Lay Her Among The Lilies

LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

JAMES HADLEY

CHASE

COPYRIGHT Š 1950

LAY HER AMONG THE

LILIES

By

JAMES HADLEY CHASE

ROBERT HALE LIMITED

63 Old Brompton Road London S.W.7

James Hadley Chase – Lay Her Among The Lilies – Copyright Š 1950

Chapter I

I

It was one of those hot, breathless July mornings, nice if you’re in a swim-suit on the beach

with your favourite blonde, but hard to take if you’re shut up in an office as I was.

The sound of the mid-morning traffic on Orchid Boulevard, the drone of aircraft circling

the beach and the background murmur of the surf drifted in through the open windows. The

air-conditioning plant, hidden somewhere in the bowels of Orchid Buildings, coped

efficiently with the rising temperature. Sunshine, hot and golden, made patterns on the office

rug Paula had bought to impress the customers, and which always seemed to me too

expensive to walk on.

I sat behind the flat-topped desk on which I had scattered a few old letters to convince

Paula if she should come in suddenly that I was working. A highball, strong enough to crack

concrete, hid behind a couple of impressive-looking law books, and clinked ice at me

whenever I reached for it.

It was now just over three and a half years since I founded Universal Services: an

organization which undertook any job from exercising a pet poodle to stamping on a

blackmailer feeding on a client’s bankroll. It was essentially a millionaire’s service, as our

rates came high, but then, in Orchid City, millionaires were almost as numerous as grains of

sand on a beach. During those three and a half years we had fun and games, made a little

money and had a variety of jobs: even murder we had taken in our stride.

For the past few days business had been as quiet as a spinster eating a bun in a lecture-hall.

The routine stuff was coming in all right, but Paula Bensinger took care of that. It was only

when something out-of-the-way reared its head that I and my leg-man, Jack Kerman, went to

work. And nothing out-of-the-way had reared its head, so we were just sitting around waiting

and punching holes in a bottle of Scotch and making out to Paula we were busy.

Sprawled out in the armchair reserved for clients, Jack Kerman, long, lean and dapper, with

a broad streak of white in his thick black hair and a Clark Gable moustache, rubbed the

frosted glass of his highball against his forehead and relaxed. Immaculate in an olive-green

tropical suit and a yellow and red striped tie, his narrow feet gaudy in white buckskin shoes

with dark green explosions, he looked every inch a fugitive from the pages of Esquire.

Out of a long, brooding silence, he said: “What a dish! Take her arms off and she’d have

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knocked Venus for a loop.” He shifted into a more comfortable position and sighed. “I wish

someone had taken her arms off. Boy! Was she strong! And I was sucker enough to think she

was a pushover.”

“Don’t tell me,” I pleaded, reaching for my highball. “That opening has a familiar ring. The

last thing I want to hear on a morning like this is an extract from your love-life. I’d rather

read Krafft-Ebing.”

“That old goat won’t get you anywhere,” Kerman said scornfully. “He wrote all the nifty

bits in Latin.”

“And you’d be surprised at the number of guys who learned Latin just to find out what he

said. That’s what I call killing two birds with one stone.”

“That brings us right back to my blonde,” Kerman said, stretching out his long legs. “I ran

into her last night in Barney’s drug store …”

“I’m not interested in blondes,” I said firmly. “Instead of sitting around here talking about

women, you should be out trying to hustle up new business. Sometimes I wonder what the

hell I pay you for.”

Kerman considered this, a surprised expression on his face.

“Do you want any new business?” he asked eventually. “I thought the idea was to let Paula

do all the work, and we live on her.”

“That’s the general set-up, but once in a while it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to do

something to earn your keep.”

Kerman looked relieved.

“Yeah; once in a while. For a moment I thought you meant now.” He sipped his highball

and closed his eyes. “Now this blonde I keep trying to tell you about. She’s a cute trick if ever

there was one. When I tried to date her up she said she didn’t run after men. Know what I

said?”

“What did you say?” I asked, because he would have told me anyway, and if I didn’t listen

to his lies, who was going to listen to mine?

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Kerman chortled.

“‘Lady,’ I said, ‘ maybe you don’t run after men, but a mousetrap doesn’t have to run after

mice, either.’ Smart, huh? Well, it killed her. You needn’t look so damned sour. Maybe you

have heard it before, but she hadn’t, and it knocked her dead.”

Then before I could hide the highball the door jerked open and Paula swept in.

Paula was a tall, dark lovely, with cool, steady brown eyes and a figure full of ideas—my

ideas, not hers. She was quick on the uptake, ruthlessly efficient and a tireless worker. It had

been she who had encouraged me to start Universal Services, and had lent the money to tide

me over for the first six months. It was entirely due to her ability to cope with the

administrative side of the business that Universal Services was an established success. If I

were the brains of the set-up, you could call her the backbone. Without her the organization

would have folded in a week.

“Haven’t you anything better to do than sit around and drink?” she demanded, planting

herself before the desk, and looking at me accusingly.

“What is there better to do?” Kerman asked, mildly interested.

She gave him a withering stare and turned her bright brown eyes on me again.

“As a matter of fact, Jack and I were just going out to beat up some new business,” I said,

hastily pushing back my chair. “Come on, Jack. Let’s go and see what we can find.”

“And where are you going to look—Finnegan’s bar?” Paula asked scornfully.

“That’s a bright idea, sourpuss,” Kerman said. “Maybe Finnegan will have something for

us.”

“Before you go you might like to look at this,” Paula said, and flourished a long envelope at

me. “The janitor brought it up just now. He found it in one of the pockets of that old

trenchcoat you so generously gave him.”

“He did?” I said, taking the envelope. “That’s odd. I haven’t worn that trenchcoat for more

than a year.”

“The cancellation stamp bears you out,” Paula said with ominous calm. “The letter was

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posted fourteen months ago. I suppose you couldn’t have put it in your pocket and forgotten

all about it? You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you?”

The envelope was addressed to me in a neat, feminine handwriting, and unopened.

“I can’t remember ever seeing it before,” I said.

“Considering you don’t appear to remember anything unless I remind you, that comes as no