His eye brightened. 'I wish I could put them to him myself.'
'I wish you could, too. But it might be dangerous.'
'Really?'
'Martel pulled a gun on another man today. I think you'd better let me go up against him.'
'And me,' Peter said. 'I insist on going along.'
Tappinger followed us out to our cars, as if to make up for his earlier impatience. I thought of offering him money for his work, five or ten dollars, but decided not to risk it. It might only remind him that he needed money and make him angry again.
8
I FOLLOWED PETER'S CORVETTE Inland into the foothills. Their masses had been half-absorbed by the blue darkness of the mountains. A few lights, bright as evening stars, were scattered up their slopes. One of them shone from Martel's house.
Peter stopped just short of the mailbox. The name stenciled on it stood out black in his headlights: Major General Hiram Bagshaw, U.S.A. (ret.) He cut the lights and started to get out.
The quiet of the evening shivered like a crystal. A high thin quavering cry came down from the direction of the house. It might have been a peacock, or a girl screaming.
Peter ran toward me. 'It's Ginny! Did you hear her?'
'I heard something.'
I tried to persuade him to wait in his car. But he insisted on riding up to the house with me.
It was a massive stone-and-glass building set on a pad, which had been excavated above the floor of the canyon. A floodlight above the door illuminated the flagstone courtyard where the Bentley was parked. The door itself was standing open.
Peter started in. I held him back. 'Take it easy. You'll get yourself shot.'
'She's my girl,' he said, in the teeth off all the evidence so far.
The girl appeared in the doorway. She had on a gray suit, the kind women use for traveling. Her movements seemed shaky and her eyes a little dull, as if she had already traveled too far and too fast.
Perhaps it was the brilliant light shining down on her face, but its skin appeared grayish and grainy. She had the sort of beauty - shape of head, slant of cheekbone and chin, curve of mouth - that made these other things irrelevant.
She held herself on the concrete stoop with a kind of forlorn elegance. Peter went to her and tried to put his arm around her. She disengaged herself.
'I told you not to come here.'
'That was you screaming, wasn't it? Did he hurt you?'
'Don't be silly. I saw a rat.'
She turned her lusterless eyes on me. 'Who are you?'
'My name is Archer. Is Mr. Martel home?'
'Not to you, I'm afraid.'
'Tell him I'm here, anyway. All I want is a chance to talk to him.'
She said to Peter: 'Please go. Take your friend with you. You have no right to interfere with us.'
She managed to produce a little spurt of anger: 'Go away now or I'll never speak to you again.'
His large face contorted itself in the light, as if it could transform its homeliness by sheer expression. 'I wouldn't care, Ginny, as long as you were safe.'
'I'm perfectly safe with my husband,' she said, and waited demurely for his surprise.
'You married him?'
'We were married on Saturday and I've never been happier in my life,' she said without any visible sign of happiness.
'You can get it annulled.'
'You don't seem to understand, I love my husband.'
Her voice was soft but there was a sting in the words which made him wince. 'Francis is everything I've ever dreamed of in a man. You can't change that, and please stop trying.'
'Thank you, ma Cherie.'
It was Martel, with his full accent on. No doubt he had been listening for an entrance cue. He appeared in the hallway behind Ginny and took hold of her upper arm. His hand against her light gray sleeve looked almost as dark as a mourning band.
Peter began to bite his mouth. I moved closer to him. Whether he was a French aristocrat or a cheap crook or a muddy mixture of the two, Ginny's husband would be a dangerous man to hit.
'Congratulations on your marriage,' I said without much irony.
He bowed, touching his chest. 'Merci beaucoup.'
'Where were you married?'
'In the chambers of a judge, by the judge himself. That makes it legal, I believe.'
'I meant what place.'
'The place doesn't matter. Life has its private occasions, you know, and I confess to a passion for privacy. Which my dear wife shares.'
He smiled down into her face. His smile had changed when he looked up at me. It was wide and mocking. 'Didn't we meet at the swimming pool today?'
'We did.'
'This man was here before,' Ginny said, 'when the fellow tried to take your picture. I saw him in the fellow's car.'
Martel stepped around his wife and came toward me. I wondered if his little gun was going to come into play. I also wondered what dark liquid had left a partial heel-print on the concrete stoop. More of it glistened on the heel of Martel's right shoe.
'Just who are you, m'sieur? And what gives you the right to ask questions?'
I told him my name. 'I'm a detective, and I'm hired to ask them.'
'Hired by this one here?'
He gave Peter a black look of contempt.
'That's right,' Peter said. 'And we're going to keep after you until we know what you want.'
'But I have what I want.'
He turned to Ginny with his arm stretched out. It was just a little like a scene from opera, more light than grand. Next minute the merry villagers would troop in for the nuptial dance.
I said to fend them off. 'One question that interests me at the moment - is that blood on your heel?'
He looked down at his feet, then quickly back to me. 'I expect it is blood.'
Ginny's curled fingers had gone to her mouth, both hands, as if another peacock cry was surging up in her throat. Martel said quietly and smoothly: 'My wife was alarmed by a rat, as she told you.'
He had been listening. 'I killed it.'
'With your heel?'
'Yes.'
He stamped on the asphalt. 'I'm a fencer, very fast on my feet.'
'I bet you are. May I see the corpse?'
'It would be hard to find, perhaps impossible. I threw it into the undergrowth for the bobcats. We have wild animals up here in the hills, don't we, ma cherie?'
Ginny dropped her hands and said yes. She was looking at Martel with a combination of respect and fear. Perhaps it was a form of love, I thought, but not one of the usual forms. His voice filled the vacuum again: 'My wife and I are very fond of the wild animals.'
'But not the rats.'
'No. Not the rats.' He offered me his wide cold grin. Above it his eyes and forceful nose seemed to be probing at me. 'Can I persuade you to leave now, Mr. Archer? I've been quite patient with you and your questions. And please take this one with you.'
He jerked his head toward Peter as if the fat young man didn't quite belong to the human race.
