The girl said: “Sit down and talk then.”
She closed the door and went to sit in a gloomy Boston rocker across the room. I sat down on a thick davenport. There was a dull green curtain hanging across an open door space, at one end of the davenport. That would lead to dressing room and bathroom. There was a closed door at the other end. That would be the kitchenette. That would be all there was.
The girl crossed her ankles and leaned her head back against the chair and looked at me under long beaded lashes. Her eyebrows were thin and arched and as brown as her hair. It was a quiet, secret face. It didn’t look like the face of a woman who would waste a lot of motion.
“I got a rather different idea of you,” I said, “from Kingsley.”
Her lips twisted a little. She said nothing.
“From Lavery too,” I said. “It just goes to show that we talk different languages to different people.”
“I haven’t time for this sort of talk,” she said. “What is it you have to know?”
“He hired me to find you. I’ve been working on it. I supposed you would know that.”
“Yes. His office sweetie told me that over the phone. She told me you would be a man named Marlowe. She told me about the scarf.”
I took the scarf off my neck and folded it up and slipped it into a pocket. I said: “So I know a little about your movements. Not very much. I know you left your car at the Prescott Hotel in San Bernardino and that you met Lavery there. I know you sent a wire from El Paso. What did you do then?”
“All I want from you is the money he sent. I don’t see that my movements are any of your business.”
“I don’t have to argue about that,” I said. “It’s a question of whether you want the money.”
“Well, we went to El Paso,” she said, in a tired voice. “I thought of marrying him then. So I sent that wire. You saw the wire?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I changed my mind. I asked him to go home and leave me. He made a scene.”
“Did he go home and leave you?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“What did you do then?”
“I went to Santa Barbara and stayed there a few days. Over a week in fact. Then to Pasadena. Same thing. Then to Hollywood. Then I came down here. That’s all.”
“You were alone all this time?”
She hesitated a little and then said: “Yes.”
“Not with Lavery—any part of it?”
“Not after he went home.”
“What was the idea?”
“Idea of what?” Her voice was a little sharp.
“Idea of going to these places and not sending any word. Didn’t you know he would be very anxious?”
“Oh, you mean my husband,” she said coolly. “I don’t think I worried much about him. He’d think I was in Mexico, wouldn’t he? As for the idea of it all—well, I just had to think things out. My life had got to be a hopeless tangle. I had to be somewhere quite alone and try to straighten myself out.”
“Before that,” I said, “you spent a month at Little Fawn Lake trying to straighten it out and not getting anywhere. Is that it?”
She looked down at her shoes and then up at me and nodded earnestly. The wavy brown hair surged forward along her cheeks. She put her left hand up and pushed it back and then rubbed her temple with one finger.
“I seemed to need a new place,” she said. “Not necessarily an interesting place. Just a strange place. Without associations. A place where I would be very much alone. Like a hotel.”
“How are you getting on with it?”
“Not very well. But I’m not going back to Derace Kingsley. Does he want me to?”
“I don’t know. But why did you come down here, to the town where Lavery was?”
She bit a knuckle and looked at me over her hand. “I wanted to see him again. He’s all mixed up in my mind. I’m not in love with him, and yet—well, I suppose in a way I am. But I don’t think I want to marry him. Does that make sense?”
“That part of it makes sense. But staying away from home in a lot of crummy hotels doesn’t. You’ve lived your own life for years, as I understand it.”
“I had to be alone, to—to think things out,” she said a little desperately and bit the knuckle again, hard. “Won’t you please give me the money and go away?”
“Sure. Right away. But wasn’t there any other reason for your going away from Little Fawn Lake just then? Anything connected with Muriel Chess, for instance?”
She looked surprised. But anyone can look surprised. “Good heavens, what would there be? That frozen-faced little drip—what is she to me?”
“I thought you might have had a fight with her—about Bill.”
“Bill? Bill Chess?” She seemed even more surprised. Almost too surprised.
“Bill claims you made a pass at him.”
She put her head back and let out a tinny and unreal laugh. “Good heavens, that muddy-faced boozer?” Her face sobered suddenly. “What’s happened? Why all the mystery?”
“He might be a muddy-faced boozer,” I said. “The police think he’s a murderer too. Of his wife. She’s been found drowned in the lake. After a month.”
She moistened her lips and held her head on one side, staring at me fixedly. There was a quiet little silence. The damp breath of the Pacific slid into the room around us.
“I’m not too surprised,” she said slowly. “So it came to that in the end. They fought terribly at times. Do you think that had something to do with my leaving?”
I nodded. “There was a chance of it.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with it at all,” she said seriously, and shook her head back and forth. “It was just the way I told you. Nothing else.”
“Muriel’s dead,” I said. “Drowned in the lake. You don’t get much of a boot out of that, do you?”
“I hardly knew the girl,” she said. “Really. She kept to herself. After all—”
“I don’t suppose you knew she had once worked in Dr. Almore’s office?”
She looked completely puzzled now. “I was never in Dr. Almore’s office,” she said slowly. “He made a few house calls a long time ago. I—what are you talking about?”
“Muriel Chess was really a girl called Mildred Haviland, who had been Dr. Almore’s office nurse.”
“That’s a queer coincidence,” she said wonderingly. “I knew Bill met her in Riverside. I didn’t know how or under what circumstances or where she came from. Dr. Almore’s office, eh? It doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?”
I said. “No. I guess it’s a genuine coincidence. They do happen. But you see why I had to talk to you. Muriel being found drowned and you having gone away and Muriel being Mildred Haviland who was connected with Dr. Almore at one time—as Lavery was also, in a different way. And of course Lavery lives across the street from Dr. Almore. Did he, Lavery, seem to know Muriel from somewhere else?”
She thought about it, biting her lower lip gently. “He saw her up there,” she said finally. “He didn’t act as if he had ever seen her before.”
“And he would have,” I said. “Being the kind of guy he was.”
“I don’t think Chris had anything to do with Dr. Almore,” she said. “He knew Dr. Almore’s wife. I don’t think he knew the doctor at all. So he probably wouldn’t know Dr. Almore’s office nurse.”
“Well, I guess there’s nothing in all this to help me,” I said. “But you can see why I had to talk to you. I guess I can give you the money now.”
I got the envelope out and stood up to drop it on her knee.
She let it lie there. I sat down again.
“You do this character very well,” I said. “This confused innocence with an undertone of hardness and bitterness. People have made a bad mistake about you. They have been thinking of you as a reckless little idiot with no brains and no control. They have been very wrong.”
She stared at me, lifting her eyebrows. She said nothing. Then a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She reached for the envelope, tapped it on her knee, and laid it aside on the table. She stared at me all the time.