emerald lawn. The Sternwood house looked the same.
The general had died. Which was too bad. And Eddie Mars hadn't died, which was also too bad. And Carmen had been put away. But Vivian was still there. And Norris the butler was still there. He had called me and asked me to come out.
The place was full of remembrance. The same low solid foothills rose behind the house. The same terraced lawn dropped the long easy drop down to the barely visible oil derricks where a few barrels a day still creaked out of the ground. The sun shone on the olive trees and vivified the birds that fluttered among the leaves. The birds sang as if the world were still young.
Which it wasn't.
Norris answered my ring. He was tall and silver-haired, a vigorous sixty with the pink skin of a man whose circulation was good.
'Mr. Marlowe,' he said. 'Good of you to come.'
The hallway was the same as it had been the first time I saw it. The portrait of the hot-eyed ancestor over the mantel. The knight and the lady forever still in the stained-glass window. The knight always trying to untie her. The lady always captive. The lady was still naked. The hair still conveniently long. It had been a while since I had first stood here and Carmen Sternwood had told me I was tall and pitched into my arms. Only yesterday.
***
She was twenty or so, small and delicately put together, but she looked durable. She wore pale blue slacks and they looked well on her. She walked as if she were floating. Her hair was a fine tawny wave cut much shorter than the current fashion of pageboy tresses curled in at the bottom. Her eyes were slate gray, and had almost no expression when they looked at me. She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin too taut lips. Her face lacked color and didn't look too healthy.
'Tall, aren't you?' she said.
'I didn't mean to be.'
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
'Handsome too,' she said. 'And I bet you know it.'
I grunted.
'What's your name?'
'Reilly,' I said. 'Doghouse Reilly. '
'That's a funny name.' She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
'Are you a prizefighter?' she asked, when I didn't.
'Not exactly. I'm a sleuth. '
'A-a-' She tossed her head angrily, and the rich color of it glistened in the rather dim light of the big hall. 'You're making fun of me.'
'Uh-uh.'
'What?'
'Get on with you,' I said. 'You heard me.'
'You didn't say anything. You 're just a big tease.' She put a thumb up and bit it. It was a curiously shaped thumb, thin and narrow like an extra finger, with no curve in the first joint. She bit it and sucked it slowly, turning it around in her mouth like a baby with a comforter.
'You're awfully tall,' she said. Then she giggled with secret merriment. Then she turned her body slowly and lithely, without lifting her feet. Her hands dropped limp at her sides. She tilted herself toward me on her toes. She fell straight back into my arms. I had to catch her or let her crack her head on the tessellated floor. I caught her under her arms and she went rubber-legged on me instantly. I had to hold her close to hold her up. When her head was against my chest she screwed it around and giggled at me.
'You're cute,' she giggled. 'I'm cute too.'
I didn't say anything. So the butler chose that convenient moment to come back through the French doors and see me holding her.
Well, maybe not quite yesterday.
***
I followed Norris's straight back down the same corridor toward the French doors. The house seemed quieter now. Probably my imagination. It was too big a house and too chilled with sadness ever to have been noisy. This time, we turned under the stairs and went down some stairs to the kitchen. The horsefaced maid was there. She smiled and bobbed her head at me. Norris glanced at her and she bobbed her head again and went out of the kitchen.
The kitchen was big and opened out onto the back lawn as it dropped away from the house. Like so many hillside mansions in Los Angeles the first floor in front was the second floor in back. The floors were a polished brown Mexican tile. There was a large wooden work-table in the center of the room, a big professional-looking cookstove against the far wall, two refrigerators to the right, and a long counter with two sinks and a set tub along the left wall.
'Will you have coffee, sir?' Norris said.
I said I would and Norris disappeared into a pantry off the kitchen and returned in a moment with a silver coffee service and a bone china cup and saucer. He poured the coffee into the cup in front of me. And placed an
