“There have been suggestions of irregularities at your husband’s bank and in his personal finances.”
“I know nothing of his financial activities except what is hinted at in the tabloids. Collin did not keep an office in our home.” She looked directly at him. “And should we stop sparring, you and me, Mr. Spade? You’re no insurance agent. You’re a private investigator with a shady reputation and a grubby little office on Mission Street above a loan company.”
Spade ignored this. “There have been hints of murder.”
“Murder, natural causes — they’d still have to pay off on anything except suicide.” Her low laugh had intimacy in it. “Unless you could convince the authorities that I poisoned him.”
“Did you?”
She leaned forward with a furious intensity that slopped tea into the saucer, which she held beneath her cup with her left hand, saying, “I won’t dignify that with a reply,” then immediately did so. “Women are barred from the Neptune Bath House.”
“Maybe you snuck in when no one was looking and gave him a good dose of asphyxia with cerebral congestion.”
Her laugh was full-bodied, not in keeping with her status as a widow. “I should be furious that you can make light of my husband’s death. But — the image...” She nodded as if to herself. “I think you’ll do.” She opened the humidor, held it out to Spade. “Would you like a cigar?”
He selected one; she picked up the corona del Ritz from the ashtray. Spade trimmed the ends with his penknife and lit both cigars with his lighter, hers first.
He said, “You’re unconventional. You work very hard to avoid the usual grieving-widow platitudes.” He gestured toward her left hand. “Only three weeks dead and no wedding band.”
“I was a woman trapped in a decaying marriage.”
“You think I’ll do for what?”
“My husband was a great friend of Charles Hendrickson Barber. Barber’s wife, Rose, has been a good friend since my marriage. She told me about your finding Henny before he could stow away on some ocean liner and said you kept it out of the papers. She recommended you. She said you were trustworthy.”
“Recommended me for what?”
“Collin was always a womanizer. Six months ago I became obsessed with identifying his then-current mistress because I believed the affair had become much deeper than a momentary infatuation, like the others. I believed he was finding with her, whoever she was, the — the comfort, the security, he once found with me.”
“I don’t do domestic,” said Spade almost automatically.
A dismissive gesture with her cigar. “I was not seeking grounds for divorce. I was defending my position as wife. I abandoned the idea for two reasons. First, I had a very good life even if there was no love left in it. Second, I came to realize that whatever decision Collin had been struggling with during the past year was related to business, not to his private affairs. Then, in quick order, he took out a huge insurance policy with me as beneficiary. Then he died. Then he was suddenly reputed to have been ruined financially.”
“Was he?”
“I have no idea. When the innuendo began about poison and suicide or, worse, murder, I realized that if he indeed had been ruined financially, suicide was possible and I might be denied the insurance money. Without that money I will lose everything I value. A life of ease. This house. My social position. Everything.”
“No idea who the mistress was?”
“None. She was surely not of our circle.” The thin lips twisted in a sudden, almost startling sneer. “I need you to find her. If he was in love with her, wouldn’t that make suicide much less likely? I will pay you of course.”
Spade stood, stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray. “Get me access to your husband’s records at the bank and I’ll find your mistress for you. She’ll be somewhere in his papers. Canceled checks paid to her, department store bills, a love nest somewhere, weekends at a Sonoma resort.”
“Impossible.” For the first time she rose. In the two-inch heels on her chic black patent leather shoes she was only some two inches shorter than Spade’s six-foot-and-a-fraction-inch height. “Not because I refuse. Because the bank insists his financial records cannot be viewed.”
“Not even by his widow?”
“Sometimes I think especially not by his widow.”
“Well, there are ways.” As if it were an afterthought he asked, “Did your husband have a friend, business aquaintance, what have you, who was about my age, dark hair, piercing eyes, built like a tennis player but with small, almost delicate hands and feet, maybe something of the dancer about him?”
She stood frowning, head cocked slightly in thought.
“Such a man was here one evening with Collin, in this room, for an hour or more. Just the one time, maybe a week before my husband’s death. There were raised voices, but that was all.”
“You couldn’t hear anything that was said?”
“I do not snoop at doors, Mr. Spade. Is he important?”
“Darned if I know. Probably not. But he was in the group at the Neptune Bath House that day. If your husband was trying to make some financial decision, this man might play into it.” He made an irritated gesture. “I need to get into those bank files, Mrs. Eberhard. I know a good attorney.”
“It’s in my interest that you see them, but the bank says no. In the face of that refusal I’m afraid to do anything that might hinder my getting the insurance money.”
“If you change your mind...”
She gave him her hand. A firm grip, warm fingers. “I will surely let you know,” she said.
17
Veiled Threats?
It was 2:55, five minutes before the official end of banking hours, when Spade went between flanking Doric pillars and through the inset decorative doorway of California-Citizens Bank at 832 California. Below the bank, at Grant, was Old St. Mary’s Church; above it, on Powell Street at the crest of the hill, the Fairmont Hotel. A streetcar slowly climbed past, its wheels clacking on the tracks.
Inside to the left, behind a cast-iron divider decorated with the figure of a miner panning for gold, was a desk with no one behind it and no papers upon it. Its brass plaque read:
Spade stood in line at the only teller’s window that was still open. By the time Spade’s turn had come an elderly uniformed bank guard had locked the front door and was letting out the last few patrons.
Spade told the teller, “I would like to speak with Vice President Spaulding concerning the bank’s late president.”
He was a slender youth with sandy hair that obviously resisted all efforts to tame it. He let his eyes slide sideways.
“Mr. Spaulding doesn’t seem to be at his desk. He may be gone for the night.”
“I have an appointment.”
Spade sat down in the armchair facing Spaulding’s desk. The youth fidgeted, closed his window, went through a door behind the cages, shutting it behind him. Spade heard the sound of an elevator. Five minutes later the teller returned, started closing out his cash drawer while managing not to look at Spade.
Two minutes after that a man in his forties came through the doorway behind the teller. He was of medium height, round faced, clean-shaven, nervous handed, slightly stoop shouldered, with receding black hair and a pince-nez on a cord fastened to his lapel buttonhole.
Spade stood, hand out. “Samuel Spade.”
Spaulding took his hand very briefly, gave it a single shake, released it. His hand was soft, moist, short fingered. He sat down behind his desk as if it were a bastion.