Scotch. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a loose grimace and the furred surface of his tongue looked dry.
One of the whiskey bottles was empty. A glass on the table had about two inches in it and the other bottle was about three quarters full. I put the empty on the tea wagon and rolled it out of the room, then went back to close the french windows and turn the slats of the blinds. The speedboat might come back and wake him. I shut the study door.
I wheeled the tea wagon out to the kitchen, which was blue and white and large and airy and empty. I was still hungry. I ate another sandwich and drank what was left of the beer, then poured a cup of coffee and drank that. The beer was flat but the coffee was still hot. Then I went back to the patio. It was quite a long time before the speedboat came tearing down the lake again. It was almost four o’clock when I heard its distant roar swell into an ear-splitting howl of noise. There ought to be a law. Probably was and the guy in the speedboat didn’t give a damn. He enjoyed making a nuisance of himself, like other people I was meeting. I walked down to the edge of the lake.
He made it this time. The driver slowed just enough on the turn and the brown lad on the surfboard leaned far out against the centrifugal pull. The surfboard was almost out of the water, but one edge stayed in and then the speedboat straightened out and the surfboard still had a rider and they went back the way they had come and that was that. The waves stirred up by the boat came charging in towards the shore of the lake at my feet. They slapped hard against the piles of the short landing and jumped the tied boat up and down. They were still slapping it around when I turned back to the house.
As I reached the patio I heard a bell chiming from the direction of the kitchen. When it sounded again I decided that only the front door would have chimes. I crossed to it and opened it.
Eileen Wade was standing there looking away from the house. As she turned she said: “I’m sorry, I forgot my key.” Then she saw me. “Oh—I thought it was Roger or Candy.”
“Candy isn’t here. It’s Thursday.”
She came in and I shut the door. She put a bag down on the table between the two davenports. She looked cool and also distant. She pulled off a pair of white pigskin gloves.
“Is anything wrong?”
“Well, there’s a little drinking being done. Not bad. He’s asleep on the couch in his study.”
“He called you?”
“Yes, but not for that. He asked me to lunch. I’m afraid he didn’t have any himself.”
“Oh.” She sat down slowly on a davenport. “You know, I completely forgot it was Thursday. The cook’s away too. How stupid.”
“Candy got the lunch before he left. I guess I’ll blow now. I hope my car wasn’t in your way.”
She smiled. “No. There was plenty of room. Won’t you have some tea? I’m going to have some,”
“All right.” I didn’t know why I said that. I didn’t want any tea. I just said it.
She slipped off a linen jacket. She hadn’t worn a hat. “I’ll just look in and see if Roger is all right.”
I watched her cross to the study door and open it. She stood there a moment and closed the door and came back.
“He’s still asleep. Very soundly. I have to go upstairs for a moment. I’ll be right down.”
I watched her pick up her jacket and gloves and bag and go up the stairs and into her room. The door closed. I crossed to the study with the idea of removing the bottle of hooch. If he was still asleep, he wouldn’t need it.
36
The shutting of the french windows had made the room stuffy and the turning of the Venetian blinds had made it dim. There was an acrid smell on the air and there was too heavy a silence. It was not more than sixteen feet from the door to the couch and I didn’t need more than half of that to know a dead man lay on that couch.
He was on his side with his face to the back of the couch, one arm crooked under him and the forearm of the other lying almost across his eyes. Between his chest and the back of the couch there was a pool of blood and in that pool lay the Webley Hammerless. The side of his face was a smeared mask.
I bent over him, peering at the edge of the wide open eye, the bare and gaudy arm, at the inner curve of which I could see the puffed and blackened hole in his head from which the blood oozed still.
I left him like that. His wrist was warm but there was no doubt he was quite dead. I looked around for some kind of note or scribble. There was nothing but the pile of script on the desk. They don’t always leave notes. The typewriter was uncovered on its stand. There was nothing in that. Otherwise everything looked natural enough. Suicides prepare themselves in all sorts of ways, some with liquor, some with elaborate champagne dinners. Some in evening clothes, some in no clothes. People have killed themselves on the tops of walls, in ditches, in bathrooms, in the water, over the water, on the water. They have hanged themselves in bars and gassed themselves in garages. This one looked simple. I hadn’t heard the shot but it must have gone off when I was down by the lake watching the surfboard rider make his turn. There was plenty of noise. Why that should have mattered to Roger Wade I didn’t know. Perhaps it hadn’t. The final impulse had coincided with the run of the speedboat. I didn’t like it, but nobody cared what I liked.
The torn pieces of the check were still on the floor but I left them. The torn strips of that stuff he had written that other night were in the wastebasket. These I did not leave. I picked them out and made sure I had them all and stuffed them into my pocket. The basket was almost empty, which made it easy. No use wondering where the gun had been. There were too many places to hide it in. It could have been in a chair or in the couch, under one of the cushions. It could have been on the floor, behind the books, anywhere.
I went out and shut the door. I listened. From the kitchen, sounds. I went out there. Eileen had a blue apron on and the kettle was just beginning to whistle. She turned the flame down and gave me a brief impersonal glance.
“How do you like your tea, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Just out of the pot as it comes.”
