Black Money

9

I was delayed on the way. A quarter of a mile down the road from Martel’s driveway, a car was parked in the darkness under a live oak. Its lines resembled Harry Hendricks’s Cadillac, and when I got out for a closer look with my flashlight, I saw that it was.

There was nobody in the decayed Cadillac, no registration on the steering post, and nothing in the dash compartment but a Los Angeles freeway map which was several years old and as obsolete as the Cadillac. Harry had probably borrowed the car from the used car lot where he worked.

I lifted the hood and felt the engine. It was warm. I could imagine Harry skulking around in the bush near Martel’s house. I thought of waiting for him, but my stomach decided against it. I could check on him later at the Breakwater Hotel.

I did call on Mrs. Bagshaw before dinner. I parked beside the deserted tennis court and made my way through the dense gloom under the eucalyptus trees to her cottage. She appeared at the door in a stiff, rustling gown, with a rope of pearls lying cold on her crepe bosom.

“I was just about to go out. But I did make the call you suggested.”

It seemed to have upset her. Under her rouge, or because of it, she looked years older. She said without quite meeting my eyes: “My friends in Georgetown don’t know Francis Martel, at least under that name. I can’t understand it. He spoke of them with such zest and familiarity. He knew all about their house.”

“He could have got that information from a servant.”

“But he knows Washington,” she said. “I couldn’t be mistaken about that. And I’m still personally convinced he knows or knew the Plimsolls – my friends in Georgetown. Perhaps he knew them under another name than Francis Martel.”

“That’s possible, too. Did you describe him to them?”

“It was Colonel Plimsoll I talked to, and I did make some attempt to describe him, yes. But it’s difficult to describe someone, particularly these Latin types – they all look alike to me. The Colonel said if I could send him a picture of Martel–?”

“I’m sorry, I have no picture.”

“Then I don’t know what I can do.” Her voice was apologetic, but there was an undertone of unwanted guilt, which made it almost accusing. “I can’t assume the responsibility for him, or for Miss Fablon. People have to look out for themselves in this world.”

“The older ones try to look out for the younger ones, though.”

“I brought up my own family,” she said sharply, “sometimes under conditions which I would hesitate to describe. If Virginia made an unfortunate choice in men, it’s hardly surprising. Her father did what he did when she was at a most vulnerable age. And even in life Roy Fablon was no great bargain.” She shook her curls. “I’m expected for dinner now. You really must excuse me.”

The word had a double meaning. Excuse. Forgive.

I walked around the pool enclosure to the main club-house. A bevy of expensive-looking people went in ahead of me. From behind the front desk Ella Strome greeted each of them by name. But she seemed a little remote, consciously out of things.

“You look like a vestal virgin.”

“I’ve been married twice,” she said dryly. “Mr. Jamieson is expecting you in the dining room.”

“Let him wait. I’ve only been married once.”

“You’re not doing your duty to American womanhood,” she said with a smile which failed to touch her eyes.

“You sound as if you didn’t enjoy being married.”

“Being married was all right, it was the men I was married to. Do I project a maternal image or something?”

“No.”

“I must. I seem to attract very peculiar types. Both of my husbands were peculiar types. It couldn’t be pure chance. There aren’t that many peculiar types.”

“Yes, there are. Speaking of peculiar types, what’s your opinion of Mr. Martel?”

“I have no particular opinion. He always treated me politely.”

Her hands came together on the polished black desk and pushed against each other, fingertip to fingertip. “Why don’t you ask Mr. Stoll about him? He had a run-in with him, I believe.”

“Who’s Mr. Stoll?”

“The manager of the club.”

I found him in the office behind the reception desk. The walnut-paneled walls were hung with photographs of parties and tennis matches and other sporting events. Stoll looked like a non-participant. He was a handsome cold-eyed man of forty, overdressed, with the little graces of a pleaser and a pleaser’s lack of resonance. The nameplate on the desk said: “Reto Stoll, Manager.”

He became quite cordial when I told him I was working for the Jamiesons. “Sit down, Mr. Archer.”

He had a faint German accent. “What can I do for you?”

I sat facing him across his desk. “Mrs. Strome said you had some trouble with Martel.”

“A little, yes. But it’s in the past. Let bygones be bygones, particularly since Mr. Martel is leaving us.”

“Is he leaving because of the trouble with you?”

“Partly, I suppose. I didn’t ask him to leave on account of it. On the other hand I didn’t urge him to stay when he finally announced his intention of leaving. I breathed a sigh of relief when he turned in his keys today and paid his bill.”

Stoll spread his manicured hand on the front of his double-breasted waistcoat.

“Why?”

“The man was a volcano. He could erupt at any moment. We like a quiet friendly atmosphere in our club.”

“Tell me about the trouble you had with him. It may be important. What did he do?”

“He offered to kill me. Do you want the whole story from the beginning?”

“Please.”

“It happened several weeks ago. Mr. Martel ordered a drink brought up to his cabana. Absinthe. The bar-boy was busy so I took it up myself. I sometimes do that as a special courtesy. Miss Fablon was with him. They were talking in French. Since French is one of my native languages I hesitated behind the screen and listened. I wasn’t consciously eavesdropping.”

Stoll raised his eyes to the ceiling, virtuously. “But he appeared to think that I was spying on him. He jumped up and attacked me.”

“With his fists?”

“With a sword.”

His hand went down his body to his stomach. “He had a sword concealed in a bamboo cane.”

“I’ve seen the cane. Did he actually stick you?”

“He held the point of it to my body.”

Stoll fondled the precious curve of his belly through his striped pants. “Fortunately Miss Fablon got him calmed down, and he apologized. But I was never at ease with him in the club again.”

“What were they talking about when you overheard them?”

“He was doing all the talking. It sounded to me like some kind of mysticism. He was saying how this philosopher believed that thinking was the basis of everything – la source de tout.”

His mind moved back and forth between the two languages. “But Mr. Martel said the ‘philosophe’ was wrong. ‘Réalité’ didn’t come into being until two people thought together. So the basis of everything was ‘l’amour’.”

The corners of Stoll’s mouth turned down. “It didn’t make much sense to me.”

“Did it to her?”

“Naturally. He was making love to her. That was the point. He was angry because I interrupted him in the middle of his pitch. When I think back over the episode, I’m convinced the man is psychopathological. Ordinary men don’t get so excited over such a little thing.”

He clenched his fist, not very tight. “I should have asked him to give up his guest privileges then and there.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

He colored faintly. “Well, you know, he is – or was – Mrs. Bagshaw’s protégé. She’s one of our oldest members, and now she’s moved into the cottage next to mine – I hated to upset her. I feel my essential role is that of a– buffer.”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling again, as if the god of innkeepers resided just over his head. “I try to stand between our members and the unpleasantness of life.”

“You’re very good at it, I’m sure.”

He accepted the compliment formally with a bow. “Thank you, Mr. Archer. The Tennis Club is known in the trade as one of the better run clubs. I’ve given it ten years of my life, and I was trained in the hotel schools of Zürich and Lausanne.”

“What did you mean when you said that French was one of your native languages?”

He smiled. “I have four native languages. French and German and Italian and Romansch. I was born in the Romansch section of Switzerland, in Silvaplana.”

His tongue caressed the name.

“Where was Martel born, Mr. Stoll?”

“I have asked myself that question. He claims to be Parisian, Mrs. Bagshaw tells me. But from what little I heard of it, his French is not Paris French. It is too provincial, too formal. Perhaps it is Canadian, or South American. I don’t know. I am not a linguistic scientist.”

“You’re the next thing to it,” I said encouragingly. “So you think he might be Canadian or South American?”

“That’s just a guess. I’m not really familiar with Canadian or South American French. But I’m quite sure Martel is not Parisian.”

I thanked Stoll. He bowed me out.

I had noticed a bulletin board on the wall outside his office. Pinned to its cord surface were some blownup candid pictures of people dancing at a party. Below them, like a reminder of purgatory at the gates of paradise, was a typed list of seven members who were behind with their dues. Mrs. Roy Fablon was one of them.

I mentioned this to Ella.

“Yes, Mrs. Fablon’s been having a hard time recently. She told me some of her investments went sour. I hated to post her name, but those are the rules.”

“It raises an interesting question. Do you think Virginia Fablon is after Martel’s money?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t make sense. She was going to marry Peter Jamieson. The Jamiesons have ten times as much money as Mr. Martel ever dreamed of.”

“Do you know that?”

“I can tell people with money from people without, and people who have had it for a while from people who haven’t. If you want my opinion, Mr. Martel is nouveau riche, and more nouveau than riche. He’s felt out of place here, and he’s been spending his money like a drunken sailor, and it hasn’t helped much.”

“Except that it’s got him Ginny. They were married over the weekend.”

“Poor girl.”

“Why do you say that?”

“On general principles. Mr. Jamieson is having a long wait. Is he the one you’re working for?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

“I am. What do you think of my client?”

“He reminds me of something I read once, that inside every fat man is a thin man crying to get out. Only Peter’s just a boy, and that makes it worse.” She added meditatively: “I suppose he has the makings of a man.”

“We’ll see.”

I jerked a thumb toward the bulletin board. “You have some pictures on the board. Does this club have a regular photographer?”

“A part time one. Why?”

“I was wondering if he took a picture of Martel.”

“I doubt it. I could check with the photographer. Eric isn’t on tonight though.”

“Get him on. Tell him I’ll pay him for his time.”

“I’ll try.”

“You can do better than try,” I said. “There’s a question about Martel’s identity, and we need a picture if there is one.”

“I said I’d try.”

She directed me to the dining room. It was actually two adjoining rooms, one of which had a polished dance floor. A small orchestra was on the stand, momentarily silent. The other room contained about thirty tables, brilliant with flowers and silver. Peter was sitting at a table by the windows, staring out gloomily at the dark beach.

He got up eagerly when he saw me, but his eagerness had more to do with dinner than with me. It was served buffet style by men in white hats. At the sight of food Peter underwent a transformation, as if his melancholy passion for Ginny had been switched to another channel. He loaded two plates for himself, one with five kinds of salad, cold ham, shrimp, crabmeat: the other with roast beef and potatoes and gravy and small green peas.

He gobbled the food with such eager straining gluttony that he made me feel like a voyeur. His eyes were fixed and mindless as he chewed. Sweat stood out on his forehead.

He wiped his plate with a piece of bread, which he ate. Then he went into contemplation, leaning his chin on his hand. “I can’t decide what to have for dessert.”

“You don’t need dessert.”

He looked at me as if I’d threatened to put him on bread and water for a month. I felt like telling him to go to hell. Watching him eat, I’d asked myself if I’d be doing Ginny a favor by bringing her back to my client. Martel at least was a man. Maybe Peter had the makings of a man, as Ella said, but when he sat down at the table he turned into something less, an appetite that only walked like a man.

“I don’t know whether to have a chocolate éclair or a hot fudge sundae,” he said seriously.

“Have both.”

“That isn’t funny. My body needs fuel.”

“You’ve already stoked it with enough fuel to run a Matson liner to Honolulu.”

He flushed. “You seem to forget that I’m your employer, and you’re my guest here.”

“I do, don’t I? But let’s get off the subject of personalities and food, and talk about something real. Tell me about Ginny.”

“After I get my dessert.”

“Before. Before you eat yourself stupid.”

“You can’t talk like that to me.”

“Somebody should. But we won’t argue about it. I want to know if Ginny is the kind of girl who goes off half-cocked about men.”

“She never did before.”

“Has she had much to do with men?.”

“Very little,” he said. “Mainly me, in fact.”

He flushed again, avoiding my eyes. “I wasn’t always so fat, if you want to know. Ginny and I sort of went steady in high school. But after that for a long time she wasn’t interested in – well, sex, necking and stuff: We were still friends, and I used to take her places sometimes, but we weren’t going steady in the true sense anymore.”

“What changed her?”

“She was hitting the books, for one thing. She did well at college. I didn’t.”

The fact seemed to nag him. “But it was mainly what happened to her father.”

“His suicide?”

Peter nodded. “Ginny was very much attached to her father. Actually it took her until just about now to get over his death.”

“How long ago did it happen?”

“Nearly seven years. Seven years this fall. He came down to the beach one night and walked into the water with all his clothes on.”

“This beach?”

I gestured towards the window. The tide was out: the surf was far down the beach and visible only as a recurring whiteness.

“Not right here, no. He went in about half a mile from here.”

Peter pointed towards a headland which loomed dark against the more distant harbor lights. “But there’s a current in this direction and when his body came up it was right offshore here. I didn’t go in the ocean for quite a while. I don’t think Ginny ever went in again. She uses – she used the pool.”

He sat hunched over in silence for a moment. “Mr. Archer, can’t we do something about Martel? Find out if they’re married legally or something?”

“I’m sure they are. Ginny would have no reason to lie, would she?”

“No. But she’s very much under his spell. You could see for yourself that it isn’t a natural situation.”

“She seems to be in love with him.”

“She can’t be! We’ve got to prevent him from taking her away.”

“With what? It’s still a free country.”

Peter leaned across the table. “Have you considered the possibility that he’s in this country illegally? He admitted he had no passport.”

“It might be worth looking into. But the worst they’d do is deport him. And Ginny would probably go along.”

“I see what you mean. It would only make matters worse.”

He lowered his cushioned chin onto his fist and became thoughtful. Our side of the dining room was filling up as people came in from outside or from the bar. A few of them wore dress clothes, and occasional diamonds and rubies sparkled on hands and throats like drippings from the past. The low sound of the ocean was lost in the rise and fall of conversation and music.

The people seemed to be talking against the darkness that pressed at the window. Fablon and his death were still on my mind. “You say that Ginny was very fond of her father?”

Peter came out of his thoughts with a start. “Yes. She was.”

“What sort of man was he?”

“He was what they call a sportsman, I guess. He went in for big-game hunting and fishing and yachting and polo and sports cars and planes.”

“All those?”

“At various times. He’d lose interest in one sport and try another. He couldn’t seem to find the one thing that would absorb his mind. For a while, when I was a kid in high school, he let me follow him around. He even used to take me up in his plane.”

Peter’s eyes blurred reminiscently. “He was in the Air Force at one time, until they invalided him out.”

“What was the matter with him?”

“I don’t know exactly. He crashed his plane in a training flight and so he never got into the war. That was a big disappointment to him. He walked with a bit of a limp. Which is one reason I think he went in for all those sports.”

“What did he look like?”

“I suppose you’d say that he was good-looking. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and he always had a deep tan. Ginny got her coloring from her mother. But I don’t know why you’re so interested in her family. What’s the point?”

“I’m trying to understand her, and understand why she fell so hard and suddenly for Martel. Does he resemble her father?”

“Some,” he admitted reluctantly. “But Mr. Fablon was better looking.”

“You said he was partly French. Did he speak French?”

“I guess he could when he wanted to. He lived in France at one time, he told me.”

“Where?”

“Paris. That was when he was studying painting.”

I was beginning to get some idea of Fablon. In these circles he was a fairly common type: the man who tried everything and succeeded at nothing.

“Where did he get the money for all his hobbies? Was he in business?”

“He tried various businesses. Right after the war he started an air-freight business. The trouble was, he was in competition with airlines like the Flying Tiger. He told me once he lost fifty thousand dollars in six months. But he had a lot of fun with it, he said.”

Peter’s tone was elegiac, nostalgic. At another time, in another body, he might have liked to live as the dead man had.

“Who paid for the fun?”

“Mrs. Fablon did, I guess. She was a Proctor.”

He paused, frowning slightly. “I just remembered something. It’s nothing to do with anything, but it’s interesting.”

He turned to the window, indicating the dark headland again. “That beach where Mr. Fablon walked into the water used to belong to the Proctors. It was part of their estate. Ginny’s mother had to sell the estate about ten years ago.”

“Three years before Fablon died.”

“That’s right. If she could have waited until now, she’d have got at least a million. But I heard it went for peanuts to pay Mr. Fablon’s debts.”

“Who bought it?”

“A cemetery company. They haven’t put in the cemetery yet.

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

Peter frowned at my levity. A minute later he left the table and ducked out of the room. I saw him a few minutes after that talking at the entrance with a tall man in a tuxedo. The tall man moved his head, and I noticed the hard line of his jaw. It was Dr. Sylvester, whose lunch with Mrs. Fablon I had interrupted.

He went into the bar. Peter trudged to the end of the line that had formed at the dessert table. He stood like an earnest communicant, his eyes dreaming over the pies and cakes and pastries.