Эллери Куин: Blow Hot, Blow Cold

It was obvious that Stanley appreciated Lila, properly or improperly. Nancy decided that too much had been said about what probably shouldn’t have been mentioned at all. Besides, she was getting goose-pimples, strange as it seemed after such a hot day. Shivering, she took a last drag on the cigaret and dropped it over the fence. Stanley automatically crushed it under the heel of his leather slipper. Pavlov’s dog, Nancy thought.

“Well, I’d better be getting inside, Stanley. Thanks for the coffin nail.”

“Think nothing of it,” Stanley said. “Nighty-night.”

About halfway to the house Nancy looked over her shoulder to see if Stanley was going inside, too. But he was still standing where she had left him. At first she thought he was gallantly watching her to the house, but then she saw that his attention was elsewhere. His head was tilted toward something above the Connors’ backyard. Stanley was watching the lighted window of the Connors’ bedroom! The room in which Lila was alone tonight, and apparently still awake. The notion that flashed across Nancy’s mind was so fantastic that she had to laugh at it in the same instant.

Oh, no! Nancy thought. Even poor Stanley must know better than that .

She went upstairs. David was still sleeping soundly, the swine. Nancy got back into her shortie and crawled into bed beside him and lay on her back for a long time, resisting every temptation to move, or sit up and read or light a cigaret; and in an unguarded moment after this long, admirable exercise in self-discipline, she fell asleep.

In spite of having gone to sleep so much later than David, Nancy awoke much earlier. She was wide awake in an instant, feeling remarkably good considering all the beer she had drunk from the keg. The room was dim, the curtains drawn. She stretched and lay for a few minutes quietly, wondering what could be done on a Sunday that would be both amusing and inexpensive; then she got up and padded over to a window and opened the curtains. The front lawn was beginning to show patches of brown here and there because of the dry spell, and in a patch of brown near the walk lay the Sunday paper, the Kansas City Star.

Slipping a robe over her shortie, Nancy went downstairs and outside and picked up the paper. Stanley had been right about the temperature; it was cooler than yesterday. Maybe with luck there would be a rain later; the grass needed a rain. It would also need cutting soon if it rained, and David would certainly grumble about that . David didn’t really mind cutting the grass; it was just that he had no confidence whatever in anything mechanical. He was convinced that all mechanical devices took on a kind of malevolent life the instant he attempted to operate them. If one of them started for him, he was amazed and incredulous; if he managed to complete a task without a breakdown, he felt that he had scored a major victory over the forces of evil.

Carrying the Star, Nancy went back inside. In the kitchen she measured water and coffee into the percolator, which she set to heating. While she waited, she sat at the kitchen table and read the paper. First, with a sense of civic and national duty, she scanned the headlines to see what was happening in town and Washington and Moscow and so on; but then she turned to the section covering amusements, shows, clubs, concerts and such, to see what was going on that she and David couldn’t afford. The coffee began to perc. Nancy poured a cup for herself and sipped it while she went on to the TV section and the book reviews — these constituting, so far as she was concerned, about all of the paper that was worth going on to, if you excepted the funnies and the weekly magazine, which sometimes she looked at and sometimes didn’t.

Half an hour passing thus, she refilled her cup, poured one for David, and went upstairs to the bedroom with a cup and saucer in each hand and the folded paper clamped under her right arm. David was awake, but groggy. He accepted his coffee with a grunt. Nancy could see that his eyes weren’t quite in focus yet, so she didn’t say anything, not even good morning, until she had opened the curtains to the encouraging light of the new day.

“Darling,” she said then, “I must say that you were quite a disappointment to me last night, especially after we got home. Since all you were capable of was sleeping and snoring, I was forced to go out and look elsewhere.”

“Good for you,” David grunted. “If there’s anything I admire in a woman, it’s initiative.” And he took a grateful slurp of coffee.

“Aren’t you even interested enough to ask if I found someone?” Nancy asked peevishly.

“All right,” said David. “Did you find someone?”

“As a matter of fact, I spent some time with Larry Connor in front of his house, then I had a tryst with Stanley Walters in the alley.”

“You’re absolutely insatiable, my love. How nice to have cooperative neighbors.”

“Cooperative! Larry and Stanley were hopelessly inadequate. Larry had just finished having a fight with Lila and was on his way to his office to spend the night. The minute I told Stanley this, later in the alley, he began to speculate about Lila and showed no interest at all in me. Darling, you can be frank. Do I need a change of deodorant?”

“The way Brigitte Bardot needs a new bra,” said David absently. “Forget it, cuddles. The boys just had an off-night. There will be plenty of others when they’ll make you feel like a woman again.”

“Do you think so? You’re so good for a girl’s ego.” Nancy said suddenly, “Tell me, darling, what do you think of Lila? I mean, really .”

David, who was propped against the headboard in possession of the book section, gave Nancy a wary look from the corner of his eye. She was seated on the edge of the bed in all innocence, but he was now sufficiently alert to recognize a loaded question. His reply called for thought. It would not do, of course, to depreciate Lila’s assets too thoroughly, for this would constitute a childish denial of the facts and would therefore be subject to suspicion. On the other hand, a factual evaluation could only lead to trouble, no matter how clinically expressed. The best resort, David decided, was to badinage.

“You asked me that last night, and I told you,” he said. “She’s beautiful and talented and sexy. I don’t blame old Stanley for speculating.”

“I don’t deny that she’s beautiful and sexy, which anyone can see. But how do you know she’s talented?”

“You mustn’t forget, dear heart, that I spent considerable time with her among the spirea bushes last night.”

“The only time I saw her in the spirea bushes, she was with Jack.”

“That was after she was with me . After all, she does have breeding. She had to be courteous to her host.”

“ Please be serious, David. Just for a moment ? Do you think there’s anything seriously wrong with Lila?”

Oh, no, thought David. You don’t trick me with that ploy. He said, “I can’t think of a thing, and I made a careful investigation.”

“I mean psychologically, or something.”

“How should I know? My investigation was physiological.”

Nancy regarded her husband for some time. Then she said, pleased, “Oh, well, I can see you’re determined not to be serious. Perhaps it’s just as well. Are you interested in breakfast?”

“I’m interested in the paper. I suggest we have a big breakfast later. Then we won’t have to bother about lunch.”

Big breakfast later. This meant scrambled eggs and bacon and hashed brown and toast and jelly and coffee. It also meant that David was not going to be home at lunch time and was too chicken to tell her so straight out.