Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“You go to bed early, Letty.”

“I had to get up early this morning, so I thought I might as well catch up on my rest. Mrs. Blackwell took some sleeping pills and left strict orders not to be disturbed. She went to bed right after dinner.”

“Is Mrs. Blackwell all right?”

“She said she had a blinding headache but she gets those from time to time.”

“How many sleeping pills did she take?”

“A couple.”

“What kind?”

“The red kind. Why?”

“Nothing. Where’s the lord and master?”

“He left early this morning. He had a phone call, about Miss Harriet, and he made me get up and make breakfast for him. It isn’t a regular part of my duties but the cook sleeps out–”

I cut in on her explanations: “Do you know where he is now?”

“He went up to Tahoe to help them search for her body. That’s where the phone call was from.”

“They haven’t found her, then?”

“No. What do you think happened to her?”

“I think she’s in the lake.”

“That’s what he said.” She stepped outside, partly closing the door behind her. “He was in bad shape at breakfast. He couldn’t eat he was so broken up. I didn’t think he should go off there by himself. But he wouldn’t let me wake up Mrs. Blackwell, and what could I do?”

She crossed the veranda and looked up at the stars. She sighed, and laid a hand on her round pink rayon bosom.

“How long have you been working for the Blackwells?”

“Two months. It seems like longer. I mean with all the trouble in the house.”

“Trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell?”

“They’ve had their share. But it don’t behoove me to talk about it.”

“Don’t they get along?”

“They get along as well as most, I guess. A-course they’ve only been married eight or nine months. It’s the long pull that counts, my daddy says, and the Colonel must be twenty years older than her.”

“Is that an issue between the Blackwells?”

“No, I don’t mean that. Only it makes you wonder why she married him. Mrs. Blackwell may have her faults, but she’s not the gold-digging type.”

“I’m interested in what you think of her and her faults.”

“I don’t talk behind people’s backs,” she said with some spirit. “Mrs. Blackwell treats me good, and I try to treat her good back. She’s a nice lady to work for. He isn’t so bad either.”

“Did they take you up to Tahoe in May?”

“That was before I started with them. Just my luck. They were talking about going up again in September, but it’s probably all off now. They wouldn’t want to stay in the lodge so soon after what happened there. I wouldn’t want to myself.”

“Were you fond of Harriet?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I never saw much of her. But I felt kind of sorry for her, even before this happened. She was a real sad cookie, even with all that money. It’s too bad she had to die before she had any happiness in life. She put on a pretty good front, but you ought to seen the crying tantrums she threw in the privacy of her own room. My mother is a practical nurse, and I tried to calm her down a couple of times.”

“What was she crying about?”

“Nobody loved her, she said. She said she was ugly. I told her she had a real nice figure and other attractive features, but she couldn’t see it. This was in June, before she went to Mexico. It’s easy to understand why she was such a pushover for that artist guy – the one with all the names that murdered her.” She looked at the stars again, and coughed at their chilliness. “I think I’m catching cold. I better get back to bed. You never can tell when they’ll get you up around here.”

She went back into the dark house. I went down the hill and turned left on Sunset toward my office. I drove automatically in the light evening traffic. My mind was sifting the facts I’d scraped together, the facts and the semi-facts and the semi-demi-semi-facts. One of the semi-facts had become a certainty since I’d learned that the tweed coat had been found near the Blackwells’ beach house: the Blackwell case and the Dolly Campion case and the Ralph Simpson case were parts of one another. Dolly and Ralph and probably Harriet had died by the same hand, and the coat could be used to identify the hand.

I spread it out on the desk in my office and looked at it under the light. The leather buttons were identical with the one Mungan had shown me. Where the top one had been pulled off there were some strands of broken thread corresponding with the threads attached to Mungan’s button. I had no doubt that an identification man with a microscope could tie that button and this coat together.

I turned the coat over, scattering sand across the desk and the floor. It had a Harris label on the right inside breast pocket, and under it the label of the retailers: Cruttworth, Ltd., Toronto. My impulse was to phone the Cruttworth firm right away. But it was the middle of the night in Toronto, and the best I could hope for was a chat with the night watchman.

I searched in vain for cleaners’ marks. Perhaps the coat had never been cleaned. In spite of its rough usage on the beach, the cuffs and the collar showed no sign of wear.

I tried the thing on. It was small for me, tight across the chest. I wondered how it would fit Campion. It was a heavy coat, and a heavy thought, and I began to sweat. I struggled out of the coat. It hugged me like guilt.

I knew a man named Sam Garlick who specialized in identifying clothes and connecting them with their rightful owners in court. He was a Detective Sergeant in the L. A. P. D. His father and his grandfather had been tailors.

I called Sam’s house in West Los Angeles. His mother-in-law informed me that the Garlicks were out celebrating their twenty-second wedding anniversary. She was looking after the three smaller children, and they were a handful, but she’d finally got them off to bed. Yes, Sam would be on duty in the morning.

While the receiver was in my hand, I dialed my answering service. Both Arnie Walters and Isobel Blackwell had called me earlier in the day. The most recent calls were from Sergeant Wesley Leonard and a woman named Mrs. Hatchen, who was staying at the Santa Monica Inn. Mrs. Hatchen. Harriet’s mother. The long loops were intersecting, and I was at the point of intersection.

I put in a call to the Santa Monica Inn. The switchboard operator told me after repeated attempts that Mrs. Hatchen’s room didn’t answer. The desk clerk thought she’d gone out for a late drive. She had checked into a single late that afternoon.

I returned Leonard’s call. He answered on the first ring.

“Sergeant Leonard here.”

“Archer. You wanted to talk to me?”

“I thought you wanted to talk to me. The wife mentioned you were here this afternoon.”

“I had some evidence that should interest you. I have more now than I had then.”

“What is it?”

“The coat Ralph Simpson had with him when he left home. I’m hoping it will lead us to the killer.”

“How?” he said, rather competitively.

“It’s a little complicated for the phone. We should get together, Sergeant.”

“I concur. I’ve got something hotter than the coat.” He was a simple man, and simple pride swelled in his voice. “So hot I can’t even tell you over the phone.”

“Do you come here or do I go there?”

“You come to me. I have my reasons. You know where I live.”

He was waiting for me on the lighted porch, looking younger and taller than I remembered him. There was a flush on his cheeks and a glitter in his eyes, as if the hotness of his evidence had raised his temperature.

I suspected that he was letting me in on it because he secretly doubted his competence to handle it. He had anxiety in him, too. He pumped my hand, and seemed to have a hard time letting go.