Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler Raymond. Страница 24

“How does one get to be a private detective? You don’t mind my sizing you up a little? And push that table over here, will you? So I can reach the drinks.”

I got up and pushed the huge silver tray on a stand across the glossy floor to her side. She made two more drinks. I still had half of my second.

“Most of us are ex-cops,” I said. “I worked for the D.A. for a while. I got fired.”

She smiled nicely. “Not for incompetence, I’m sure.”

“No, for talking back. Have you had any more phone calls?”

“Well — “ She looked at Anne Riordan. She waited. Her look said things.

Anne Riordan stood up. She carried her glass, still full, over to the tray and set it down. “You probably won’t run short,” she said. “But if you do — and thanks very much for talking to me, Mrs. Grayle. I won’t use anything. You have my word for it.”

“Heavens, you’re not leaving,” Mrs. Grayle said with a smile.

Anne Riordan took her lower lip between her teeth and held it there for a moment as if making up her mind whether to bite it off and spit it out or leave it on a while longer.

“Sorry, afraid I’ll have to. I don’t work for Mr. Marlowe, you know. Just a friend. Good-by, Mrs. Grayle.”

The blonde gleamed at her. “I hope you’ll drop in again soon. Any time.” She pressed the bell twice. That got the butler. He held the door open.

Miss Riordan went out quickly and the door closed. For quite a while after it closed, Mrs. Grayle stared at it with a faint smile. “It’s much better this way, don’t you think?” she said after an interval of silence.

I nodded. “You’re probably wondering how she knows so much if she’s just a friend,” I said. “She’s a curious little girl. Some of it she dug out herself, like who you were and who owned the jade necklace. Some of it just happened. She came by last night to that dell where Marriott was killed. She was out riding. She happened to see a light and came down there.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Grayle lifted a glass quickly and made a face. “It’s horrible to think of. Poor Lin. He was rather a heel. Most of one’s friends are. But to die like that is awful.” She shuddered. Her eyes got large and dark.

“So it’s all right about Miss Riordan. She won’t talk. Her father was chief of police here for a long time,” I said.

“Yes. So she told me. You’re not drinking.”

“I’m doing what I call drinking.”

“You and I should get along. Did Lin — Mr. Marriott — tell you how the hold-up happened?”

“Between here and the Trocadero somewhere. He didn’t say exactly. Three or four men.”

She nodded her golden gleaming head. “Yes. You know there was something rather funny about that holdup. They gave me back one of my rings, rather a nice one, too.”

“He told me that.”

“Then again I hardly ever wore the jade. After all, it’s a museum piece, probably not many like it in the world, a very rare type of jade. Yet they snapped at it. I wouldn’t expect them to think it had any value much, would you?”

“They’d know you wouldn’t wear it otherwise. Who knew about its value?”

She thought. It was nice to watch her thinking. She still had her legs crossed, and still carelessly.

“All sorts of people, I suppose.”

“But they didn’t know you would be wearing it that night? Who knew that?”

She shrugged her pale blue shoulders. I tried to keep my eyes where they belonged.

“My maid. But she’s had a hundred chances. And I trust her — “

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just trust some people. I trust you.”

“Did you trust Marriott?”

Her face got a little hard. Her eyes a little watchful. “Not in some things. In others, yes. There are degrees.” She had a nice way of talking, cool, half-cynical, and yet not hardboiled. She rounded her words well.

“All right — besides the maid. The chauffeur?”

She shook her head, no. “Lin drove me that night, in his own car. I don’t think George was around at all. Wasn’t it Thursday?”

“I wasn’t there. Marriott said four or five days before in telling me about it. Thursday would have been an even week from last night.”

“Well, it was Thursday.” She reached for my glass and her fingers touched mine a little, and were soft to the touch. “George gets Thursday evening off. That’s the usual day, you know.” She poured a fat slug of mellow-looking Scotch into my glass and squirted in some fizz-water. It was the kind of liquor you think you can drink forever, and all you do is get reckless. She gave herself the same treatment.

“Lin told you my name?” she asked softly, the eyes still watchful.

“He was careful not to.”

“Then he probably misled you a little about the time. Let’s see what we have. Maid and chauffeur out. Out of consideration as accomplices, I mean.”

“They’re not out by me.”

“Well, at least I’m trying,” she laughed. “Then there’s Newton, the butler. He might have seen it on my neck that night. But it hangs down rather low and I was wearing a white fox evening wrap; no, I don’t think he could have seen it.”

“I bet you looked like a dream,” I said.

“You’re not getting a little tight, are you?”

“I’ve been known to be soberer.”

She put her head back and went off into a peal of laughter. I have only known four women in my life who could do that and still look beautiful. She was one of them.

“Newton is okey,” I said. “His type don’t run with hoodlums. That’s just guessing, though. How about the footman?”

She thought and remembered, then shook her head. “He didn’t see me.”

“Anybody ask you to wear the jade?”

Her eyes instantly got more guarded. “You’re not fooling me a damn bit,” she said.

She reached for my glass to refill it. I let her have it, even though it still had an inch to go. I studied the lovely lines of her neck.

When she had filled the glasses and we were playing with them again I said, “Let’s get the record straight and then I’ll tell you something. Describe the evening.”

She looked at her wrist watch, drawing a full length sleeve back to do it. “I ought to be — “

“Let him wait.”

Her eyes flashed at that. I liked them that way. “There’s such a thing as being just a little too frank,” she said.

“Not in my business. Describe the evening. Or have me thrown out on my ear. One or the other. Make your lovely mind up.”

“You’d better sit over here beside me.”

“I’ve been thinking that a long time,” I said. “Ever since you crossed your legs, to be exact.”

She pulled her dress down. “These damn things are always up around your neck.”

I sat beside her on the yellow leather chesterfield. “Aren’t you a pretty fast worker?” she asked quietly.

I didn’t answer her.

“Do you do much of this sort of thing?” she asked with a sidelong look.

“Practically none. I’m a Tibetan monk, in my spare time.”

“Only you don’t have any spare time.”

“Let’s focus,” I said. “Let’s get what’s left of our minds — or mine — on the problem. How much are you going to pay me?”

“Oh, that’s the problem. I thought you were going to get my necklace back. Or try to.”

“I have to work in my own way. This way.” I took a long drink and it nearly stood me on my head. I swallowed a little air.

“And investigate a murder,” I said.

“That has nothing to do with it. I mean that’s a police affair, isn’t it?”

“Yeah — only the poor guy paid me a hundred bucks to take care of him — and I didn’t. Makes me feel guilty. Makes we want to cry. Shall I cry?”

“Have a drink.” She poured us some more Scotch. It didn’t seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.

“Well, where have we got to?” I said, trying to hold my glass so that the whiskey would stay inside it. “No maid, no chauffeur, no butler, no footman. We’ll be doing our own laundry next. How did the holdup happen? Your version might have a few details Marriott didn’t give me.”