Lay Her Among the Lilies vm-2 Read online

  The garden was small and compact, and as neat and as orderly as a barrack-room on inspection day. Yellow sunblinds, faded and past their prime, screened the windows. The front door could have done with a lick of paint. That went for the whole of the bungalow, too.

  I dug my thumb into the bell-push and waited. After a while I became aware that someone was peeping at me though the sunblinds. There was nothing I could do about that except put on a pleasant expression and wait. I put on a pleasant expression and waited.

  Just when I thought I would have to ring again I heard the kind of noise a mouse makes in the wainscotting, and the front door opened.

  The woman who looked at me was thin and small and bird-like. She had on a black silk dress that might have been fashionable about fifty years ago if you lived in isolation and no one ever sent you Vogue. Her thin old face was tired and defeated, her eyes told me life wasn’t much fun.

  “Is the doctor in?” I asked, raising my hat, knowing if anyone would appreciate courtesy she would.

  “Why, yes.” The voice sounded defeated, too. “He’s in the garden at the back. I’ll call him.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I’d as soon go around and see him there. I’m not a patient. I just wanted to ask him a question.”

  “Yes.” The look of hope which had begun to climb into her eyes faded away. Not a patient. No fee. Just a healthy young husky with a question. “You won’t keep him long, will you? He doesn’t like being disturbed.”

  “I won’t keep him long.”

  I raised my hat, bowed the way I hoped in her better days men had bowed to her, and retreated back to the garden path again. She closed the front door. A moment later I spotted her shadow as she peered at me through the front window blinds.

  I followed the path around the bungalow to the garden at the back. Doc Bewley might not have been a ball of fire as a healer, but he was right on the beam as a gardener I would have liked to have brought those three Crosby gardeners to look at this garden. It might have shaken up their ideas.

  At the bottom of the garden, standing over a giant dahlia was a tall old man in a white alpaca coat, a yellow panama, yellowish-white trousers and elastic side-boots. He was looking at the dahlia the way a doctor looks down your throat when you say ‘ Ah-aa’, and was probably finding it a lot more interesting.

  He looked up sharply when I was within a few feet of him. His face was lined and shrivelled, not unlike the skin of a prune, and he had a crop of coarse white hair sprouting out of his cars. Not a noble or clever face, but the face of a very old man who is satisfied with himself, whose standards aren’t very high, who has got beyond caring, is obstinate, dull-witted, but undefeated.

  “Good afternoon,” I said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Surgery hours are from five to seven, young man,” he said in a voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “I can’t see you now.”

  “This isn’t a professional call,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the dahlia. It was a lovely thing: eight inches across if it was an inch, and flawless. “My name’s Malloy. I’m an old friend of Janet Crosby.”

  He touched the dahlia gently with thick-jointed fingers.

  “Who?” he asked vaguely, not interested: just a dull-witted old man with a flower.

  “Janet Crosby,” I said. It was hot in the sun, and the drone of the bees, the smell of all those flowers made me a little vague myself.

  “What of her?”

  “You signed the death certificate.”

  He dragged his eyes away from the dahlia and looked at me.

  “Who did you say you were?”

  “Victor Malloy. I’m a little worried about Miss Crosby’s death.”

  “Why should you be worried?” he asked, a flicker of alarm in his eyes. He knew he was old and dull-witted and absent-minded. He knew by keeping on practicing medicine at his age he ran the risk of making a mistake sooner or later. I could see he thought I was going to accuse him of making that mistake now.

  “Well, you see,” I said mildly, not wanting to stampede him, “I’ve been away for three or four years. Janet Crosby was a very old friend. I had no idea she had a bad heart. It was a great shock to me to hear she had gone like that. I want to satisfy myself that there was nothing wrong.”

  A muscle in his face twitched. The nostrils dilated.

  “What do you mean—wrong? She died of malignant endocarditis. The symptoms are unmistakable. Besides, Dr. Salzer was there. There was nothing wrong. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. What exactly is malignant endocarditis?”

  He frowned blankly, and, for a moment, I thought he was going to say he didn’t know, but he got hold of himself, stirred his old withered memory and said slowly as if he were conjuring up a page from some medical dictionary, “It’s a progressive microbic infection of the heart valves. Fragments of the ulcerating valves were carried by the blood stream all over her body. She hadn’t a chance. Even if they had called me in sooner, there was nothing I could have done.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me, doc,” I said, and smiled to let him know I was on his side.

  “Just why did they call you in? You weren’t her doctor, were you?”

  “Certainly not,” he said, almost angrily. “But it was quite proper to call me in. I live close by. It would have been unethical for Dr. Salzer to have issued the certificate.”

  “Just who is Dr. Salzer?”

  He began to look vague again, and his fingers went yearningly towards the dahlia. I could see he wanted to be left alone, to let his brain sleep in the peaceful contemplation of his flowers, not to be worried by a husky like me who was taking up his time for nothing.

  “He runs one of those crank sanatoriums, right next door to the Crosby estate,” he said finally. “He’s a friend of the family. His position is such he couldn’t ethically issue a certificate. He is not a qualified practitioner. I was very flattered they asked for my help.”

  I could imagine that. I wondered what they paid him.

  “Look, doc,” I said. “I’d like to get this straight. I’ve tried to see Maureen Crosby, but she isn’t well. I’m going away, but before I go I want to get a picture of this thing. All I’ve heard is that Janet died suddenly. You say it was heart trouble. What happened? Were you there when she died?”

  “Why, no,” he said, and alarm again flickered in the dim eyes. “I arrived about half an hour after she was dead. She had died in her sleep. The symptoms were unmistakable. Dr. Salzer told me she had been suffering from the disease for some months. He had been treating her. There was nothing much one can do with such cases except rest. I can’t understand why you’re asking so many questions.” He looked hopefully towards the house to see if his wife wanted him. She didn’t.

  “It’s only that I want to satisfy myself,” I said, and smiled again. “You arrived at the house, and Salzer was there. Is that it?”

  He nodded, getting more worried every second.

  “Was there anyone else there?”

  “Miss Crosby. The younger one. She was there.”

  “Maureen?”

  “I believe that’s her name.”

  “And Salzer took you to Janet’s room? Did Maureen come, too?”

  “Yes. They both came with me into the room. The the young woman seemed very upset.

  She was crying.” He fingered the dahlia. “Perhaps there should have been a postmortem,” he said suddenly. “But I assure you there was no need. Malignant endocarditis is unmistakable. One has to consider the feelings of those who are left.”

  “And yet, after fourteen months, you are beginning to think there should have been a postmortem?”

  I put a slight edge to my voice.

  “Strictly speaking, there should have been, because Dr. Salzer had been treating her, and, as he explained to me, he is a Doctor of Science, not Medicine. But the symptoms…”

  “Yeah… are unmistakable. One other thing, doc. Have y
ou ever seen Janet Crosby before? I mean, before she died?”

  He looked wary, wondering if I were springing a trap.

  “I’ve seen her in her car, but not to speak to.”

  “And not close enough to notice if she showed any symptoms of heart trouble?”

  He blinked.

  “I didn’t get that.”

  “I understand she was suffering from this disease for some months. You say you saw her in her car. How long ago was this: that you saw her? How long before she died?”

  “A month, maybe two. I don’t remember.”

  “What I’m trying to get at,” I said patiently, “is that with this disease she would have shown symptoms you might have recognized if you had seen her before she died.”

  “I don’t think I should.”

  “And yet the symptoms are unmistakable?”

  He licked his thin lips.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and began to back away. “I can’t give you any more of my time. It is valuable. I must ask you to excuse me.”

  “That’s all right, doc,” I said. “Well, thanks. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. But you know how it is. I just wanted to put my mind at rest. I liked that girl.”

  He didn’t say anything, but continued to back away towards the rose beds.

  “There’s just one other thing, doc,” I said. “How was it that Dr. Salzer signed Macdonald Crosby’s certificate when he was accidentally shot? Wasn’t that unethical for a non-qualified quack to do that?”

  He looked at me the way you look at a big spider that has fallen into your bath.

  “Don’t worry me,” he said in a quavering voice. “Ask him : don’t bother me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s a good idea. Thank you, doc. I will.”

  He turned and moved off down the path towards his roses. From the back he looked even older than he was. I watched him pick off a dead rose and noticed his hand was very shaky. I was afraid I had spoilt his afternoon.

  The small bird-like woman was standing on the porch of the front door, hopefully, when I arrived back at the house. She pretended not to see me.

  “I’m afraid I’ve taken up a lot of the doctor’s time,” I said, raising my hat. “He tells me it is valuable. Would five dollars cover it?”

  The tired eyes brightened. The thin face lit up.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said, and looked furtively down the garden at the old bent back and the yellow panama hat.

  I slipped the bill into her hand. She snapped it up the way a lizard snaps up a fly. I had an idea the old man at the bottom of the garden wouldn’t ever set eyes on it. At least, I hadn’t spoilt her afternoon.

  IV

  I pushed open my office door and marched in. Jack Kerman was dozing in the armchair by the window. Paula was sitting at my desk working on one of her hundreds of card indexes: indexes that kept our fingers on the pulse of Orchid City, that told us who was who, who was in town and who had left town, who had married who, and so on. Although she had four girls working continuously on the cards, she insisted on keeping the key-cards up-to-date herself.

  She moved out of the desk-chair as I tossed my hat at Kerman, waking him. He gave a startled grunt, rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  “What’s it like—working?” he asked. “Or haven’t you started yet?”

  “I’ve started,” I said, and sat down, reached for a cigarette, lit it, shot my cuffs and plunged into the tale. I gave them all the details with the exception of my session with Nurse Gurney. I skirted over that, knowing Paula wouldn’t have approved and Kerman would have got too excited to think straight. “Not much,” I concluded, “but enough to make me think it’s worth while going on with. Maybe there’s nothing wrong; maybe there is. If there is the less commotion we make the better. We don’t want to tip anyone off just yet.”

  “If this guy in the Dodge was tailing you, it seems to me someone’s tipped off already,” Kerman pointed out.

  “Yeah, but we can’t be sure of that. Maybe my face interested him. Maybe he was practicing to be a detective.”

  I reached for the telephone. “Give me police headquarters,” I told the exchange girl.

  “You got his number?” Paula asked, fluttering through the stack of cards in her hands.

  “Checking it now,” I said. “Give me Lieutenant Mifflin,” I went on when an unenthusiastic voice announced Police Headquarters. There was a plop on the line, and Mifflin’s gritty voice asked, “Hello?”

  Tim Mifflin was a good tough cop, and we had worked together off and on for some time. Whenever I could I helped him, and whenever he could he helped me. He had a great respect for my hunches when playing the horses, and, by following my tips, he had had the luck to make himself a little folding money.

  “Malloy here,” I said. “How are you, Tim?”

  “What do you care?” he snapped. “You’ve never been interested in my health and you never will be. What do you want this time?”

  “Who owns an olive-green Dodge; licence number, O.R.3345?”

  “The way you use Headquarters for financial gain slaughters me,” Mifflin said. “If Brandon ever finds out what I do for you he’ll screw me.”

  “Well, I won’t tell him, so it’s up to you,” I said, and grinned, “and another thing, talking about financial gain, if you want to make yourself a piece of change, put your shirt on Crab Apple for a win. Tomorrow; four-thirty.”

  “You really mean my shirt?”

  “I’ll say I do. Sell up your home; hock your wife; break into Brandon’s safe. As good as that. Two gets you six. The only thing that’ll stop that horse is for someone to shoot it.”

  “Maybe someone will,” Mifflin said, who was always over cautious. “Well, if you say so.”

  “It’s the safest bet you’ll ever have. How about that number?”

  “Sure, sure. Hang on. I’ll have it for you in ten seconds.”

  While I was waiting I saw Jack Kerman busily dialling on the other phone.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

  “Getting my bookie. That Crab Apple sounds good.”

  “Forget it. I’m just telling him what someone told me. It’s a safe enough tip for a copper, but not for a friend.”

  Kerman replaced the receiver as if it had bitten him. “Suppose he sells up his home and hocks his wife? You know what a dope he is on these things.”

  “Have you seen his home and wife? Well, I have. I’ll be doing him a favour.” As Mifflin’s voice came on the line, I said, “What have you got?”

  “O.R.3345, did you say?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The car’s registered in the name of Jonathan Salzer, The Sanatorium, Foothill Boulevard. That what you want to know?”

  I kept the excitement out of my voice. “Maybe. Who’s Salzer? Know anything about him?”

  “Not much. He runs a crank’s home. If you have a pain in your belly he fills you up with fruit juices and lets you ferment. He does all right.”

  “Nothing crooked on the side?”

  “For crying out loud! He doesn’t need to be crooked. He’s making a hell of a lot of dough.”

  “Well, thanks, Tim.”

  “You’re sure about that horse?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said, and winked at Kerman. “Put your shirt on it.”

  “Well, I’ll spring five bucks, but no more.” I hung up.

  “Five bucks! The gambler!”

  “Salzer’s car, huh?” Kerman said.

  I nodded.

  “Maybe we did tip our hand.” I looked at Paula. “Have you anything on Salzer?”

  “I’ll see.” She put a card down before me. “That might interest you. It’s all the information we have on Janet Crosby.”

  I read the details while she went into the card-index room that led off the outer office.

  “Dancing, tennis and golf,” I said, looking across the desk at Kerman. “Doesn’t sound lik
e someone with heart disease. Intimate friends, Joan Parmetta and Douglas Sherrill. A couple of years back she was engaged to Sherrill, but broke it off. No reason given. Who’s Sherrill anyway?”

  “Never heard of him. Want me to find out?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you went along and saw this Parmetta girl and Sherrill. Tell them you used to be an old friend of Janet in her San Francisco days. You’ll have to get the background in case they try and trip you. Paula will get that for you. What I want, Jack, is their reaction to her having heart trouble. Maybe she did have a wacky heart, but if she didn’t, then we really have something to work on.”

  “Okay,” Kerman said.

  Paula came in.

  “Nothing much,” she said. “Salzer started his sanatorium in 1940. It’s a luxury place. Two hundred dollars a week.”

  “Nice profit,” I said enviously.

  “Some people must be crazy. Imagine paying all that dough for a glass of fruit juice,” Kerman said, horrified. “It sounds the kind of racket we should be in.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “He’s married. Speaks French and German fluently. Has a Doctor of Science degree. No hobbies. No children. Age fifty-three,” Paula said, reading from the card. “That’s all, Vic.”

  “Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. “Give Jack a hand, will you? He wants the dope on this Parmetta girl and Sherrill. I’m going downstairs to have a word with Mother Bendix. I want to check on the Crosbys’ staff. That butler struck me as a phoney. Maybe she got him the job.”

  V

  At first glance, and come to that, even at second glance, Mrs. Martha Bendix, executive director of the Bendix Domestic Agency, could easily have been mistaken for a man. She was big and broad shouldered and wore her hair cut short, a man’s collar and tie, and a man’s tweed coat. It was only when she stood up and moved away from her desk you were surprised to see the tweed skirt, silk stockings and heavy brogue shoes. She was very hearty, and, if you weren’t careful to keep out of her reach, she had a habit of slapping you violently on the back, making you feel sick for the next two or three hours. She also had a laugh as loud as the bang of a twelve-bore shot-gun, and if you weren’t watching for it, you jumped out of your skin when she let it off. A woman I wouldn’t want to live with, but a good-hearted soul, generous with her money, and a lot more interested in nervous, frail little blondes than a big husky like me.