Brett Halliday: Die Like a Dog

Nothing happened for what seemed to her a long interval, and her courage slowly ebbed away while she waited. During the years she had been Michael Shayne’s secretary and only employee, she had successfully carried out many difficult and some dangerous assignments to help him on his cases, but this one today, she felt, was the most weird and bizarre she had ever attempted.

She was in such a state of bemusement that she could not repress an open start of nervousness when the right hand door swung open silently.

A sullen-faced maid stood on the threshold of a long, dim hallway facing her. The girl wore a neat, black uniform with white lace at the wrists and neck, and she had pouting lips and wary eyes.

She said, “What is it, Ma’am?” in a sing-song voice that contrived to convey a faint impression of insolence.

Lucy said, “I’d like a moment with Mrs. Rogell.”

The maid tightened her lips momentarily and said, “Madame is not at home to anyone.”

Lucy smiled pleasantly and said, “I think she’ll see me,” with a lot more assurance than she felt. She unsnapped her bag and took out the cardcase, extracted the square of white cardboard and offered it to the maid. “Please take her my card.”

The girl pressed her hands against her sides and said primly, “I couldn’t disturb Madame while she’s resting.”

Lucy Hamilton lifted her chin arrogantly and said, “I didn’t come here to argue with servants. Take my card to Mrs. Rogell at once.” She took a step forward as she spoke, thrusting the card into the girl’s face so her hand lifted instinctively to take it. She backed away, saying sullenly, “You wait here and I’ll see.”

Lucy said, “I have no intention of waiting on the doorstep,” and moved into the hall, closing her bag and pressing it to her side under her right elbow.

The maid gave way reluctantly, closing the door and moving aside to an archway with drawn portieres, drawing them aside ungraciously and muttering, “You can wait in here then, if you insist.”

Lucy went in to a large, square, sombre room lined with dark walnut bookshelves laden with books in dark leather bindings. There were massive leather chairs in the room, and a man stood in the far corner with his back turned to her. He was bent over a portable bar, and Lucy heard the clink of a swizzle-stick against glass. He wore light tan slacks and a red and yellow plaid sport jacket, and when he swung about to face Lucy with a highball glass in his hand she saw he was a fair-haired young man of about thirty with a wispy mustache and suspiciously high color in his cheeks for a man of his age.

He smiled quickly, showing slightly protruding upper teeth, and exclaimed, “By Jove, there. You’ve arrived just in the nick of time to save me from a fate worse than death. Drinking alone, you know? And long before the sun has swung over the yard-arm.” His voice was thin and a trifle high, but he exuded friendliness like a stray mongrel who has just received his first kind word in weeks.

He advanced toward Lucy, his smile becoming a beaming welcome. “Whatever you’re selling, I’ll take a lot of. Provided, of course, that you have a drink with me first. My name’s Marvin Dale, you know. How long has it been since anyone has told you how gorgeous you are?”

Lucy couldn’t refrain from smiling. “I’m Lucy Hamilton to see Mrs. Rogell. It’s a little early for a drink, and I have nothing at all you’d want to buy.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” He stood close to her and she saw that his eyes were greenish-blue and had a ferrety gleam in them as they travelled down audaciously from her face over trim bosom and neat waist, hovered approvingly over nicely-rounded hips and then moved downward to well-fleshed calves and slender ankles.

“Ve-ry nice. Every bit of it if you’ll allow me a snap judgment with so many clothes intervening.” He took hold of her left elbow and firmly led her toward the bar. “Of course it’s a little early for a drink, but never too early. Wasn’t it Dorothy Parker who said, ‘Candy is dandy; but liquor is quicker?’”

“I think it was.” Lucy struggled with a desire to giggle. This must be the ne’er-do-well brother Henrietta had mentioned so disparagingly, and Michael had told her to keep her eyes open and learn as much about the different members of the family as she could. Marvin, she realized, was already slightly drunk as well as being more than slightly amorous, and she decided to indulge him to the extent of one small drink.

“If you could make me a gin and tonic,” she agreed hesitantly. “A very light one. I have a business matter to discuss with your sister,” she added as stiffly as she could.

Marvin released her elbow and beamed at her as he whisked a gin bottle from a shelf beneath the bar, and opened an ice bucket to deposit two cubes in a tall glass. He uncorked the bottle and started to tip it over the rim of the glass, but Lucy took it away from him firmly, saying, “I mentioned a light one, remember? Very light.” She picked up a jigger and poured it less than full, while he remonstrated:

“So many people do without really meaning it, you know. Say they want a light one, I mean. I always feel the hospitable thing is to…”

“Ply your women with liquor,” Lucy carried on for him pleasantly. “But I’m not Dorothy Parker. Tonic, please.” She held the glass out and he reluctantly filled it to the brim with fizzing liquid.

“I can see you’re not. If you’re holding back on the intake, however, because you hope to discuss business with my dear sister today, you may as well relax and have a decent slug.”

“I’ll settle for this one,” Lucy told him, retreating to the depths of a leather-upholstered chair. “I know Mr. Rogell’s funeral is tomorrow and I don’t like to intrude on her grief, but I did hope to have a moment of her time today.”

“Oh, it isn’t dear John she’s grieving about,” Marvin told her with a tight, unpleasant smile. “We’ve all been expecting that for months. It’s her darling Daffy.”

“Her Pekinese?” queried Lucy. “Sombre Daffodil Third.”

“Sombre Daffodil Third,” he agreed, taking a gulp of his drink and slouching into another leather chair near Lucy’s with both long legs draped over one arm of it. “Why not try this position?” he demanded suddenly with something very close to a leer. “It’s the only comfortable way to sit in one of these chairs.”

“And not very ladylike,” said Lucy primly, taking a sip of her mild drink.

“Who asked you to be ladylike?” His leer became more pronounced. “You know what the male cricket said to the female grasshopper?”

“No,” said Lucy. “I don’t know and I’m not interested.”

“Well, he said… Oh, I say,” Marvin interrupted himself as the maid entered through the portieres, “do you have to intrude just now, Maybelle? Miss Hamilton and I are just getting cozy over a drink and I was about to tell her a very funny story.”

Lucy got to her feet quickly and set the glass down as she faced the girl questioningly.

Maybelle made the pretense of a curtsy and said, “Madame will see you in her upstairs sitting room, Ma’am.”

Lucy followed her out quickly without looking back at Marvin.

The maid led her down the vaulted hallway to a wide stairway curving upward to the right, and up the stairs to another wide hallway where she knocked lightly on a closed door before opening it and announcing, “Miss Hamilton.”

The boudoir was chintzy and feminine, and the temperature was like that of a hothouse devoted to the propagation of tropical flowers in contrast to the pleasant coolness of the rest of the big, stone house.

And the girl-woman facing Lucy, propped up against fluffy, silken pillows on a chaise-longue was not unlike a rare orchid. There was a look of cultivated fragility, of almost ethereal beauty, in the delicate, finely-drawn features of Anita Rogell. Her violet eyes appeared enormous and had a look of haunting melancholy about them which, Lucy realized on closer inspection, had been artfully attained by the skillful use of purple eyeshadow combined with a dusting of gold powder on carefully shaped brows. Her hair, tightly drawn back from cameo-like features, was the exact color and texture of cornsilk with the morning sun glinting on it, and it displayed a wide forehead and tiny, shell-like ears that lay flat against her head.