A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

“She’s been injured?”

“Yes, this automobile accident. Only minor injuries, but she’s trying to keep them alive. Every so often she has a relapse and takes to her wheelchair.”

“Who pushes it?”

“Susie Irwin, maid, housekeeper, companion, cook and chauffeur.”

“Any other help in the house?”

“No.”

“Your aunt is stingy?”

“Both stingy and secretive.”

“Rich?”

“I tell you, no one knows. She inherited some money. She’s made investments. She always seems to have money, but she hates to spend it and if you really want to make her mad, ask her one question, just one single question about her financial affairs.”

“Tell me about the accident.”

“Oh, it was one of those street intersection things, with each party claiming the other was in the wrong.”

“Settled?”

“Auntie sputtered and fumed for a while, but the insurance company decided she was in the wrong and made a settlement with the owner of the other car. He had three witnesses with him. Auntie was driving alone. She was furious. She cancelled her insurance with the company because of it.”

“Taken out any since?”

“No, she swears she’ll carry her own insurance. She feels the other people should have been sued and made to pay. She may have been right. Auntie’s very careful and observing and her reactions are quick, but, as I said, the other car had three witnesses. They might have been coached by a gramophone record, the way they told their story.”

I said, “Let’s be frank with each other. Mrs. Bushnell…”

“I go under the name of Miss Bushnell.”

“All right; then, let’s be frank with each other, Claire.”

She said, “You work fast, don’t you, Mister Lam?”

“Not so fast,” I said. “I just don’t think we have time to waste getting acquainted. Let’s get down to brass tacks. This is a medium-priced, furnished apartment. You…”

“You ought to pay the rent on it if you think it’s medium-priced.”

“I know, but it’s in that general’ classification. You haven’t a car. You probably have some income, perhaps alimony. You have good clothes, as cheap an apartment as one can live in comfortably and still have a little elbow room. You don’t have a telephone. You aren’t rich. You don’t have any big income.”

Her eyes were angry.

I said, “But you gave Bertha Cool two hundred bucks in order to find out about the man who is hanging around your aunt. That two hundred dollars didn’t come easy.”

“Well, it went easy,” she flared.

I nodded and said, “You’re not getting my point. It took quite a motive for you to part with two hundred dollars. You didn’t do it simply because you were suspicious of a man who was dancing attendance on your Aunt Amelia.”

“I said he was trying to sell her something.”

“Bertha Cool talked with you for quite a while. Then she made the two-hundred-dollar price and you didn’t argue with her. You didn’t try to bargain…”

“Was I supposed to have done so?”

“Some of them do.”

“Then what happens?”

“They get the worst of it. But I’m not talking about Bertha. I’m talking about you.”

“So it would seem.”

“In other words,” I said, “you had some motive that you haven’t told us.”

She bounced up out of her chair and said angrily, “Will you get busy and do what you’re paid to do, instead of hanging around here and insulting me?”

“I’m trying to get information so I can help you.”

She said sarcastically, ‘Believe me, Mr. Lam, if I had known the answers, I certainly wouldn’t have paid your estimable, grasping, avaricious Bertha Cool two hundred dollars in order to get those answers for me. When I turned that money over to your partner, I was foolish enough to think that I could get someone who would go out and start collecting information for me, not hang around my apartment on a Sunday morning making passes…”

“I haven’t made any passes,” I told her.

“I know,” she said, “but you will.”

“Want to bet?” I asked.

She looked at me scornfully, then said, “Yes.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars,” she said, and then added hastily, “No, wait a minute. You’d... I’m talking about the way you came in when I was taking a bath, the way you... I mean for two hundred dollars you wouldn’t.”

“Make it a hundred.”

“No.”

“Fifty.”

“No.”

“Ten.”

“That’s a go,” she said. “It’s a bet. You’d be a gentleman for twenty, but you’d be willing to lose the ten if you thought you could get to first base.”

I said, “Okay. You’ve made a bet. Now, let’s get back to the case.”

“What do you want to know?”

I said casually, “Ever lived in Colorado?”

“No.”

“Don’t happen to know a Dover Fulton?”

“No.”

“His wife?”

“No, never heard of them.”

“Don’t happen to know a Stanwick Carlton?”

Her eyes became round. “What does that have to do with it?”

“Nothing, perhaps. I wanted to know.”

“Why I… I know Minerva Carlton. I’ve known her for years. She’s a close friend. I don’t know her husband. I’ve never met him.”

“Where does Minerva live?”

“In Colorado.”

“Heard from her lately?”

“No.”

“Read the papers?” I asked.

She said, “The comic section and the magazine part. What on earth does Minerva have to do with all this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re a close friend of hers?”

“Yes, very close.”

“When did you hear from her last?”

“Oh, I don’t know — a month or so ago. We write constantly.”

“Don’t happen to have a picture, do you?”

“Why, yes, I’ve got a photograph she sent, and I have some snapshots taken when we were at the beach this summer.”

“Let’s take a look at the snapshots.”

“But why?”

“I want to see them.”

“But what does that have to do with this man who’s been calling on Aunt Amelia?”

“I don’t know. I want to take a look at the pictures.”

She said, “You’re the most arbitrary man I think I ever knew, outside of…” she hesitated.

“You mean Mrs. Bushnell’s little boy, Jimmie?”

“Exactly,” she said.

I said, “Okay, get the pictures and we’ll call it square.”

She went to a cupboard, rummaged around in a drawer, came out with an envelope of the kind put out by concerns that specialize in developing and printing pictures. There was a pocket on one side for films, a pocket on the other for prints.

She took out the prints and started running through them. A half-smile played around the corners of her mouth as she hastily put six of the prints back in the pocket. Then she handed me two.

I looked at the photographs. They were good, clear photographs of Claire Bushnell and another girl in very skimpy bathing suits. The pictures showed that Claire Bushnell had a neat little figure. The girl with her was the one I’d seen in the cocktail lounge the night before, the red-headed girl with the contemplative eyes.

“That’s Minerva Carlton?” I asked.

“The one with me, yes.”

“Nice figure,” I said.

“She gets by.”

“Yours, I was looking at.”

“Is this part of the service I get for two hundred dollars, or do you throw this in?”

“I throw this in.”

“You can throw it out, as far as I’m concerned.”

“What are the other pictures?”

She shook her head. “When two girls have a camera and get to playing around on the beach, you can’t tell just what will happen.”