Bride of the Rat God (5 page)

She took another doubtful step, and he bounced on his short legs, barking wildly, urgently, while Buttercreme and Black Jasmine scratched in a frenzy at the door. As far as Norah knew, Chang Ming would no more have tried to bite her than he’d have stolen a car.
This is silly,
she thought, an echo of her aunts’ voices.
One shouldn’t allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one’s arm.

Yet she backed up and sat on the black silk cushions of the divan once again. And not because she feared Chang Ming. She could not have said exactly what it was she did fear.

The golden dog’s trembling stopped. Enormous tail raised like a triumphal banner, he trotted to the door where the other two sniffed intently at the panels.

Outside, the wind screamed in the darkness.

For a moment all was still. The room looked strange in the dim light, as rooms did late at night when one had been wakened from uneasy sleep. The house Frank Brown had bought for Christine was in the Spanish style, backed against the sharp rise of the hill and climbing up it, a minor fairy tale of pink-washed turrets, pocket-handkerchief terraces, and balconies no broader than a lace table runner. Among its Mediterranean arches and heavy, darkly carved beams the furniture looked wildly incongruous, a combination of modernist enameled sinuosity—purchased by Frank Brown—and a gaudy clutter of Chinese lamps, vases, lacquered Oriental cabinets that lent primitive splashes of cinnabar, gold, and blue to the smooth scheme of black and cream silk.

Norah found herself thinking how isolated the house was, far up Ivarene Street in the wooded Cahuenga Hills that overlooked Hollywood from the north. Brown had chosen it as a love nest precisely because it was isolated, though in the six weeks Norah had been there he had never spent the night; also, it was cheaper than the more prestigious neighborhood of Whitley Heights immediately to the south. The closest neighbors were a good half mile up the road, a religious cult whose members Norah sometimes saw dancing in what they probably considered to be Grecian dress among the eucalyptus and chaparral. Felipe, the gardener, had warned her never to let the dogs out at night for fear of coyotes lurking in the darkness.

But in her heart Norah knew that whatever was out there, it wasn’t a coyote.

Buttercreme and Chang Ming left the door and trotted swiftly into the hall, moving with that peculiarly businesslike Pekingese toddle, fur flouncing, as if to say,
Places to go. Things to do.
It would have been comical if not for the way they had barked, the way Chang Ming had turned upon her... the way Black Jasmine still stood, ears raised and hackles erect, before the outer door. The aureate light caught in his single eye, reflecting there a curious and terrible concentration, more like a cat than a dog. One of the lion creatures in her dream, Norah recalled, had been one-eyed. Had it been black as well?

She shook her head. Usually her dreams were utterly prosaic: feeding the dogs, mending stockings, wrestling with the primal chaos of Christine’s checkbook. Sometimes she dreamed about Oxford, about sitting in a lecture or walking briskly over the gray stone of Magdalene Bridge, turning to look upstream at the green aisle of willows, or about herself in that dim and barely recalled pre-Oxford, prewar world, practicing piano in her white dress and pink sash. She hadn’t been at all surprised to find herself dreaming about the ending scenes of
Kiss of Darkness.

This is silly,
thought Norah again, and rose from the divan. Black Jasmine, yakking sharply, flung himself at her, and she sat quickly. He turned immediately back to his vigil at the door. Though his tail was up, she could see him quiver with tiny unheard growls. Dimly, but with curious clarity, she could hear the toenails of the other two tapping the wooden floors of the dining room, breakfast room, study, and hall; the tiles of the kitchen and bath; up and down the short flights of steps that joined the myriad levels of the lower floor. They would pause, then go on. In her mind she saw them sniffing busily with their little flat noses, looking for... what?

In time they trotted back to sniff once more at the front door. Then, with an air of having settled something to their own satisfaction, the three of them scurried to her feet and licked apologetically at her ankles, her hands, and their own noses, three flat, anxious faces gazing up at her, begging to be forgiven, hoping she understood.

She didn’t and wasn’t certain she wanted to. She picked them up, cuddled them each by each on her lap—she had firm opinions about whom couches were intended for, and it did not include even the cutest or most loyal of dogs—stroked the little grapefruit heads, and had her fingers thoroughly licked and chewed. She lay down on the couch again but did not go back to sleep, for her mind clung uneasily to the fast-fading fragments of her dreams. She could not rid her mind of the image of something huge and terrible scuttling back and forth along the walls in the rainy darkness, waiting for the yellow roadster to swing through the shadow of the cluster of trees where the drive plunged steeply down off the road and around the side of the house to the garage.

The wind died down. It began to rain again. Every now and then one or two of the dogs would make another brisk patrol of the house. Eventually, feeling a complete fool, Norah searched the house herself, armed with a broom from the kitchen and accompanied by Buttercreme and Chang Ming, switching on lights all the way. She found nothing, but she did not go to sleep, did not even ascend the stairs to her bedroom.

She was still awake at four when car lights flashed across the front windows, and the dogs bounded to the door, tightly-curled tails wagging eagerly, to meet Christine as she came tipsily in, as if they had sensed nothing more amiss in the night than some neighbor’s stray cat.

“Murdered?” Norah’s hand groped for the back of the gleaming black chair that graced the telephone niche in the hall. She felt stunned, knowing that she should produce some appropriate emotion but not sure what it should be.

“Cut to pieces. We’re over here now,” said A. F. Brown’s deep, slightly drawling voice through the tinny speaker of the receiver. “Is Chris awake yet? She talked to them both at my place last night. Fishbein—that’s my publicity man; don’t know if you’ve met him—says we’ve got to call the police pretty soon, and I want to make sure everybody’s story is straight.”

“I’ll wake her.” Down six steps at the end of the hall, Norah could hear the faint clatter of porcelain as Dominga the cook whipped up scrambled eggs and talked to the dogs in Spanish. Visible through two archways and up two steps, like a Vermeer painting, wan sunlight gleamed briefly on the highly polished breakfast table, then faded as she watched from the tulip goblets and the pink and green chinoiserie plates. Outside the bow window rain began to patter on the dark thickets of oleander that half masked the myriad panes of beveled glass. A gust of wind stirred them, scratching fretfully at the casements. Norah shivered. “Shall I have her ring you back?”

“Yeah.” Some regional American inflection made the affirmative come out as
yowp.
“She has the number.”

“Is Mr. Sandringham there?” Something inside her twisted with anxiety for that charming, kindly sot. Very few people in Hollywood would have taken the trouble to make sure she was happy in her position as lady-in-waiting to a star. “What happened?”

Brown’s voice was guarded. “We don’t know. He doesn’t have a regular houseboy these days; the woman who cleans the place called us when she arrived this morning. We’re having a look around now. Just tell Chris to call us here. And don’t let anyone know we called you until we’ve talked to you again. If the press calls, or the police, you’re surprised as hell. Got that?”

“Mr. Brown,” Norah said quickly, recovering her wits as she heard the dismissal in his voice, “I saw Mr. Sandringham last night, too. He and Mr. Pelletier came into Enyart’s.”

“Shit! Pardon my French. Look...”. He hesitated. In the background Norah heard another masculine voice, a light tenor, ask something, and through a beefy hand laid over the mouthpiece she heard Brown say, “Norah says Charlie and the kid were at Enyart’s. That means whoever else was in the place saw them, too.”

She heard, quite clearly, the other voice say, “Shit.”

“Look, Norah, I’m coming up there. Did you talk to Charlie at Enyart’s? And was anybody with you?”

“I was with Mr. Mindelbaum.”

“She was with Mindelbaum,” she heard Brown relay.

“Good, he’s under contract.”

“Norah?” The hand was removed from the mouthpiece. “Conrad and I are coming. Can you get Chris rolled out of bed and get some coffee in her before we get there?”

“I can but try. Mr. Brown,” she added, forestalling another hanging up. “What happened?”

Another very long pause. From the kitchen a flurry and skitter of toenails. The swinging door fell open, admitting a rolling fur ball like three wigs fighting, rufous, ivory, and black. Consonant with their determination to be wolves, the Pekes felt obliged to fight for their lightly buttered toast and sautéed chicken livers every morning. The dogs bounded up the steps and into the hallway, Chang Ming dragging the protesting Buttercreme across the polished floor by one ear.

“Like I said, we don’t know.” Brown’s voice was dry. “Charlie’s disappeared, and somebody carved the kid up with a champagne bottle. Find anything in those drawers, Fishy?”

“Just some letters. Jesus, how many kids did Sandringham take up with?”

“Burn ‘em. We’re on our way.”

“Keith Pelletier
murdered
?” Christine stared aghast from the lace fantasia of pillow shams and convent-embroidered sheets. Though the bed, with its gilded cupids and outspread swan wings, was pure DeMille, its hangings had been replaced with rich and glossy Chinese silks upon which dragons cavorted with flamingos. A brass Buddha meditated in a curtained niche, gold and crimson tassels dangled like immense fuchsias from rafters painted with more dragons, and a sort of pagoda of black lacquer and gold-embroidered scarlet silk transformed what had been the ceiling fixture into an opium-den dream. Amid all this Christine sat, clutching her fragile batiste nightgown to her bosom. “And Frank and Fishy coming
here
? That only gives me thirty minutes to get some makeup on!”

She bolted out of bed with the mightiest turn of prebreakfast speed Norah had yet seen her sister-in-law produce and flung herself into the
en suite
bathroom to dash handfuls of cold water on her face. “Darling, would you save my
life
and go get me some coffee? Oh, I’m sorry, my little sweetnesses, Mother doesn’t have time to say good morning to her angel muffins today.” With a great clatter of toenails on the cream and violet bathroom tiles—the Celestial Empire did not extend beyond the connecting door—the three Pekes, which had followed Norah up the stairs, orbited Christine’s ankles, staring up at her with concern in their dark, childlike eyes.

The telephone was ringing again as Norah descended the stairs to the hall. Feeling as if she were moving with the preternatural slowness of dreams, she answered it. The voice on the other end brought, curiously, a rush of relief.

“Mrs. Blackstone? This is Alec Mindelbaum.”

“Oh, Mr. Mindelbaum!” Why on earth, she wondered, should she feel rescued? Not exactly rescued—upheld. “I take it Mr. Brown reached you.”

“Just now. He told me to come up there. Is this all right with you and Christine?”

“Well, we’re about to be invaded by Mr. Brown and Mr. Fishbein and then, in all probability, the police, so I suppose the more the merrier. Christine is putting on her makeup now.”

“The woman never disappoints me. How are you?”

He asked as if it meant something to him, so Norah gave it a few moments thought. “I think I’m having trouble believing it really happened, though another part of me feels quite shocked.” That arrogant hand on Mr. Sandringham’s arm kept coming back to her mind, and the look of genuine, hopeless adoration in Mr. Sandringham’s eyes.
You know what love is....
“I—I think I would welcome a little sane support.”

“You’re not going to get any from Chris. It’ll take me maybe half an hour to get there. I live clear down in Venice. Don’t let Brown and Fishy bully you—and don’t sign anything.”

He rang off. As she put the receiver back into its hooks, Norah glimpsed something gray moving outside the breakfast room’s bay window. A man, poking among the thick oleanders that masked the stone foundation. The reporters who had crowded the lobby of the Million Dollar Theater sprang at once to mind, and with a refined oath, Norah crossed to the front door and let herself out onto the high concrete porch.

“May I help you?” she inquired in her most freezing voice.

A moment later, seeing that the man was climbing the hillside to investigate the masses of foliage, she thought,
Police.

He turned. It was the ancient Chinese gentleman from the theater.

“Indeed you may, good lady.” The soft voice was unmistakable. The bartered blue coat and the faded gray shirt were flecked with rain and far too big for his long, thin frame. One arthritic hand gripped the staff he’d carried the previous night; with the other, he brushed aside the water dripping into his eyes.

“It is the lady with the lion-dogs,” he said, and smiled. “This, then, is the house of the cinema actress Miss Chrysanda Flamande?”

Norah was about to speak when the caw of a Klaxon drew her attention. A huge black Ford edged its way off Ivarene Street. At the wheel she glimpsed the sleek, fair head of Conrad Fishbein, publicist for Colossus Studios. In the back, like an obese black lion, rode A. F. Brown.

She wondered if Christine had finished making up yet.

When she turned her eyes back to where the old man had been standing, he was gone.

Know when to withdraw...

You are unable to help yourself—hire servants.

“H
E WAS CUT
to pieces,” Frank Brown said again, and shifted his bulk against the black silk cushions of the divan. Shrewd green eyes studied Norah’s face for a reaction. “Almost literally. There was blood all over the front room and the bedroom—it’s one of those little bungalow courts over on Highland. Neither of the neighbors on either side were home. Why should they be? Thursday was Thanksgiving; a lot of people had yesterday off. The woman directly across the court says she had the gramophone on and heard nothing.”