A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

Maxwell?” he said pleasantly.

“I am glad you are feeling better.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said. He remembered that he had heard her say this, and only this, once before.

“I’m Mitchel Brown.” He waited, smiling down at her.

“I don’t believe…” she murmured in genteel puzzlement. She had a nice straight nose and, although she was looking up at him, she seemed to be looking down that nose.

“I’m sure you remember the name,” Mitch said. “It was the sixteenth of March. No, it was Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning, actually.”

“I don’t quite…”

Was she stupid or what? Mitch said, with a bit of a sting in the tone, “Did you have much of a hangover?”

“I’m very sorry,” she said with a little exasperated laugh, “but I really don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Oh, come now, Natalie,” said Mitch, beginning to feel miffed,

“it was my apartment.”

“What?” she said.

“My apartment that you passed out in — here in Los Angeles.”

“I am afraid you are making a mistake,” she said distantly.

Mitch did not think so.

“Aren’t you Mrs. Julius Maxwell?”

“Yes, I am.”

“From Santa Barbara?”

“Why, yes, I am.” She was frowning a little.

“Then the apartment you woke up in, on Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning, was my apartment,” said Mitch huffily, “and why the amnesia?”

“What is this?” said a male voice.

Mitch swivelled his head and knew at once that here was Mr. Julius Maxwell. He saw a medium-sized, taut- muscled, middle-aged man with a thatch of salt-and-pepper hair and fierce black eyes under heavy black brows. Everything about this man blazoned aggression and possession. He reeked of push and power, of I and Mine.

Mitchel Brown, playwright, artist, and apostle of compassion, drew his own forces together, as if he folded in some wings.

“Julius,” said the blond woman, “this man knows my name. He keeps talking about Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning.”

“Oh, he does?” said her husband.

“He says I was in his apartment, here in Los Angeles.”

To Mitch Brown came a notion that would explain all this. Obviously, Natalie’s husband had never found out where Natalie had been that night. So Natalie had to pretend she didn’t know Mitch, because she knew, as he did not, that Julius Maxwell was nearby and would appear. But something in the woman’s manner did not quite fit this theory. She didn’t seem to be concerned enough. She looked straight ahead and her bewilderment was perfunctory.

Still, he thought he should be gallant. “I must have made a mistake” he said. “But the resemblance is remarkable. Perhaps you have a double, ma’am?”

He thought this was handsome of him and that it gave her a way out.

“A double?” said Julius Maxwell nastily. “Who uses my wife’s name?”

Well, of course, if the man was going to be intelligent about it, that tore it. “Sorry,” said Mitch lightly.

“Sit down and tell me about it,” said Maxwell commandingly.

“Mr.…er…?”

“Brown,” said Mitch shortly. He was of a mind to turn on his heel and go away. But he glanced at Natalie. She had opened her handbag and found her compact. This stuck him as either offensively nonchal-ant or pathetically trusting. Or what? Curiosity rose in Mitch — and he sat down.

“Why, I happened into a bar where a lady had had too much to drink,” he said, as if this were nothing unusual. “I volunteered to put her in a taxi but there was no taxi. I wound up leaving her passed out on my sofa. In the morning she was gone. That’s all there is to the story.”

“This was on Saint Patrick’s Day?” said Maxwell intently.

“In the small hours. In the morning.”

“Then the lady was not my wife. My wife was with me in Santa Barbara at our home that night.”

“With you?” said Mitch carefully, feeling a bit of shock.

“Certainly.” Maxwell’s tone was belligerent.

Mitch was beginning to wonder. The woman had powdered her nose and sat looking as if she couldn’t care less. “Not simply in the same building,” Mitch inquired, “as you may have assumed?”

“Not simply in the same building,” said Julius Maxwell, “and no assumption. She was with me, speaking to me, touching me, if you like.” His black eyes were hostile.

Oh, ho, thought Mitch, then you are a liar, too. Now what is all this? He did not care for this Maxwell at all.

“Perhaps I have mistaken her for another lady,” he said smoothly.

“But isn’t it strange that she is wearing exactly the same clothes now that she was wearing on Saint Patrick’s Day?”

(Try that one on for size, Mitch thought smugly.) Julius said ominously, “Do you know who I am?”

“I have heard your name,” said Mitch.

“You know that I am an influential man?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mitch pleasantly. “In fact, I can smell the money from here.”

“How much do you want to forget that you saw my wife in Los Angeles that night?”

Mitch’s brows went up.

“On Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning,” added Julius sneeringly.

Mitch felt his feathers ruffling, his temper flaring. “Why? What is it worth?” he said.

They locked gazes. It was ridiculous. Mitch felt as if he had strayed into a Class B movie. Then Maxwell rose from the table. “Excuse me.” He lashed Mitch with a sharp look which seemed to be saying,

“Stay,” as if Mitch were a dog. Then he strode off.

Mitch, alone with the blond woman, said to her quickly, “What do you want me to do or say?”

He was looking at her hand, long-fingered, pink-nailed, limp on the table. It did not clench. It did not even move. “I don’t understand,” she said in a mechanical way.

“Okay,” said Mitch disgustedly. “I came here for dinner and I see no profit in this discussion, so please excuse me.”

He got up, crossed over to his own table, and ordered his meal.

Julius Maxwell returned in a few moments and stood looking at Mitch with a triumphant light in his eyes. Mitch waved the wand of reason over the very human activity of his own glands. It was necessary for Mitch’s self- respect that he dine here, as he had planned to do, and that he remain unperturbed by these strange people.

His steak had come when a man walked into the room and up to Maxwell’s table. There was an exchange of words. Julius rose. Both men came over to Mitch.

Julius said, “This is the fellow, Lieutenant.”

Mitch found that the stranger was slipping into the seat beside him and Julius was slipping in beside him on his other hand. He rejected a feeling of being trapped. “What’s all this?” he inquired mildly, patting his lips with his napkin.

“Name’s Prince,” said the stranger. “Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Maxwell tells me you are saying something about Mrs.

Maxwell’s being here in town on the night of the sixteenth of March and the morning of the