“That’s very queer,” Grayson said.
“I’d say that was one very nervous man,” I said. “And Degarmo asked me if her folks—meaning your daughter’s folks—had hired me. Looks as if he didn’t feel safe yet, wouldn’t you say?”
“Safe about what?” He didn’t look at me saying this. He re-lit his pipe, slowly, then tamped the tobacco down with the end of a big metal pencil and lit it again.
I shrugged and didn’t answer. He looked at me quickly and looked away. Mrs. Grayson didn’t look at me, but her nostrils quivered.
“How did he know who you were?” Grayson asked suddenly.
“Made a note of the car license, called the Auto Club, looked up the name in the directory. At least that’s what I’d have done and I saw him through his window making some of the motions.”
“So he has the police working for him,” Grayson said.
“Not necessarily. If they made a mistake that time, they wouldn’t want it found out now.”
“Mistake!” He laughed almost shrilly.
“Okay,” I said. “The subject is painful but a little fresh air won’t hurt it. You’ve always thought he murdered her, haven’t you? That’s why you hired this dick—detective.”
Mrs. Grayson looked up with quick eyes and ducked her head down and rolled up another pair of mended socks.
Grayson said nothing.
I said: “Was there any evidence, or was it just that you didn’t like him?”
“There was evidence,” Grayson said bitterly, and with a sudden clearness of voice, as if he had decided to talk about it after all. “There must have been. We were told there was. But we never got it. The police took care of that.”
“I heard they had this fellow arrested and sent up for drunk driving.”
“You heard right.”
“But he never told you what he had to go on.”
“No.”
“I don’t like that,” I said. “That sounds a little as if this fellow hadn’t made up his mind whether to use his information for your benefit or keep it and put a squeeze on the doctor.”
Grayson looked at his wife again. She said quietly: “Mr. Talley didn’t impress me that way. He was a quiet unassuming little man. But you can’t always judge, I know.”
I said: “So Talley was his name. That was one of the things I hoped you would tell me.”
“And what were the others?” Grayson asked.
“How can I find Talley—and what it was that laid the groundwork of suspicion in your minds. It must have been there, or you wouldn’t have hired Talley without a better showing from him that he had grounds.”
Grayson smiled very thinly and primly. He reached for his little chin and rubbed it with one long yellow finger.
Mrs. Grayson said: “Dope.”
“She means that literally,” Grayson said at once, as if the single word had been a green light. “Almore was, and no doubt is, a dope doctor. Our daughter made that clear to us. In his hearing too. He didn’t like it.”
“Just what do you mean by a dope doctor, Mr. Grayson?”
“I mean a doctor whose practice is largely with people who are living on the raw edge of nervous collapse, from drink and dissipation. People who have to be given sedatives and narcotics all the time. The stage comes when an ethical physician refuses to treat them any more, outside a sanatorium. But not the Dr. Almores. They will keep on as long as the money comes in, as long as the patient remains alive and reasonably sane, even if he or she becomes a hopeless addict in the process. A lucrative practice,” he said primly, “and I imagine a dangerous one to the doctor.”
“No doubt of that,” I said. “But there’s a lot of money in it. Did you know a man named Condy?”
“No. We know who he was. Florence suspected he was a source of Almore’s narcotic supply.”
I said: “Could be. He probably wouldn’t want to write himself too many prescriptions. Did you know Lavery?”
“We never saw him. We knew who he was.”
“Ever occur to you that Lavery might have been blackmailing Almore?”
It was a new idea to him. He ran his hand over the top of his head and brought it down over his face and dropped it to his bony knee. He shook his head.
“No. Why should I?”
“He was first to the body,” I said. “Whatever looked wrong to Talley must have been equally visible to Lavery.”
“Is Lavery that kind of man?”
“I don’t know. He has no visible means of support, no job. He gets around a lot, especially with women.”
“It’s an idea,” Grayson said. “And those things can be handled very discreetly.” He smiled wryly. “I have come across traces of them in my work. Unsecured loans, long outstanding. Investments on the face of them worthless, made by men who would not be likely to make worthless investments. Bad debts that should obviously be charged off and have not been, for fear of inviting scrutiny from the income tax people. Oh yes, those things can easily be arranged.”
I looked at Mrs. Grayson. Her hands had never stopped working. She had a dozen pairs of darned socks finished. Grayson’s long bony feet would be hard on socks.
“What’s happened to Talley? Was he framed?”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. His wife was very bitter. She said he had been given a doped drink in a bar and he had been drinking with a policeman. She said a police car was waiting across the street for him to start driving and that he was picked up at once. Also that he was given only the most perfunctory examination at the jail.”
“That doesn’t mean too much. That’s what he told her after he was arrested. He’d tell her something like that automatically.”
“Well, I hate to think the police are not honest,” Grayson said. “But these things are done, and everybody knows it.”
I said: “If they made an honest mistake about your daughter’s death, they would hate to have Talley show them up. It might mean several lost jobs. If they thought what he was really after was blackmail, they wouldn’t be too fussy about how they took care of him. Where is Talley now? What it all boils down to is that if there was any solid clue, he either had it or was on the track of it and knew what he was looking for.”
Grayson said: “We don’t know where he is. He got six months, but that expired long ago.”
“How about his wife?”
He looked at his own wife. She said briefly: “1618½ Westmore Street, Bay City. Eustace and I sent her a little money. She was left bad off.”
I made a note of the address and leaned back in my chair and said:
“Somebody shot Lavery this morning in his bathroom.”
Mrs. Grayson’s pudgy hands became still on the edges of the basket. Grayson sat with his mouth open, holding his pipe in front of it. He made a noise of clearing his throat softly, as if in the presence of the dead. Nothing ever moved slower than his old black pipe going back between his teeth.
“Of course it would be too much to expect,” he said and let it hang in the air and blew a little pale smoke at it, and then added, “that Dr. Almore had any connection with that.”
“I’d like to think he had,” I said. “He certainly lives at a handy distance. The police think my client’s wife shot him. They have a good case too, when they find her. But if Almore had anything to do with it, it must surely arise out of your daughter’s death. That’s why I’m trying to find out something about that.”
Grayson said: “A man who has done one murder wouldn’t have more than twenty-five per cent of the hesitation in doing another.” He spoke as if he had given the matter considerable study.
I said: “Yeah, maybe. What was supposed to be the motive for the first one?”
“Florence was wild,” he said sadly. “A wild and difficult girl. She was wasteful and extravagant, always picking up new and rather doubtful friends, talking too much and too loudly, and generally acting the fool. A wife like that can be very dangerous to a man like Albert S. Almore. But I d
on’t believe that was the prime motive, was it, Lettie?”
He looked at his wife, but she didn’t look at him. She jabbed a darning needle into a round ball of wool and said nothing.
Grayson sighed and went on: “We had reason to believe he was carrying on with his office nurse and that Florence had threatened him with a public scandal. He couldn’t have anything like that, could he? One kind of scandal might too easily lead to another.”
I said: “How did he do the murder?”
“With morphine, of course. He always had it, he always used it. He was an expert in the use of it. Then when she was in a deep coma he would have placed her in the garage and started the car motor. There was no autopsy, you know. But if there had been, it was known that she had been given a hypodermic injection that night.”
I nodded and he leaned back satisfied and ran his hand over his head and down his face and let it fall slowly to his bony knee. He seemed to have given a lot of study to this angle too.
I looked at them. A couple of elderly people sitting there quietly, poisoning their minds with hate, a year and a half after it had happened. They would like it if Almore had shot Lavery. They would love it. It would warm them clear down to their ankles.
After a pause I said: “You’re believing a lot of this because you want to. It’s always possible that she committed suicide, and that the cover-up was partly to protect Condy’s gambling club and partly to prevent Almore having to be questioned at a public hearing.”
“Rubbish,” Grayson said sharply. “He murdered her all right. She was in bed, asleep.”
“You don’t know that. She might have been taking dope herself. She might have established a tolerance for it. The effect wouldn’t last long in that case. She might have got up in the middle of the night and looked at herself in the glass and seen devils pointing at her. These things happen.”
“I think you have taken up enough of our time,” Grayson said.
I stood up. I thanked them both and made a yard towards the door and said: “You didn’t do anything more about it after Talley was arrested?”
“Saw an assistant district attorney named Leach,” Grayson grunted. “Got exactly nowhere. He saw nothing to justify his office in interfering. Wasn’t even interested in the narcotic angle. But Condy’s place was closed up about a month later. That might have come out of it somehow.”
“That was probably the Bay City cops throwing a little smoke. You’d find Condy somewhere else, if you knew where to look. With all his original equipment intact.”
I started for the door again and Grayson hoisted himself out of his chair and dragged across the room after me. There was a flush on his yellow face.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,”he said. “I guess Lettie and I oughtn’t to brood about this business the way we do.”
“I think you’ve both been very patient,” I said. “Was there anybody else involved in all this that we haven’t mentioned by name?”
He shook his head, then looked back at his wife. Her hands were motionless holding the current sock on the darning egg. Her head was tilted a little to one side. Her attitude was of listening, but not to us.
I said: “The way I got the story, Dr. Almore’s office nurse put Mrs. Almore to bed that night. Would that be the one he was supposed to be playing around with?”
Mrs. Grayson said sharply: “Wait a minute. We never saw the girl. But she had a pretty name. Just give me a minute.”
We gave her a minute. “Mildred something,” she said, and snapped her teeth.
I took a deep breath. “Would it be Mildred Haviland, Mrs. Grayson?”
She smiled brightly and nodded. “Of course, Mildred Haviland. Don’t you remember, Eustace?”
He didn’t remember. He looked at us like a horse that has got into the wrong stable. He opened the door and said: “What does it matter?”
“And you said Talley was a small man,” I bored on. “He wouldn’t for instance be a big loud bruiser with an overbearing manner?”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Grayson said. “Mr. Talley is a man of not more than medium height, middle-aged, with brownish hair and a very quiet voice. He had a sort of worried expression. I mean, he looked as if he always had it.”
“Looks as if he needed it,” I said.
Grayson put his bony hand out and I shook it. It felt like shaking hands with a towel rack.
“If you get him,” he said and clamped his mouth hard on his pipe stem, “call back with a bill. If you get Almore, I mean, of course.”
I said I knew he meant Almore, but that there wouldn’t be any bill.
I went back along the silent hallway. The self-operating elevator was carpeted in red plush. It had an elderly perfume in it, like three widows drinking tea.
TWENTY-FOUR
The house on Westmore Street was a small frame bungalow behind a larger house. There was no number visible on the smaller house, but the one in front showed a stencilled 1618 beside the door, with a dim light behind the stencil. A narrow concrete path led along under windows to the house at the back. It had a tiny porch with a single chair on it. I stepped up on the porch and rang the bell.
It buzzed not very far off. The front door was open behind the screen but there was no light. From the darkness a querulous voice said:
“What is it?”
I spoke into the darkness. “Mr. Talley in?”
The voice became flat and without tone. “Who wants him?”
“A friend.”
The woman sitting inside in the darkness made a vague sound in her throat which might have been amusement. Or she might just have been clearing her throat. “All right,” she said. “How much is this one?”
“It’s not a bill, Mrs. Talley. I suppose you are Mrs. Talley ?”
“Oh, go away and let me alone,” the voice said. “Mr. Talley isn’t here. He hasn’t been here. He won’t be here.”
I put my nose against the screen and tried to peer into the room. I could see the vague outlines of its furniture. From where the voice came from also showed the shape of a couch. A woman was lying on it. She seemed to be lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling. She was quite motionless.
“I’m sick,” the voice said. “I’ve had enough trouble. Go away and leave me be.”
I said: “I’ve just come from talking to the Graysons.”
There was a little silence, but no movement, then a sigh. “I never heard of them.”
I leaned against the frame of the screen door and looked back along the narrow walk to the street. There was a car across the way with parking lights burning. There were other cars along the block.
I said: “Yes, you have, Mrs. Talley. I’m working for them. They’re still in there pitching. How about you? Don’t you want something back?”
The voice said: “I want to be let alone.”
“I want information,” I said. “I’m going to get it. Quietly if I can. Loud, if it can’t be quiet.”
The voice said: “Another copper, eh?”
“You know I’m not a copper, Mrs. Talley. The Graysons wouldn’t talk to a copper. Call them up and ask them.”
“I never heard of them,” the voice said. “I don’t have a phone, if I knew them. Go away, copper. I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a month.”
“My name is Marlowe,” I said. “Philip Marlowe. I’m a private eye in Los Angeles, I’ve been talking to the Graysons. I’ve got something, but I want to talk to your husband.”
The woman on the couch let out a dim laugh which barely reached across the room. “You’ve got something,” she said. “That sounds familiar. My God it does! You’ve got something. George Talley had something too—once.”
“He can have it again,” I said, “if he plays his cards right.”
“If that’s what it takes,” she said, “you can scratch him off right now.”
I leaned against the doorframe and scratched my chin instead. Somebody back on the street had clicked a flashlight on. I didn’t know why. It went
off again. It seemed to be near my car.
The pale blur of face on the couch moved and disappeared. Hair took its place. The woman had turned her face to the wall.
“I’m tired,” she said, her voice now muffled by talking at the wall. “I’m so damn tired. Beat it, mister. Be nice and go away.”
“Would a little money help any?”
“Can’t you smell the cigar smoke?”
I sniffed. I didn’t smell any cigar smoke. I said, “No.”
“They’ve been here. They were here two hours. God, I’m tired of it all. Go away.”
“Look, Mrs. Talley—”
She rolled on the couch and the blur of her face showed again. I could almost see her eyes, not quite.
“Look yourself,” she said. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I have nothing to tell you. I wouldn’t tell it, if I had. I live here, mister, if you call it living. Anyway it’s the nearest I can get to living. I want a little peace and quiet. Now you get out and leave me alone.”
“Let me in the house,” I said. “We can talk this over. I think I can show you—”
She rolled suddenly on the couch again and feet struck the floor. A tight anger came into her voice. “If you don’t get out,” she said, “I’m going to start yelling my head off. Right now. Now!”
“Okay,” I said quickly. “I’ll stick my card in the door. So you won’t forget my name. You might change your mind.”
I got the card out and wedged it into the crack of the screen door. I said: “Well goodnight, Mrs. Talley.”
No answer. Her eyes were looking across the room at me, faintly luminous in the dark. I went down off the porch and back along the narrow walk to the street.
Across the way a motor purled gently in the car with the parking lights on it. Motors purl gently in thousands of cars on thousands of streets, everywhere.
I got into the Chrysler and started it up.
TWENTY-FIVE
Westmore was a north and south street on the wrong side of town. I drove north. At the next corner I bumped over disused interurban tracks and on into a block of junk yards. Behind wooden fences the decomposing carcasses of old automobiles lay in grotesque designs, like a modern battlefield. Piles of rusted parts looked lumpy under the moon. Roof high piles, with alleys between them.