in the nick of time to save me from a fate worse than death. Drinking alone, you know? And long before the sun has swung over the yard-arm.” His voice was thin and a trifle high, but he exuded friendliness like a stray mongrel who has just received his first kind word in weeks.
He advanced toward Lucy, his smile becoming a beaming welcome. “Whatever you’re selling, I’ll take a lot of. Provided, of course, that you have a drink with me first. My name’s Marvin Dale, you know. How long has it been since anyone has told you how gorgeous you are?”
Lucy couldn’t refrain from smiling. “I’m Lucy Hamilton to see Mrs. Rogell. It’s a little early for a drink, and I have nothing at all you’d want to buy.”
“Let me be the judge of that.” He stood close to her and she saw that his eyes were greenish-blue and had a ferrety gleam in them as they travelled down audaciously from her face over trim bosom and neat waist, hovered approvingly over nicely-rounded hips and then moved downward to well-fleshed calves and slender ankles.
“Ve-ry nice. Every bit of it if you’ll allow me a snap judgment with so many clothes intervening.” He took hold of her left elbow and firmly led her toward the bar. “Of course it’s a little early for a drink, but never too early. Wasn’t it Dorothy Parker who said, ‘Candy is dandy; but liquor is quicker?’”
“I think it was.” Lucy struggled with a desire to giggle. This must be the ne’er-do-well brother Henrietta had mentioned so disparagingly, and Michael had told her to keep her eyes open and learn as much about the different members of the family as she could. Marvin, she realized, was already slightly drunk as well as being more than slightly amorous, and she decided to indulge him to the extent of one small drink.
“If you could make me a gin and tonic,” she agreed hesitantly. “A very light one. I have a business matter to discuss with your sister,” she added as stiffly as she could.
Marvin released her elbow and beamed at her as he whisked a gin bottle from a shelf beneath the bar, and opened an ice bucket to deposit two cubes in a tall glass. He uncorked the bottle and started to tip it over the rim of the glass, but Lucy took it away from him firmly, saying, “I mentioned a light one, remember? Very light.” She picked up a jigger and poured it less than full, while he remonstrated:
“So many people do without really meaning it, you know. Say they want a light one, I mean. I always feel the hospitable thing is to…”
“Ply your women with liquor,” Lucy carried on for him pleasantly. “But I’m not Dorothy Parker. Tonic, please.” She held the glass out and he reluctantly filled it to the brim with fizzing liquid.
“I can see you’re not. If you’re holding back on the intake, however, because you hope to discuss business with my dear sister today, you may as well relax and have a decent slug.”
“I’ll settle for this one,” Lucy told him, retreating to the depths of a leather-upholstered chair. “I know Mr. Rogell’s funeral is tomorrow and I don’t like to intrude on her grief, but I did hope to have a moment of her time today.”
“Oh, it isn’t dear John she’s grieving about,” Marvin told her with a tight, unpleasant smile. “We’ve all been expecting that for months. It’s her darling Daffy.”
“Her Pekinese?” queried Lucy. “Sombre Daffodil Third.”
“Sombre Daffodil Third,” he agreed, taking a gulp of his drink and slouching into another leather chair near Lucy’s with both long legs draped over one arm of it. “Why not try this position?” he demanded suddenly with something very close to a leer. “It’s the only comfortable way to sit in one of these chairs.”
“And not very ladylike,” said Lucy primly, taking a sip of her mild drink.
“Who asked you to be ladylike?” His leer became more pronounced. “You know what the male cricket said to the female grasshopper?”
“No,” said Lucy. “I don’t know and I’m not interested.”
“Well, he said… Oh, I say,” Marvin interrupted himself as the maid entered through the portieres, “do you have to intrude just now, Maybelle? Miss Hamilton and I are just getting cozy over a drink and I was about to tell her a very funny story.”
Lucy got to her feet quickly and set the glass down as she faced the girl questioningly.
Maybelle made the pretense of a curtsy and said, “Madame will see you in her upstairs sitting room, Ma’am.”
Lucy followed her out quickly without looking back at Marvin.
The maid led her down the vaulted hallway to a wide stairway curving upward to the right, and up the stairs to another wide hallway where she knocked lightly on a closed door before opening it and announcing, “Miss Hamilton.”
The boudoir was chintzy and feminine, and the temperature was like that of a hothouse devoted to the propagation of tropical flowers in contrast to the pleasant coolness of the rest of the big, stone house.
And the girl-woman facing Lucy, propped up against fluffy, silken pillows on a chaise-longue was not unlike a rare orchid. There was a look of cultivated fragility, of almost ethereal beauty, in the delicate, finely-drawn features of Anita Rogell. Her violet eyes appeared enormous and had a look of haunting melancholy about them which, Lucy realized on closer inspection, had been artfully attained by the skillful use of purple eyeshadow combined with a dusting of gold powder on carefully shaped brows. Her hair, tightly drawn back from cameo-like features, was the exact color and texture of cornsilk with the morning sun glinting on it, and it displayed a wide forehead and tiny, shell-like ears that lay flat against her head.
Only the mouth was a discordant note in the carefully-wrought perfection of Anita Rogell’s face, and the shock-effect of that feature, Lucy knew immediately, had been carefully and unerringly calculated as a vivid contrast with the overall effect.
It was a large, coarse mouth with full, pouting underlip daringly accentuated with heavy lipstick that had a violent orange tinge. It was hard to describe the effect that garish mouth had against the background of cold fragility that was the dominant characteristic of Anita’s face. It was a bold and shameless promise of fire and lust that lay beneath the otherwise placid exterior, a flagrant and provocative flaunting of sexual precocity which would have remained otherwise concealed.
At least, that’s the way it struck Lucy as she stepped into the overheated room. She had no way of knowing how it would appear to a man who looked at Anita for the first time, and the fleeting thought crossed her mind that she would give a great deal to get Michael Shayne’s reaction to the woman in front of her.
But she said composedly, “I apologize for intruding like this, Mrs. Rogell, but when we at Haven Eternal learned of your bereavement we felt morally obligated to bring to your attention certain of our unique services which have lessened the pangs of grief of other pet-owners and which we sincerely hope will partially assuage your own.”
It was a speech she had learned by rote, and she delivered it glibly and with what she hoped was a commendable show of sincerity.
Anita had her card between the thumb and tapering forefinger of her left hand. She glanced down at it with a tiny frown puckering her smooth forehead as Lucy spoke her lines, and said, “I don’t think I understand exactly what you want from me.”
Her voice was unexpectedly husky and deep, with a rich resonance that seemed to vibrate in the silence after she finished speaking.
“It isn’t what we want from you, Mrs. Rogell,” Lucy told her. “It’s what we feel we can do for you that counts with us. Is it possible that you haven’t heard of Pet Haven Eternal?” She made it sound as though such abysmal ignorance on the part of Anita was utterly unthinkable, and the woman nibbled at the bait by saying, “The name does sound familiar, but I really don’t know…”
“This little booklet will explain much better than I can if I talked for hours,” Lucy interrupted her, opening her bag and extracting the brochure. “It will only take a moment of your time to glance through it and determine which of our services you feel would be most suitable to assure your dear Sombre Daffodil Third that final peace and utter tranquility that every owner of a four-footed friend who was so devoted in life must desire for the canine soul that has passed onward over the Great Divide to enter the realm of peace that passeth understanding.”
Lucy noticed a peculiarly wary, almost frightened glint in Anita’s eyes as she completed this remarkable speech and pressed the booklet into the woman’s somewhat reluctant hands, and she thought, “Oh, dear. Did I overdo it that time? I don’t think this gal is as dumb as I anticipated. Watch your step, Lucy Hamilton, and get down off your cloud.”
Aloud, she said, “By merely glancing through this you will see that we have one of the finest plants in the United States. And I assure you our charges are extremely moderate. We are incorporated as a non-profit
