The Instant Enemy (20 page)

“Nobody asked you to.” But he sounded angry. I suspected he was angry with himself for talking to me too freely. “If you’re finished here, I’ll drive you bloody well home.”

“Since you put it so charmingly.”

“I don’t have to be charming. I’m a serious painter, and that’s all I have to be.”

In spite of his lousy manners, I felt a certain liking for Sidney Marburg, or a tolerance bordering on liking. Perhaps he had sold out for money in marrying Ruth, who was nearly twenty years older. But like a shrewd agent he’d held back a percentage of himself.

“That sounds like a declaration of independence,” I said.

His angry grimace changed to a smile, but there was self-deprecation in it. “Come on, let’s go. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” We went out to his Mercedes. “Where do you live?”

“In West Los Angeles, but I’m not going home. My car’s in Woodland Hills.”

“That’s where the Sebastian girl lives, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with her? Schitzy?”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“More power to you. Excuse my little flareup a minute ago. I’m glad to drive you. But this place has bad associations for me.”

As if he hoped to leave them behind forever, he started the Mercedes’ engine with a roar. We rocketed along the shore of the lake, across the dam, and down the long winding grade to the gate, where Marburg braked the car to a jarring halt.

“Okay,” I said, “you win the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“Sorry if I alarmed you.”

“I’ve had a rough two days. I was hoping this one would be some improvement.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Marburg drove more carefully down to the coastal highway and turned north. At Malibu Canyon he turned inland again. In a few minutes we were surrounded by the hills.

I said that they would make a pretty picture.

Marburg corrected me. “No. Anything that would make a
pretty picture makes a bad picture. The picturesque things have all been done. You have to do something new. Beauty is difficult, as somebody said.”

“That Klee in the gallery, for instance?”

“Yes. I advised Stephen to buy Klee ten years ago.” He added: “Stephen needs advice. His taste is terrible, in everything.”

“Women?”

Marburg groaned. “Poor Gerda. When she came back from Germany with him, she thought she was going to live
la vie en rose
. She had a rude awakening. They live like recluses, never go anywhere, never see anyone.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s frightened—frightened of life. Money does that to some people. And then of course there’s what happened to his father. It’s strange, for fifteen years Stephen’s been acting as if the same thing was going to happen to him. And it almost did.”

“Almost.”

“You’ve had considerable experience, Mr. Archer. Is it possible for people to bring disaster down on their own heads? You know, by assuming a disaster-prone posture?”

“It’s an interesting idea.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Ask me again when I’ve finished with this case.”

He gave me a swift startled look, during which the car almost left the road. He concentrated on driving for a minute, slowing down.

“I thought you
had
finished.”

“Not with Spanner still at large, and several unsolved murders.”

“Several?”

I let the question hang. We passed the Probation Camp, off the road to the left. Marburg looked at the buildings in a worried way, as if I might be tricking him into custody.

“Did you say several murders?”

“There are at least two others besides Mark Hackett.”

Marburg drove until we were out of sight of the camp. He found a turnout point, pulled off the road, and stopped the car.

“What about these other murders?”

“One was a woman named Laurel Smith. She owned a small apartment building in the Palisades. She was beaten to death there the day before yesterday.”

“I read about her in this morning’s
Times
. The police think she was beaten by a kook—some sadist who didn’t even know her.”

“I don’t think so. Laurel Smith was once married to a man named Jasper Blevins. He died under a train fifteen years ago—just a few days after Mark Hackett was killed. As far as I can make out, Laurel Smith and Jasper Blevins were Davy Spanner’s parents. I think all these crimes, including the one against Stephen, are tied together.”

Without moving, except for his fingers drumming on the wheel, Marburg gave the impression of squirming. His eyes came up to mine and gave me a quick unguarded look, like a spurt of darkness. “Am I being paranoid, or are you accusing me of something?”

“Maybe I am. What am I accusing you of?”

“It isn’t so funny,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do. The cops gave me a really bad time after Mark was killed. They took me down to the station and questioned me most of the night. I had a perfectly good alibi, but to them it looked like one of those open-and-shut cases—you know, the standard triangle. I don’t deny, and I didn’t deny then, that Ruth and I were very close and I adore her passionately,” he said in a rather perfunctory way. “But the fact is she was planning to divorce Mark.”

“And marry you?”

“And marry me. So I had nothing to gain by Mark’s death.”

“Ruth had.”

“Not really. He left her as little as he legally could. Mark changed his will, on account of me, shortly before he died, and left the bulk of his estate to Stephen. Anyway, Ruth had a perfectly good alibi, just as I had, and I resent your imputation for both of us.”

But there was no real force in Marburg’s anger. Like his passion, it belonged to the part of himself he had sold. He was watching me and talking carefully, like a hired advocate for himself.

“Tell me about the alibis, just for fun.”

“I don’t have to, but I will. Gladly. At the time that Mark was killed, Ruth and I were having dinner with some friends in Montecito. It was a large dinner party, with over twenty guests.”

“Why didn’t the police accept your alibi?”

“They did when they got around to checking it out. But that wasn’t until the next day. They wanted me to be guilty, I know how their minds work. They were afraid to tackle Ruth directly, but they thought they could get at her through me.”

“Whose side was Stephen on?”

“He was out of the country, had been for several years. At the time of his father’s death he was studying economics at the London School. I’d never even met him at that time. But he was close to his father, and Mark’s death hit him hard. He actually broke down and wept on the transatlantic phone. That was about the last time I ever knew him to show any real emotion.”

“When was this?”

“Ruth called him immediately after Lupe phoned her, before we left her friends’ house in Montecito. As a matter of fact I put in the call to London for her, and then she took it on another extension. The news came as a terrible blow to Stephen. Frankly, I felt sorry for him.”

“How did he feel about you?”

“I don’t think Stephen even knew I existed, at that time.
And I kept out of sight for nearly a year afterwards. That was Ruth’s idea, and it was a good one.”

“Why? Because she’s financially dependent on Stephen?”

“That may have played a part in it. But the fact is she’s very fond of him. She wanted to arrange her life so she could have us both, and that’s what she’s done.” Marburg spoke of his wife as if she was some kind of natural force, a demiurge or deity. “She gave me a—well, a kind of personal scholarship, at San Miguel de Allende. A few minutes after Stephen flew in from London, I flew out for Mexico City. Ruth kept us separate at the airport, but I caught a glimpse of Stephen when he got off the plane. He was a lot less conventional in those days. He wore a beard and a mustache and had let his hair grow long. By the time I finally met him he’d stiffened up a good deal—money ages a man.”

“How long were you gone?”

“Nearly a year, as I said. Actually that year was the making of me. I’d never had any decent instruction before, or painted from a model, or had a chance to talk to genuine painters. I loved the light in Mexico, and the colors. And I learned to paint them.” The part of Marburg that belonged to himself was talking to me now. “I changed from a Sunday painter into an artist. And Ruth made it possible for me.”

“What did you do before you became an artist?”

“I was a geological draftsman. I worked for a—an oil company. It was dull work.”

“Corpus Christi Oil and Gas?”

“That’s right, I worked for Mark Hackett. It’s how I met Ruth.” He paused, and hung his head in depression. “So you have been researching me?”

I answered him with another question; “How do you and Stephen get along?”

“Fine. We follow our separate courses.”

“Night before last, you suggested it would be nice if he never came back. You’d own his art collection then, you said.”

“I was joking. Don’t you recognize black humor?” When I failed to reply, he peered into my face. “You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to Stephen?”

I still didn’t answer him. He sulked the rest of the way to Woodland Hills.

I
WENT INTO
a chain restaurant on Ventura Boulevard and ordered a rare steak for breakfast. Then I reclaimed my car from the station where I had left it and drove up the long hill to Sebastian’s street.

It was Saturday, and even at this time in the morning the fairways beyond the street were sprinkled with golfers. A mailbox bearing the name Gensler stopped me before I reached Sebastian’s house. I knocked on the door of the Gensler house instead.

A fair-haired man of about forty came to the door. He had an anxious vulnerable look which was accentuated by prominent blue eyes and almost invisible eyebrows.

I explained who I was, and asked if I could see Heidi.

“My daughter isn’t here.”

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve sent her out of town to stay with relatives.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Gensler. The probation people will want to talk to her.”

“I don’t see why.”

“She’s a witness.”

His face and neck reddened. “She certainly is not. Heidi’s a nice clean-living girl. Her only connection with the Sebastian girl is that we happen to live on the same street.”

“It’s no disgrace to be a witness,” I said. “Or even to know someone in trouble.”

Gensler closed the door abruptly in my face. I drove my
car up the street to Sebastian’s house, thinking that Heidi must have told her father something that frightened him.

Dr. Jeffrey’s Rover was parked in front of the house. When Bernice Sebastian let me in, I could see that her face reflected some further disaster. Its flesh was being eaten away from inside so that the bones had become more prominent: her eyes were like lights in a cage.

“What happened?”

“Sandy attempted suicide. She hid one of her father’s razor blades in her dog.”

“Her dog?”

“Her little cloth spaniel. She must have got the blade when she went to the bathroom. She tried to cut her wrist with it. Fortunately I was listening at the door. I heard her cry out and I stopped her before she hurt herself too terribly.”

“Did she say why she did it?”

“She said she didn’t deserve to live, that she was a terrible person.”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“No. I didn’t know what to say.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Just now. The doctor’s still with her. Please excuse me.”

It was her daughter, but my case. I followed her to the door of Sandy’s room and looked in. Sandy was sitting on the edge of her bed. She had a gauze bandage on her left wrist, a sprinkling of blood on the front of her pajamas. She had changed in other ways in the course of the night. Her eyes were darker in color. Her mouth was set hard. She wasn’t very pretty now.

Her father was sitting beside her, holding her hand in an unreal sort of way. Dr. Jeffrey was standing over them, telling them both that Sandy would have to be hospitalized:

“I recommend the Psychiatric Center in Westwood.”

“Isn’t that terribly expensive?” Sebastian said.

“No more so than other hospitals. Good psychiatric treatment
is always expensive.”

Sebastian shook his head: his face swung loosely. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it. It was all I could do to raise bail money.”

Sandy lifted her heavy eyes. Barely moving her lips, she said: “Let them take me to jail. That doesn’t cost anything.”

“No,” her mother said. “We’ll sell the house.”

“Not on this market,” Sebastian said. “We wouldn’t even get our equity out.”

His daughter pulled her hand away from his. “Why didn’t you let me die? That would solve all the problems.”

“The hard way,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll order an ambulance.”

Sebastian got to his feet. “Let me drive her. Ambulances cost money.”

“I’m sorry, this is an ambulance case.”

I followed Jeffrey to the telephone in the study. He made his call and hung up.

“Yes?” His look was hard and questioning.

“How sick is she?”

“I don’t know. There’s been some slippage, obviously. But I’m not a psychiatrist. That’s why I want to get her to one right away. She needs security precautions.”

“You think she’ll try again?”

“We have to go on that assumption. I’d say she’s very likely to repeat. She told me she’s been planning this for months. She took some LSD last summer and had a bad reaction. She’s still not over it.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes. It may account for the change in her personality over the last few months. One dose can do it if it hits you wrong. She claims that’s all she had—one dose in a sugar cube.”

“Did she tell you where she got it?”

“No. Obviously she’s covering up for somebody.”

I got out the sugar cubes I’d taken from Lupe’s kitchen and handed one of them to the doctor. “This almost certainly came from the same source. Can you have it analyzed?”