looked a good deal like Muriel Chess. The hair seemed to be reddish and in a very different style than she has worn it here, and the eyebrows were all plucked to narrow arches, and that changes a woman a good deal. But it did look a good deal like Bill Chess’s wife.”
I drummed on the door of the car and after a moment I said, “What did you tell him?”
“We didn’t tell him anything. First off, we couldn’t be sure. Second, we didn’t like his manner. Third, even if we had been sure and I had liked his manner, we likely would not have sicked him on to her. Why would we? Everybody’s done something to be sorry for. Take me. I was married once—to a professor of classical languages at Redlands University.” She laughed lightly.
“You might have got yourself a story,” I said.
“Sure. But up here we’re just people.”
“Did this man De Soto see Jim Patton?”
“Sure, he must have. Jim didn’t mention it.”
“Did he show you his badge?”
She thought and then shook her head. “I don’t recall that he did. We just took him for granted, from what he said. He certainly acted like a tough, city cop.”
“To me that’s a little against his being one. Did anybody tell Muriel about this guy?”
She hesitated, looking quietly out through the windshield for a long moment before she turned her head and nodded.
“I did. Wasn’t any of my damn business, was it?”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything. She gave a funny little embarrassed laugh, as if I had been making a bad joke. Then she walked away. But I did get the impression that there was a queer look in her eyes, just for an instant. You still not interested in Muriel Chess, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Why should I be? I never heard of her until I came up here this afternoon. Honest. And I never heard of anybody named Mildred Haviland either. Drive you back to town?”
“Oh no, thanks. I’ll walk. It’s only a few steps. Much obliged to you. I kind of hope Bill doesn’t get into a jam. Especially a nasty jam like this.”
She got out of the car and hung on one foot, then tossed her head and laughed. “They say I’m a pretty good beauty operator,” she said. “I hope I am. As an interviewer I’m terrible. Goodnight.”
I said good night and she walked off into the evening. I sat there watching her until she reached the main street and turned out of sight. Then I got out of the Chrysler and went over towards the telephone company’s little rustic building.
10
A tame doe deer with a leather dog collar on wandered across the road in front of me. I patted her rough hairy neck and went into the telephone office. A small girl in slacks sat at a small desk working on the books. She got me the rate to Beverly Hills and the change for the coin box. The booth was outside, against the front wall of the building.
“I hope you like it up here,” she said. “It’s very quiet, very restful.”
I shut myself into the booth. For ninety cents I could talk to Derace Kingsley for five minutes. He was at home and the call came through quickly but the connection was full of mountain static.
“Find anything up there?” he asked me in a three highball voice. He sounded tough and confident again.
“I’ve found too much,” I said. “And not at all what we want.
Are you alone?”
“What does that matter?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. But I know what I’m going to say. You don’t.”
“Well, get on with it, whatever it is,” he said.
“I had a long talk with Bill Chess. He was lonely. His wife had left him—a month ago. They had a fight and he went out and got drunk and when he came back she was gone. She left a note saying she would rather be dead than live with him any more.”
“I guess Bill drinks too much,” Kingsley’s voice said from very far off.
“When he got back, both the women had gone. He had no idea where Mrs. Kingsley went Lavery was up here in May, but not since. Lavery admitted that much himself. Lavery could, of course, have come up again while Bill was out getting drunk, but there wouldn’t be a lot of point to that and there would be two cars to drive down the hill. And I thought that possibly Mrs. K. and Muriel Chess might have gone away together, only Muriel also had a car of her own. But that idea, little as it was worth, has been thrown out by another development. Muriel Chess didn’t go away at all. She went down into your private lake. She came back up today. I was there.”
“Good God!” Kingsley sounded properly horrified. “You mean she drowned herself?”
“Perhaps. The note she left could be a suicide note. It would read as well that way as the other. The body was stuck down under that old submerged landing below the pier. Bill was the one who spotted an arm moving down there while we were standing on the pier looking down into the water. He got her out. They’ve arrested him. The poor guy’s pretty badly broken up.”
“Good God!” Kingsley said again. “I should think he would be. Does it look as if he—” He paused as the operator came in on the line and demanded another forty-five cents. I put in two quarters and the line cleared.
“Look as if he what?”
