Росс Макдональд - The Blue Hammer

Piano music drew me past her into a central room of the house, a wide high room that rose two stories to the roof. A woman with short black hair was playing “Someone to Watch Over Me” on a grand piano that was dwarfed by the room. A couple of dozen men and women stood around in party clothes with drinks. It looked like a scene recovered from the past, somehow less real than the oil paintings hanging on the walls.

Mrs. Chantry came toward me from the far end of the room. She was wearing a blue evening dress with a lot of skirt and not much top, which displayed her arms and shoulders. She didn’t seem to recognize me at first, but then she lifted both her hands in a gesture of happy surprise.

“How good of you to come. I was hoping I’d mentioned my little party to you, and I’m so glad I did. It’s Mr. Marsh, isn’t it?” Her eyes were watching me carefully. I couldn’t tell if she liked me or was afraid of me.

“Archer,” I said. “Lew Archer.”

“Of course. I never could remember names. If you don’t mind, I’ll let Betty Jo Siddon introduce you to my other guests.”

Betty Jo Siddon was a level-eyed brunette of about thirty. She was well-shaped but rather awkward in her movements, as if she weren’t quite at home in the world. She said she was covering the party for the local paper, and clearly wondered what I was doing there. I didn’t tell her. She didn’t ask.

She introduced me to Colonel Aspinwall, an elderly man with an English accent, an English suit, and a young English wife who looked me over and found me socially undesirable. To Dr. Ian Innes, a cigar-chomping thick-jowled man, whose surgical eyes seemed to be examining me for symptoms. To Mrs. Innes, who was pale and tense and fluttering, like a patient. To Jeremy Rader, the artist, tall and hairy and jovial in the last late flush of his youth. To Molly Rader, a statuesque brunette of about thirty-nine, who was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in weeks. To Jackie Pratt, a spare little longhaired man in a narrow dark suit, who looked like a juvenile character out of Dickens but on second glance had to be fifty, at least. To the two young women with Jackie, who had the looks and the conversation of models. To Ralph Sandman and Larry Fallon, who wore black silk jackets and ruffled white shirts, and appeared to comprise a pair. And to Arthur Planter, an art collector so well known that I had heard of him.

Betty Jo turned to me when we had finished our rounds. “Would you like a drink?”

“Not really.”

She looked at me more closely. “Are you feeling all right? You look a little peaked.”

I caught it from a dead man I just found on Olive Street. What I said was, “I don’t believe I’ve eaten for a while.”

“Of course. You look hungry.”

“I am hungry. I’ve had a big day.”

She took me into the dining room. Its wide uncurtained windows looked out over the sea. The room was uncertainly lit by the tall candles on the refectory table.

Standing behind the table with the air of a proprietor was the large dark hook-nosed man, whom the girl addressed as Rico, I had met on my earlier visit. He cut some slices off a baked ham and made me a sandwich with which he offered me wine. I asked for beer instead, if he didn’t mind. He strutted toward the back of the house, grumbling.

“Is he a servant?”

Betty Jo answered me with deliberate vagueness: “More or less.” She changed the subject. “A big day doing what?”

“I’m a private detective. I was working.”

“Policeman was one of the thoughts that occurred to me. Are you on a case?”

“More or less.”

“How exciting.” She squeezed my arm. “Does it have to do with the picture the Biemeyers had stolen?”

“You’re very well informed.”

“I try to be. I don’t intend to write a social column for the rest of my life. Actually I heard about the missing picture in the newsroom this morning. I understand it’s a conventionalized picture of a woman.”

“So I’ve been told. I haven’t seen it. What else was the newsroom saying?”

“That the picture was probably a fake. Is it?”

“The Biemeyers don’t think so. But Mrs. Chantry does.”

“If Francine says it’s a fake, it probably is. I think she knows by heart every painting her husband did. Not that he did so many – fewer than a hundred altogether. His high period only lasted seven years. And then he disappeared. Or something.”

“What do you mean, ‘Or something’?”

“Some old-timers in town here think he was murdered. But that’s pure speculation, so far as I can find out.”

“Murdered by whom?”

She gave me a quick bright probing look. “Francine Chantry. You won’t quote me, will you?”

“You wouldn’t have said it if you thought I would. Why Francine?”

“He disappeared so suddenly. People always suspect the spouse, don’t they?”

“Sometimes with good reason,” I said. “Are you professionally interested in the Chantry disappearance?”

“I’d like to write about it, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean. I’ll make a deal with you.”

She gave me another of her probing looks, this one edged with sexual suspicion. “Oh?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean this. I’ll give you a hot tip on the Chantry case. You tell me what you find out.”

“How hot?”

“This hot.”

I told her about the dead man at the hospital. Her eyes became narrower and brighter. She pushed out her lips like a woman expecting to be kissed, but kissing was not what was on her mind.

“That’s hot enough.”

Rico came back into the room carrying a foaming glass.

“It took me a long time,” he said in a complaining tone. “The beer wasn’t cold. Nobody else drinks beer. I had to chill it.”

“Thanks very much.”

I took the cold glass from his hand and offered it to Betty Jo.

She smiled and declined. “I have to work tonight. Will you forgive me if I run off now?”

I advised her to talk to Mackendrick. She said she would, and went out the back door. Right away I found myself missing her.

I ate my ham sandwich and drank my beer. Then I went back into the room where the music was. The woman at the piano was playing a show tune with heavy-handed professional assurance. Mrs. Chantry, who was talking with Arthur Planter, caught my eye and detached herself from him.

“What happened to Betty Jo? I hope you didn’t do away with her.”

She meant the remark to be light, but neither of us smiled.

“Miss Siddon had to leave.”

Mrs. Chantry’s eyes became even more unsmiling. “She didn’t tell me that she was going to leave. I hope she gives my party proper coverage – we’re raising money for the art museum.”

“I’m sure she will.”

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

“To the hospital. There’s been a murder. Paul Grimes was killed.”

Her face opened, almost as if I’d accused her, then closed against the notion. She was quiet but internally active, rearranging her face from the inside. She drew me into the dining room, reacted to the presence of Rico, and took me into a small sitting room.

She closed the door and faced me in front of a dead and empty fireplace. “How do you know Paul Grimes was murdered?”

“I found him dying.”

“Where?”

“Near the hospital. He may have been trying to get there for treatment, but he died before he made it. He was very badly smashed up around the head and face.”

The woman took a deep breath. She was still very handsome, in a cold silvery way, but the life seemed to have gone out of her face. Her eyes had enlarged and darkened.

“Could it have been an accident, Mr. Archer?”