Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“Your hunch,” she said contemptuously. “If Charles were being held under duress, for ransom, your visit to me tonight under these circumstances could be interpreted as an overture, from whoever was holding him. Did you know this Negress, the one you claim was murdered?”

“She was murdered. Did you know her?”

Her face radiated a dull white glow of anger. “I warn you not to be insolent, young man. I know how to deal with insolence.”

I glanced at Sylvia, who smiled bleakly and almost imperceptibly shook her head: “You must be very tired, Mrs. Singleton. It’s very late.”

The older woman paid no attention to her. She leaned towards me, her black silk lap wrinkling stiffly like iron under pressure: “Only this morning, under circumstances similar to these, a man came here representing himself as a private detective, like you. He claimed that he could find Charles for me, if I would pay him part of the reward in advance. I naturally refused. Then he wasted a full hour of my time, asking me questions. When I tried to ask him a question or two in my turn, he had nothing to say, not a constructive word. What was his name, Sylvia?”

“Heiss.”

“Heiss,” the older woman repeated vehemently, as if she had invented the name on the spur of the moment. She rolled her eyes towards me. They had been pickled in tears, glassed in grief, but they were still shrewd. “Do you know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A most repugnant creature. Eventually he dared to suggest that I sign a contract to pay him five thousand dollars if he should produce my son, alive or dead. He boasted of his connections among the criminal element. I arrived at the conclusion that he was either conspiring to defraud me, or representing a criminal organization of some sort. I ordered him out of my house.”

“And you’ve cast me in the same role?”

“Oh no,” the girl said softly from her corner.

Mrs. Singleton subsided backward, her energy spent. Her head rolled on the curved back of the sofa, exposing a slack throat to an invisible knife. Rising words palpitated feebly in her throat: “I don’t know what to think. I’m sick, old, exhausted, bereft. In a word of liars. No one will tell me anything.”

Sylvia rose, her soft and anxious look shepherding me to the door. Mrs. Singleton called out with sudden eagerness: “Mr. Archer. Did Charles send you to me? Is that it? Does he need money?” The change in her voice was startling. She sounded like a frightened girl. I turned to look at her face, and saw the same false girlishness touch it with beauty for an instant. The beauty passed like the beam of a searchlight moving across time. It left her mouth curled in a cynical parody of mother-love.

The situation was too complicated for me to understand or try to deal with. I didn’t know whether the umbilical cord between Mrs. Singleton and her son had stretched and broken and snapped back in her face and knocked her silly. Or whether she knew he was dead and was talking against despair. Whichever it was, she was ready to believe almost anything and suspicious of nearly everybody. Reality had betrayed her.

“I’ve never met Charles,” I said. “Good night. Good luck.”

She didn’t answer.

Sylvia went with me to the end of the hall. “I’m sorry, Mr. Archer. The last two weeks have been terribly hard on her. She’s been under drugs for days. When things don’t fit in with her ideas, she simply doesn’t hear them, or she forgets them. It isn’t that her mind is affected, exactly. She’s suffered so much, she can’t bear to talk about the facts, or even think about them.”

“What facts?”

She said surprisingly: “Can we sit in your car? I think she really wants me to talk to you.”

“You’d have to be psychic to know it.”

“I am a bit psychic where Mrs. Singleton is concerned. When you’re under a person’s thumb, you know.”

“You get to know the thumbprint. How long have you worked for her?”

“Only since June. But our families have known each other for a great many years. Charles’s father and mine went to Harvard together.” She opened the door, leaning across me to reach the knob. “Excuse me, I need some fresh air.”

“Is she all right by herself?”

“There are servants on duty. They’ll put her to bed.” She started towards my car.

“Just a minute, Sylvia. Do you have a picture of Charles? A recent snapshot would be good.”

“Why, yes, I do.”

“Get it for me, will you?”

“I have one here,” she said without embarrassment. She took a red leather wallet from the pocket of her suit and extracted a small snapshot that she handed me: “Is it big enough, clear enough?”

The picture showed a young man in tennis shorts and an open-necked short-sleeved shirt, smiling into the sun. The strength and leanness of his features were emphasized by a short service crew-cut. He was strongly built, with wide sloping shoulders and muscular forearms. But there was an unreal, actorish quality about him. His pose was self-conscious, chest pouting, stomach sucked in, as if he feared the cold eye of the Leica or the hot eye of the sun.

“It’s clear enough,” I said. “May I keep it?”

“For as long as you need it. It’s very like him.”

Climbing into my car, she showed a fine round leg. I noticed when I slid behind the wheel that she filled the interior with a clean springlike smell. I offered her a cigarette.

“Thanks, I never smoke.”

“How old are you, Sylvia?”

“Twenty-one.” She added with apparent irrelevance: “I just received the first quarterly check from Mother’s trust fund.”

“Good for you.”

“About the check, I mean, it’s nearly a thousand dollars. I can afford to employ you, if you’ll work for me instead of Mrs. Singleton.”

“I couldn’t promise anything definite. You want him found pretty badly, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The word had the pressure of her life behind it. “How much money should I give you?”

“Don’t bother about it now.”

“Why should you trust me?”

“Anybody would. What’s more surprising is that you trust me.”

“I know something about men,” she said. “My father is a good man. You’re not like that man Heiss.”

“You talked to him?”

“I was in the room. All he wanted was money. It was so – naked. I had to threaten him with the police before he’d leave. It’s really a pity. Mrs. Singleton might have opened out to you if he hadn’t spoilt things.”

“Are there things she could have told me, that she didn’t?”

“Charlie’s whole life,” she said obscurely. “What did this Negro woman look like?”

I gave her a thumbnail description of Lucy Champion.

She interrupted me before I finished: “It’s the same one.” She opened the door on her side and began to get out. Everything she did was done gently, almost regretfully, as if an action was a dangerous gamble.

“Do you know her?”

“Yes. I want to show you something.” And she was gone.

I lit a cigarette. Before I had smoked a half inch of it, Sylvia came out of the house and climbed in beside me again. “I believe this is hers.”

She handed me a soft dark object. I turned on the overhead light to examine it. It was a woman’s turban, knitted of black wool and gold thread. Inside, there was a maker’s label: Denise.

“Where did you get this?”

“She was here, the day before yesterday.”

“To see Mrs. Singleton?”

“I think now that must have been it. She drove up here in a taxicab in the middle of the afternoon. I was cutting flowers in the garden, and I saw her sitting in the back of the cab as if she couldn’t make up her mind. Finally she got out, and the cab-driver started away. She stood in the drive and looked at the house for a moment. Then I think she lost her nerve.”