“She’s the secretary of a client. A Mrs. Murdock in Pasadena. The client is rather a brute. About eight years ago a man made a hard pass at Merle. How hard I don’t know. Then—I don’t mean immediately—but around that time he fell out of a window or jumped. Since then she can’t have a man touch her—not in the most casual way, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.” His pop eyes continued to read my face. “Does she think he jumped out of the window on her account?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Murdock is the man’s widow. She married again and her second husband is dead too. Merle has stayed with her. The old woman treats her like a rough parent treats a naughty child.”
“I see. Regressive.”
“What’s that?”
“Emotional shock, and the subconscious attempt to escape back to childhood. If Mrs. Murdock scolds her a good deal, but not too much, that would increase the tendency. Identification of childhood subordination with childhood protection.”
“Do we have to go into that stuff?” I growled.
He grinned at me calmly. “Look, pal. The girl’s obviously a neurotic. It’s partly induced and partly deliberate. I mean to say that she really enjoys a lot of it. Even if she doesn’t realize that she enjoys it. However, that’s not of immediate importance. What’s this about killing a man?”
“A man named Vannier who lives in Sherman Oaks. There seems to be some blackmail angle. Merle had to take him his money, from time to time. She was afraid of him. I’ve seen the guy. A nasty type. She went over there this afternoon and she says she shot him.”
“Why?”
“She says she didn’t like the way he leered at her.
“Shot him with what?”
“She had a gun in her bag. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But if she shot him, it wasn’t with that. The gun’s got a wrong cartridge in the breech. It can’t be fired as it is. Also it hasn’t been fired.”
“This is too deep for me,” he said. “I’m just a doctor. What did you want me to do with her?”
“Also,” I said, ignoring the question, “she said the lamp was turned on and it was about five-thirty of a nice summery afternoon. And the guy was wearing his sleeping suit and there was a key in the lock of the front door. And he didn’t get up to let her in. He just sort of sat there sort of leering.”
He nodded and said: “Oh.” He pushed a cigarette between his heavy lips and lit it. “If you expect me to tell you whether she really thinks she shot him, I can’t do it. From your description I gather that the man is shot. That so?”
“Brother, I haven’t been there. But that much seems pretty clear.”
“If she thinks she shot him and isn’t just acting—and God, how these types do act!—that indicates it was not a new idea to her. You say she carried a gun. So perhaps it wasn’t. She may have a guilt complex. Wants to be punished, wants to expiate some real or imaginary crime. Again I ask what do you want me to do with her? She’s not sick, she’s not loony.”
“She’s not going back to Pasadena.”
“Oh.” He looked at me curiously. “Any family?”
“In Wichita. Father’s a vet. I’ll call him, but she’ll have to stay here tonight.”
“I don’t know about that. Does she trust you enough to spend the night in your apartment?”
“She came here of her own free will, and not socially. So I guess she does.”
He shrugged and fingered the sidewall of his coarse black mustache. “Well, I’ll give her some Nembutal and we’ll put her to bed. And you can walk the floor wrestling with your conscience.”
“I have to go out,” I said. “I have to go over there and see what has happened. And she can’t stay here alone. And no man, not even a doctor is going to put her to bed. Get a nurse. I’ll sleep somewhere else.”
“Phil Marlowe,” he said. “The shop-soiled Galahad. Okay. I’ll stick around until the nurse comes.”
He went back into the living room and telephoned the Nurses’ Registry. Then he telephoned his wife. While he was telephoning, Merle sat up on the davenport and clasped her hands primly in her lap.
“I don’t see why the lamp was on,” she said. “It wasn’t dark in the house at all. Not that dark.”
I said: “What’s your dad’s first name?”
“Dr. Wilbur Davis. Why?”
“Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”
At the telephone Carl Moss said to me: “Tomorrow will do for that. This is probably just a lull.” He finished his call, hung up, went to his bag and came back with a couple of yellow capsules in his hand on a fragment of cotton. He got a glass of water, handed her the capsules and said: “Swallow.”
“I’m not sick, am I?” she said, looking up at him.
“Swallow, my child, swallow.”
She took them and put them in her mouth and took the glass of water and drank.
I put my hat on and left.
On the way down in the elevator I remembered that there hadn’t been any keys in her bag, so I stopped at the lobby floor and went out through the lobby to the Bristol Avenue side. The car was not hard to find. It was parked
