“Nice chap, Ashbury,” Carter went on.
I didn’t say anything.
“Certainly must be nice to be able to keep in first-class physical shape,” Carter went on, looking down at his tight waistcoat. “You move as easily as a fish swimming around in water. I’ve been watching you.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, I have. You know, Lam, I’d like to know you better — have you whip me into shape.”
“It could be done,” I said, knocking the billiard balls around.
He moved closer. “There’s someone else on whom you’ve made a favourable impression, Lam.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Mrs. Ashbury.”
I said, “She told me she’d like to take off a little weight after her blood pressure got back to normal.”
He lowered his voice. “Did it ever strike you there’s something a little strange about the way her blood pressure started to mount and she started to put on weight immediately after she married Ashbury?”
I said, “Lots of women keep on a diet while they’re husband-hunting, and then as soon as they marry, settle back—”
His face grew purple. “That’s not what I meant at all,” he snapped.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
“If you knew Mrs. Ashbury, you’d realise how utterly uncalled for such a statement is, how far it’s removed iron the real facts.”
I didn’t look up from the billiard balls. I said, “You were doing the talking. I thought perhaps that was what you wanted to say, and I’d make it easier for you.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”
“Why not go ahead and say it, then?”
He said, “All right, I will. I’ve known Mrs. Ashbury for some little time. Before her marriage she was twenty-five pounds lighter, and she looked twenty years younger.”
“High blood pressure can do a lot to a person,” I said.
“Of course it can, but what’s the reason for the blood pressure? Why should her marriage suddenly run her blood pressure up?”
“Why should it?” I asked.
He waited until I glanced up to meet his eyes. He was almost quivering with rage. He said, “The answer is obvious. The persistent, steady hostility of her stepdaughter.”
I put the cue in the rack and said, “Did you want to talk with me about that?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
He said, “Carlotta — Mrs. Ashbury — is a marvellous woman, charming, magnetic, beautiful. Since her marriage I’ve seen her change.”
“You said all that before.”
His lips were trembling with rage. “And the reason for it all is the hostility of that spoiled brat.”
“Meaning Alta?” I asked.
“Meaning Alta.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Ashbury take that possibility into consideration before the marriage?”
He said, “At the time of the marriage, Alta had abandoned her father, gone off chasing a good time around the world without caring a snap of her fingers about her dad, but the minute he married Carlotta and she started making him a home, Alta came dashing back and started playing the part of the devoted daughter. Gradually, bit by bit, she’s been poisoning her father’s mind against Mrs. Ashbury. Carlotta is sensitive and—”
“Why tell me all this?” I asked.
“I thought you should know it.”
“Think it’s going to help me to get Henry Ashbury into better physical shape?” I asked.
He said, “It might.”
“Just what did you expect me to do?”
He said, “You and Alta get along pretty well together.”
“So what?”
He said, “I thought it might change Alta’s attitude a bit if she realised that her stepmother wanted to be friendly.”
“Well?”
“You’ve talked with Ashbury?”
“Yes.”
“You still don’t see what I’m driving at?”
“No.”
His eyes bored steadily into mine. “All right,” he said, “if you want it straight from the shoulder. Carlotta — Mrs. Ashbury — needs only to breathe a whisper of what she knows to the police, and Alta would be put into Jed Ringold’s room last night at the time of the murder.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Well,” Carter amended hastily, “just before the time of the murder— Did it ever occur to you that the woman who went up to see Ringold answers Alta’s description, that it wouldn’t take a hell of a lot of detective work to establish the fact that Alta’s car was in a parking station within a couple of blocks of the hotel, and that a witness could be called who would testify that he’d seen Alta hurrying toward the parking lot from the direction of the hotel at just about the time the murder was committed?”
“What,” I asked, “do you want me to do?”
He said, “The next time Alta starts talking about her stepmother you might casually explain to her that Mrs, Ashbury has it in her power to put Alta in a hell of a spot, that she isn’t doing it because Carlotta is a square shooter and loyal to the man she’s married.”
I said, “You seem to take it for granted that Alta’s going to discuss her stepmother with me.”
“I do,” he said, and turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Just a minute,” I said. “If Alta left the hotel before the murder was committed, it doesn’t seem to me she has much to worry about.”
He paused with his hand on the knob of the door. “She was seen on the street,” he said, “just after the murder was committed.”
I stood staring at the door after he’d closed it. Evidently Carter didn’t know just when the murder had been committed, hadn’t noticed the exact time that he’d seen Alta, or else was willing to dress the story up a little bit in order to give Mrs. Ashbury a trump card.
However, there was no use worrying about him. Any time the police got the idea Alta might be mixed up in it, they would have a cinch. The night clerk at the hotel, the girl at the cigar counter, the man at the parking lot, the elevator boy — oh, there were plenty of witnesses. The nice part of it was that those witnesses would have to swear that Alta had left the hotel before the shots were fired, but if Mrs. Ashbury thought she had a fistful of trumps, there was no reason why I shouldn’t let her keep on thinking so until I saw just how she intended to play them.
I got my hat and coat, watched for an opportunity to get out when Alta couldn’t see me and decided to go and take a look at the joints run by the Atlee Amusement Corporation.
They had two restaurants, very swank downstairs, and I didn’t have much trouble getting upstairs. The places were well fitted but small. No one seemed to pay any particular attention to me. I gambled in a small way and just about broke even on roulette. There were a few people in the place. I tried to make some excuse to get to see the manager, but it looked as though I’d have to get rough in order to do it.
Just as I was walking out of the joint, a blonde came in on the arm of a chap in evening clothes who looked like ready money.
I’d seen that hair before. It was Esther Clarde, the girl at the cigar counter of the hotel where Ringold had been bumped off.
I started kicking myself mentally. It was a chance, of course, but a chance I should have foreseen. If she’d known enough about the Atlee Amusement Corporation to answer my questions, there at the hotel, she knew enough to get a commission out of piloting suckers into the joint. I’d set my own trap, baited it, and walked right in.
She looked at me, and I saw her eyes get hard. She said casually, “Oh, hello, there. How’s the luck? Any good?”
“Not so good.”
She smiled at her companion and said, “Arthur, I want you to meet Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, this is Arthur Parker.”
We shook hands. I told him I was pleased to meet him.