1949 - You're Lonely When You Dead (9 page)

I
parked under the same beech tree at the entrance to Wiltshire Avenue, removed the registration card from the steering post and climbed out of the car into the solid heat of the sun. ‘We walk from here,’ I said. ‘It’s just at the top of the road.’

Kerman reluctantly got out of the car, adjusted the blue-and-red silk handkerchief that peeped out of his top left-hand pocket, ran his thumb along the edge of his dapper moustache and stifled a groan.

‘As far as that?’ he said, staring. ‘Jeepers! My feet feel as if they’ve been scuffling in a bed of red-hot embers. Think he’ll give us a drink?’

‘He’s more likely to bend a two-handed sword over our skulls,’ I returned, tucking under my arm Dana’s coat and skirt I had made into a brown-paper parcel. ‘He’s a collector of medieval weapons.’

‘Well, that’s nice,’ Kerman said. ‘A two-handed sword, huh? That’s something I’ve never been hit with.’

We walked side by side up to the long avenue, keeping in the shadow of the trees.

‘The idea is to get to his bedroom and plant Dana’s things in his wardrobe without being seen,’ I said, as we paused outside the iron-studded gate. ‘If he’s in the garden hold him in conversation until I join you. If he’s in the house I’ll have to take a chance that he doesn’t hear me. With any luck he won’t be home.’

‘You’ll look a little flatfooted if he catches you and calls the cops,’ Kerman said, grinning. ‘I can just imagine Brandon’s face when you’re marched in on a charge of breaking and entering.’

‘We have to keep him away from the telephone,’ I explained. ‘That’s why I’ve brought you along. Don’t let’s have any misunderstanding about that. We’re going to act very tough indeed.’

‘That’s fine, so long as he doesn’t act very tough with us.’

I pushed open the gate and glanced around. The doves were still on the roof, and there was no one in the garden.

‘I wonder if he’s skipped,’ I said, looking towards the house.

‘Do I go first?’ Kerman asked.

‘Sure. Ring the bell, and if he’s there keep him amused until I’ve had time to get into his bedroom. I shouldn’t be two or three minutes.’

‘I hope you’re not,’ Kerman said, and went off briskly towards the house.

I watched his progress up the wooden steps to the front door and heard the bell ring sharply somewhere in the house. We waited, but nothing happened, and Kerman looked my way, lifted his hands and shook his head. I made motions, telling him to ring again. He rang again. Then without any warning a voice said, ‘What exactly do you think you’re up to?’

Maybe I didn’t jump more than a foot, but it felt like a yard. I swung around.

A tall hunk of male beef was standing just behind me; the kind of lad women would fall for in a big way. He had a lot of black curly hair, and his eyes seemed bluer than they were because of the rich golden tan of his skin. He had a complacent, smug air about him of a guy who’s been told so often he is handsome that he has at last come to believe it, and it hasn’t been such hard work at that.

I didn’t have to be Philo Vance to guess he was Barclay.

Dana had said he dressed and looked like a movie star and that description about fitted him. He wore an apricot-coloured rugger shirt, white linen slacks with a crease sharp enough to slice bread with, and white buckskin shoes with brown explosions. Around his thick hairy wrist was a heavy gold-chain bracelet, and around his thick hairy neck was a green silk scarf with his initials neatly monogrammed just where I could read them.

‘Mr. Barclay?’ I asked, not perhaps as nonchalantly as I would have liked but near enough to make no difference.

‘What if I am?’ He had a Lawrence Tibbett baritone, very manly and rich; the kind of voice that would send shudders up the spines of bobby-soxers, but did nothing at all to mine.

I handed him my card: the one with the Universal Services’ crest in the corner, and stood back while he examined it as enthusiastically as if I’d handed him the business end of a skunk. He took his time about reading it, turned it and stared at the blank side for a moment or so, then returned it as if it soiled his fingers.

‘Sorry and all that,’ he said, and sneered thoughtfully at a Charlotte Collins dahlia that happened to be in his line of vision. ‘I have all the service I want. Thank you for calling: some other time perhaps.’

Kerman joined us. Barclay studiously ignored him.

‘We’re not offering service,’ I said. ‘We’re acting for a client whose wife happens to be a friend of yours. You may be able to help us.’

Although he managed to hold his bored, contemptuous attitude a wary expression now came into his eyes.

‘Still sorry,’ he said, waving his hand to the gate. ‘I’m a little pressed for time right now, and besides I don’t like snoopers.’

‘We can get our information from the police,’ I said. ‘But then you know what the police are; they haven’t any respect for the individual. We have.’

He took one hand from one trousers pocket, rubbed his square jaw thoughtfully and still managed to appear as unruffled and as calm as a mountain capped with snow.

‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Let’s be quick about it.’

‘Sorry, but our business is a little too serious to discuss in a hurry. Shall we go and talk it over?’

He looked from me to Kerman and back to me again, and his eyes hardened.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he exclaimed, losing his poise, and pushing past me, walked with long quick strides towards the house.

We went after him.

‘Do you still plant exhibit A?’ Kerman asked out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Not a hope. We’ll either have to trap a confession out of him or beat it out of him. I don’t know what else we can do.’

‘It should be fun beating it out of him,’ Kerman said gloomily.

Barclay opened the front door and entered the living room without bothering to see if we were following. He crossed over to a big cocktail cabinet, opened the double doors to reveal an interesting collection of bottles on the inside of the doors were racks that held cut-glass tumblers, and set in the middle of the cabinet was a tiny refrigerator.

It was the most efficient drinking apparatus I had seen, and by the way Kerman reacted, rubbing his hands briskly and teetering up and down on his toes, he thought so too.

‘Well, say your piece and be quick about it,’ Barclay said, selecting a glass and half filling it with whisky. He added a splash of soda and an ice cube from the refrigerator, closed the cabinet doors with a sharp click that told me he wasn’t going to open them again until we had gone, and moved over to the settee where he stretched out his manly bulk I waited in silence until he had settled himself, then stripped the brown paper off the rolled-up coat and skirt and tossed them into his lap.

‘How did this suit get into your cupboard?’ I asked.

He put the whisky down on the occasional table at his side, poked at the coat doubtfully, a look of blank surprise on his face.

‘What was that again?’ he asked, and his head came round and he stared at me.

‘That suit was in your cupboard. I want to know how it got there.’

He brushed the suit from his lap on to the floor, picked up his whisky, took a long drink and set the glass down again.

‘Are you drunk or just crazy?’ he asked.

‘Look, don’t let’s have any of that,’ I said. ‘I called here about a couple of hours back. There was no one home so I had a look round, and I found that suit in the cupboard in your bedroom.’

‘Did you?’ He was getting over his surprise now. ‘So you took it away and brought it back again. Very clever,’ and he a lowed himself a small sneer.

‘I took it away because I wanted to have it examined for bloodstains.’

He lifted his head sharply at that. There was a sudden bright glitter in his eyes.

‘What do you mean - bloodstains?’

‘That suit belonged to Dana Lewis, the girl who was shot near East Beach last night.’

He swung his legs off the settee and sat up.

‘What the hell is all this?’

‘I’m asking you how it is that this suit, belonging to a girl who was murdered and stripped last night, happened to be in your cupboard.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about, and I don’t care. I’ve had enough of this. Take your old clothes and beat it!’

‘I have very definite evidence to connect you with Dana Lewis,’ I said quietly. ‘She was one of my operators and was watching Mrs. Cerf at the time she was murdered.’

That stopped him. He pulled up like an angry bull confronted by a barbed-wire fence.

‘What’s this - blackmail?’

‘Nothing as simple as that. The murdered girl was a friend of mine. I’m checking up on her death. I want to know how her clothes got into your cupboard.’

‘Well, well, well,’ he said and got slowly to his feet; very big, dangerously quiet and controlled. ‘But all the same it smells of blackmail to me. Before we go any further with this, let’s call the police. I’d like them to hear what you’ve just said, then you can produce your proof, and if you can’t they’ll know how to take care of you.’ His hand reached for the telephone, but Kerman was a shade too fast for him. He grabbed the telephone, yanked the cable loose from its moorings and threw the instrument across the room.

‘No phone, pal,’ he said.

Barclay’s reaction was immediate. Moving fast for a big man he socked Kerman on the side of the head. It was a nice punch, and Kerman went down, taking the table with him.

By the time Barclay turned to let fly at me I was already moving in on him. I got my face out of the way of a left swing, touched him lightly on the chest with my left, straightened him a trifle, then uncorked the right-hand wallop that Comrade Mills had treated so flippantly, only Barclay wasn’t in Mills’s class and he took the punch on the side of his jaw. His eyes rolled back, the whites showed and he fell forward on his face with a crash that shook the room.

‘Nice work,’ Kerman said, getting slowly to his feet. He held the side of his face tenderly. ‘He packs quite a punch.

Think we could help ourselves to a little of his whisky?’

‘Let’s help ourselves to a lot,’ I said, stirring Barclay’s thick body with my foot.

Kerman went over to the cocktail cabinet, still rubbing his face. He made two drinks, handed me one and swallowed the other at a gulp. I drank half mine and set the glass on the table. I was worried about Barclay. He hadn’t acted like a guilty man, and I had an uneasy feeling he had been genuine when he said he didn’t know what I was talking about.

‘We’ll have to handle this a little smarter than we’re doing now,’ I said, ‘if we don’t want a showdown with the cops.’

Kerman poured himself another drink. Now he had got his hands on the whisky he was thoroughly happy.

‘We’re doing all right,’ he said. ‘He started the fight anyway. Let’s get him talking,’ and he picked up the soda syphon and squirted a jet of soda into Barclay’s face.

Barclay grunted, rolled over, shielding his face with his hands, then slowly lifted his head and blinked up at us.

‘Come on, sissy, don’t loll around all night,’ Kerman said, putting down the syphon. ‘We have a lot to talk over,’ and he reached for an Indian club that was hanging on the wall and balanced it lightly in his hand. ‘And don’t go showing off your strength again or I’ll give you a tap with this.’

Barclay got to his feet, stripped off his sodden scarf and dropped it on the floor. His eyes were dark explosions, but without a word he walked slowly over to the settee, sank down on it and fingered his jaw where a lump was forming.

‘Now, suppose we start all over again?’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘How did this suit get into your cupboard?’

After a long pause he said with a snarl in his voice, ‘I tell you I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

And the trouble was I didn’t believe he did.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘So you don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, I’ll tell you. Three days ago Franklin Cerf hired us to watch his wife. Never mind why. He had his reasons, but we needn’t go into that. Dana Lewis was the operator detailed to shadow Mrs. Cerf. She reported that Mrs. Cerf and you were on friendly terms and were meeting secretly. This information was not passed on to Cerf by the way. Last night she received a telephone call about one o’clock, and she left her apartment. She was found later on the sand dunes near East Beach, shot through the head.

‘Her murder puts us on a spot We guarantee our clients absolute secrecy, and if we help the police we can’t avoid breaking our guarantee and giving Mrs. Cerf away. That’s bad for our business, and we’ve decided to carry out our own investigation.

‘We are looking for Mrs. Cerf. You may or may not know she’s disappeared. We thought this place would be a likely hide-out for her, and late this afternoon I came here to see if she was around. No one was home so I searched the place. I didn’t find Mrs. Cerf, but I did find Dana Lewis’s clothes in your bedroom cupboard. I’m giving you a chance to explain how they got there. If you can’t give me an explanation then I’m going to assume you killed her and take the necessary action. You have a pretty sound motive for getting rid of her. She knew you and Mrs. Cerf were fooling around together. You’re not the type who’d welcome an outraged husband on your heels, and you might have been tempted to shut her mouth with a gun. Now do you understand what I’m talking about?’