“So there was only one thing to do. I’ve known that for years, really. It was all my fault and Mrs. Murdock has been so wonderful to me. It couldn’t make me any worse than I was already, could it?”
I put my hand up and rubbed my cheek hard, to quiet the nerve. She forgot that I hadn’t answered her and went on again.
“So I did it,” she said. “He was there in his pajamas, with a glass beside him. He was leering at me. He didn’t even get up to let me in. But there was a key in the front door. Somebody had left a key there. It was—it was—” her voice jammed in her throat.
“It was a key in the front door,” I said. “So you were able to get in.”
“Yes.” She nodded and almost smiled again. “There wasn’t anything to it, really. I don’t even remember hearing the noise. But there must have been a noise, of course. Quite a loud noise.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“I went over quite close to him, so I couldn’t miss,” she said.
“And what did Mr. Vannier do?”
“He didn’t do anything at all. He just leered, sort of. Well, that’s all there is to it. I didn’t like to go back to Mrs. Murdock and make any more trouble for her. And for Leslie.” Her voice hushed on the name, and hung suspended, and a little shiver rippled over her body. “So I came here,” she said. “And when you didn’t answer the bell, I found the office and asked the manager to let me in and wait for you. I knew you would know what to do.”
“And what did you touch in the house while you were there?” I asked. “Can you remember at all? I mean, besides the front door. Did you just go in at the door and come out without touching anything in the house?”
She thought and her face stopped moving. “Oh, I remember one thing,” she said. “I put the light out. Before I left. It was a lamp. One of these lamps that shine upwards, with big bulbs. I put that out.”
I nodded and smiled at her. Marlowe, one smile, cheerful. “What time was this—how long ago?”
“Oh just before I came over here. I drove. I had Mrs. Murdock’s car. The one you asked about yesterday. I forgot to tell you that she didn’t take it when she went away. Or did I? No, I remember now I did tell you.”
“Let’s see,” I said. “Half an hour to drive here anyway. You’ve been here close to an hour. That would be about five-thirty when you left Mr. Vannier’s house. And you put the light off.”
“That’s right.” She nodded again, quite brightly. Pleased at remembering. “I put the light out.”
“Would you care for a drink?” I asked her.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head quite vigorously. “I never drink anything at all.”
“Would you mind if I had one?”
“Certainly not. Why should I?”
I stood up, gave her a studying look. Her lip was still going up and her head was still going around, but I thought not so far. It was like a rhythm which is dying down.
It was difficult to know how far to go with this. It might be that the more she talked, the better. Nobody knows very much about the time of absorption of a shock.
I said: “Where is your home?”
“Why—I live with Mrs. Murdock. In Pasadena.”
“I mean, your real home. Where your folks are.”
“My parents live in Wichita,” she said. “But I don’t go there—ever. I write once in a while, but I haven’t seen them for years.”
“What does your father do?”
“He has a dog and cat hospital. He’s a veterinarian. I hope they won’t have to know. They didn’t about the other time. Mrs. Murdock kept it from everybody.”
“Maybe they won’t have to know,” I said. “I’ll get my drink.”
I went out around the back of her chair to the kitchen and poured it and I made it a drink that was a drink. I put it down in a lump and took the little gun off my hip and saw that the safety was on. I smelled the muzzle, broke out the magazine. There was a shell in the chamber, but it was one of those guns that won’t fire when the magazine is out. I held it so that I could look into the breech. The shell in there was the wrong size and was crooked against the breech block. It looked like a .32. The shells in the magazine were the right size, .25’s. I fitted the gun together again and went back to the living room.
I hadn’t heard a sound. She had just slid forward in a pile in front of the chair, on top of her nice hat. She was as cold as a mackerel.
I spread her out a little and took her glasses off and made sure she hadn’t swallowed her tongue. I wedged my folded handkerchief into the corner of her mouth so that she wouldn’t bite her tongue when she came out of it. I went to the phone and called Carl Moss.
“Phil Marlowe, Doc. Any more patients or are you through?”
“All through,” he said. “Leaving. Trouble?”
“I’m home,” I said. “Four-o-eight Bristol Apartments, if you don’t remember. I’ve got a girl here who has pulled a faint. I’m not afraid of the faint, I’m afraid she may be nuts when she comes out of it.”
“Don’t give her any liquor,” be said. “I’m on my way.”
I hung up and knelt down beside her. I began to rub her temples. She opened her eyes. The lip started to lift. I pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth. She looked up at me and said: “I’ve been over to Mr. Vannier’s house. He lives in Sherman Oaks. I—”
“Do you mind if I lift you up and put you on the davenport? You know me—Marlowe, the big boob that goes around asking all the wrong questions.”
“Hello,” she said.
I lifted her. She went stiff on me, but she didn’t say anything. I put her on the davenport and tucked her skirt down over her legs and put a pillow under her head and picked her hat up. It was as flat as a flounder. I did what I could to straighten it out and laid it aside on the desk.
She watched me sideways, doing this.
“Did you call the police?” she asked softly.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’ve been too busy.”
She looked surprised. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought she looked a little hurt, too.
I opened up her bag and turned my back to her to slip the gun back into it. While I was doing that I took a look at what else was in the bag. The usual oddments, a couple of handkerchiefs, lipstick, a silver and red enamel compact with powder in it, a couple of tissues, a purse with some hard money and a few dollar bills, no cigarettes, no matches, no tickets to the theater.
I pulled open the zipper pocket at the back. That held her driver’s license and a flat packet of bills, ten fifties. I riffled them. None of them brand new. Tucked into the rubber band that held them was a folded paper. I took it out and opened it and read it. It was neatly typewritten, dated that day. It was a common receipt form and it would, when signed, acknowledge the receipt of $500. “Payment on Account.”
It didn’t seem as if it would ever be signed now. I slipped money and receipt into my pocket. I closed the bag and looked over at the davenport.
She was looking at the ceiling and doing that with her face again. I went into my bedroom and got a blanket to throw over her.
Then I went to the kitchen for another drink.
28
Dr. Carl Moss was a big burly Jew with a Hitler mustache, pop eyes and the calmness of a glacier. He put his hat and bag in a chair and went over and stood looking down at the girl on the davenport inscrutably.
“I’m Dr. Moss,” he said. “How are you?”
She said: “Aren’t you the police?”
He bent down and felt her pulse and then stood there watching her breathing. “Where does it hurt, Miss—”
“Davis,” I said. “Miss Merle Davis.”
“Miss Davis.”
“Nothing hurts me,” she said, staring up at him. “I—I don’t even know why I’m lying here like this. I thought you were the police. You see, I killed a man.”
“Well, that’s a normal human impulse,” he said. “I’ve killed dozens.” He didn’t smile.
She lifted her lip and moved her head around for him.
“You know you don’t have to do that,” he said, quite gently. “You feel a twitch of the nerves here and there and you proceed to build it up and dramatize it. You can control it, if you want to.”
“Can I?” she whispered.
“If you want to,” he said. “You don’t have to. It doesn’t make any difference to me either way. Nothing pains at all, eh?”
“No.” She shook her head.
He patted her shoulder and walked out to the kitchen. I went after him. He leaned his hips against the sink and gave me a cool stare. “What’s the story?”
“She’s the secretary of a client. A Mrs. Murdock in Pasadena. The client is rather a brute. About eight years ago a man made a hard pass at Merle. How hard I don’t know. Then—I don’t mean immediately—but around that time he fell out of a window or jumped. Since then she can’t have a man touch her—not in the most casual way, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.” His pop eyes continued to read my face. “Does she think he jumped out of the window on her account?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Murdock is the man’s widow. She married again and her second husband is dead too. Merle has stayed with her. The old woman treats her like a rough parent treats a naughty child.”
“I see. Regressive.”
“What’s that?”
“Emotional shock, and the subconscious attempt to escape back to childhood. If Mrs. Murdock scolds her a good deal, but not too much, that would increase the tendency. Identification of childhood subordination with childhood protection.”
“Do we have to go into that stuff?” I growled.
He grinned at me calmly. “Look, pal. The girl’s obviously a neurotic. It’s partly induced and partly deliberate. I mean to say that she really enjoys a lot of it. Even if she doesn’t realize that she enjoys it. However, that’s not of immediate importance. What’s this about killing a man?”
“A man named Vannier who lives in Sherman Oaks. There seems to be some blackmail angle. Merle had to take him his money, from time to time. She was afraid of him. I’ve seen the guy. A nasty type. She went over there this afternoon and she says she shot him.”
“Why?”
“She says she didn’t like the way he leered at her.
“Shot him with what?”
“She had a gun in her bag. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But if she shot him, it wasn’t with that. The gun’s got a wrong cartridge in the breech. It can’t be fired as it is. Also it hasn’t been fired.”
“This is too deep for me,” he said. “I’m just a doctor. What did you want me to do with her?”
“Also,” I said, ignoring the question, “she said the lamp was turned on and it was about five-thirty of a nice summery afternoon. And the guy was wearing his sleeping suit and there was a key in the lock of the front door. And he didn’t get up to let her in. He just sort of sat there sort of leering.”