There was a long and painful silence. Even Jack Kerman hadn’t anything to say. We relied on recommendations to bring in the business, and keeping five hundred dollars belonging to a prospective client for fourteen months without even acknowledging it is no way to get a recommendation.
“Urgent and confidential,” Paula murmured. “After keeping it to himself for fourteen months he hands it to the janitor to show to all his little playmates. Wonderful!”
“You shut up!” I snarled. “Why didn’t she call up and ask for an explanation? She must have guessed the letter had gone astray. But wait a minute. She’s dead, isn’t she? One of the Crosby girls died. Was it Janet?”
“I think it was,” Paula said. “I’ll soon find out.”
“And dig up everything we’ve got on Crosby, too.”
When she had gone into the outer office, I said: “I’m sure she’s dead. I guess we’ll have to return this money to her estate.”
“If we do that,” Kerman said, always reluctant to part with money, “the press may get wind of it. A story like this will make a swell advertisement for the way we run our business. We’ll have to watch our step, Vic. It might be smarter to hang on to the swag and say nothing about it.”
“We can’t do that. We may be inefficient, but at least let’s be honest.”
Kerman folded himself down in the armchair again.
“Safer to let sleeping dogs lie. Crosby’s something in oil, isn’t he?”
“He was. He’s dead. He was killed in a shooting accident about a couple of years back.” I picked up the paper-knife and began to punch holes in the blotter. “It beats me how I came to leave the letter in my trenchcoat like that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Kerman, who knew Paula, grinned sympathetically.
“Slosh her in the slats if she nags,” he said helpfully. “Am I glad it wasn’t me!”
I went on punching holes in the blotter until Paula returned with a fistful of newspaper clippings.
“She died of heart failure on May 15th, the same day as she wrote the letter. No wonder you didn’t hear from her,” she said as she shut the office door.
“Heart failure? How old was she then?”
“Twenty-five.”
I laid down the paper-knife and groped for a cigarette.
“That seems mighty young to die of heart failure. Anyway, let’s have the dope. What have you got?”
“Not a great deal. Most of it we know already,” Paula said, sitting on the edge of the desk.
“Macdonald Crosby made his millions in oil. He was a hard, unlovable old Quaker with a mind as broad as a tightrope. He married twice. Janet, the elder by four years, was by his first wife. Maureen by his second. He retired from business in 1943 and settled in Orchid City. Before that he lived in San Francisco. The two girls are as unalike as they can be. Janet was studious and spent most of her time painting. Several of her oils are hung in the Arts Museum. She seems to have had a lot of talent, a retiring nature and a sharp temper. Maureen is the beauty of the family. She’s wild, woolly and wanton. Up to Crosby’s death she was continually getting herself on the front page of the newspapers in some scandal or other.”
“What kind of scandal?” I asked.
“About a couple of years ago she knocked down and killed a fellow on Centre Avenue.
Rumour has it she was drunk, which seems likely as she drank like a fish. Crosby squared the police and she got off with a heavy fine for dangerous driving. Then another time she rode along Orchid Boulevard on a horse without a stitch on. Someone betted her she hadn’t the nerve, but she did it.”
“Let me get that straight,” Kerman said, sitting up excitedly. “Was it the horse or the girl who hadn’t a stitch on?”
“The girl, you dope!”
“Then where was I? I didn’t see her.”
“She only got about fifty yards before she was pinched.”
“If I’d been around she wouldn’t have got that far.”
“Don’t be coarse, and be quiet!”
“Well, she certainly sounds a grand subject for blackmail,” I put in.
Paula nodded.
“You know about Crosby’s death. He was cleaning a gun in his study, and it went off and killed him. He left three-quarters of his fortune to Janet with no strings tied to it, and a quarter to Maureen in trust. When Janet died, Maureen came into the whole vast estate, and seems to be a reformed character. Since she lost her sister she hasn’t once been mentioned in the press.”
“When did Crosby die?” I asked.
“March 1948. Two months before Janet died.”
“Convenient for Maureen.”
Paula raised her eyebrows.
“Yes. Janet was very upset by her father’s death. She was never very strong, and the press say the shock finished her.”
“All the same it’s very convenient for Maureen. I don’t like it, Paula. Maybe I have a suspicious mind. Janet writes to me that someone is blackmailing her sister. She then promptly dies of heart failure and her sister comes into her money. It’s too damned convenient.”
“I don’t see what we can do,” Paula said, frowning. “We can’t represent a dead client.”
“Oh, yes, we can.” I tapped the five onehundred-dollar bills. “I have either to hand this money back to the estate or try to earn it. I think I’ll try to earn it.”
“Fourteen months is a long time,” Kerman said dubiously. “The trail will be cold.”
“If there is a trail,” Paula said.
“On the other hand,” I said, pushing back my chair, “if there’s anything sinister about Janet’s death, fourteen months provides a pleasant feeling of security, and when you feel secure, you’re off your guard. I think I’ll call on Maureen Crosby and see how she likes spending her sister’s money.”
Kerman groaned.
“Something tells me the brief spell of leisure is over,” he said sadly. “I thought it was too good to last. Do I start work now or wait until you get back?”
“You wait until I get back,” I said, moving towards the door. “But if you’ve made a date with that mousetrap of yours, tell her to go find another mouse.”
II
Crestways, the Crosby’s estate, lurked behind low, bougainvillea-covered walls above which rose a tall, clipped, Australian pine hedge, and back of this was a galvanized cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Heavy wooden gates, with a Judas window set in the right-hand gate, guarded the entrance.
There were about half a dozen similar estates strung along Foothill Boulevard and backing on to Crystal Lake desert. Each estate was separated from its neighbour by an acre or so of a no-man’s-land of brushwood, wild sage, sand and heat.
I lolled in the pre-war Buick convertible and regarded the wooden gates without much interest. Apart from the scrolled sign on the wall that declared the name of the house, there was nothing particularly different about it from all the other millionaire estates in Orchid City. They all lurked behind impregnable walls. They all had high, wooden gates to keep out unwelcomed visitors. They all exuded the same awed hush, the same smell of flowers and well-watered lawns. Although I couldn’t see beyond the gates, I knew there would be the same magnificent swimming-pool, the same aquarium, the same rhododendron walk, the same sunken rose garden. If you own a million dollars you have to live on the same scale as the other millionaires or else they’ll think you are punk. That’s the way it was, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’ll always be—if you own a million dollars.
No one seemed to be in a hurry to open the gates, so I dragged myself out of the car and hung myself on to the end of the bell chain. The bell had been muffled, and rang timorously.
Nothing happened. The sun beat down on me. The temperature hoisted itself up another knotch. It was too hot even for such a simple exercise as pulling a bell chain. Instead, I pushed on the gate, which swung creakily open under my touch. I looked at the stretch of lawn before me that was big enough for tank manoeuvres. The grass hadn’t been cut this month, nor for that matter the month before. Nor had the two long herbaceous borders on either side of the broad carriageway received any attention this spring, nor for that matter last autumn either. The daffodils and tulips made brown patterns of untidiness among the dead heads of the peonies. Shrivelled sweet william plants mingled with unstaked and matted delphiniums. A fringe of straggling grass disgraced the edges of the lawn. The tarmac carriageway sprouted weeds. A neglected rose rambler napped hysterically in the lazy breeze that came off the desert. An unloved, uncared-for garden, and looking at it I seemed to hear old man Crosby fidgeting in his coffin.