The place was decorated in green, several shades of it. The davenport was unusual, it must have been all of seven feet in length. I envied the guy that; my feet always stuck over the end of mine. There was an ash tray at every conceivable place a man would want to sit down and all of them were spotlessly clean. Chinese prints were on the walls.
I had to begin talking sometime.
“Nice place you have here.” That was lame.
“It isn’t mine. It’s... Leonore’s.”
“May I ask your name.”
“Eleanor.”
“Call me Chuck if you like.”
“What do you want?”
She sank onto the long davenport, drying her eyes. She was pretty against the green wall. I took a chair across from her. What did I want?
What didn’t I want! I wanted everything I could possibly pump from her. I wanted the full story of all that was going on about me which I couldn’t understand. Slim chance of getting that much from Eleanor. Looking across the room at her, at her set face, her curvacious but stiffly held body, I realized it would be necessary to hand her a couple of stiff jolts to get anything from her. I wanted her confidence and why should she give that to a stranger? I thought I had a way of getting it. It might or might not be a lousy trick — but I had buried her sister, and she didn’t know where.
I’ve sunk to a new depth, Louise. Or shall we say I am once again floating at my accustomed level? I was fully prepared to trade a body for information.
What did I want?
“I’d like some information about Leonore.”
“You are a detective.” She spat that out as an accusation, not as a question.
“Yes,” I admitted cheerfully. “But that shouldn’t frighten you. It isn’t my intention to pry into your affairs. I’m interested only in Leonore.”
Lie, Mr. Horne, big fat lie.
“You are a detective,” she repeated bitterly.
“I’d particularly like to know about Leonore and Harry Evans,” I went on. She knew I was watching her but she failed to hide the tightening of her lips.
“It’s like this,” I continued in a frank, warm manner, “Evans dropped in on me in Boone and hired me for a few days. Before I could... well, you probably know he was killed?”
She nodded quickly, too quickly. Her lips said nothing; but her eyes and her actions shouted a great clamor. Her eyes were vindictive, inhumanly satisfied. Eleanor had shared Leonore’s secret. Shared her revenge.
“The cops over there,” I said, “are still hunting for a hit-and-run driver. They don’t know — yet — that that driver is... (I almost said dead and buried)... is out of their reach.”
I paused. Eleanor said, “And?”
“And I was looking for her until I met you a moment ago. After all, I was in Evans’ pay and my loyalty, if you want to call it that, was to him. At least until I found I could do no more for him. I’m well enough acquainted with Leonore to know you are telling the truth when you say you are her sister. I should have seen that right away.”
“And?” she repeated in the same old rut.
“Of course, I have no actual proof she was the driver of the car. No proof at all, nothing but little bits gathered here and there to convince me. It wouldn’t convince the police so there is no use taking it to them. There is no use going to them at all, now.”
She was going to say “And?” again but I beat her to it.
“And nothing much. My case for Evans is wound up. I had met Leonore previous to the finding of the... previous to her death. I counted myself as a sort of friend. She was nice to me.”
Eleanor glanced at me sharply, her brows drawn close. I smiled the suspicion away.
“No. Don’t take me wrong. She did me a small favor, no more. I liked her for it. I rather think she liked me in the short time we knew each other. We talked about skating, and things.” That was stretching it mighty thin but then Eleanor couldn’t know everything about her sister.
“At any rate, there the matter hangs.” I thought it about time for teasing. “I’m washed up with the Evans business. But because of our friendship I would like to do something for Leonore. I’d like to clear up in my mind the connection between her and Evans. I mean, in view of what she did.”
“Why should I tell you anything?” she countered. She seemed to take my knowledge of the hit-and-run thing calmly.
“Because I want to help her,” I emphasized. “I want this information for myself, not the police. Can’t you understand I’m doing this because I liked the girl? I’m not trying to get any money out of it.”
Eleanor leaned against the back of the davenport and folded her arms. Her head rested on the cool, green covering. She bit out five annoyed words.
“What are you talking about?”
I let her have it the hard way.
“Why — I think she was murdered. Don’t you?”
She took it the hard way. The davenport was seven feet long. I picked her up off the floor and laid her on it; there was two feet of space to spare.
Stretched out that way she didn’t seem nearly so tall as before. I took off her shoes and loosened her blouse about the neck, and then went in search of the bathroom and a wash cloth.
It was between two bedrooms and it was a shock to me. The room was entirely out of keeping with the immaculate tidiness of the rest of the apartment. His shaving supplies were scattered aimlessly over the shelf-like rear section of the sink. I looked at his safety razor, at two rusty razor blades, a partly used tube of brushless shaving cream, a bottle of lotion, a stiptic pencil, some red mouth wash, and a cellophane-wrapped toothbrush.
On a glass shelf hanging just above the bathtub was a small can of false teeth powder, a dirty hair brush and comb, an extra roll of tissue, two thin slabs that were once bars of soap, a package of bath salts for men, and a scattering of large safety pins.
The tub itself had two successive rings five and six inches high and had also been used for an ash tray. The guy smoked cork-tipped cigarettes. Dirty towels were kicked into one corner of the room and the bath mat was a crumpled mess. Another heavy deposit of cigarette ashes and a thumbed copy of a wild west magazine were on the floor near the stool.
I found a cloth in a small cabinet beneath the basin and wet it with cold water. On the way back to Eleanor I walked through to the two bedrooms and made a circling route by way of the kitchen. Only the bathroom was mussed up. Neither bed had been slept in recently and nothing in the kitchen indicated current usage.
She came out of the faint slowly but quietly. I massaged her temples with my fingertips. She liked the effect of that and lay there for several minutes without moving.
“Why did you say that?” she asked weakly. Her breasts rose and fell evenly.
“I’m sorry, Eleanor. I should have been more tactful.”
“But why did you say it?”
“Because I think it is a fact.”
“But why, why?”
“That’s what I’m hoping you will tell me. That’s why I need the information I asked you for. You know so much more about her movements, her friends, than I could ever hope to find out. You know why she drove that car.”
Eleanor opened her eyes and looked up into my face. I kept on talking.
“By that I mean you know the real reason. The coroner discovered a part of it, and told the newspaper. But you and I both know she didn’t commit suicide; you and I both know she and Evans were in love, passionately so. I found plenty of paper evidence of that. Poems he had written to her.”
“Yes — she showed me those magazines.”
“What you know and I don’t is why she drove that car — in the face of that love and that other thing.”