Masters of Noir: Volume Two (14 page)

"This is it,” Grace said, stirring at my side.

All I saw was a six foot wall into the top of which had been cemented chunks of broken glass. A pole vaulter might scale the barrier, but the average trespasser would most likely try another route.

"Where's the entrance?” I asked.

"Around the bend."

I pulled up near a wrought iron gate that hung open between a pair of concrete columns, and debarked. I stuck my head through the window on the other side. “I'll try not to be long,” I said.

"Be careful,” she said, and took my face between her palms and leaned towards me. It was supposed to be a simple kiss of encouragement. But something happened. Our lips met and the contact triggered a whole set of electrical impulses that went through me like a searing flame.

Call it chemistry, anything you like. Sometimes, rarely, it just happens this way. We were a pair of catalytic agents working on each other. The hunger must have been building up inside her for a long time, like a full head of steam in a boiler. A sob caught at her throat and there was a soft sighing exhalation. Her mouth opened on mine, our breaths intermingled, and her fingernails gouged into my shoulders and for a moment there I thought she was going to haul me right through the closed door into the car. Her body seemed to grow tense and I felt my knees grow wobbly.

And then I remembered Lester Britt, sitting up in his office chair, with that piece of steel sticking in his throat, and I broke her grip. It took a bit of doing, but I managed it.

"Not now,” I said shakily. “There's work to be done."

She leaned hack, her breathing erratic and shallow, her eyes smoldering, unwilling to trust her voice.

I took a long breath and touched her lightly on the cheek and walked past the wrought iron gates along a graveled drive. The building broke into view as I came around a bend. It was dark brown, turreted, solid as a fortress, its leaded panes glinting dully in the late afternoon sun. A heavy oaken door was closed and looked impregnable. There was no bell, no knocker, nothing but a pull cord, which I gave a hard tug.

The door opened wide enough to show me a female face as thin as a hatchet and just as sharp. She was a tall, muscular woman, forty or so, in a starched white nurse's uniform. She was in the wrong profession. The milk of human kindness had long since curdled in her eyes.

"Yes?” Her voice was short and reedy. “What is it?"

"Dr. Vandam, please."

"The doctor's busy,” she said unpleasantly and started to close the door in my face.

But I had my foot in the doorway and she looked down at it, surprised. I put some steel into my voice. “Dr. Vandam,” I said. “Don't make me ask you again. Where is he?"

She gave me a look of cold hostility, turned on her heel, and said abrasively, “This way."

I followed her through a wide lobby and down an uncarpeted corridor to another oaken door. She knocked on this, opened it, and said, “This person wishes to see you, doctor. He practically forced his way in."

Dr. Vandam stood up from behind his desk, a bony man with an angular face, aggrieved eyes, and a perpetually worried mouth. This was the expression he presented to the public. What went on behind it, I couldn't even guess. “Come in, sir,” he said in a deceptively mild voice. “Come in and sit down.” He pulled a chair around so that the light would strike my face. “You mustn't mind Miss Kirk,” he said. “We're short-handed and she has to do most of the work.” He peered at me owlishly. “I don't believe I've ever seen you before. Are you selling something?"

"Not exactly, doctor.” I had ignored the proffered chair. “I came to see one of your patients."

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Paula Larsen."

There was no visible change in his expression. “Are you a relative?"

"No, doctor."

"Friend of the family?"

"No, doctor."

He moved his shoulders patiently. “Then what is the purpose of your visit, if I may inquire? Mrs. Larsen is resting now. She had a touch of flu last month and she's very weak."

"I'd like to talk to her."

He smiled patronizingly. “My dear fellow, we can't allow just anyone to walk in and disturb our guests. Surely you realize that."

I fished one of my cards out of my wallet and gave it to him. His lips moved as he read it. His eyes came up without any expression.

"I see,” he said. “You're a lawyer. What, exactly, do you want, counselor? Who do you represent?"

"Mrs. Grace Denney. We want to find out if Mrs. Larsen is competent to handle her own affairs."

He stroked his closed eyelids with infinite weariness. “Ah, yes. Mrs. Denney was here yesterday, but Mrs. Larsen refused to see her.” He shoved his chair back abruptly and came to his feet. “I think an interview can be managed. Suppose we just walk in on Mrs. Larsen. But please make it brief, counselor. Follow me.” His manner had turned crisp and businesslike.

A spiral staircase wound upward to the second floor. Our footsteps were absorbed on the well-padded broadloom. Dr. Vandam paused at the end of the corridor, opened a door, and walked in with a cheerful smile.

"Well, Mrs. Larsen, you're looking chipper. How do you feel this afternoon?"

"Resting nicely, doctor. I—” She stopped when she noticed he was not alone and her faded eyes regarded me curiously.

I saw a small woman, very old, lying in a four poster, dwarfed by its hugeness. Her skin was wrinkled parchment and her hair was snow white. Only the porcelain dentures anchored to her gums kept her mouth from collapsing upon itself.

"I brought you a visitor,” Dr. Larsen said.

She searched my face, probing, trying to recollect if she knew me.

"How do you do, Mrs. Larsen,” I said. “I'm a friend of Grace's."

The gnarled fingers tightened on the coverlet and her withered lips contracted. “Then you're no friend of mine,” she said.

"Grace would like very much to see you, Mrs. Larsen."

"Well, I don't want to see her. Why doesn't she leave me alone and go back to California?"

I said quietly, “She's divorcing Charles."

Her eyes closed, as if the light hurt them. “Poor Charles. Grace must have made him very unhappy."

"Please,” Dr. Vandam broke in firmly. “I'm sorry, but you can see that Mrs. Larsen is very tired. She needs rest and this excitement isn't doing her any good."

I smiled, first at him, then at her, and now I gave them both the shock of their lives.

"That's too goddam bad about her,” I said unpleasantly. “Get up out of that bed, you old fraud. And get some clothes on, unless you want me to drag you down to Police Headquarters in your nightgown."

Her mouth fell open. She gaped at me, dumbfounded, her eyes dark with apprehension and dismay. Dr. Vandam stood with his spine arched, his larynx paralyzed, speechless and staring. There were incoherent sounds in his throat that finally became words:

"What—what—what is the meaning of this?"

I was playing a hunch and I hoped I was right.

I said with acid precision, “Who do you think you're kidding? This isn't Mrs. Larsen. This woman is a phoney, a substitute, a ringer."

His Adam's apple bobbed erratically. “But Mrs. Larsen—where—"

"Dead, probably,” I said. “And kept a secret so this old bag could take her place."

He seemed at a complete loss. “I—I don't understand. Why?"

"In order to keep receiving those annuity payments. Five hundred smackers a week. Twenty-five thousand a year. It adds up, friend. If they could get away with it for only four years it's a hundred grand.” I looked at her stonily. “Get up, lady. You won't have long to spend in jail. You're too old."

But she wasn't as old as she looked. She kicked her feet over the side of the bed and stood up, trembling and agitated. Her mouth was working and her quivering finger pointed at the doctor.

"He made me do it!” she shouted. “He hired me and asked me to play the part. I don't know about any annuities. I don't—"

Vandam cut her short with a snarl. “Shut up!” His eyes were glazed, abnormally bright as he turned on me, trying to pull himself erect. “These premises are private. You have no right here."

But it was only surface courage, an attitude of desperation. Inside, he was demoralized. He knew the game was up.

"You didn't coach her well enough,” I said. “Mrs. Larsen never told you about Grace and Charles, or why she had fought with her niece. She slipped on that one."

The muscles in his angular face were out of control, warping his mouth.

"Mrs. Larsen died,” I said. “You thought she was alone in the world. She never told you about Grace. It must have been a shock when the letters started coming. Because the die had already been cast. She was dead and you thought you saw a chance to make some easy money. Instead of reporting it, you buried her quietly and secretly out in the garden somewhere. You accepted the checks and counterfeited her signature on the indorsements.” I showed him my teeth. “Or did greed make you impatient, doctor? Perhaps you couldn't wait for her to die from old age. Maybe you accelerated the event. An autopsy will tell that part of the story when the police find her."

Pallor diluted his complexion. Whatever control he had left was rapidly dissolving, disorganizing his thoughts. He sought desperately to salvage some remnants of his honor. “No, no,” he whispered hoarsely, “it—it wasn't me. I didn't kill her. She received a box of chocolates in the mail.” He swallowed painfully, like a man with the mumps. “Arsenic. I kept the wrapper."

"Where did the candy come from?"

"San Diego."

"I believe you,” I said. “You didn't kill Mrs. Larsen. It was somebody else. But just the same you're going to sit in that electric chair up in Sing Sing."

He staggered back, cringing away from me. Beads of sweat condensed along his brow. His nostrils were pinched and gray.

"You killed somebody else,” I said. “Lester Britt. He was hired to find out why the old lady had failed to answer any letters. He investigated and fell onto your scheme and started to blackmail you. That was all right, until Grace Denney arrived in New York. Britt was panicked. He was a small timer who had an easy touch and he was afraid the girl would put an end to it. So he came to you, for a quick kill, trying to up the ante. You understood about blackmailers, doctor. You knew that sort of thing was endless. It got progressively worse. You were desperate. Britt had to be eliminated. So you went to his office and you did what had to be done. And you hired this old lady in case the girl asked someone else to investigate."

His lips moved soundlessly. The truth was there in his distorted face for anyone to see. He backed away blindly through the door.

I didn't bother to chase after him. What the hell for? If he wanted to commit suicide, let him. It would save the State a lot of trouble.

I looked at the old lady. “Get away from here,” I told her. “Get away from here as fast as you can."

I took the same advice for myself.

I was halfway to the car when I heard the shot, a muffled report, absorbed in space.

Dr. Vandam had appealed his case to a higher authority.

Grace was waiting in the car, with the radio playing. Dinner music from some hotel, soft and muted. There were people who still led normal lives. I climbed in beside her and started the car. She twisted around to face me while I drove.

"What is it?” she asked. “You look strange. Did you see Aunt Paula."

"No,” I said.

"But you spoke to Dr. Vandam."

"Yes,” I said.

She clutched urgently at my sleeve. “What happened, Scott?"

I ignored the question and asked one of my own. “Do you ever go to San Diego, Grace?"

Her forehead was puckered. “Occasionally. I have friends there. Why?"

"How about Charles? Does he ever go there?"

"I imagine so. It isn't too far from Hollywood."

"I'd like to talk to him. Where do you think he's staying?"

"At the Selwyn, probably, on East 48th Street. What is it, Scott? Please tell me."

"Later,” I said. “I want to think for a moment."

I drove back to Manhattan too fast and too recklessly. When we reached our destination, I parked in the only space available, beside a fire hydrant.

We entered the lobby and Grace got Denney's room number from the desk clerk. An elevator took us up to the eighth floor. I stood to one side when she knocked.

His voice came through, sounding cautious. “Who is it?"

"It's me, Charles, Grace. Please open the door."

No key could have opened the door so quickly. A smile of welcome was forming on his face. It died when he saw me and he started to slam the door shut. I hit it with my shoulder, driving him backward into the room. He tried to stop me but couldn't.

His mouth hardened. “Now look here, shyster—"

Even in the lexicon of a mule skinner there is no epithet more calculated to make my blood go to the boiling point.

"A bit of chocolates,” I said to him. “Sent from San Diego, California, to the Vandam Nursing Home. Just an innocent box of chocolates."

The words hit him like a physical blow. I could read the look of doom in his suddenly transformed face.

For a moment he stood rigid, the muscles pulling his face out of shape, and then he spun away from me toward a kitchenette at the rear. He had the bread knife out before I could grab him. He brandished it aloft, like a hammer in his fist.

Grace's hands flew to her mouth, plugging up the scream which was forcing itself out.

I backed slowly away, talking to him.

"A box of chocolates,” I said. “You sent them to Mrs. Larsen, spiked with arsenic."

He didn't speak. His eyes were live coals, searing with hate. He stood motionless, the long steel saw-toothed blade glittering under the light.

"California has a community property law,” I said. “Each spouse is entitled to half the property. You knew that Grace was planning to get a divorce, and you poisoned her aunt so she would inherit without delay. But Vandam crossed you up. He kept the death a secret."

Charles Denney moved then. He sprang forward and the knife made a flashing arc that would have laid me open like a side of beef.