“Merle’s at my apartment,” I said. “She threw an ing-bing.”
Without looking up she said:. “And just what is an ing-bing, Mr. Marlowe?”
She moved another card, then two more quickly.
“A case of the vapors, they used to call it,” I said. “Ever catch yourself cheating at that game?”
“It’s no fun if you cheat,” she said gruffly. “And very little if you don’t. What’s this about Merle? She has never stayed out like this before. I was getting worried about her.”
I pulled a slipper chair over and sat down across the table from her. It put me too low down. I got up and got a better chair and sat in that.
“No need to worry about her,” I said. “I got a doctor and a nurse. She’s asleep. She was over to see Vannier.”
She laid the pack of cards down and folded her big gray hands on the edge of the table and looked at me solidly.
“Mr. Marlowe,” she said, “you and I had better have something out. I made a mistake calling you in the first place. That was my dislike of being played for a sucker, as you would say, by a hardboiled little animal like Linda. But it would have been much better, if I had not raised the point at all. The loss of the doubloon would have been much easier to bear than you are. Even if I had never got it back.”
“But you did get it back,” I said.
She nodded. Her eyes stayed on my face. “Yes. I got it back. You heard how.”
“I didn’t believe it.”
“Neither did I,” she said calmly. “My fool of a son was simply taking the blame for Linda. An attitude I find childish.”
“You have a sort of knack,” I said, “of getting yourselves surrounded with people who take such attitudes.”
She picked her cards up again and reached down to put a black ten on a red jack, both cards that were already in the layout. Then she reached sideways to a small heavy table on which was her port. She drank some, put the glass down and gave me a hard level stare.
“I have a feeling that you are going to be insolent, Mr. Marlowe.”
I shook my head. “Not insolent. Just frank. I haven’t done so badly for you, Mrs. Murdock. You did get the doubloon back. I kept the police away from you—so far. I didn’t do anything on the divorce, but I found Linda—your son knew where she was all the time—and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with her. She knows she made a mistake marrying Leslie. However, if you don’t think you got value—”
She made a humph noise and played another card. She got the ace of diamonds up to the top line. “The ace of clubs is buried, darn it. I’m not going to get it out in time.”
“Kind of slide it out,” I said, “when you’re not looking.”
“Hadn’t you better,” she said very quietly, “get on with telling me about Merle? And don’t gloat too much, if you have found out a few family secrets, Mr. Marlowe.”
“I’m not gloating about anything. You sent Merle to Vannier’s place this afternoon, with five hundred dollars.”
“And if I did?” She poured some of her port and sipped, eyeing me steadily over the glass.
“When did he ask for it?”
“Yesterday. I couldn’t get it out of the bank until today. What happened?”
“Vannier’s been blackmailing you for about eight years, hasn’t he? On account of something that happened on April 26th, 1933?”
A sort of panic twitched in the depths of her eyes, but very far back, very dim, and somehow as though it had been there for a long time and had just peeped out at me for a second.
“Merle told me a few things,” I said. “Your son told me how his father died. I looked up the records and the papers today. Accidental death. There had been an accident in the street under his office and a lot of people were craning out of windows. He just craned out too far. There was some talk of suicide because he was broke and had fifty thousand life insurance for his family. But the coroner was nice and slid past that.”
“Well?” she said. It was a cold hard voice, neither a croak nor a gasp. A cold hard utterly composed voice.
“Merle was Horace Bright’s secretary. A queer little girl in a way, over timid, not sophisticated, a little girl mentality, likes to dramatize herself, very old-fashioned ideas about men, all that sort of thing. I figure he got high one time and made a pass at her and scared her out of her socks.”
“Yes?” Another cold hard monosyllable prodding me like a gun barrel.
“She brooded and got a little murderous inside. She got a chance and passed right back at him. While he was leaning out of a window. Anything in it?”
“Speak plainly, Mr. Marlowe. I can stand plain talk.”
“Good grief, how plain do you want it? She pushed her employer out of a window. Murdered him, in two words. And got away with it. With your help.”
She looked down at the left hand clenched over her cards. She nodded. Her chin moved a short inch, down, up.
“Did Vannier have any evidence?” I asked. “Or did he just happen to see what happened and put the bite on you and you paid him a little now and then to avoid scandal—and because you were really very fond of Merle?”
