"You oughta be ashamed? said the maid viciously. "A nicer, kinder, sweeter woman I never-and you-"
The girl said detachedly, "You're hired as a maid, Winter, not a nursemaid. I'll talk to the policeman." She jerked her head at him. "You can come in here."
It was, when she switched on the lights, a big, stiffly formal, cold sitting room. She threw herself into a chair and told him ungraciously to sit down. "What do you want to see Mona about?"
"A murder, Miss Carstairs. Someone she knew has been murdered, and we'd just like to hear a few little things, like when Miss Ferne last saw him and so on."
"She's just left, what a pity-she'll enjoy that like anything." Evidently she wasn't interested in who had been murdered. "A man hanging on her every word-even a policeman. Heaven knows when she'll be home, she's gone to see her agent. I suppose you could find her there if it's all that urgent-Stanley Horwitz, two doors from the Cha-Cha Club on the Strip. She'd be delighted to be chased down."
Hackett watched her curiously. "Thanks very much, I may do that."
She was thin enough, even a little too thin: she might have a nice figure under that sloppy outht. It wasn't the deliberate sloppiness some girls affected, thinking they achieved the casual air: it was just carelessness. Uncaringness. "You haven't asked who's been murdered."
"Wel1, I know it wasn't Mona, more's the pity, and if it was one of her friends, it's not likely to make any difference to me."
"It was a gentleman by the name of Brooke Twelvetrees."
She sat up from her ungraceful slouch and stared. "Brooke? Who on earth would want to murder him? He's not-not important enough."
"Somebody evidently thought he was."
"Funny," she said. "And you have to go round asking questions to find out who and why. What a dull job. But I suppose you're used to it. Do they pay you much for sorting through other people's dirty laundry?"
Hackett didn't often get mad, and he was used to overlooking insults from people he questioned, but unaccountably he felt his temper beginning to slide with this girl. "It's a living," he said shortly.
"And gives you that nice feeling of power, I suppose, you can b-bully witnesses and beat up gangsters whenever you pl-"
"Oh, for God's sake!" said Hackett angrily, and then stopped. Belatedly it came to him that she hardly knew what she was saying: she was caught up in some violent emotional maelstrom, and he'd just walked into the middle of it. She was trembling convulsively; now she sprang up, crushing both fists against her mouth, turning her back on him.
"Here," he said, anger dropping away from him, "what's the matter?"
She just stood there shaking. He went up and laid a hand on her shoulder. She was taller than he'd thought; unlike most women, she'd reach above his shoulder if she straightened up. But too thin.
"Look, don't do that," he said helplessly. "You'll go working yourself up into hysterics in a minute, and that pune-faced maid'll think I'm murdering you."
She gave an involuntary, half-tearful giggle. "I'm s-sorry. Just a minute. I'll be-all right-in a minute." She groped blindly for a handkerchief, blew her nose; after a minute she turned around and sat down again. "I'm sorry," she said more steadily. "I've been saying horrible things, I didn't mean- Not your fault… You'd better try Mr. Horwitz's office if you want Mona, and if she's not there I think she was going to the Fox and Hounds for lunch."
She sat stiff and upright on the edge of the chair and said it like a child reciting a lesson. A child with nobody to see her hair was combed and her face washed and her nails scrubbed. Hackett was curious and oddly irritated: what was wrong with her? She wouldn't be bad-looking at all if she'd fix herself up a little. She had a small straight nose, nice teeth, a clear pale complexion; her eyes were good hazel-brown with black lashes, and if she was tall for a woman she wasn't all that outsize. And she sat there looking like hell, like some female in one of those funny sects where they thought colored clothes and short hair and lipstick were engines of Satan-worse, because those people did comb their hair and wash their hands. Her nails were like a child's, short and unpainted, and her hands weren't very clean, and that straight limp hair falling stringily down her back… And the maid had called her Miss Angel. Angel, my God, what a name, and for this one.
He got up and said, "Thanks very much, I'll see if I can find her there."
She went to the door with him. "I'll give you a little tip," she said, and her flat voice was metallic. "You just start out by telling her you remember all her pictures and think she's the greatest actress since Bernhardt, and she'll fall over herself to oblige you."
"I thought I remembered the name-Mona Ferne-she's the same one who used to be in pictures, then?"
"Oh, goodness, don't say that to her. Used to be. She's just taking a little rest between jobs, according to her. A little twenty-year rest." In the merciless light, from the open door, of pewter-gray cold daylight, she looked awfuclass="underline" she looked gray and cold as the sky, and her eyes I were too bright, too expressionless on him. "She'll like you, she likes big men. What's your name?… Oh, yes, that'll be all right too, a nice American-sounding name. Now I look at you, you look quite nice, because I like big men too. I've got to, haven't I, being so big and clumsy myself, but it's rather an academic question, of course, because it doesn't work the opposite way-nobody ever looks twice at me, no reason. Will you do me a favor, Sergeant Hackett?"
The little fixed smile on her colorless mouth was somehow terrible. He said carefully, "Well, now, that depends on what it is, Miss Carstairs." Something very wrong here.
"Oh, it's nothing difficult. Just, when you do locate Mona, and talk to her, or should I say listen to her, I'd like you to remember that she's my mother, and I'm twenty-six years old, and she was thirty-four when I was born-it was fashionable to have a baby that year, you see. Will you do that?"
"Yes, I'll do that."
"Thank you very much," she said. "I'm sorry I said nasty things to you, before. Goodbye." She still wore the fixed smile when she shut the door after him.
Hackett got out a cigarette and lit it, and was surprised to find that his hand was shaking. That one, he said to himself, is just about ready for the men in white coats. But it didn't pass through his mind academically or cynically. And as a cop he'd seen a lot of trouble and grief and evil and lunacy, and he'd learned to shut off much feeling about it because that got you nowhere-you'd just tear yourself to pieces over it and accomplish nothing. But right now he felt something, he couldn't help it, about that girl-he felt so damned sorry for her he could have wept-and that surprised him all over again.
"I just had the feeling," said Mendoza, "that Mr. Martin Kingman is a little too smooth and slippery to be entirely unacquainted with the law. Of course there's a very thin line there, I admit it-that kind is always very smooth. The same essential type, it goes in for politics and the church and show business, as well as legally dishonest jobs, and you've got to separate the sheep from the goats
… But it was all very pat, rather like a pair of professional gamblers sitting with a pigeon, you know-I had the distinct feeling there was a cold deck rung in."
"Not surprising," said Lieutenant Arnhelm, and sighed. He looked like someone's jolly and indulgent grandfather, bald, round, and amiable, but in reality was a bachelor and a complete cynic. “They get that way. After all, it's six of one, half dozen of another whether they keep inside the letter of the law or not-it's still a racket. It's still a front they're putting up, and it gets to be like a seasoned vaudeville act, the automatic routine."
"I wish you could give me something else on them."