James Chase: This Way for a Shroud

THE telephone bell rang sharply as Janey Conrad came briskly down the stairs. She was wearing her new evening dress: a strapless, sky-blue creation, the bodice of which was covered with silver sequins. She was looking her best, and she was aware of it.

At the sound of the telephone bell she stopped in mid-stride. Her animated expression turned to exasperated anger: a transformation as swift and as final as the turning off of an electric lamp.

“Paul! Don’t answer it,” she said in the cold quiet voice that always came with her anger.

Her husband, a tall, loose-limbed, powerfully built man in his late thirties came out of the lounge. He was wearing a tuxedo and carried a soft black hat in his hand. When Janey had first met him he had reminded her very sharply of James Stewart, and the resemblance had been the main reason why she had married him.

“But I’ve got to answer it,” he said in his soft, drawling voice. “I may be wanted.”

“Paul!” Her voice rose a little as he walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

He grinned at her, motioning with his hand for her to be quiet.

“Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece.

“Paul? This is Bardin.” The Lieutenant’s voice boomed against Paul’s ear and spilt into the quiet tense hall.

As soon as Janey heard the voice, she clenched her fists and her mouth set in a hard, ugly line.

“You’ll want to be in on this,” Bardin went on. There’s been a massacre up at Dead End: June Arnot’s place. We’re knee deep in corpses, and one of them is June’s. Brother! Is this going to be a sensation! How soon can you get out here?”

Conrad pulled a face and looked at Janey out of the corners of his eyes. He watched her walk slowly and stiffly into the sitting-room.

“I guess I’ll be right over,” he said.

“Swell. I’ll hold everything until you get here. Snap it up. I want you here before the press get on to this.”

“I’ll be right over,” Conrad said, and hung up.

“Goddamn it!” Janey said softly. She stood with her back to him, facing the mantelpiece.

“I’m sorry, Janey, but I’ve got to go…”

“Goddamn it, and you too,” Janey said without raising her voice. “This always happens. Whenever we plan to go out, this happens. You and your stinking police force!”

“That’s no way to talk,” Conrad said. “It’s a damn shame, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll go tomorrow night, and I’ll make certain we do go.”

Janey leaned forward and with the back of her hand she swept the ornaments, photograph frames and the clock off the mantelpiece, to crash into the hearth.

“Janey!” Conrad came quickly into the room. “Now stop that!”

“Oh, go to hell!” Janey said in the same cold, quiet voice. She stared at Conrad’s reflection in the mirror, her eyes hostile and glittering. “Go and play cops and robbers. Never mind about me, but don’t expect to find me here when you get back. From now on, I’m going to have fun without you.”

“June Arnot’s been murdered, Janey. I’ve got to go. Now look, I’ll take you to the Ambassador’s tomorrow night to make up for this. How would you like that?”

“You won’t take me so long as there’s a telephone in this house.” Janey said bitterly. “I want some money, Paul!”

He looked at her. “But, Janey…”

“I want some money now: at this minute! If I don’t get it I’ll have to hock something, and it won’t be anything belonging to me!”

Conrad shrugged. He took a ten-dollar bill from his billfold and handed it to her.

“All right, Janey. If that’s the way you feel about it. Why don’t you give Beth a call? You don’t want to go alone.”

Janey folded the bill, looked up at him and then turned away. It was a shock to him to see how impersonal and indifferent her eyes were. She might have been looking at a stranger.

“You don’t have to worry about me. Go and worry about your silly little murder. I’ll get along fine on my own.”

He started to say something, then stopped. When she was in this mood there was no reasoning with her.

“Can I drop you anywhere?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, drop dead!” Janey said violently, and walked over to the window.

Conrad’s mouth tightened. He went across the hall, opened the front door and walked quickly down to his car, parked at the kerb.

As he slid under the driving-wheel he was aware of a tight feeling across his chest that restricted his breathing. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew Janey’s and his sands were running out. How long had they been married now? He frowned as he trod down on the starter. Just under three years. The first year had been pretty good, but that was before he had become Chief Investigator to the District Attorney’s office. That was when he kept regular hours and could take Janey out every night.

She had been pleased enough when he had got promotion: overnight his salary had doubled, and they had moved out of the three-room apartment on Wentworth Street and had taken a bungalow on the swank Hayland’s Estate. This was a big move up in the social scale. Only people earning five-figure incomes and more were accepted on Hayland’s Estate. But Janey wasn’t so pleased when she began to realize that he was on call any time of the night and day. “For heaven’s sake,” she had said, “anyone would think you were a common policeman instead of a Chief Investigator.”

“But I am a policeman,” he had explained patiently. “I am the D.A.’s special policeman, and if a big case breaks I have to represent him.”

There had been quarrels which at first didn’t seem to Paul to amount to much: just natural disappointment when a sudden emergency call spoilt an evening out. It was understandable, he had told himself, but he wished she would be more reasonable. He had to admit that emergency calls always seemed to turn up just when they were going out, but that was something they both had to put up with. But Janey wouldn’t put up with it. The quarrels developed into rows, and rows into scenes, and now he was getting tired of it.

But this was the first time Janey had asked for money to go out on her own. This was a new development, and it worried Conrad more than all the rows, the breakages and scenes of the past.

Janey was far too attractive to go out by herself. Conrad was aware of the reckless streak in her. From some of the things she had let slip in off-guarded moments, he had gathered she had led a pretty hectic life before they married. He had decided that what load happened in her past was none of his business, but now, remembering some of the stories she had told him of wild parties, and the names of past boy friends she had sometimes taunted him with when she was in a rage, he wondered uneasily if she were going on the war-path again. She was only twenty-four, and sex seemed to mean much more to her than to him, and this surprised him, for he had the normal appetites of the male. Then there were her looks. With her forget-me-not blue eyes, her silky blonde hair, her perfect complexion and her cute retrousse nose she was a temptation to any man.

“Oh, goddamn it!” he muttered under his breath, unconsciously repeating her cry of exasperation.

He raced the engine, engaged gear and swung the car away from the kerb.

For the past three years June Arnot had been rated the most popular actress in motion pictures, and she was said to be the richest woman in Hollywood.

She had built for herself a luxurious home on the promontory of the east arm of Tammany Bay, a few miles outside Pacific City and some ten miles from Hollywood.