Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“Gin and tonic, Maria,” she said. I had thought that the indeterminate maid with a face like half a walnut had gone away, and I felt a slight shock of surprise to discover that she had been standing all the while behind me. Now she nodded three times exactly, a repetition of the gesture she had made at the door, and backed away into the apartment and out of sight. Faith Salem sat down in a low wicker chair and crossed her feet at the ankles and stared at her long golden legs. I stared at them too.

“Please sit down, Mr. Hand,” she said. “Maria will bring the gin and tonics in a moment. In the meanwhile, if you like, I can begin explaining why I asked you to come here.”

“I’d appreciate it.” I folded myself into her chair’s mate. “I’ve been wondering, of course.”

“Naturally.” The full lower lip protruded a little, giving to her face a suggestion of darkness and brooding. “Let me begin by asking a question. Do you know Graham Markley?”

“Not personally. Like everyone else who reads the papers, I know something about him. Quondam boy-wonder of finance. No boy any longer. If he’s still a wonder, he doesn’t work at it quite so hard. Works harder nowadays, from reports, at spending some of what he’s made. Unless, of course, there’s another Graham Markley.”

“He’s the one. Graham and I have an understanding.”

There was, before the last word, a barely perceptible hesitation that gave to her statement a subtle and significant shading. She had explained in a breath, or in the briefest holding of a breath, the acres of pile and tile in this lavish stone and steel tower with terraces that caught the afternoon sun for at least a little while. Delicately, she had told me who paid the rent.

“That’s nice,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“It’s entirely informal at present, but it may not remain so. He’s asked me to marry him. Not immediately, which is impossible, but eventually.”

“That’ll be even better. Or will it?”

“It will. A certain amount of security attaches to marriage. There are certain compensations if the marriage fails.” She smiled slowly, the smile beginning and growing and forcing from her face the dark and almost petulant expression of brooding, and in her eyes, which were brown, there was instantly a gleam of cynical good humor which was the effect, as it turned out, of a kind of casual compatibility she had developed with herself. “I haven’t always had the good things that money buys, Mr. Hand, but I’ve learned from experience to live with them naturally. I don’t think I would care now to live with less. With these good things that money buys, I’m perfectly willing to accept my share of the bad things that money seems invariably to entail. Is my position clear?”

“Yes, it is.” I said. “It couldn’t be clearer.”

At that moment, Maria returned with a pair of gin and tonics in red and yellow glasses on a tray. She served one of them to Faith Salem and the other to me, and then she completed the three nods routine and went away again. The three nods, I now realized, was not a gesture of approval but an involuntary reaction to any situation to be handled, as my arrival earlier, or any situation already handled, as the serving of the drinks. I drank some of my tonic and liked it. There was a kind of astringency in the faintly bitter taste of the quinine. There was also, I thought now that it had been suggested to me, a kind of astringency in Faith Salem. A faintly bitter quality. A clean and refreshing tautness in her lean and lovely body and in her uncompromised compatibility with herself.

“Did you know Graham’s wife?” she asked suddenly.

“Which one?” I said.

“The last one. Number three, I think.”

“It doesn’t matter. There was no purpose in my asking for the distinction. I didn’t know number three, or two, or one. Graham Markley’s wives and I didn’t move in the same circles.”

“I thought perhaps you might have met her professionally.”

“As an employer or subject of investigation?”

“Either way.”

“Neither, as a matter of fact. And if I had, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Ethics? I heard that about you. Someone told me you were honorable and discreet. I believe it.”

“Thanks. Also thanks to someone.”

“That’s why I called you. I’m glad now that I did.”

“I know. You like my looks, and I like yours. We admire each other.”

“Are you always so flippant?”

“Scarcely ever. The truth is, I’m very serious, and I take my work seriously. Do you have some work for me to do?”

She swallowed some more of her tonic and held the glass in her lap with both hands. Her expression was again rather darkly brooding, and she seemed for a moment uncertain of herself.

“Perhaps you won’t want the job,” she said.

I nodded. “It’s possible.”

“We’ll see.” She swallowed more of the tonic and looked suddenly more decisive. “Do you remember what happened to Graham’s third wife?”

“I seem to remember that she left him, which wasn’t surprising. So did number one. So did number two. Excuse me if I’m being offensive.”

“Not at all. You’re not required to like Graham. Many people don’t. I confess that there are times when I don’t like him very much myself. I did like his third wife, however. We were in college together, as a matter of fact. We shared an apartment one year. Her name was Constance Vaughan then. I left school that year, the year we shared the apartment, and we never saw each other again.”

“You mean you never knew her as Mrs. Graham Markley?”

“Yes. I didn’t know she’d married. In college she didn’t seem, somehow, like the kind of girl who would ever marry anyone at all, let alone someone like Graham. That was a good many years ago, of course, and people change, I suppose. Anyhow, it was rather odd, wasn’t it? I came here about a year ago from Europe, where I had been living with my second husband, who is not my husband any longer, and I met Graham and after a while entered into our present arrangement, which is comfortable but not altogether satisfactory, and then I learned that he had been married to Constance, whom I had known all that time ago. Don’t you think that was quite odd?”

“It seems to meet the requirements of the term.”

“Yes. The truth is, it made me feel rather strange. Especially when I discovered that she had simply disappeared about a year before.”

“Disappeared?”

“Simply vanished. She hasn’t been seen since by anyone who knew her here. You’ll have to admit that it’s peculiar. Numbers one and two left Graham and divorced him and tapped him for alimony, which he probably deserved, and this was sensible. It was not sensible, however, simply to disappear without a trace and never sue for divorce and alimony, or even separate maintenance. Do you think so?”

“Off hand, I don’t. There may have been good reasons. Surely an attempt was made to locate her.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Her disappearance was reported to the police, and they made an effort to find her, but it was kept pretty quiet, and I don’t think anyone tried very hard. Because of the circumstances, you see.”

“No, I don’t see. What circumstances?”

“Well, Constance had a baby. A little boy that got to be almost two years old and died. Constance loved him intensely. That’s the way she was about anyone or anything she loved. Very intense. It was rather frightening, in a way. Anyhow, when the little boy died, she seemed to be going right out of her mind with grief, and Graham was no consolation or comfort, of course, and then she met Regis Lawler. Psychologically, she was just ready for him, completely vulnerable, and she fell in love with him, and apparently they had an affair. To get to the point about circumstances, Regis Lawler disappeared the same night that Constance did, and that’s why no one got too excited or concerned. It was assumed that they’d gone away together.”