Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

Dalmas went around her, went towards a saffron-colored woman who had just come into the room with a bottle of gin in each hand. She put the bottles on the piano and leaned against it, looking bored. Dalmas went up to her and asked for Miss Crayle.

The saffron-colored woman reached a cigarette out of an open box on the piano. “Outside — in the yard,” she said tonelessly.

Dalmas said: “Thank you, Mrs. Sutro.”

She stared at him blankly. He went under another arch, into a darkened room with wicker furniture in it. A door led to a glassed-in porch and a door out of that led down steps to a path that wound off through dim trees. Dalmas followed the path to the edge of a bluff that looked out over the lighted part of Hollywood. There was a stone seat at the edge of the bluff. A girl sat on it with her back to the house. A cigarette tip glowed in the darkness. She turned her head slowly and stood up.

She was small and dark and delicately made. Her mouth showed dark with rouge, but there was not enough light to see her face clearly. Her eyes were shadowed.

Dalmas said: “I have a cab outside, Miss Crayle. Or did you bring a car?”

“No car. Let’s go. It’s rotten here, and I don’t drink gin.”

They went back along the path and passed around the side of the house. A trellis-topped gate let them out on the sidewalk, and they went along by the fence to where the taxi was waiting. The driver was leaning against it with one heel hooked on the edge of the running board. He opened the cab door. They got in.

Dalmas said: “Stop at a drugstore for some butts, Joey.”

“Okay.”

Joey slid behind his wheel and started up. The cab went down a steep, winding hill. There was a little moisture on the surface of the asphalt pavement and the storefronts echoed back the swishing sound of the tires.

After a while Dalmas said: “What time did you leave Walden?”

The girl spoke without turning her head towards him. “About three o’clock.”

“Put it a little later, Miss Crayle. He was alive at three o’clock — and there was somebody else with him.”

The girl made a small, miserable sound like a strangled sob. Then, she said very softly: “I know... he’s dead.” She lifted her gloved hands and pressed them against her temples.

Dalmas said: “Sure. Let’s not get any more tricky than we have to... Maybe we’ll have to — enough.”

She said very slowly, in a low voice: “I was there after he was dead.”

Dalmas nodded. He did not look at her. The cab went on and after a while it stopped in front of a corner drugstore. The driver turned in his seat and looked back. Dalmas stared at him, but spoke to the girl.

“You ought to have told me more over the phone. I might have got in a hell of a jam. I may be in a hell of a jam now.”

The girl swayed forward and started to fall. Dalmas put his arm out quickly and caught her, pushed her back against the cushions. Her head wobbled on her shoulders and her mouth was a dark gash in her stone-white face. Dalmas held her shoulder and felt her pulse with his free hand. He said sharply, grimly: “Let’s go on to Carli’s, Joey. Never mind the butts... This party has to have a drink — in a hurry.”

Joey slammed the cab in gear and stepped on the accelerator.

Carli’s was a small club at the end of a passage between a sporting-goods store and a circulating library. There was a grilled door and a man behind it who had given up trying to look as if it mattered who came in.

Dalmas and the girl sat in a small booth with hard seats and looped-back green curtains. There were high partitions between the booths. There was a long bar down the other side of the room and a big jukebox at the end of it. Now and then, when there wasn’t enough noise, the bartender put a nickel in the jukebox.

The waiter put two small glasses of brandy on the table and Mianne Crayle downed hers at a gulp. A little light came into her shadowed eyes. She peeled a black-and-white gauntlet off her right hand and sat playing with the empty fingers of it, staring down at the table. After a little while the waiter came back with a couple of brandy highballs.

When he had gone away again Mianne Crayle began to speak in a low, clear voice, without raising her head: “I wasn’t the first of his women by several dozen. I wouldn’t have been the last — by that many more. But he had his decent side. And believe it or not, he didn’t pay my room rent.”

Dalmas nodded, didn’t say anything. The girl went on without looking at him: “He was a heel in a lot of ways. When he was sober he had the dark blue sulks. When he was lit up he was vile. When he was nicely edged he was a pretty good sort of guy besides being the best smut director in Hollywood. He could get more smooth sexy tripe past the Hays office than any other three men.”

Dalmas said without expression: “He was on his way out. Smut is on its way out, and that was all he knew.”

The girl looked at him briefly, lowered her eyes again and drank a little of her highball. She took a tiny handkerchief out of the pocket of her sports jacket and patted her lips.

The people on the other side of the partition were making a great deal of noise.

Mianne Crayle said: “We had lunch on the balcony. Derek was drunk and on the way to get drunker. He had something on his mind. Something that worried him a lot.”

Dalmas smiled faintly. “Maybe it was the twenty grand somebody was trying to pry loose from him — or didn’t you know about that?”

“It might have been that Derek was a bit tight about money.”

“His liquor cost him a lot,” Dalmas said dryly. “And that motor cruiser he liked to play about in — down below the border.”

The girl lifted her head with a quick jerk. There were sharp lights of pain in her dark eyes. She said very slowly: “He bought all his liquor at Ensenada. Brought it in himself. He had to be careful — with the quantity he put away.”

Dalmas nodded. A cold smile played about the corners of his mouth. He finished his drink and put a cigarette in his mouth, felt in his pocket for a match. The holder on the table was empty.

“Finish your story, Miss Crayle,” he said.

“We went up to the apartment. He got two fresh bottles out and said he was going to get good and drunk... Then we quarreled... I couldn’t stand any more of it. I went away. When I got home I began to worry about him. I called up but he wouldn’t answer the phone. I went back finally... and let myself in with the key I had... and he was dead in the chair.”

After a moment Dalmas said: “Why didn’t you tell me some of that over the phone?”

She pressed the heels of her hands together, said very softly: “I was terribly afraid... And there was something... wrong.”

Dalmas put his head back against the partition, stared at her with his eyes half closed.

“It’s an old gag,” she said. “I’m almost ashamed to spring it. But Derek Walden was left-handed... I’d know about that, wouldn’t I?”

Dalmas said very softly: “A lot of people must have known that — but one of them might have got careless.”

Dalmas stared at Mianne Crayle’s empty glove. She was twisting it between her fingers.

“Walden was left-handed,” he said slowly. “That means he didn’t suicide. The gun was in his other hand. There was no sign of a struggle and the hole in his temple was powder-burned, looked as if the shot came from about the right angle. That means whoever shot him was someone who could get in there and get close to him. Or else he was paralyzed drunk, and in that case whoever did it had to have a key.”

Mianne Crayle pushed the glove away from her. She clenched her hands. “Don’t make it any plainer,” she said sharply. “I know the police will think I did it. Well — I didn’t. I loved the poor damn fool. What do you think of that?”