There was a pause and then Lucy said, “Mrs. Montgomery? Mr. Shayne… returning your call.”
She handed the instrument to him, and he said, “Shayne speaking.”
“I must say, Mr. Shayne, that you’re very lax about returning my call.” She didn’t really sound particularly sweet or little or old to Shayne. Her voice was brittle and dry.
He said, “My secretary tried to get you as soon as I came in this morning, and got no answer. Since then, I’ve been… occupied.”
“H-m-m. Trying to keep your own skirts clean in the Ambrose murder, I presume.”
“What do you know about that?”
“I read the newspapers and even watch television occasionally. Has the case been solved yet?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
She said peremptorily, “I must see you at once. Come to this address.” She gave him a street number in the Southeast bay area, one of the older and more expensive residential sections of the city, and her telephone clicked decisively.
Shayne passed his phone back to Lucy, and she looked at him with eager curiosity as she replaced it. He rubbed his chin reflectively and said, “It may tie up with Ambrose somehow. I’ll go out and see her.”
The Montgomery residence was in reality a mansion. One of those old, three-story, coral stone monstrosities built in the early 1900’s in the center of its own stonewalled and lavishly landscaped acres. It was one of those that had refused the blandishments and the million-dollar offers of land speculators in the Twenties, and remained aloof and alone in this backwash of the modern city.
The grounds were untended now, a mass of tropical verdure that had taken over the formal gardens of yesteryear, and the old stone house was weathered and desolate in appearance.
Shayne parked under a wide porte-cochere in front that was rampant with flaming bougainvillea, and when he cut off his motor he was surrounded by hushed silence and the overpowering incense of magnolia blossoms.
He got out and mounted stone steps to a wide veranda with worn, creaking boards underfoot, crossed to heavy, double oak doors where a large, wrought-iron knocker was seemingly the only way a visitor could announce his presence. He tried the knocker skeptically, and was surprised when the door opened at once. A trim young girl, wearing a maid’s black dress and a maid’s wispy, white apron stood in front of him, and, beyond her, he saw a dim, vaulted hallway, leading into the cavernous depths of the house.
She said, “Mr. Shayne?” and, when he nodded, she stepped back and said, “Madam expects you. Come this way, please.”
Shayne followed her down the long hall for at least forty feet, past closed doors on both sides, to an archway with portieres, which she parted for him to enter.
The room was pleasant and well-lighted by a chandelier and wall-sconces on all sides, carpeted from wall to wall with a light blue rug that gave back a springy feel to his feet, pleasantly furnished with good, modern furniture that harmonized with the rug and the golden-flecked wallpaper.
Mrs. Montgomery sat facing him across the room, in a wheelchair with big, rubber-tired wheels. She was a large, grossly-fat woman, with completely white hair that needed brushing, snapping black eyes, almost hidden by the rolls of fat on her face, wearing an absurdly youthful bed-jacket of baby-blue silk with peek-a-boo lace strained over the bulging breasts and threaded with pink ribbons tied in bow-knots at the throat and short sleeves. A knitted afghan was tucked in at the sides of the chair to cover the lower portion of her body.
There was something grotesque and something frightening about her silent scrutiny as Shayne hesitated on the other side of the room, and the words, “sweet,” “little,” and “old” flashed through his mind.
Her voice was unexpectedly resonant and placid now. “Well, Mr. Shayne. You needn’t stand there gawking. Sit down and I’ll ring for a drink, if you like.”
Shayne said, “Thank you. It’s a little too early-right after lunch.”
He crossed to a blue-brocaded chair she indicated and sat down.
She cackled with unexpected mirth. “I didn’t know it was ever too early for a private eye to accept a free drink. Perhaps I should have phrased it: ‘Be my guest’?”
Shayne said, “You’ve been watching too much television.”
“Possibly. Now then: aren’t you thoroughly ashamed of yourself, Mr. Shayne?”
“What for?” he asked in complete surprise.
“For encouraging and abetting blackmail, of course! Don’t you agree that a blackmailer is the most loathsome human being on earth? You don’t need to answer that,” she added sharply. “It’s already quite evident that you don’t. Probably you have no morals whatsoever.”
Shayne couldn’t repress a grin. “What is all this about blackmail?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Mr. Shayne. Please. I’m an old woman, confined to a wheelchair, but that’s no reason for you to treat me like a half-wit. I’m talking about the pay-off you arranged and supervised for Dr. Ambrose last night at the Seacliff Restaurant. You’re not going to sit there and deny it, are you?”
Shayne said, “I’m not denying anything, but what do you know about it?”
She leaned forward and peered into his face with shining, suspicious, black shoe-button eyes behind a roll of fat. “Don’t pretend to me that you are unaware that it was my son, Cecil, who participated in that unwholesome affair.”
“I was until this moment,” he told her honestly. “Is Cecil the one with a crew-cut?”
“Yes. Cecil persists in that childish haircut. Who did the doctor tell you he was meeting last night?”
“He insisted to me that he didn’t know. That the man had kept his identity a secret.”
“And you fell for that line?” she cackled incredulously.
Shayne said, “I saw no good reason to doubt him.”
“How well were you acquainted with Dr. Ambrose?” she demanded imperiously.
“I met him last night for the first time.”
“Yet you went along to protect him?” she marveled. “A great, big man like you to protect him from my Cecil? Shame on you!”
Shayne started to explain to her about his old friend, Tim Rourke, who owed the doctor a debt of gratitude, but decided the hell with it. He said, “All right, Mrs. Montgomery. So your son stuck his neck out last night. Did he kill Dr. Ambrose?”
“Cecil? Why ever would he? You witnessed the entire transaction, from what Cecil told me. You know he got what he went after… all fair and square. Why would he want to kill the doctor?”
Shayne said, “I came here hoping you were going to tell me that.”
“Hoping I was going to tell you my son is a murderer? Really, Mr. Shayne…!”
“What do you want to tell me?”
“Very frankly, I’m worried. The doctor’s murder upset everything. Naturally, I want my son’s connection with the affair kept out of it entirely. If… if I were able to give you a lead to the identity of the real murderer, would that suffice?” She leaned forward eagerly in her wheelchair.
“You mean in return for my promise to keep Cecil in the clear?”
“Yes. Is that too much to ask? He did nothing wrong… really.”
“You’re the one,” he reminded her sharply, “who recently asked me to agree that a blackmailer is the most loathsome human being on earth. Yet, you’re now asking me to protect an admitted participant in blackmail.”
“Mr. Shayne.” Her voice was tremulous suddenly, and old. “Cecil is all I have left in life. I have protected him for years, from the results of his own folly. No mother can be blamed for doing that. Whatever mistakes he has made in the past… can they not be forgiven now? I assure you he had nothing to do with murder last night. Except… possibly… as an indirect result of his own folly. That is why I asked you to come here today. To listen to a mother plead for her only son. He acted in a misguided and foolish manner last night. In a sense, I have myself to blame for having protected him in the past. But… he is my son, Mr. Shayne.”