Black money (20 page)

The suitcases were on the floor of the closet under a row of empty hangers. They had been left unpacked except for a few overnight things: Ginny's nightgown and hairbrush and toothbrush and cosmetics, Martel's pajamas and safety razor. I went through his suitcases quickly. Most of his clothes were new and of fine quality, some with Bond Street labels. Apart from a book by Descartes, Meditations, in French, I could find nothing personal, and even this book had no name on the flyleaf.

Later, as we drove through the endless suburbs to Montevista, I asked Ginny if she knew who her husband was. Sylvester had given her a sedative, and she rode between us with her head on his extended arm. The shock of Martel's death had pushed her back toward childishness. Her voice sounded just a little like a sleep-talker's: "He's Francis Martel, from Paris. You know that."

"I thought I did, Ginny. But just today another name came up. Feliz Cervantes."

"I never heard of any such person."

"You met him, or at least he met you, at a Cercle Francais meeting at Professor Tapping's house."

"When? I've been to dozens of Cercle Francais meetings."

"This one was seven years ago, in September. Francis Martel was there under the name Cervantes. Mrs. Tappinger identified a photograph of him."

"Can I see the photograph?"

I moved over into the slow lane and worked the picture out of my jacket pocket. She took it from me. Then for some time she was silent. The afternoon traffic fled by us on the left. The drivers looked apprehensive, as if they had been kidnapped by their cars.

"Is this really Francis standing by the wall?"

"I'm almost certain that it is. Didn't you know him in those days?"

"No. Was I supposed to have?"

"He knew you. He told his landlady that he was going to get rich some day and come back and marry you."

"But that's ridiculous."

"Not so very. It happened."

Sylvester, who had been quiet until now, growled something at me about shutting up.

Ginny hung her head in thought over the picture. "If this is Francis, what's he doing with Mr. and Mrs. Ketchel?"

"You know the Ketchels?"

"I met them once."

"When?"

"September seven years ago. My father took me to lunch with them. It was just before he died."

Sylvester scowled across her at me. "This is enough of this, Archer. It's no time to poke around in explosive material."

"It's the only time I have."

I said to the girl: "Do you mind talking to me about these things?"

"Not if it will help."

She managed a wan smile.

"Okay. What happened at this lunch with the Ketchels?"

"Nothing, really. We had something to eat in the patio of his cottage. I tried to make conversation with Mrs. Ketchel. She was a local girl, she said, but that was the only thing we had in common. She hated me."

"Why?"

"Because Mr. Ketchel liked me. He wanted to do things for me, help me with my education and so on."

Her voice was toneless.

"Did your father know about this?"

"Yes. It was the purpose of the lunch. Roy was very naive about exploiting people. He thought he could use a man like Mr. Ketchel without being used."

"Use him for what?" I said.

"Roy owed him money. Roy was a nice man, but by that time he owed everybody money. I couldn't help him. It wouldn't have done any good to go along with Mr. Ketchel's plan. Mr. Ketchel is the kind of man who takes everything and gives nothing. I told Roy that."

"Just what was the plan?"

"It was rather vague, but Mr. Ketchel offered to send me to school in Europe."

"And your father went for this?"

"Not really. He just wanted me to butter up Mr. Ketchel a little bit. But Mr. Ketchel wanted everything. Men get that way when they're afraid they're dying."

The girl surprised me. I reminded myself that she wasn't a girl, but a woman with a brief tragic marriage already behind her. And what sounded like a long tragic childhood. Her voice had changed perceptibly, almost as though she had skipped from youth to middle age, when she began to call her father "Roy."

"How often did you see Ketchel?"

"I talked to him just the once. He had noticed meat the club."

"You say the lunch with him occurred shortly before your father died. Do you mean the same week?"

"The same day," she said. "It was the last day I ever saw Roy alive. Mother sent me to look for him that night."

"Where?"

"Down at the beach, and at the club. Peter Jamieson was with me a part of the time. He went to the Ketchel's cottage I didn't want to - but they weren't there. At least they didn't answer."

"Do you think Ketchel and your father quarreled over you?"

"I don't know. It's possible."

She went on in the same flat voice: "I wish I had been born without a nose, or only one eye."

I didn't have to ask Ginny what she meant. I had known a number of girls for whom men insisted on doing things.

"Did Ketchel murder your father, Ginny?"

"I don't know. Mother thought so, at the time."

Sylvester groaned. "I don't see the point in raking it over."

"The point is that it's connected with the present situation, doctor. You don't want to see the connection because you're part of the chain of cause and effect."

"Do we have to go into that again?"

"Please."

Ginny screwed up her face and rolled her head from side to side. "Please don't argue across me. They always used to argue across me."

We both said we were sorry. After a while she asked me in a soft voice: "Do you think Mr. Ketchel killed my husband?"

"He's the leading suspect. I don't think he'd do it personally. He'd more likely use a hired gunman."

"But why?"

"I can't go into all the circumstances. Seven years ago your husband left Montevista with Ketchel. Apparently Ketchel sent him to school in France."

"As a substitute for me?"

"That hardly seems likely. But I'm sure Ketchel had his uses for your husband."

She was offended. "Francis wasn't like that at all."

"I don't mean sex. I believe he used Francis in his business."

"What business?"

"He's a big-time gambling operator. Didn't Francis ever mention Ketchel?"

"No. He never did."

"Or Leo Spillman, which was Ketchel's real name?"

"No."

"What did you and Francis talk about, Ginny?"

"Poetry and philosophy, mostly. I had so much to learn from Francis."

"Never real things?"

She said in her anguished voice: "Why do real things always have to be ugly and horrible?"

She was feeling the pain now, I thought, the cruel pain of coming home widowed after a three-day marriage.

It was time to leave the freeway. I could see Montevista in the distance: its trees were like a green forest on the horizon. The access road straightened out toward the sea.

My mind was on Francis Martel, or whoever he was. He had driven his Bentley down this road a couple of months ago, on the track of a seven-year dream. The energy that had conceived the dream, and forced it briefly into reality, had all run out now. Even the girl beside me was lax as a doll, as if a part of her had died with the dreamer. She didn't speak again until we reached her mother's house.

The front door was locked. Ginny turned from it with a rejected air. "It's her bridge day. I should have remembered."

She found the key in her bag, and opened the door. "You don't mind bringing my suitcases in? I'm feeling a little weak."

"You have reason to," Sylvester said.

"Actually, I'm relieved that Mother isn't here. What could I say to her?"

Sylvester and I looked at each other. I got the suitcases out of the trunk of my car and carried them into the front hall. Ginny said from the sitting room: "What happened to the phone?"

"There was trouble here last night."

She leaned in the doorway. "Trouble?"

Sylvester went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "I'm sorry I have to tell you this, Ginny. Your mother was shot last night."

She slipped from his hands onto the floor. Her skin was gray and her eyes indigo, but she didn't faint. She sat with her back against the wall.

"Is Marietta dead'" "I'm afraid she is, Ginny."

I squatted beside her. "Do you know who shot your mother?"

She shook her head so hard that her hair fell like a blonde screen across her face.

"Your mother was deeply upset last night. Was something said to her, by you or Martel?"

"We said goodbye."

She gasped over the finality of the word. "That was about all, except that she didn't want me to go. She said she'd get money some other way."

"What did she mean?"

"That I had married Francis for his money, I suppose. She didn't understand."

I said: "She told me before she died that lover-boy shot her. Who would lover-boy be?"

"Francis, maybe. But he was with me all the time."

Her head fell against the wall with a thud. "I don't know what she could have meant."

"Lay off her," Sylvester said. "I'm speaking as a friend and as a doctor."

He was right. I felt like a tormenting devil squatting beside her. I got to my feet and helped Ginny to hers. "She ought to have protection. Will you stay with her, doctor?"

"I can't possibly. I must have a dozen patients stacked up waiting for me."

He glanced at his wristwatch. "Why don't you stay with her yourself? I can call a cab."

"I have things to do in town."

I turned to Ginny: "Could you stand having Peter around?"

"I guess so," she said with her head down, "so long as I don't have to talk any more to anyone."

I found Peter at home and explained the circumstances. He said he knew how to use a gun - trapshooting was one of his sports - and he'd be glad to stand guard.

He loaded a shotgun and brought it along, carrying it with a slightly military air. The news of Martel's death seemed to have lifted his spirits.

Ginny greeted him quietly in the hall. "This is nice of you, Peter. But we won't talk about anything. Okay?"

"Okay. I'm sorry, though."

They shook hands like brother and sister. But I saw his eyes take possession of her injured beauty. It came to me with a jolt that for Peter the case had just ended. I left before he realized it himself.

24

I DROVE SLOWLY Up the pass road which was the shortest route between Montevista and the city, Sylvester kept looking back into the valley where we had left Ginny. The rooftops were half submerged among the trees like flotsam in a turbulent green flood. I said: "Shouldn't she be in the hospital, or at least have a nurse?"

"I'll see about that later, when I've cleaned up my work at the clinic."

"Do you think she'll be all right?"

Sylvester was slow in answering. "She's a durable girl. Of course she's had lousy luck, compounded by bad judgement. She should have married Peter as she was supposed to. She would have been safe with him, at least. Maybe now she will."

"Maybe. You seem fond of the girl."

"As fond as I dare be."

"What does that mean, doctor?"

"Just what I said. She's a beautiful kid and she trusts me. You make everything sound like an accusation."

"I don't think so."

"Then listen to yourself. You'll see what I mean."

"You may be right."

I wanted him to keep talking. After a moment, I said: "You knew Roy Fablon. Was he the kind of a man who would try to use his daughter to pay off gambling losses?"

"Why ask me?"

"Ginny seems to think he was."

"I didn't gather that from the conversation. At worst, Roy may have been using her, or trying to, to make Spillman more lenient. You don't know how desperate a man can get when a gorilla like Spillman has you by the.. " He suppressed the end of the sentence.

"I do."

"What you say adds up to an affirmative answer. Fablon was the kind of man who would try to use his daughter."

"He didn't, anyway. He didn't have a chance to. Say he made an offer to Spillman and then withdrew it. A blowtop like Spillman might very easily have killed him."

"It works just as well the other way," Sylvester said. "Better, if you know the background situation. Put a man like Roy in a moral vise like that, and he's liable to kill himself. Which is what happened. I checked back with Dr Wills this morning, incidentally - he's the deputy coroner who performed the autopsy on Roy. He found definite evidence, chemical evidence that Roy drowned himself in the ocean."

"Or was drowned."

"There are cases of murder by drowning," Sylvester said. "But I never heard of one committed by a sick man in the sea at night."

"Spillman was and is in a position to have these things done for him."

"He had no motive."

"We've just been talking about one possible motive. A more obvious one was that Fablon owed him thirty thousand dollars and he couldn't pay. Spillman wouldn't take it lightly. You're a witness to that."

Sylvester moved restlessly in the seat. "Marietta really put a bee in your bonnet. She was cracked on the subject of Spillman."

"Did she talk to you about him recently?"

"Yesterday of lunch, when you barged in."

"You must take her seriously or you wouldn't have checked with Dr Wills today."

"Check with Wills yourself. He'll tell you the same thing."

We had reached the low summit of the pass. In a sloping field to my left an old palomino stallion wandered in the sunlight, white-maned, like a survivor.

I adjusted my windshield visor against the light as we started down the hill. The city below resembled a maze, put together by an inspired child: it looked both intricate and homemade. Beyond it lay the changing blue mystery of the sea.

I dropped Sylvester off in front of his clinic and crossed the street to Mercy Hospital. The deputy coroner had his office and laboratory in the basement, next to the hospital morgue.

Dr Wills was a small thin man with a dedicated-scientist look, intensified by steel-rimmed glasses. He handled himself as if his hands, his fingers, even his eyes and mouth were technical instruments, useful but not alive; and the real Dr Wills sat hidden in his skull directing their operations.