Ross MACDONALD - Sleeping Beauty

“I think he would. He loves her.”

“But wouldn’t everything have to come out in the papers?”

“Everything will anyway. Especially if you try to fly Laurel out of the country.”

Lennox was silent for a long minute. “You’re right, that wouldn’t be a good idea. But there’s still something I want you to do for me. For Laurel. I want you to go and look after her, starting now. I can’t make it myself, and Laurel and Marian aren’t on good terms. They haven’t been since Laurel was a teen-ager and started living a life of her own. Will you take over from Marian for me?”

“I’ll do my best.”

On my way out through the hospital lobby, I met Sylvia Lennox coming in. She looked like the survivor of an almost fatal illness. Her face was carved thin and her eyes were very bright.

“You haven’t found Laurel?”

“Not yet.”

“How is Jack?”

“He seems much stronger,” I said.

“My husband, William Lennox, was killed this morning; did you know that?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, which rather surprises me. I’ve been full of malice towards him, wishing him dead.”

“He wasn’t killed by a wish.”

“I know that, Mr. Archer. I’m not losing my mind, though I may have given that impression yesterday afternoon.” She drew in her breath. “Yesterday I seemed to have reached the end of my life, the end of my nature. But just now I’ve discovered that I haven’t. I’m sorry about William’s death. I can even feel some compassion for the woman.”

“Why don’t you tell her that?”

“I don’t feel that much compassion,” she said dryly.

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because you’re a witness. You saw me at my dead end yesterday. I wanted you to know that I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in that state.” She moved closer to me and lowered her voice: “But I can’t get over what happened to Tony Lashman. Why do you think he was killed?”

“To keep him quiet. He was a witness, too. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Lennox, I should be on my way.”

There was one more thing to witness.

I parked on the road near Jack Lennox’s mailbox. Before I approached the house, I got the .38 out of the trunk of my car, loaded it, and put it in my pocket. I moved down the driveway cautiously, studying the lay of the land. It was the first I’d seen of it by daylight.

The house was low, built into the rim of the cliff and partly cantilevered over it. Extending from the house on the right was the patio with the wall over which Bagley had fallen to his death.

A dead grebe covered with oil lay on the patio. Beyond it was an empty field which had been plowed to keep the weeds down. Shore birds driven off the beaches were foraging in the dirt.

Workboats moved back and forth on the water, spraying the unshrinking edges of the oil slick with chemicals and straw. Smoke hung in the sky above them like a dark reflection of the oil on the sea. When I moved closer to the rim of the cliff, I could see the multiple sources of the smoke. Up and down the shoreline great fires were crackling, fed by oil-soaked straw which dozens of men were raking up from the black stony beach.

I envied the men on the boats and on the beaches. I envied anyone who didn’t have my errand to perform.

I knocked on the front door. Marian Lennox must have been watching me from inside the house. She spoke through the door:

“Go away. My husband told me not to let anyone in.”

“Your husband sent me here. You remember me, Mrs. Lennox. My name is Archer.”

“Why?” she said in a high thin voice. “Why did he send you here?”

“He wants me to look after Laurel.”

“I’m perfectly competent–” She caught herself. “Laurel isn’t here.”

“Your husband says she is. You might as well let me in, Mrs. Lennox. We have some things to discuss.”

Abruptly she opened the door. The morning light fell harshly on her face. Her hair was ragged and streaked with white, as if time had run his ashy fingers through it.

The gun with the telescopic sight was standing in the corner of the hallway. I moved past Mrs. Lennox and took possession of it. She didn’t try to stop me but simply stood and looked at me with eyes in which the long night still persisted. I disarmed the gun and set it back in the corner.

“Where’s Laurel?”

“In her room. I gave her some sleeping pills, and she went to sleep.”

“What happened to the sleeping pills she had? The Nembutals?”

“She flushed them down the toilet in the Somervilles’ garage. She told me she was on the point of taking all of them. But then she decided to live.” The woman’s eyes were bright and watchful. “It was a brave decision.”

“To go on living?”

“I think so. She has so much to face up to. Didn’t my husband tell you what she did?” Her long face lengthened. I thought she was going to cry, but only words came out of her downturned mouth: “She killed a man last night – no, the night before last. She pushed him off our patio and he fell down on the rocks. But you know that.”

“How do you happen to know it, Mrs. Lennox?”

“I saw her do it. She ran at him and pushed him with all her force. He went flying over the wall.”

She mimicked the action she was describing, pushing her hands out violently in front of her. But the expression on her face, widemouthed and horrified, seemed to be that of the man falling.

“Why did Laurel kill him?”

“I don’t know. There have been a lot of things I don’t understand.”

“Did she remember Bagley from the old days, when she was a little girl?”

“Yes, I believe she did.” She picked up the idea. “As a matter of fact, he murdered her baby-sitter when she was three. He shot and killed her.”

“And Laurel saw this happen?”

“Maybe she did. She was in the house at the time. She was supposed to be sleeping, and so was little Tom, but maybe she did.”

“How do you know these things, Mrs. Lennox?”

“I have my ways of knowing. People try to keep things from me, but I find out.”

“Were you in the Russo house the night Allie was shot?”

She nodded. “I went there to bring Laurel home. That was all I did. Jack was supposed to meet me at the club but he didn’t come and he didn’t come, so I went and brought Laurel home.”

“Was Allie dead when you went there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look in the bedroom. I didn’t know about her death until I saw it in the paper.”

“When was this?”

“Several days later. Little Tom was alone with her all that time. But I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it.”

“I believe you, Mrs. Lennox. Nobody but a ghoul would leave a child alone with his mother’s body.”

“I’m not a ghoul.” She was appalled by the name. “Anyway, he wasn’t my child. He belonged to that filthy woman.”

“Why do you call her that?”

“Because she was. She was no better than a prostitute. But Jack chose to spend his last night ashore with her. He went to drop off Laurel at her house and never came back. I went there and found him lying drunk in her–”

She clapped a hand to her face. It incompletely masked her widened eyes and mouth.

“Did you shoot her, Mrs. Lennox?”

She spoke after a silence. “If I did, I had good reason.”

“Did you, though?”

“I’m not going to answer that,” she said behind her hand. “I have a right not to answer. Besides, we know that Nelson Bagley shot her.”

“How do you know that?”

“It came out in the News. The neighbors saw him sneaking around the house that night, and they gave his description to the police.”