‘How did you get here?’ I asked without turning.
‘I called you around nine o’clock this morning,’ she said. ‘The operator said your receiver was off and no one was answering.’ She joined me at the window. ‘I hadn’t anything better to do so I came over. You were lying on the floor. The lights were on; the doors open. I got you on to the bed and was trying to bring you round when I heard them drive up. I poured whisky over you and told them you had been celebrating. I kept them away from you as long as I could. I didn’t want them to know you had been sapped. I didn’t think you would want them to know either. I don’t think they did, do you?’
‘No.’ I took a package of Camels from my pocket, shook out two, gave her one and lit up. ‘The whisky was a good idea. You didn’t see anyone else here when you came in?’
‘There wasn’t anyone else here. What happened?’
‘Someone was waiting for me. I walked in, and, Bingo! That’s all there was to it.’
She went over and began straightening the bed.
‘You make it sound pretty simple,’ she said.
‘Being hit on the head with a sock full of sand is simple. There’s nothing to it. You should try it some time.’
‘Don’t you have anyone to look after you?’
I had forgotten Tony, my Filipino boy, then I remembered it was Sunday. He didn’t come in on Sundays. That was a break. I wouldn’t have liked him to have walked in here and found me lying on the floor. He was a respectable boy. He would probably have quit.
‘Not on Sundays. On Sundays I have a beautiful redhead who comes in and does for me,’ I said, and went into the sitting room. I stood over the casting couch and stared at it. If the yellow cushion had been there I should have been convinced that I had had a nightmare, but the yellow cushion wasn’t there.
It was a pity about the casting couch. I had grown fond of it, but I would have to get rid of it. It was lucky there were no bloodstains on it, but it did smell of death. At least it smelt of death to me. You don’t make love to a girl on a couch that smells of death. Even a Malloy has his finer feelings at times, and this was one of the times.
I wandered around the room. Nothing out of place. There was no sign that Anita Cerf had been here: no sign whatsoever. I examined the carpet where the Colt automatic had lain. There were no oil stains. I got down on hands and knees and put my nose on the carpet and sniffed. There seemed to be a faint smell of gunpowder, but I couldn’t be sure if I was imagining it.
Miss Bolus stood in the bedroom doorway and watched me. A troubled little frown wrinkled her brow.
‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked. ‘Or do you always act like this?’
I stood up and ran fingers down the back of my head.
‘Sure,’ I said absently. ‘You want to see the way I act when I’m not hit on the head.’
‘I don’t think you’re well. Hadn’t you better go back to bed?’
‘Didn’t you hear what Brandon said? I have to go to Frisco to identify Benny.’
‘Bosh,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re not fit to go. I can go or someone from the office.’
I went over to the cupboard where I kept the aspirin.
‘Yes,’ I said, not paying a great deal of attention to what she was saying. I took four aspirins from the bottle and flicked them one after the other into my mouth. I washed them down with lukewarm coffee, ‘But I’m going all the same. Benny was a friend of mine.’
‘You had better get a doctor to look at your head,’ Miss Bolus said. I could see she was worried. ‘You may have concussion.’
‘The Malloys are famous for their rock-like skulls,’ I said, wondering if I had taken enough aspirins. My head still ached. ‘Nothing short of a sledgehammer would give me concussion.’ I shot two more aspirins into my mouth to be on the safe side. I was wondering why Anita Cerf had come to my place, and how the murderer knew she was there. Then an unpleasant thought dropped into my mind. Perhaps he didn’t know, and was waiting for me. That seemed much more likely. Maybe he thought I was getting too inquisitive and had come out here to silence me the way he had silenced Dana, and had knocked Anita off for practice. Well, not exactly practice... This needed a little thought. This needed one of those brain sessions for which I’m not particularly famous. I decided to put the problem in lavender until my head stopped aching.
‘I wish I knew what was going on in your mind,’ Miss Eolus said uneasily. ‘Has something happened? I mean apart from Benny?’
‘I’m glad to hear you call it a mind,’ I said. ‘You should hear what some people call it. No, nothing’s happened apart from Benny. Nothing at all.’ The two additional aspirins were on the job now. The pain in my head began to recede. ‘Why don’t you run along?’ I went on. ‘You must have things to do.’
She smoothed down her dress over her hips. She had nice hips: just the right shape and just the right weight. This wasn’t a new discovery. I had noticed them before.
‘Well, isn’t that fine?’ she said bitterly. ‘After all I’ve done for you. A brush-off. I don’t know why I bother with you. Can you tell me why I bother with you?’
‘Not right now,’ I said, not wishing to hurt her feelings, but wanting her to go very badly. ‘We’ll talk about that some other time. I’ll call you in a day or so. I must hurry up and change. You won’t mind if I say goodbye now, will you?’ and I went into the bedroom and closed the door.
After a couple of minutes I heard her car start up. I didn’t wave out of the window and I forgot her as soon as the sound of the car engine died away.
IV
The air taxi touched down on the long runway of the Portola airport, San Francisco, at twenty minutes past three. We came in on the tail of an air-liner full of movie stars, and when we reached the main gates of the airport there was a big crowd waiting to see the stars. A couple of excited bobby-soxers waved their handkerchiefs and screamed at us as we drove past, but we didn’t wave back. We weren’t in that kind of mood.
Kerman said, ‘You know it’s a funny thing, Vic, but a guy has to die before you get to know anything about him. I had no idea Ed had a wife and a couple of kids. He never mentioned them. He never told me his mother was living either. He never acted like a man with a wife and a couple of kids, did he? The way he used to horse around.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ I said. ‘What do we want to talk about his wife and kids for?’
Kerman took out his handkerchief and mopped his face.
‘I guess that’s right.’ And after a while he said, ‘I’ll be glad when it gets a bit cooler. March and a heat wave. It’s all wrong. Now, last night...’
‘And shut up about the weather too,’ I said.
‘Sure.’ Kerman said.
During the silence that followed, and while we drove along Market Street, I reconstructed the happenings of the morning. Paula had come over. Brandon had already been to see her about Benny. She had told the same tale as I had: that Benny had gone to San Francisco for the weekend. He hadn’t gone on business. He had gone up there on a sight-seeing trip. He did that sort of thing, Paula had said. I had said much the same thing. Brandon hadn’t believed us, but there was nothing he could do about it because Benny’s murder was out of his district.
While we talked Jack Kerman had arrived. Barclay’s alibi, he told us, after we had talked about Benny, was as water-tight as a submarine. He had been with Kitty Hitchens as he had said and hadn’t left her apartment until three-thirty of the afternoon following Dana’s murder. That put Barclay out of the running.
I then told them about Anita Cerf. By the way Paula and Kerman went over my rooms I could see they didn’t believe me. It was hard to believe, because there just wasn’t a trace of her ever having been in the cabin. But they both remembered the yellow cushion. The fact it wasn’t in the cabin finally convinced them I hadn’t imagined it: the cushion and the pulpy softness at the back of my head.