"Gosh, you know everything, don't you Mrs. Loving?"
She pushed the bill away from her, frowning. "He had one. He carried it on him ever since he and Sylvia were married the second time. He called it his mad money. It was not found on his body."
"There could be other reasons for that."
"I know. But how many people carry a five-thousand-dollar bill around with them? How many who could afford to give you that much money would give it to you in this form?"
It wasn't worth answering. I just nodded. She went on brusquely.
"And what were you supposed to do for it, Mr. Marlowe?' Or would you tell me? On that last ride down to Tijuana he had plenty of time to talk. You made it very clear the other evening that you didn't believe his confession. Did he give you a list of his wife's lovers so that you might find a murderer among them?"
I didn't answer that either, but for different reasons.
"And would the name of Roger Wade appear on that list by any chance?" she asked harshly. "If Terry didn't kill his wife, the murderer would have to be some violent and irresponsible man, a lunatic or a savage drunk. Only that sort of man could, to use your own repulsive phrase, beat her face into a bloody sponge. Is that why you are making yourself so very useful to the Wades-a regular- mother's helper who comes on call to nurse him when he is drunk, to find him when he is lost, to bring him home when he is helpless?"
"Let me set you right on a couple of points, Mrs. Loving, Terry may or may not have given me that beautiful piece of engraving. But he gave me no list and mentioned no names. There was nothing he asked me to do except what you seem to feel sure I did do, drive him to Tijuana. My getting involved with the Wades was the work of a New York publisher who is desperate to have Roger Wade finish his book, which involves keeping him fairly sober, which'in turn involves finding out if there is any special trouble that makes him get drunk. If there is and it an be found out, then the next step would be an effort to remove it. I say effort, because the chances are you couldn't do it. But you could try."
"I could tell you in one simple sentence why he gets drunk," she said contemptuously. "That anemic blond show piece he's married to."
"Oh I don't know," I said. "I wouldn't call her anemic."
"Really? How interesting." Her eyes glittered.
I picked up my portrait of Madison. "Don't chew too long on that one, Mrs. Loring. I am not sleeping with the lady. Sorry to disappoint you."
I went over to the safe and put my money away in the locked compartment. I shut the safe and spun the dial.
"On second thought," she said to my back, "I doubt very much that anyone is sleeping with her."
I went back and sat on the corner of the desk. "You'regetting bitchy, Mrs. Loring. Why? Are you carrying a torch for our alcoholic friend?"
"I hate remarks like that," she said bitingly. "I hate them. I suppose that idiotic scene my husband made makes you think you have the right to insult me. No, I am not carrying a torch for Roger Wade. I never did-even when he was a sober man who behaved himself. Still less now that he is what he is."
I flopped into my chair, reached for a matchbox, and stared at her. She looked at her watch.
"iou people with a lot of money are really something," I said. "You think anything you choose to say, however nasty, is perfectly all right. You can make sneering remarks about Wade and his wife to a man you hardly know, but if I hand you back a little change, that's an insult. Okay, let's play it low down. Any drunk will eventually turn up with a loose woman. Wade is a drunk, but you're not a loose woman.' That's just a casual suggestion your high-bred husband drops to brighten up a, cocktail party. He doesn't mean it, he's just saying it for laughs. So we rule you out, and look for a loose woman elsewhere. How far do we have to look, Mrs. Loving-to findS one that would involve you enough to bring you down here trading sneers with me? It has to be somebody- rather special, doesn't it-otherwise why should you care?"
She sat perfectly silent, just looking. A long half minute went by. The corners of her mouth were white and her hands were rigid on her gabardine bag that matched her suit.
"You haven't exactly wasted your time, have you?" she said at last. "How convenient that this publisher should have thought of employing you! So Terry named no names to you! Not a name. But it really didn't matter, did it, Mr. Marlowe? Your instinct was unerring. May I ask what you propose to do next?"
"Nothing."
"Why, what a waste of talent! How can you reconcile it with your obligation to your portrait of Madison? Surely there must be something you can do."
"Just between the two of us," I said, "you're getting pretty corny. So Wade knew your sister. Thanks for telling me, however indirectly. I already guessed it. So what? He's just one of what was most likely a fairly rich collection. Let's leave it there. And let's get around to -why you wanted, to see me. That kind of got lost in the shuffle didn't it?"
She stood up. She glanced at her watch once more. "I have a car downstairs. Could I prevail upon you to- drive home with me and drink a cup of tea?"
"Go on," I said. "Let's have it."
"Do I sound so suspicious? I have a guest who would like to make your acquaintance."
"The old man?"
"I don't call him that," she said evenly, I stood up and leaned across the desk. "Honey, you're awful cute sometimes. You really are. Is it all right if I carry a gun?"
"Surely you're not afraid of an oh! man." She wrinkled her lip at me.
"Why not? I'll bet you are-plenty."
She sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid I am. I always have been. He can be rather terrifying."
"Maybe I'd better take two guns," I said, then wished I hadn't.
32
It was the damndest-looking house I ever saw. It was a square gray box three stories high, with a mansard roof, steeply sloped and broken by twenty or thirty double dormer windows with a lot of wedding cake decoration around them and between them. The entrance had double stone pillars on each side but the cream of the joint was an outside spiral staircase with a stone railing, topped by a tower room from which there must have been a view the whole length of the lake.
The motor yard was paved with stone. What the place really seemed to need was a half mile of poplar-lined' driveway and a deer park and a wild garden and a terrace on three levels and a few hundred roses outside the library window and a long green vista from every window ending in forest and silence and quiet emptiness. What it had was a wall of fieldstone around' a comfortable ten or fifteen acres, which is a fair hunk of real estate in our crowded little country. The driveway was lined with a cypress hedge trimthed round. There were all sorts of ornamental trees in dumps here and there and they didn't look like California trees. Imported stuff. Whoever built that place was trying to drag the Atlantic seaboard over the Rockies. He was trying hard, but he hadn't made it.
Añios, the middle-aged colored chauffeur, stopped the Caddy gently in front of the pillared entrance, hopped out, and came around to hold the open door for Mrs. Loving. I got out first and helped him hold it. I helped her get out. She had hardly spoken to me since we got into the car in front of my building. She looked tired and nervous. Maybe this idiotic hunk of architecture depressed her. It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove.
"Who built this placer' I asked her. "And who was he mad at?"
She finally smiled. "Hadn't you seen it before?"
"Never been this far into the valley."
She walked me over to the other side of 'the driveway and pointed up. "The-man who built it jumped out of that tower room and landed about where you are standing. He was a French count named La Tourelle and unlike most French counts he had a lot of money. His wife was Ramona Desborough, who was not exactly threadbare herself. In the silent-picture days she made thirty thousand a week. La Tourelle built this place for their home. It's supposed to be a miniature of the Château de Blois You know that, of course."