Читать книгу The Dead Can Tell: A Detective McKee Mystery - Helen Reilly - Страница 3

ALL THAT Christopher McKee, the head of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, had when he started on that investigation were a remembered glimpse of two people in a café and an anonymous letter. He wasn’t even in New York when the crime was committed. He was on his way to Rio de Janeiro where he had been sent by the Mayor at the special request of the Brazilian authorities.

Fernandez, New York’s Chief Medical Examiner, slim, dark and elegant in sand color, and the Inspector, lean and towering in loose gray flannel, were having a cocktail in the El Capitan on East Sixty-third Street when Fernandez said with a grin, “Don’t look now, McKee, but there’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen right behind you. I know how interested you are in pretty girls.”

McKee didn’t turn. He said indifferently, “If Irving Berlin’s right, your life must be one long sweet song. How many prettiest girls do you run into of a day? About that hydrocyanic—if it is there, why the five stab wounds?”

“By Jove,” Fernandez said, “she is lovely. I didn’t think they made them like that any more.”

McKee glanced past three frosted mint juleps and an array of decorative bottles at the subject of Fernandez’s appreciative gaze. He saw a slim girl in a gray linen dress with touches of raspberry and peacock at the throat and an absurd raspberry hat tilted over glinting chestnut hair. Her white throat was arched. There was tension in her white profile, short straight nose, competent chin, sensitive mouth. The tension, the conflict, were repeated in her eyes, wide-set violet-gray eyes with depths to them, set at a tilt under delicate dark brows.

“Ah!” Fernandez murmured, “the incriminating document.”

The girl had taken a note out of her purse and was reading it. Her slight figure was erect. There was a haunted look in the violet-gray eyes.

McKee finished his ale.

“Ready?” Fernandez asked regretfully.

“No,” the Scotsman answered, “I’m going to have another.” He pushed his glass toward the bartender and kept on looking into the mirror.

The girl in gray didn’t notice the two men at the bar. Outside, the blazing August afternoon was breathless, the interior of the café was cool, dim. She had slipped into the first unoccupied booth near the door. She was shaking a little. There was haze all about her. She told herself she shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have given in, no matter what Steve said. To meet like this was stupid, dangerous, would only get them into more trouble. It was lunacy. They were rational human beings. She was twenty-six and Steven was thirty-two. If those weren’t years of discretion, when did you reach them? In your second childhood?

It was wrong, all wrong, not only to themselves but to another human being, no matter what sort of person that other human being was. Cristie Lansing lit a cigarette with quick nervous movements and read Steve’s note again.

Cristie: I’ve got to see you. Something tremendous has come up. Meet me without fail at five this afternoon at El Capitan.

A waiter paused beside the booth. Cristie shook her head slightly, started to return the note to her purse and changed her mind. Better tear it up.

She and Steven had had their chance and they had thrown it away. That was three years ago. They had quarreled and busted it up. The quarrel between them had been childish, silly, meaningless. She couldn’t even remember now what it had been about. Pride, obstinacy, hot temper, wounded vanity had prevented either of them from making the first move. So no move was made and she had gone back to Texas with her defeated hopes and absurd canvases and her heartache and Steven had married another woman.

Steven had a wife. There was no getting away from that.

She went on reducing the sheet of paper to lozenges and squares. Simply because she and Steven had met again here in New York at the beginning of August and she had been weak enough, foolish enough to see Steve three times since that first accidental meeting was no good reason for cracking up Steven’s career, Sara’s life and her own.

She had built up a new existence for herself, slowly and laboriously—had her work. Not the creation of the gigantic murals that had occupied her during those long-ago days when she and Steven had gone around together, young and happy and in love with each other and with life, but pen-and-ink sketches that had caught on and were bringing her in a good price and were fun to do.

It was during their last meeting that she had discovered that the past wasn’t dead and that the feeling they had for each other, instead of weakening with time, had taken on a new fire and a depth that threatened to sweep them both off their feet.

It was she who had called the turn. The thing between herself and Steven was too fine for muddling, for shabbiness and intrigue and hypocrisy and deceit. Scraps and fragments weren’t of any use. There was no middle ground. It was all or nothing. It couldn’t be all. It had to be nothing. Steven was married and had a wife. You couldn’t do that to another woman. It wasn’t decent or honorable or fair.

As soon as she realized what had happened she had taken steps. She had been quite frank, keeping emotion out of it, on the surface, at any rate. She could go back and pick out the very bush in Central Park beside which she had halted when she said, “Look, Steve, you’d better go. Now. Yes, I admit it, I find myself liking you again too much, thinking about you too much for my own peace of mind. I thought it was gone, that I was—free. But I’m not. So will you . . . ?”

Steven had said good-bye huskily, abruptly, after a short volcanic protest, and they had agreed not to meet again. It was over and the pain was beginning to recede, to dull just a little—and then he had asked her to meet him, and here she was.

Flight was still possible. Cristie glanced at the clock. He had said five and it was only just that. If she went now, quickly—she measured the distance to the street, and her heart took a leap, a leap that was half joy and half foreboding. Steve was coming toward her along the aisle, tall, wide-shouldered, with that familiar swing, cocked dark head at a go-to-hell angle, keen, steel-colored eyes alight in his long clever face.

He reached the table, paused beside it. “Cristie!”

His voice had a triumphant lift to it. It was forceful and eager and decisive. He threw himself down on the white leather cushions opposite, reached out and took her two hands in his. It wasn’t right, couldn’t lead anywhere but to pain and frustration and sorrow and regret. The blood tingled through Cristie’s veins, put a rose flush in her slender cheeks and a glow into the lovely eyes in pools of shadow made by the lashes. An electric fan blew a wisp of soft hair across her white forehead.

“Steve, what is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?” Thoughts dashed helter-skelter through her mind. Was it something about Sara? What could it be?

Steven said, “I knew it would work out, Cristie. I knew there was a way. I’ve found it.”

Cristie caught her breath. “What way, Steve?”

Steven said, “If I take the Argentine laboratory, and Wilbur put it up to me directly this afternoon, yes or no, then don’t you see, Cristie . . . ?”

Cristie didn’t see. Sara was still there, she was still between them. There was no international date-line on a marriage. You couldn’t get unmarried by crossing a border. “But, Steve, what about Sara?”

Lines etched themselves suddenly around Steven’s mouth. It lost its resilience; it was wry, a little sad. He said soberly, “Don’t worry about Sara, Cristie. You don’t have to. That’s the point.”

Cristie withdrew her hands from his. She said stiffly, “But I do worry, Steven. I have to worry. You can’t get what you want by grabbing, by stealing from someone else, making someone else unhappy. You’re Sara’s husband, and Sara’s your wife. I’m a woman too. I wouldn’t want another woman to do that to me. It’s dishonest and greedy and unfair.”

Steven nodded. He reached for her cold fingers, imprisoned them in his. “I know what you mean, Cristie, but I don’t think you quite understand. God knows I tried to make a go of it with Sara, tried to make her happy. The whole thing was wrong from the beginning. I should never have married her. Once it was done, I did everything in my power to make our marriage a success. That sounds as though I’m excusing myself, but I’m not. It’s the truth.” His mouth took a grim twist.

Cristie looked at him. She didn’t say anything. Steven had always been a scrupulous person.

He went on, “Sara never loved me either. Whatever little feeling she had wore off after the first few months. She’s not happy with me. I can’t give her the things she wants, the only sort of life she really craves. She’s suggested herself, at least twice, that we call it a day. She was the one who mentioned the word ‘divorce’ first.”

A pulse in Cristie’s throat beat in and out. “Divorce!”

“Yes,” Steven said firmly, “divorce. She spoke of one a year ago. National Motors wanted me to take the Argentine laboratory then. It was the opportunity I was after. No engineer could ask for a better. The equipment’s tip-top. It would have given me a fine chance for experimental work. But Sara absolutely refused to go. She said she’d divorce me if I accepted the post, and now, well—don’t you see?”

This time Cristie did see. Her defenses began to crumble. If Sara didn’t love Steven, if she was willing to divorce him, wanted a divorce herself . . .

Steven leaned across the table. He was closer to her. His words came faster. “Don’t worry about Sara. Sara will agree. I know she will, like a shot, when I make my offer. She wouldn’t dream of leaving New York and her tight little world. She doesn’t care a snap of her fingers for me, doesn’t want anything from me except cold cash. It may be a little hard for us for a while, darling. Sara will demand everything. It will mean a commitment for big alimony. But it will be worth it. Think of it, Cristie. We can wipe out that miserable blunder we made three years ago. We can start over again.”

To start over again, with Steven, in South America. New horizons and a new existence—together. The thought of it shook Cristie almost unbearably. She lowered her lashes to hide the flame that had sprung up in her eyes, tried to drag herself back to sanity. There were a lot of obstacles to be surmounted. And yet . . . Steven’s voice was in her ears.

“Look at me, darling.”

Cristie raised her lashes slowly.

At the bar McKee turned. He glanced at the girl’s radiant face lifted to the man on the other side of the table. Strong emotion can be as tangible as a breeze, a shout. It was there in those two people. It hadn’t been there a moment before. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. He didn’t need to hear. We hold these truths to be self-evident.

Twenty feet away Steven Hazard was repeating softly, “So you see it’s going to be all right if—love me, Cristie?”

This time it was Cristie’s hands that found his. She touched the back of Steven’s with the tips of her fingers. “You know, don’t you?” she whispered.

There was no hesitation in her answer. But she was still not completely convinced. Could you ever go back and wipe out the past? Steven sensed her uncertainty, because he said with sudden iron in his voice, “You don’t know what my marriage is like. You don’t know it at all, Cristie. I’m not going to go into it. But we’re entitled to another chance, you and I. It isn’t as though I were welching on Sara. She doesn’t want me, doesn’t want any part of me. Our life together is over. If she gets money enough it will suit her down to the ground to let me go. That’s all I can tell you.”

His brooding gaze left Cristie for a moment, he was far away, enclosed in the shadows of a dark inward knowledge. He straightened his wide shoulders like a man shaking himself free of a physical weight. His eyes cleared. His muscles relaxed. He said forcefully, “I’m going straight home. I’m going to put it up to Sara, now, at once, today. And tonight at Margot St. Vrain’s party, when the decks are clear, we’ll be able to make our plans, definite plans.”

Happiness should have been singing through Cristie. The happiness was there but there were other things mixed up with it.

“Sara won’t be with you ?” she said. “Margot asked her.”

“No,” Steven replied, signaling to the waiter. He ordered cocktails. “‘Sara’s going to the opening of ‘The Star-spangled Manner’ with the Johnsons.”

The cocktails were brought. “To us,” Steven said, raising his glass.

Their eyes met and held. A wave of joy engulfed Cristie. She stopped fighting, let it take her. They kept on looking at each other.

Cristie had come to New York from Texas late in the spring, after her mother’s death. She was staying for the summer with Margot St. Vrain in Margot’s penthouse on East Sixty-fourth Street. Margot’s people had been friends of Cristie’s father. Margot and Margot’s cousin, Johnny St. Vrain, the radio announcer, had been in Texas when her mother died and they had both pressed her to come north. It was Margot who had fallen on Cristie’s pen-and-ink sketches with a scream of delight, Margot who had made her send them around. They had had an almost immediate, if modest, success.

Steven left Cristie at the door of Margot’s apartment. Her mood of exhilaration began to fade as he walked away. Entering the lobby, going up in the small private elevator that serviced the penthouse, the doubts and tremors and questions began to come back. Granting that Sara wanted a divorce herself, would she make some impossible conditions? Cristie tried to push her fears aside; they refused to go, completely.

When she went into the penthouse living room, Margot was there, with Euen Firth, the man Margot was engaged to, and so was Johnny. Cristie said hello to Margot, tall and competent and square in a superbly cut, brown shantung coat and skirt that intensified her height and leanness and brought out the lines of a magnificent pair of shoulders and arms. They were Margot’s one really good point and she made the most of them.

Johnny waved a cheerful greeting to Cristie as she pulled off her hat and settled down in a corner of the immense geranium-red sofa. Looking at Johnny’s shapely head, his compact body, his pleasant handsome face, listening to his voice, a voice that even in a room had the ring to it that had put him well at the top of America’s leading announcers, Cristie knew why she hadn’t married him when he had asked her in the spring. It was because he wasn’t Steven. Her refusal hadn’t made any difference in the camaraderie between herself and the St. Vrains. She had been afraid it would, but it hadn’t.

Margot’s engagement to Euen Firth had been announced in the morning papers. They were discussing plans and a date. Margot said firmly that she couldn’t leave New York until after Thanksgiving. Two or three pots were due to boil in late November and she had to be on deck to watch the proceedings.

Cristie looked at her wistfully. Margot was so sure of herself. At thirty-one she was the foremost band agent in the country, and she had started from scratch. Left with an illustrious name and nothing with which to back it up, she had gradually built a business that was the despair of her competitors. “You’ve got to see St. V. to swing” had become an axiom among the jive and jam folk. Winchell had called Margot the Queen of Swing in a Sunday night broadcast.

But Cristie knew that although Margot’s income was large, her expenses were high and the pace was terrific. She had engaged herself to Euen Firth with her eyes open, made no secret of it. She wasn’t and she didn’t pretend to be, madly in love with the gangling, not quite “ex-” playboy in his early thirties, with a prospective couple of millions in his jeans. Euen was the son of Charles Firth, one of the country’s leading drug manufacturers. Not that Margot wasn’t fond of Euen in her own way. She was, but she had explained to Cristie quite frankly that he could give her the things she wanted, the chance to stop and take a deep breath, to lie back and relax and laze a bit—for a while, anyhow.

Margot went on talking, but she gave Cristie a shrewd glance. Cristie averted her face. The gnawing little worm of fear in her breast stirred. Margot was terrifically keen, saw all there was to see. She didn’t know, specifically, about Steven. Cristie didn’t want her to know, didn’t want anyone to know—yet.

She was relieved when the maid entered and said that Margot was wanted on the phone. Cristie wasn’t afraid of Johnny or of Euen. Men didn’t notice things, like women. Johnny went on reading the lyric of a new Harry Woods song and sipping a Tom Collins. Euen was engrossed in a newspaper.

Margot was away for about five minutes. When she re-entered the living room, a modernistic room mollified by incongruous and comfortable additions that would have driven its designer mad, a change had come over her. Her mouth was constricted and her strong plain face was a bad color. Johnny put his feet, flung over a chair, on the floor.

“Who was it, Margot?” he asked, frowning at his cousin.

At Margot’s answer the blood rushed into Cristie’s face, stained her throat. Standing near a table, rolling a cigarette between the fingers of a large shapely hand, Margot said in a queer flat tone, “It was Steven Hazard’s wife, Sara.” The cigarette she was holding broke and tobacco dribbled to the floor.

Cristie was aware of the fact that Margot knew Sara. They had been at Miss Brandon’s school together, and Sara had been a pupil there when Margot was teaching deportment for room and board and nothing a year before she started her upward climb. The connection between them was neither close nor intimate. Cristie’s hands tightened in her lap. What had Sara Hazard said to Margot to make her look like that? Something disturbing, certainly.

Margot threw the ruined cigarette into the waste basket, got another from a box, lit it and said, without turning to Euen Firth, lolling in his corner with a highball, “Sara Hazard mentioned you on the phone just now, Euen. I didn’t know you were a friend of hers.”

A surge of relief, a dart of surprise, wonder; it was then that it began for Cristie, that baffling sense of distortion, of values superimposed on other values, the underlying ones quite different from those that showed on top.

Euen Firth blinked sandy lashes. His eyes were uneasy, furtive. “Sara Hazard . . . ? Who the hell is Sara . . . ?” His long, sallow, high-nosed face and dish-chin smoothed themselves out. “That’s right,” he said, “I remember now. Yes. I met a Mrs. Hazard at the Jettison’s on Long Island last winter.”

He got up and helped himself to a fistful of Scotch and very little vichy. His narrow-shouldered back was turned. He forgot to release the siphon on the bottle and the vichy squirted over the tray in a wide pool.

The other two didn’t notice, but Cristie did. Margot was looking at Johnny. It was a strange look, weighing, speculative. Cristie was conscious of a slight feeling of suffocation. Johnny didn’t meet Margot’s glance. He was gazing out at the terrace with its hedge of cedars in red terra-cotta pots against the broken frieze of the towers of New York and a mauve evening sky barred with long streaks of green.

There was a funny little pause. Nobody said anything. Then Johnny said with a yawn, “I don’t like that woman. I ran into her the other day with the Henleys. I don’t care how long it is before I see her again.”

Margot was crossing to her desk, a chromium and leather contraption with half a hundred drawers. She seated herself, took out a memorandum book and said over her shoulder, “Oh, but you will, Johnny, darling. You and Euen will both see her, shortly. She wasn’t coming to my party tonight. She’s changed her mind.” He intonation was clipped, incisive.

Euen’s highball halted halfway to his lips. Johnny’s brows drew together. Cristie saw them both through a mist. Her sense of foreboding, her latent fear had quickened, sharply. Steven had said that Sara was going to the theater with friends. Why had she altered her plans? What did it mean? Cristie felt herself beginning to shake.

She got up, walked to one of the windows and stood there with her back turned, looking out into the dusk.