The Lady in the Lake (4 page)

“So she left you,” I said, when he fell silent.

“That night. I wasn’t even here. I felt too mean to stay even half sober. I hopped into my Ford and went over to the north side of the lake and holed up with a couple of no-goods like myself and got good and stinking. Not that it did me any good. Along about 4
A.M.
I got back home and Muriel is gone, packed up and gone, nothing left but a note on the bureau and some cold cream on the pillow.”

He pulled a dog-eared piece of paper out of a shabby old wallet and passed it over. It was written in pencil on blue-lined paper from a note book. It read:

“I’m sorry, Bill, but I’d rather be dead than live with you any longer. Muriel.”

I handed it back. “What about over there?” I asked, pointing across the lake with a glance.

Bill Chess picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it across the water, but it refused to skip.

“Nothing over there,” he said. “She packed up and went down the same night. I didn’t see her again. I don’t want to see her again. I haven’t heard a word from Muriel in the whole month, not a single word. I don’t have any idea at all where she’s at. With some other guy, maybe. I hope he treats her better than I did.”

He stood up and took keys out of his pocket and shook them. “So if you want to go across and look at Kingsley’s cabin, there isn’t a thing to stop you. And thanks for listening to the soap opera. And thanks for the liquor. Here.” He picked the bottle up and handed me what was left of the pint.

SIX

We went down the slope to the bank of the lake and the narrow top of the dam. Bill Chess swung his stiff leg in front of me, holding on to the rope handrail set in iron stanchions. At one point water washed over the concrete in a lazy swirl.

“I’ll let some out through the wheel in the morning,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s all the darn thing is good for. Some movie outfit put it up three years ago. They made a picture up here. That little pier down at the other end is some more of their work. Most of what they built is torn down and hauled away, but Kingsley had them leave the pier and the millwheel. Kind of gives the place a touch of color.”

I followed him up a flight of heavy wooden steps to the porch of the Kingsley cabin. He unlocked the door and we went into hushed warmth. The closed-up room was almost hot. The light filtering through the slatted blinds made narrow bars across the floor. The living room was long and cheerful and had Indian rugs, padded mountain furniture with metal-strapped joints, chintz curtains, a plain hardwood floor, plenty of lamps and a little builtin bar with round stools in one corner. The room was neat and clean and had no look of having been left at short notice.

We went into the bedrooms. Two of them had twin beds and one a large double bed with a cream-colored spread having a design in plum-colored wool stitched over it. This was the master bedroom, Bill Chess said. On a dresser of varnished wood there were toilet articles and accessories in jade green enamel and stainless steel, and an assortment of cosmetic oddments. A couple of cold cream jars had the wavy gold brand of the Gillerlain Company on them. One whole side of the room consisted of closets with sliding doors. I slid one open and peeked inside. It seemed to be full of women’s clothes of the sort they wear at resorts. Bill Chess watched me sourly while I pawed them over. I slid the door shut and pulled open a deep shoe drawer underneath. It contained at least half a dozen pairs of new-looking shoes. I heaved the drawer shut and straightened up.

Bill Chess was planted squarely in front of me, with his chin pushed out and his hard hands in knots on his hips.

“So what did you want to look at the lady’s clothes for?” he asked in an angry voice.

“Reasons,” I said. “For instance Mrs. Kingsley didn’t go home when she left here. Her husband hasn’t seen her since. He doesn’t know where she is.”

He dropped his fists, and twisted them slowly at his sides. “Dick it is,” he snarled. “The first guess is always right. I had myself about talked out of it. Boy, did I open up to you. Nellie with her hair in her lap. Boy, am I a smart little egg!”

“I can respect a confidence as well as the next fellow,” I said, and walked around him into the kitchen.

There was a big green and white combination range, a sink of lacquered yellow pine, an automatic water heater in the service porch and opening off the other side of the kitchen a cheerful breakfast room with many windows and an expensive plastic breakfast set. The shelves were gay with colored dishes and glasses and a set of pewter serving dishes.

Everything was in apple-pie order. There were no dirty cups or plates on the drain board, no smeared glasses or empty liquor bottles hanging around. There were no ants and no flies. Whatever loose living Mrs. Derace Kingsley indulged in she managed without leaving the usual Greenwich Village slop behind her.

I went back to the living room and out on the front porch again and waited for Bill Chess to lock up. When he had done that and turned to me with his scowl well in place I said:

“I didn’t ask you to take your heart out and squeeze it for me, but I didn’t try to stop you either. Kingsley doesn’t have to know his wife made a pass at you, unless there’s a lot more behind all this than I can see now.”

“The hell with you,” he said, and the scowl stayed right where it was.

“All right, the hell with me. Would there be any chance your wife and Kingsley’s wife went away together?”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“After you went to drown your troubles they could have had a fight and made up and cried down each other’s necks. Then Mrs. Kingsley might have taken your wife down the hill. She had to have something to ride in, didn’t she?”

It sounded silly, but he took it seriously enough.

“Nope. Muriel didn’t cry down anybody’s neck. They left the weeps out of Muriel. And if she did want to cry on a shoulder, she wouldn’t have picked little roundheels. And as for transportation she has a Ford of her own. She couldn’t drive mine easily on account of the way the controls are switched over for my stiff leg.”

“It was just a passing thought,” I said.

“If any more like it pass you, let them go right on,” he said.

“For a guy that takes his long wavy hair down in front of complete strangers, you’re pretty damn touchy,” I said.

He took a step towards me. “Want to make something of it?”

“Look, pal,” I said. “I’m working hard to think you are a fundamentally good egg. Help me out a little, can’t you?”

He breathed hard for a moment and then dropped his hands and spread them helplessly.

“Boy, can I brighten up anybody’s afternoon,” he sighed. “Want to walk back around the lake?”

“Sure, if your leg will stand it.”

“Stood it plenty of times before.”

We started off side by side, as friendly as puppies again. It would probably last all of fifty yards. The roadway, barely wide enough to pass a car, hung above the level of the lake and dodged between high rocks. About half way to the far end another smaller cabin was built on a rock foundation. The third was well beyond the end of the lake, on a patch of almost level ground. Both were closed up and had that long-empty look.

Bill Chess said after a minute or two: “That straight goods little roundheels lammed off?”

“So it seems.”

“You a real dick or just a shamus?”

“Just a shamus.”

“She go with some other guy?”

“I should think it likely.”

“Sure she did. It’s a cinch. Kingsley ought to be able to guess that. She had plenty of friends.”

“Up here?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Was one of them named Lavery?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said.

“There’s no secret about this one,” I said. “She sent a wire from El Paso saying she and Lavery were going to Mexico.” I dug the wire out of my pocket and held it out. He fumbled his glasses loose from his shirt and stopped to read it. He handed the paper back and put his glasses away again and stared out over the blue water.

“That’s a little confidence for you to hold against some of what you gave me,” I said.

“Lavery was up here once,” he said slowly.

“He admits he saw her a couple of months ago, probably up here. He claims he hasn’t seen her since. We don’t know whether to believe him. There’s no reason why we should and no reason why we shouldn’t.”

“She isn’t with him now, then?”

“He says not.”

“I wouldn’t think she would fuss with little details like getting married,” he said soberly. “A Florida honeymoon would be more in her line.”

“But you can’t give me any positive information? You didn’t see her go or hear anything that sounded authentic?”

“Nope,” he said. “And if I did, I doubt if I would tell. I’m dirty, but not that kind of dirty.”

“Well, thanks for trying,” I said.

“I don’t owe you any favors,” he said. “The hell with you and every other God damn snooper.”

“Here we go again,” I said.

We had come to the end of the lake now. I left him standing there and walked out on a little pier. I leaned on the wooden railing at the end of it and saw that what had looked like a band pavilion was nothing but two pieces of propped-up wall meeting at a flat angle towards the dam. About two feet deep of overhanging roof was stuck on the wall, like a coping. Bill Chess came up behind me and leaned on the railing at my side.

“Not that I don’t thank you for the liquor,” he said.

“Yeah. Any fish in the lake?”

“Some smart old bastards of trout. No fresh stock. I don’t go for fish much myself. I don’t bother with them. Sorry I got tough again.”

I grinned and leaned on the railing and stared down into the deep still water. It was green when you looked down into it. There was a swirl of movement down there and a swift greenish form moved in the water.

“There’s Granpa,” Bill Chess said. “Look at the size of that old bastard. He ought to be ashamed of himself getting so fat.”

Down below the water there was what looked like an underwater flooring. I couldn’t see the sense of that. I asked him.

“Used to be a boat landing before the dam was raised. That lifted the water level so far the old landing was six feet under.”

A flat-bottomed boat dangled on a frayed rope tied to a post of the pier. It lay in the water almost without motion, but not quite. The air was peaceful and calm and sunny and held a quiet you don’t get in cities. I could have stayed there for hours doing nothing but forgetting all about Derace Kingsley and his wife and her boy friends.

There was a hard movement at my side and Bill Chess said, “Look there!” in a voice that growled like mountain thunder.

His hard fingers dug into the flesh of my arm until I started to get mad. He was bending far out over the railing, staring down like a loon, his face as white as the weather tan would let it get. I looked down with him into the water at the edge of the submerged staging.

Languidly at the edge of this green and sunken shelf of wood something waved out from the darkness, hesitated, waved back again out of sight under the flooring.

The something had looked far too much like a human arm.

Bill Chess straightened his body rigidly. He turned without a sound and clumped back along the pier. He bent to a loose pile of stones and heaved. His panting breath reached me. He got a big one free and lifted it breast high and started back out on the pier with it. It must have weighed a hundred pounds. His neck muscles stood out like ropes under canvas under his taut brown skin. His teeth were clamped tight and his breath hissed between them.

He reached the end of the pier and steadied himself and lifted the rock high. He held it a moment poised, his eyes staring down now, measuring. His mouth made a vague distressful sound and his body lurched forward hard against the quivering rail and the heavy stone smashed down into the water.

The splash it made went over both of us. The rock fell straight and true and struck on the edge of the submerged planking, almost exactly where we had seen the thing wave in and out.

For a moment the water was a confused boiling, then the ripples widened off into the distance, coming smaller and smaller with a trace of froth at the middle, and there was a dim sound as of wood breaking under water, a sound that seemed to come to us a long time after it should have been audible. An ancient rotted plank popped suddenly through the surface, struck out a full foot of its jagged end, and fell back with a flat slap and floated off.

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again.

The thing rolled over once more and an arm flapped up barely above the skin of the water and the arm ended in a bloated hand that was the hand of a freak. Then the face came. A swollen pulpy gray white mass without features, without eyes, without mouth. A blotch of gray dough, a nightmare with human hair on it.

A heavy necklace of green stone showed on what had been a neck, half imbedded, large rough green stones with something that glittered joining them together.

Bill Chess held the handrail and his knuckles were polished bones.

“Muriel!” his voice said croakingly. “Sweet Christ, it’s Muriel!”

His voice seemed to come to me from a long way off, over a hill, through a thick silent growth of trees.

SEVEN

Behind the window of the board shack one end of a counter was piled with dusty folders. The glass upper half of the door was lettered in flaked black paint.
Chief of Police. Fire Chief. Town Constable. Chamber of Commerce.
In the lower corners a USO card and a Red Cross emblem were fastened to the glass.

I went in. There was a pot-bellied stove in the corner and a rolltop desk in the other corner behind the counter. There was a large blue print map of the district on the wall and beside that a board with four hooks on it, one of which supported a frayed and much mended mackinaw. On the counter beside the dusty folders lay the usual sprung pen, exhausted blotter and smeared bottle of gummy ink. The end wall beside the desk was covered with telephone numbers written in hard-bitten figures that would last as long as the wood and looked as if they had been written by a child.

A man sat at the desk in a wooden armchair whose legs were anchored to flat boards, fore and aft, like skis. A spittoon big enough to coil a hose in was leaning against the man’s right leg. He had a sweat-stained Stetson on the back of his head and his large hairless hands were clasped comfortably over his stomach, above the waistband of a pair of khaki pants that had been scrubbed thin years ago. His shirt matched the pants except that it was even more faded. It was buttoned tight to the man’s thick neck and undecorated by a tie. His hair was mousy brown except at the temples, where it was the color of old snow. He sat more on his left hip than on his right, because there was a hip holster down inside his right hip pocket, and a half foot of .45 gun reared up and bored into his solid back. The star on his left breast had a bent point.

He had large ears and friendly eyes and his jaws munched slowly and he looked as dangerous as a squirrel and much less nervous. I liked everything about him. I leaned on the counter and looked at him and he looked at me and nodded and loosed half a pint of tobacco juice down his right leg into the spittoon. It made a nasty sound of something falling into water.

I lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray.

“Try the floor, son,” the large friendly man said.

“Are you Sheriff Patton?”

“Constable and deputy sheriff. What law we got to have around here I’m it. Come election anyways. There’s a couple of good boys running against me this time and I might get whupped. Job pays eighty a month, cabin, firewood and electricity. That ain’t hay in these little old mountains.”

“Nobody’s going to whip you,” I said. “You’re going to get a lot of publicity.”

“That so?” he asked indifferently and ruined the spittoon again.

“That is, if your jurisdiction extends over to Little Fawn Lake.”

“Kingsley’s place. Sure. Something bothering you over there, son?”

“There’s a dead woman in the lake.”

That shook him to the core. He unclasped his hands and scratched one ear. He got to his feet by grasping the arms of his chair and deftly kicking it back from under him. Standing up he was a big man and hard. The fat was just cheerfulness.

“Anybody I know?” he enquired uneasily.

“Muriel Chess. I guess you know her. Bill Chess’s wife.”

“Yep, I know Bill Chess.” His voice hardened a little.

“Looks like suicide. She left a note which sounded as if she was just going away. But it could be a suicide note just as well. She’s not nice to look at. Been in the water a long time, about a month, judging by the circumstances.”

He scratched his other ear. “What circumstances would that be?” His eyes were searching my face now, slowly and calmly, but searching. He didn’t seem in any hurry to blow his whistle.

“They had a fight a month ago. Bill went over to the north shore of the lake and was gone some hours. When he got home she was gone. He never saw her again.”

“I see. Who are you, son?”

“My name is Marlowe. I’m up from L.A. to look at the property. I had a note from Kingsley to Bill Chess. He took me around the lake and we went out on that little pier the movie people built. We were leaning on the rail and looking down into the water and something that looked like an arm waved out under the submerged flooring, the old boat landing. Bill dropped a heavy rock in and the body popped up.”

Patton looked at me without moving a muscle.

“Look, sheriff, hadn’t we better run over there? The man’s half crazy with shock and he’s there all alone.”

“How much liquor has he got?”

“Very little when I left. I had a pint but we drank most of it talking.”

He moved over to the rolltop desk and unlocked a drawer. He brought up three or four bottles and held them against the light.

“This baby’s near full,” he said, patting one of them. “Mount Vernon. That ought to hold him. County don’t allow me no money for emergency liquor, so I just have to seize a little here and there. Don’t use it myself. Never could understand folks letting theirselves get gummed up with it.”

He put the bottle on his left hip and locked the desk up and lifted the flap in the counter. He fixed a card against the inside of the glass door panel. I looked at the card as we went out. It read:
Back in Twenty Minutes—Maybe.

“I’ll run down and get Doc Hollis,” he said. “Be right back and pick you up. That your car?”

“Yes.”

“You can follow along then, as I come back by.”

He got into a car which had a siren on it, two red spotlights, two foglights, a red and white fire plate, a new air raid horn on top, three axes, two heavy coils of rope and a fire extinguisher in the back seat, extra gas and oil and water cans in a frame on the running board, an extra spare tire roped to the one on the rack, the stuffing coming out of the upholstery in dingy wads, and half an inch of dust over what was left of the paint.

Behind the right-hand lower corner of the windshield there was a white card printed in block capitals. It read:

“VOTERS, ATTENTION! KEEP JIM PATTON CONSTABLE. HE IS TOO OLD TO GO TO WORK.”

He turned the car and went off down the street in a swirl of white dust.