“A good night’s sleep and a change of company,” I said, but that didn’t mean anything to Miss Lymington.
I went along the hallway and peeked into the bedroom. They had put a pair of my pajamas on her. She lay almost on her back with one arm outside the bedclothes. The sleeve of the pajama coat was turned up six inches or more. The small hand below the end of the sleeve was in a tight fist. Her face looked drawn and white and quite peaceful. I poked about in the closet and got a suitcase and put some junk in it. As I started back out I looked at Merle again. Her eyes opened and looked straight up at the ceiling. Then they moved just enough to see me and a faint little smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
“Hello.” It was a weak spent little voice, a voice that knew its owner was in bed and had a nurse and everything.
“Hello.”
I went around near her and stood looking down, with my polished smile on my clear-cut features.
“I’m all right,” she whispered. “I’m fine. Amn’t I?”
“Sure.”
“Is this your bed I’m in?”
“That’s all right. It won’t bite you.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said. A hand came sliding towards me and lay palm up, waiting to be held. I held it. “I’m not afraid of you. No woman would ever be afraid of you, would she?”
“Coming from you,” I said, “I guess that’s meant to be a compliment.”
Her eyes smiled, then got grave again. “I lied to you,” she said softly. “I—I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“I know. I was over there. Forget it. Don’t think about it.”
“People are always telling you to forget unpleasant things. But you never do. It’s so kind of silly to tell you to, I mean.”
“Okay,” I said, pretending to be hurt. “I’m silly. How about making some more sleep?”
She turned her head until she was looking into my eyes. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand.
“Will the police come here?” she asked.
“No. And try not to be disappointed.”
She frowned. “You must think I’m an awful fool.”
“Well—maybe.”
A couple of tears formed in her eyes and slid out at the corners and rolled gently down her cheeks.
“Does Mrs. Murdock know where I am?”
“Not yet. I’m going over and tell her.”
“Will you have to tell her—everything?”
“Yeah, why not?”
She turned the head away from me. “She’ll understand,” her voice said softly. “She knows the awful thing I did eight years ago. The frightful terrible thing.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s why she’s been paying Vannier money all this time.”
“Oh dear,” she said, and brought her other hand out from under the bedclothes and pulled away the one I was holding so that she could squeeze them tightly together. “I wish you hadn’t had to know that. I wish you hadn’t. Nobody ever knew but Mrs. Murdock. My parents never knew. I wish you hadn’t.”
The nurse came in at the door and looked at me severely. “I don’t think she ought to be talking like this, Mr. Marlowe. I think you should leave now.”
“Look, Miss Lymington, I’ve known this little girl two days. You’ve only known her two hours. This is doing her a lot of good.”
“It might bring on another—er—spasm,” she said severely, avoiding my eyes.
“Well, if she has to have it, isn’t it better for her to have it now, while you’re here, and get it over with? Go on out to the kitchen and buy yourself a drink.”
“I never drink on duty,” she said coldly. “Besides somebody might smell my breath.”
“You’re working for me now. All my employees are required to get liquored up from time to time. Besides, if you had a good dinner and were to eat a couple of the Chasers in the kitchen cabinet, nobody would smell your breath.”
She gave me a quick grin and went back out of the room. Merle had been listening to this as if it was a frivolous interruption to a very serious play. Rather annoyed.
“I want to tell you all about it,” she said breathlessly. “I—”
I reached over and put a paw over her two locked hands. “Skip it. I know. Marlowe knows everything—except how to make a decent living. It doesn’t amount to beans. Now you’re going back to sleep and tomorrow I’m going to take you on the way back to Wichita—to visit your parents. At Mrs. Murdock’s expense.”
“Why, that’s wonderful of her,” she cried, her eyes opening wide and shining. “But she’s always been wonderful to me.”
I got up off the bed. “She’s a wonderful woman,” I said, grinning down at her. “Wonderful. I’m going over there now and we’re going to have a perfectly lovely little talk over the teacups. And if you don’t go to sleep right now, I won’t let you confess to any more murders.”
“You’re horrid,” she said. “I don’t like you.” She turned her head away and put her arms back under the bedclothes and shut her eyes.
I went towards the door. At the door I swung around and looked back quickly. She had one eye open, watching me. I gave her a leer and it snapped shut in a hurry.
I went back to the living room, gave Miss Lymington what was left of my leer, and went out with my suitcase.
I drove over to Santa Monica Boulevard. The hockshop was still open. The old Jew in the tall black skullcap seemed surprised that I was able to redeem my pledge so soon. I told him that was the way it was in Hollywood.
He got the envelope out of the safe and tore it open and took my money and pawn ticket and slipped the shining gold coin out on his palm.
“So valuable this is I am hating to give it back to you,” he said. “The workmanship, you understand, the workmanship, is beautiful.”
“And the gold in it must be worth all of twenty dollars,” I said.
He shrugged and smiled and I put the coin in my pocket and said goodnight to him.
32
The moonlight lay like a white sheet on the front lawn except under the deodar where there was the thick darkness of black velvet. Lights in two lower windows were lit and in one upstairs room visible from the front. I walked across the stumble stones and rang the bell.
I didn’t look at the little painted Negro by the hitching block. I didn’t pat his head tonight. The joke seemed to have worn thin.
A white-haired, red-faced woman I hadn’t seen before opened the door and I said: “I’m Philip Marlowe. I’d like to see Mrs. Murdock. Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock.”
She looked doubtful. “I think she’s gone to bed,” she said. “I don’t think you can see her.”
“It’s only nine o’clock.”
“Mrs. Murdock goes to bed early.” She started to close the door.
She was a nice old thing and I hated to give the door the heavy shoulder. I just leaned against it.
“It’s about Miss Davis,” I said. “It’s important. Could you tell her that?”
“I’ll see.”
I stepped back and let her shut the door.
A mockingbird sang in a dark tree nearby. A car tore down the street much too fast and skidded around the next corner. The thin shreds of a girl’s laughter came back along the dark street as if the car had spilled them out in its rush.
The door opened after a while and the woman said: “You can come in.”
I followed her across the big empty entrance room. A single dim light burned in one lamp, hardly reaching to the opposite wall. The place was too still, and the air needed freshening. We went along the hall to the end and up a flight of stairs with a carved handrail and newel post. Another hall at the top, a door open towards the back.
I was shown in at the open door and the door was closed behind me. It was a big sitting room with a lot of chintz, a blue and silver wallpaper, a couch, a blue carpet and french windows open on a balcony. There was an awning over the balcony.
Mrs. Murdock was sitting in a padded wing chair with a card table in front of her. She was wearing a quilted robe and her hair looked a little fluffed out. She was playing solitaire. She had the pack in her left hand and she put a card down and moved another one before she looked up at me.
Then she said: “Well?”
I went over by the card table and looked down at the game. It was Canfield.
“Merle’s at my apartment,” I said. “She threw an ingbing.”
Without looking up she said:. “And just what is an ingbing, Mr. Marlowe?”
She moved another card, then two more quickly.
“A case of the vapors, they used to call it,” I said. “Ever catch yourself cheating at that game?”
“It’s no fun if you cheat,” she said gruffly. “And very little if you don’t. What’s this about Merle? She has never stayed out like this before. I was getting worried about her.”
I pulled a slipper chair over and sat down across the table from her. It put me too low down. I got up and got a better chair and sat in that.
“No need to worry about her,” I said. “I got a doctor and a nurse. She’s asleep. She was over to see Vannier.”
She laid the pack of cards down and folded her big gray hands on the edge of the table and looked at me solidly.
“Mr. Marlowe,” she said, “you and I had better have something out. I made a mistake calling you in the first place. That was my dislike of being played for a sucker, as you would say, by a hardboiled little animal like Linda. But it would have been much better, if I had not raised the point at all. The loss of the doubloon would have been much easier to bear than you are. Even if I had never got it back.”
“But you did get it back,” I said.
She nodded. Her eyes stayed on my face. “Yes. I got it back. You heard how.”
“I didn’t believe it.”
“Neither did I,” she said calmly. “My fool of a son was simply taking the blame for Linda. An attitude I find childish.”
“You have a sort of knack,” I said, “of getting yourselves surrounded with people who take such attitudes.”
She picked her cards up again and reached down to put a black ten on a red jack, both cards that were already in the layout. Then she reached sideways to a small heavy table on which was her port. She drank some, put the glass down and gave me a hard level stare.
“I have a feeling that you are going to be insolent, Mr. Marlowe.”
I shook my head. “Not insolent. Just frank. I haven’t done so badly for you, Mrs. Murdock. You did get the doubloon back. I kept the police away from you—so far. I didn’t do anything on the divorce, but I found Linda—your son knew where she was all the time—and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with her. She knows she made a mistake marrying Leslie. However, if you don’t think you got value—”
She made a humph noise and played another card. She got the ace of diamonds up to the top line. “The ace of clubs is buried, darn it. I’m not going to get it out in time.”