I waved a hand. “Aren’t we all? All right, suppose it’s true. Morny will deny it, and we’ll be right back where we started. Morny will have to deny it, because otherwise it would tie him to a couple of murders.”
“Is there anything so unlikely about that being the exact situation?” she blared.
“Why would Morny, a man with backing, protection and some influence, tie himself to a couple of small murders in order to avoid tying himself to something trifling, like selling a pledge? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
She stared, saying nothing. I grinned at her, because for the first time she was going to like something I said.
“I found your daughter-in-law, Mrs. Murdock. It’s a little strange to me that your son, who seems so well under your control, didn’t tell you where she was.”
“I didn’t ask him,” she said in a curiously quiet voice, for her.
“She’s back where she started, singing with the band at the Idle Valley Club. I talked to her. She’s a pretty hard sort of girl in a way. She doesn’t like you very well. I don’t find it impossible to think that she took the coin all right, partly from spite. And I find it slightly less impossible to believe that Leslie knew it or found it out and cooked up that yarn to protect her. He says he’s very much in love with her.”
She smiled. It wasn’t a beautiful smile, being on slightly the wrong kind of face. But it was a smile.
“Yes,” she said gently. “Yes. Poor Leslie. He would do just that. And in that case—” she stopped and her smile widened until it was almost ecstatic, “in that case my dear daughter-in-law may be involved in murder.”
I watched her enjoying the idea for a quarter of a minute. “And you’d just love that,” I said.
She nodded, still smiling, getting the idea she liked before she got the rudeness in my voice. Then her face stiffened and her lips came together hard. Between them and her teeth she said:
“I don’t like your tone. I don’t like your tone at all.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I don’t like it myself. I don’t like anything. I don’t like this house or you or the air of repression in the joint, or the squeezed down face of the little girl or that twerp of a son you have, or this case or the truth I’m not told about it and the lies I am told about it and—”
She started yelling then, noise out of a splotched furious face, eyes tossing with fury, sharp with hate:
“Get out! Get out of this house at once! Don’t delay one instant! Get out!”
I stood up and reached my hat off the carpet and said: “I’ll be glad to.”
I gave her a sort of a tired leer and picked my way to the door and opened it and went out. I shut it quietly, holding the knob with a stiff hand and clicking the lock gently into place.
For no reason at all.
22
Steps gibbered along after me and my name was called and I kept on going until I was in the middle of the living room. Then I stopped and turned and let her catch up with me, out of breath, her eyes trying to pop through her glasses and her shining copper-blond hair catching funny little lights from the high windows.
“Mr. Marlowe? Please! Please don’t go away. She wants you. She really does!”
“I’ll be darned. You’ve got Sub-deb Bright on your mouth this morning. Looks all right too.”
She grabbed my sleeve. “Please!”
“The hell with her,” I said. “Tell her to jump in the lake. Marlowe can get sore too. Tell her to jump in two lakes, if one won’t hold her. Not clever, but quick.”
I looked down at the hand on my sleeve and patted it. She drew it away swiftly and her eyes looked shocked.
“Please, Mr. Marlowe. She’s in trouble. She needs you.”
“I’m in trouble too,” I growled. “I’m up to my ear flaps in trouble. What are you crying about?”
“Oh, I’m really very fond of her. I know she’s rough and blustery, but her heart is pure gold.”
“To hell with her heart too,” I said. “I don’t expect to get intimate enough with her for that to make any difference. She’s a fat-faced old liar. I’ve had enough of her. I think she’s in trouble all right, but I’m not in the excavating business. I have to get told things.”
“Oh, I’m sure if you would only be patient—”
I put my arm around her shoulders, without thinking. She jumped about three feet and her eyes blazed with panic.
We stood there staring at each other, making breath noises, me with my mouth open as it too frequently is, she with her lips pressed tight and her little pale nostrils quivering. Her face was as pale as the unhandy makeup would let it be.
“Look,” I said slowly, “did something happen to you when you were a little girl?”
She nodded, very quickly.
“A man scared you or something like that?”
She nodded again. She took her lower lip between her little white teeth.
“And you’ve been like this ever since?”
She just stood there, looking white.
“Look,” I said, “I won’t do anything to you that will scare you. Not ever.”
