De Visdelou smiled condescendingly, went to his liquor cart, freshened his own whiskey, and poured us some Bacardi and Coke on the rocks. We had each taken a chair.
He served us, raised his glass and said something in French, and had a sip. So did we, except for the saying something in French part. He sat on the sofa, where he could lounge against the armrest; he seemed blase, but he wasn’t: a small tic played at the corner of one soulful eye.
“I would so very much like to help Freddie,” he said.
I glanced at Gardner, then looked hard at the Marquis. “You say that like there’s some doubt.”
His prissy mouth pursed, and he sipped the drink again. “Mr. Higgs called. We haven’t spoken yet-but I intend to ask him not to call me as a witness.”
“Why is that?”
“I gave a statement to the police…. It, what is the word? Corroborates Freddie’s story, to every detail. But in open court, on the witness stand…What I would rather do is leave this island, quietly, and not testify at all.”
I sat forward. Gardner’s eyes glittered behind the wire-frames; I knew he was kicking himself that this was all off the record.
“What’s wrong, de Visdelou? Were you lying for Freddie? To cover for him?”
He looked away from me. He seemed about to weep!
“What the hell is going on, de Visdelou!”
He swallowed thickly; he looked toward me, but the darting eyes wouldn’t land. “I’m afraid there are elements of Freddie’s story that will not…coincide…with what I would have to say.”
“Such as?”
He reached forward to the coffee table and popped open the lid of a silver box; he removed a cigarette, inserted it into a holder and lighted himself up with a silver lighter shaped like a horse’s head. The horse’s ass.
He gestured with the cigarette-in-holder. “My…companion for the evening…a young lady…I took her home much earlier than Freddie indicates.”
Gardner and I exchanged sharp glances.
“How much earlier?” I asked.
He shrugged; the breeze was riffling his silk shirt. “Immediately after the party.”
“Before or after the Count took those RAF dames home?” I asked, hoping to catch him.
“After…right after. We were gone probably at about the same time. But I returned sooner, because…my companion…lives only a few minutes from the Victoria Street cottage.”
“Fifteen minutes round trip,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t leave around three a.m. to take her home? And, earlier, Freddie didn’t knock on your door to offer to take her home for you?”
He smiled, as if happy to back up at least part of his friend’s account. “Oh, he did knock on my door around one-thirty…but merely to say good night.”
Gardner’s face was clenched with confusion, but I thought I knew what was going on.
“You’re a nobleman, aren’t you, Marquis?”
“I don’t think of myself that way,” he said, with a tiny smile that said he sure as hell did. He drew on the cigarette-in-holder.
“And you have certain codes of chivalry, that extend back to days of knights and maidens.”
My arch tone was getting under his skin; his smile was gone.
“What are you saying?”
“That you’re shielding that little blonde. She’s sixteen years old, she probably has parents in town, and you don’t want to go on the witness stand and let the world know you two were shacked up.”
“That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard!”
I laughed shortly. “I doubt that. I doubt I can even imagine the outrageous things you’ve heard, said and done in your Noel fucking Coward world.”
“I don’t appreciate your crudity.”
“I don’t appreciate your warped sense of honor. You’re going to sell out your cousin, your best friend, you’re going to put a goddamn rope around his neck, to protect the ‘good name’ of some little blond bimbo?”
“He’s right, Georgie,” a voice said.
A sweet, female, confident voice.
She was standing behind us, to our left, in a doorway that had been closed, but now stood open to reveal a glimpse of a bedroom; in her arms, held gently as if a child, was a dark gray cat.
Betty Roberts was a lovely fair-skinned girl with long, flowing blond hair that covered part of her face, Veronica Lake-style; silky-smooth, it brushed the shoulders of a blue-and-white polka-dot blouse that almost burst with her buxom youth. Her skirt was white and stopped just above the knees of million-dollar legs.
“Ah,” de Visdelou said. “My little pussy.”
I looked at Gardner and he looked at me; had we been sipping our rum and Cokes at the time, we’d have done spit takes.
The Marquis rose and went to Betty and patted the cat. “My little pussycat….”
Gardner and I traded smiles, rolled our eyes, and both rose.
“I’m Betty Roberts,” she said, handing de Visdelou his pussy. She strode over to us assuredly-she might have been sixteen, but she had the demeanor of a career woman of twenty-five. She extended her hand and I shook it.
I introduced myself, as well as Gardner (by last name only), who also shook her hand, and I said, “That must be the famous cat that awoke de Marigny around three in the morning.”
“It is,” she smiled. “Georgie! Let’s all sit down and talk frankly.”
He came over, holding the cat tenderly, petting it, and sat next to the cheerful girl on the sofa. She was arranging her skirt so that we could appreciate her crossed legs, within reason.
She looked at me with baby-blue eyes that were as direct as her boyfriend’s weren’t. “You’ll have to forgive Georgie. He has some very old-fashioned ideas. Believe me, this silliness wasn’t my doing.”
“My dear,” he said, “the local scandal…”
“Don’t be a silly ass, Georgie.” She smiled at me; her mouth was wide and her lipstick was candy-apple red. “I live with my mother, Mr. Heller, and she doesn’t always approve of my actions…but that’s her problem.”
“You have an interesting point of view, Miss Roberts.”
She threw her head back and the blond hair shimmered. “I don’t care what people think about me. I only care what I think about me. I may not be twenty-one, but I’m free and white and completely self-supporting.”
“She’s a cashier at the Savoy Theater,” de Visdelou said timidly.
“I don’t want you to worry about what Georgie is going to say on the witness stand,” she said. “You tell Mr. Higgs that both Georgie and I are willing and able to testify for Freddie. Every word Freddie said is true, and we can back him up.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” I said.
The Marquis looked at her with admiration and lust. “You’re a wonderful child, Betty,” he said.
Somehow I didn’t think the child in this relationship was her.
De Visdelou handed Betty the cat; she petted it and it purred. “Miss Roberts is right,” he said, jutting his tiny chin. “As much as I treasure her good name, I can’t put my cousin’s life at peril.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell Higgs. Thanks for the drink.”
I stood, and so did Gardner.
“Oh,” I said to the Marquis. “One last thing-when you got back from driving Miss Roberts home, what did you do with the car keys?”
“Of the Chevrolet?” he asked. “They were in my pants pocket.”
“In your pants pocket, in your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of sleeper are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Heavy, or light?” I asked.
“Light,” the girl said.
He gave her a scolding look, and she smiled and shrugged.
I asked him, “Does Freddie have another set of keys?”
“Not that I know of.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He frowned; the cigarette holder was in his teeth now, at a raffish FDR angle. “Is that useful information, Mr. Heller?”
“It means Freddie couldn’t have moved or used the Chevy without entering your apartment and fishing the keys out of your pants.”
“Oh-well, he most certainly didn’t do that.”