The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)

by Raymond Chandler

and large dark eyes that looked as if they might warm up at the right time and in the right place.

“No appointment.” “It is very difficult to see Mr. Kingsley without an appointment.” That wasn’t anything I could argue about.

The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips. I looked the place over. You can’t tell anything about an outfit like that. They might be making millions, and they might have the sheriff in the back room, with his chair tilted against the safe.

I let him have that trick and gave him my other card,

Derace Kingsley marched briskly behind about eight hundred dollars’ worth of executive desk and planted his backside in a tall leather chair.

He took his time about it. It didn’t matter about my time.

I blew a little gray cloud of cigarette smoke and fanned it with my hand. I said nothing. He seemed a little surprised that I said nothing.

“And as for your being too tough for me,” I said, “most of the clients start out either by weeping down my shirt or bawling me out to show who’s boss. But usually they end up very reasonable—if they’re still alive.”

“Do you lose very many of them?” he asked. “Not if they treat me right,” I said. “Have a cigar,” he said. I took a cigar and put it in my pocket.

Six feet of a standard type of homewrecker. Arms to hold you close and all his brains in his face.

“Why not? You’ve got to consider it. I get a very vague idea of Mrs. Kingsley—that she is young, pretty, reckless, and wild. That she drinks and does dangerous things when she drinks. That she is a sucker for the men and might take up with a stranger who might turn out to be a crook. Does that fit?” He nodded. “Every word of it.”

“Mr. Kingsley thinks you can give me Chris Lavery’s address,” I told her and watched her face.

Her voice was tight and cold when she spoke.

A couple of red spots burned in her cheeks. Her eyes were remote and bitter. I got the impression that Mr. Chris Lavery was not a pleasant thought to her.

“No, it wouldn’t. A private dick can bother anybody. He’s persistent and used to snubs. He’s paid for his time and he would just as soon use it to bother you as any other way.”

Lavery was bound for the edge of the broad Pacific, to lie in the sun and let the girls see what they didn’t necessarily have to go on missing.

He finished his call and hung up. He leaned back and sat there brooding, staring down at his desk, but not forgetting to look out of the window every half minute. He was waiting, and I waited with him, for no reason at all. Doctors make many phone calls, talk to many people. Doctors look out of their front windows, doctors frown, doctors show nervousness, doctors have things on their mind and show the strain. Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us. But there was something about the way this one behaved that intrigued me. I looked at my watch, decided it was time to get something to eat, lit another cigarette and didn’t move.

Canoes paddled about on the blue water and rowboats with outboard motors put-putted and speedboats showing off like fresh kids made wide swathes of foam and turned on a dime and girls in them shrieked and dragged their hands in the water. Jounced around in the wake of the speedboats people who had paid two dollars for a fishing license were trying to get a dime of it back in tired-tasting fish.

“Everything’s for sale in California.”

The roar of his laughter was like a tractor backfiring. It blasted the woodland silence to shreds.

he snarled, bending down a little so that he could reach me with a hard right, if it worked out that way.

“But you don’t want to hear about that,” he said. And in his faded blue eyes was the deep yearning to talk about it, as plain as anything could possibly be. “It’s none of my business,” I said. “But if it would make you feel any better—”

He nodded sharply. “Two guys will meet on a park bench,” he said, “and start talking about God. Did you ever notice that? Guys that wouldn’t talk about God to their best friend.” “I know that,” I said.

I moved a little to show him I was still there, but I didn’t say anything for fear of breaking the spell.

He stopped talking and I let his words hang in the air.

He seemed to fight with it in his mind. The whiskey won the fight, as it always does.

screwed the cap on tightly, as if that meant something.

“Reasons,” I said.

“For a guy that takes his long wavy hair down in front of complete strangers, you’re pretty damn touchy,” I said. He took a step towards me. “Want to make something of it?”

The air was peaceful and calm and sunny and held a quiet you don’t get in cities. I could have stayed there for hours doing nothing but forgetting all about Derace Kingsley and his wife and her boy friends.

I lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. “Try the floor, son,” the large friendly man said.

“Nobody’s going to whip you,” I said. “You’re going to get a lot of publicity.” “That so?” he asked indifferently and ruined the spittoon again. “That is, if your jurisdiction extends over to Little Fawn Lake.” “Kingsley’s place. Sure. Something bothering you over there, son?” “There’s a dead woman in the lake.” That shook him to the core.

He fixed a card against the inside of the glass door panel. I looked at the card as we went out. It read: Back in Twenty Minutes—Maybe.

He got into a car which had a siren on it, two red spotlights, two foglights, a red and white fire plate, a new air raid horn on top, three axes, two heavy coils of rope and a fire extinguisher in the back seat, extra gas and oil and water cans in a frame on the running board, an extra spare tire roped to the one on the rack, the stuffing coming out of the upholstery in dingy wads, and half an inch of dust over what was left of the paint.

Then without a word he went and vomited under a pine tree.

“ ’Course we know who done it. Guy Pope done it. Only Guy was dead nine days of pneumonia before we found Dad Meacham.” “Eleven days,” Patton said. “Nine,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said. “Was all of six years ago, Andy. Have it your own way, son. How you figure Guy Pope done it?”

“Well, that’s the way it goes,” Patton said, and smiled at me in a vague manner. “Fellow always forgets something, don’t he? No matter how careful he is.”

Andy shook his head. Patton looked at him with a sly grin. “Crabbin’ again, Andy?” “Was nine days, I tell you. I just counted back,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said morosely. The doctor threw his arms up and walked away, with one hand to his head. He coughed into his handkerchief again and again looked into the handkerchief with passionate attention. Patton winked at me and spat over the railing. “Let’s get on to this one, Andy.” “You ever try to drag a body six feet under water?” “Nope, can’t say I ever did, Andy. Any reason it couldn’t be done with a rope?” Andy shrugged. “If a rope was used, it will show on the corpse. If you got to give yourself away like that, why bother to cover up at all?” “Question of time,” Patton said. “Fellow has his arrangements to make.”

“I forget,” Patton said. “You know how it is in a place like this. Not much folks don’t notice. Except maybe in summertime where there’s a lot of strangers about.”

A kind of charged emptiness hung in the air, as if something that had not been said was plain to all of them and didn’t need saying.

“You’ll want to send the corpse down in my ambulance, Jim, won’t you?” Patton shook his head. “Nope. This is a poor county, Doc. I figure the lady can ride cheaper than what you get for that ambulance.” The doctor walked away from him angrily, saying over his shoulder: “Let me know if you want me to pay for the funeral.” “That ain’t no way to talk,” Patton sighed.

The whole place was full to overflowing with males in leisure jackets and liquor breaths and females in high-pitched laughs, oxblood fingernails and dirty knuckles. The manager of the joint, a low-budget tough guy in shirt-sleeves and a mangled cigar, was prowling the room with watchful eyes. At the cash desk a pale-haired man was fighting to get the war news on a small radio that was as full of static as the mashed potatoes were full of water.

It was still broad daylight but some of the neon signs had been turned on, and the evening reeled with the cheerful din of auto horns, children screaming, bowls rattling, skeeballs clunking, .22’s snapping merrily in shooting galleries, juke boxes playing like crazy, and behind all this out on the lake the hard barking roar of the speedboats going nowhere at all and acting as though they were racing with death.

“Pretty good grapevine you’ve got up here,” I said and started the car.

“She didn’t say anything. She gave a funny little embarrassed laugh, as if I had been making a bad joke. Then she walked away. But I did get the impression that there was a queer look in her eyes, just for an instant. You still not interested in Muriel Chess, Mr. Marlowe?”

Are you alone?” “What does that matter?” “It doesn’t matter to me. But I know what I’m going to say. You don’t.”

“I guess Bill drinks too much,” Kingsley’s voice said from very far off.

But if Muriel wanted to keep it and yet hide it from Bill, there’s some sense in the place where it was hidden.” Patton looked puzzled this time. “Why is that?” “Because it’s a woman’s hiding place. Confectioner’s sugar is used to make cake icing. A man would never look there. Pretty clever of you to find it, sheriff.” He grinned a little sheepishly. “Hell, I knocked the box over and some of the sugar spilled,” he said. “Without that I don’t guess I ever would have found it.”

And most men can stand what they’ve got to stand, when it steps up and looks them straight in the eye.

Well, goodnight to you. I’m going to walk down to that little pier again and stand there awhile in the moonlight and feel bad.