

“Something for you to read too. Came by messenger.” My Dear Mr. Noble:

My son informs me that he has once met you, and that you have had extraordinary success in solving problems perplexing to the regular police.

Though I do not know you, may I beg you to exert your abilities on the problem of the deaths of my son’s wife and of his friend? My son is no ordinary man; and his peace of mind, if you can secure it, will be deeply valued by

Your sincere friend,

FLORENCE HARNETT (Mrs. S. T. Harnett)

“See it now?” said Nick Noble.

MacDonald felt Dr. Wahrschein’s beady and eager eyes on him, and sensed vaguely that the honour of the department depended on him. “I can’t say...” he began.

“Labels,” said Nick Noble. “Look at them.”

MacDonald looked at the labels. He stared at them. He glared at them. He scrutinised their inscrutability. Then suddenly he seized the other three papers which lay on the table, spread them in a row before him, looked from one to the other, and slowly nodded.

“You see?” said Nick Noble. “Clear pattern. Three main points. 1: Groucho Marx.” MacDonald nodded gravely; he’d remembered that one. Meanwhile Dr. Ferdinand Wahrschein stared at him.

“2,” Noble went on: “the cliché.”

“Cliché?”

“The chocolates. Everybody knows gimmick. Botkin, Molineux, Anthony Berkeley.

Why eat? Unless...”

“Of course. And the third point...” MacDonald indicated the assorted papers before him and echoed Noble’s own statement. “Crime must have a stop.” Dr. Ferdinand Wahrschein giggled and beckoned to Rosario for more sherry. This essay on American police methods should be
aber fabelhaft!

Steve Harnett filled his glass of straight whiskey. “I’m alone,” he said thickly. “Alone.

They’re gone. Harriet’s gone. Lynn’s gone too.
How happy...
But they’re gone.” His bare toes wiggled in anguish. “And
Pursuit’s
gone too, come Thursday week. And McVeagh’s gone on account of I can’t pay her any more. I’m alone...”

“Are you?” Mrs. Harnett asked gently. She sat unobtrusively in a corner while her son paced the room.

“I know,” Steve muttered. “You’re here. You’re always here, darling, and you know how much... Blast it, there is truth in clichés. A man’s best mother is his—“ The phone rang.

“I’ll take it, dear.” Mrs. Harnett seemed hardly to move, but the phone had not rung three times before she answered it. “Just a minute,” she said quietly into the mouthpiece. “I’ll see if he’s in.” She put her hand over the diaphragm as she whispered, “New York.”

Steve let out a yell. “They fire me and still they own my soul while the contract runs!

But I can’t. Not now I can’t. Look at my hands. They’re quivering like an aspen... an aspic... an aspen...”

He was still judiciously weighing the two words when Mrs. Harnett had finished murmuring apologies and hung up. “I’ll stand between you and these things now, dear,” she murmured. “I’ll—“