checkbook. He opened it and reached for a pen.
“I owe you a thousand dollars,” he said quietly. He wrote in the book. Then on the counterfoil. He tore the check out, came around the desk with it, and dropped it in front of me. “Is that all right?”
I leaned back and looked up at him and didn’t touch the check and didn’t answer him. His face was tight and drawn. His eyes were deep and empty.
“I suppose you think I killed her and let Lennox take the rap,” he said slowly. “She was a tramp all right. But you don’t beat a woman’s head in just because she’s a tramp. Candy knows I went there sometimes. The funny part of it is I don’t think he would tell. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
“Wouldn’t matter if he did,” I said. “Harlan Potter’s friends wouldn’t listen to him. Also, she wasn’t killed with that bronze thing. She was shot through the head with her own gun.”
“She maybe had a gun,” he said almost dreamily. “But I didn’t know she had been shot. It wasn’t published.”
“Didn’t know or didn’t remember?” I asked him. “No, it wasn’t published.”
“What are you trying to do to me, Marlowe?” His voice was still dreamy, almost gentle. “What do you want me to do? Tell my wife? Tell the police? What good would it do?”
“You said a good man died for you.”
“All I meant was that if there had been any real investigation I might have been identified as one—but only one—of the possible suspects. It would have finished me in several ways.”
“I didn’t come here to accuse you of a murder, Wade. What’s eating you is that you’re not sure yourself. You have a record of violence to your wife. You black out when you’re drunk. It’s no argument to say you don’t beat a woman’s head in just because she’s a tramp. That is exactly what somebody did do. And the guy who got credit for the job seemed to me a lot less likely than you.”
He walked to the open french windows and stood looking out at the shimmer of heat over the lake. He didn’t answer me. He hadn’t moved or spoken a couple of minutes later when there was a light knock at the door and Candy came in wheeling a tea wagon, with a crisp white cloth, silver-covered dishes, a pot of coffee, and two bottles of beer.
“Open the beer, boss?” he asked Wade’s back.
“Bring me a bottle of whiskey.” Wade didn’t turn around.
“Sorry, boss. No whiskey.”
Wade spun around and yelled at him, but Candy didn’t budge. He looked down at the check lying on the cocktail table and his head twisted as he read it. Then he looked up at me and hissed something between his teeth. Then he looked at Wade.
“I go now. This my day off.”
He turned and went. Wade laughed.
“So I get it myself,” he said sharply, and went.
I lifted one of the covers and saw some neatly trimmed three-cornered sandwiches. I took one and poured some beer and ate the sandwich standing up. Wade came back with a bottle and a glass. He sat down on the couch and poured a stiff jolt and sucked it down. There was the sound of a car going away from the house, probably Candy leaving by the service driveway. I took another sandwich.
“Sit down and make yourself comfortable,” Wade said. “We have all afternoon to kill. ” He had a glow on already. His voice was vibrant and cheerful. “You don’t like me, do you, Marlowe?”
“That question has already been asked and answered.”
“Know something? You’re a pretty ruthless son of a bitch. You’d do anything to find what you want. You’d even make love to my wife while I was helpless drunk in the next room.”
“You believe everything that knife thrower tells you?” He poured some more whiskey into his glass and held it up against the light. “Not everything, no. A pretty color whiskey is, isn’t it? To drown in a golden flood—that’s not so bad. ‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’ How does that go on? Oh, sorry, you wouldn’t know. Too literary. You’re some kind of a dick, aren’t you? Mind telling me why you’re here.”
He drank some more whiskey and grinned at me. Then he spotted the check lying on the table. He reached for it and read it over his glass.
“Seems to be made out to somebody named Marlowe. I wonder why, what for. Seems I signed it. Foolish of me, I’m a gullible chap.”
“Stop acting,” I said roughly. “Where’s your wife?”
He looked up politely, “My wife will be home in due course. No doubt by that time I shall be passed out and she can entertain you at her leisure. The house will be yours.”
“Where’s the gun?” I asked suddenly.
He looked blank. I told him I had put it in his desk. “Not there now, I’m sure,” he said. “You may search if it pleases you. Just don’t steal any rubber bands.”
I went to the desk and frisked it. No gun. That was something. Probably Eileen had hidden it.
“Look, Wade, I asked you where your wife was. I think she ought to come home. Not for my benefit, friend, for yours. Somebody has to look out for you, and I’ll be goddamned if it’s going to be me.”
He stared vaguely. He was still holding the check. He put his glass down and, tore the check across, then again and again, and let the pieces fall to the floor.
“Evidently the amount was too small,” he said. “Your services come very high. Even a thousand dollars and my wife fail to satisfy you. Too bad, but I can’t go any higher. Except on this.” He patted the bottle.
