Death Spins the Platter

9

The Hathaway House was on Carmelita Avenue in Beverly Hills. It was a manorial two-story brick set in barbered lawns, with formal flowerbeds surrounding an Italianate fish pool. A colored girl in uniform answered Layton’s ring. He told her who he was and asked to see Mrs. Hathaway.

The maid left him standing in a black-tiled foyer, very cool and inhospitable. When she returned, she asked him to follow her.

She led him through a silent house to a rear door and a patio garden. Near a barbecue pit with the look of long use stood a verdigrised metal table with a rainbow-colored umbrella over it. Beach chairs were scattered about. A woman in dark glasses, wearing an extreme red bikini, was sunning herself in one of the chairs.

Layton’s first glance gave him the impression of youth; her almost entirely exposed figure was trim and firm, and her hair was a lustrous bronze. Then he got a good look at her face. They can’t do much about the faces, he thought. She had gone through so many face-liftings and neck-flesh treatments that it was impossible to tell what she must once have looked like. She had made a caricature out of what Layton suspected had long ago been great beauty. At close range the bronze hair had obviously come out of a bottle and some of her lower teeth were a denture. She looked sixty-five and might be six or seven years younger.

Mrs. Hathaway removed her sunglasses for a moment to inspect him, and he saw her eyes. For one horrible instant he experienced the shock of recognition. Layton had once interviewed a man condemned to the gas chamber who had slaughtered — with a hand ax — an entire family of seven, including a two-year-old and a three-month-old infant. Mrs. Hathaway had the same eyes.

“Sit down, Mr. Clayton,” she said. There was a terry robe lying within reach, but she did not reach for it. “Would you like a drink?” She put her sunglasses back on.

“Layton.” Layton smiled. “And thank you.” He seated himself at the table in the shade of the umbrella. “Are you having one, Mrs. Hathaway? My mother told me never to drink alone.”

She glanced at him — it was impossible to say how, because of the glasses; but no part of her ravaged face smiled in return. “I never touch alcohol. Alice, fix me a limeade. And fetch Mr. Clayton whatever he wants.”

“Layton,” Layton said again. “Bourbon and soda, please.”

The maid said, “Yes, sir,” and went into the house. Her pretty, intelligent face was as expressionless as her mistress’s.

“I used to drink,” Mrs. Hathaway said. “But past thirty a woman has to start counting calories. Did you know that one shot of whisky contains a hundred calories?”

“No,” Layton confessed.

“Watch your figure, I’ve always said, and the men will watch it, too.” She stretched lazily, arched her back like a cat, the tight bikini straining. Her large breasts were remarkably untouched by time.

Layton winced. “You certainly can’t have any trouble in that department, Mrs. Hathaway,” he said.

The dark glasses flashed his way for an instant. “Thank you, Mr. Clayton.”

He did not bother to correct her this time. “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to interfere with your afternoon, so... Oh, thank you.” He took the drink from the tray the maid offered, and waited until she had gone back into the house again. “What I started to say, Mrs. Hathaway—”

“I know what you started to say. I was wondering when the press would get around to me.” The old woman with the young body sipped her limeade. “It’s been nearly a month since I filed for divorce.”

“Oh,” Layton said. “Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Of course, neither George nor I has been in the public eye in recent years.” She was talking dreamily to the sun, as if through an interpreter. “I naturally don’t count that stupid job George has at a desk... What I mean is, the public has such a fickle memory. When George and I were stars — and I mean stars, Mr. Clayton, stars of the first magnitude, not the empty faces and feeble little talents that constitute stardom today — when we were right up there at the top, as I say, our breakup would have made headlines from coast to coast.”

If this female fossil with the killer eyes had once been a star of the same magnitude as her husband, it was a total surprise to Layton. He studied her profile, trying to detect what it must have been like a third of a century ago, in vain. Who the devil was it that George Hathaway had married? Layton struggled with boyhood recollections of his mother’s constant talk of “that divine George Hathaway” — she had been an ambulatory encyclopedia on the subject. But he could not remember.

He tried a long shot. “I’m going to throw myself on your mercy, Mrs. Hathaway. I’ve been trying to recall the name of that last picture you made, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been able to. What was it again?”

“April Love,” she said coldly. “That’s fame for you. The critics called it our greatest.”

Our greatest. Of course. April Love had been George Hathaway’s final film. Costarring Linda Norman. This was what had once been Linda Norman. Good God in His heaven. He was a little boy when his mother had taken him to see April Love. He could not remember George Hathaway in it at all. But he had never forgotten Linda Norman. This was Linda Norman, the goddess Linda Norman.

Layton closed his eyes. “I remember you so well in it, Miss Norman — I beg your pardon. Mrs. Hathaway.”

“Silly boy,” the woman murmured; the murmur had a note of physical repletion in it, as if in and by themselves the words “Miss Norman” had constituted a Lucullan feast. “It’s so good hearing it again. You know, Mr. Clayton,” she went on in that intimate murmur, “I could have had as great a career in sound pictures as I had in the silents. But George and I were planning to be married, and his career ended when sound came in. That eununch’s voice of his, you know. It would have crucified George to have me go on, while he fell by the wayside. I was in love with him. So I sacrificed my career.”

“I understand,” Layton said. He had produced his notebook and was pretending to take notes.

“Money, of course, was no problem,” she went on. “That was before the days of the big income taxes and George and I had never squandered our money the way so many big Hollywood stars did in those days. George didn’t start throwing his money away — on rotten investments — until after he stopped earning it.” Layton had to steel himself to keep looking at her; now it was her smile that recalled the cold-blooded killer he had interviewed. “Lousy businessman, George. About all he has now is his income from that belly-scraping job at KZZX. So I’m not asking him for a thing except this house and its contents. I do hope you understand, Mr. Clayton, that I’m not the kind of woman who sucks a man dry and then divorces him. My money is intact — I don’t need his.”

Layton was wondering how he could maneuver the conversation around to the real reason for his visit. This was one he’d have to play by ear.

“Do you have any definite plans, Miss Norman,” he asked, poising his ballpoint, “for after your divorce?”

He watched that formidable bosom expand again as she breathed deeply. “I may try a comeback,” she said.

Comeback, Layton pretended to write, and then he rather desperately took a long pull at his drink. “Now about the divorce, Miss Norman—”

“Do call me Linda, Mr. Clayton.”

“If you’ll call me Jim.” Maybe she’d remember “Jim.”

“All right, Jim.” She smiled. “I suppose you want to know why I’m suing. Well, George was never easy to live with, but in recent years he’s been impossible.”

“In what way, Linda?” This was more like it.

“For one thing, he’s psychopathically jealous. I can’t look at a man that George doesn’t accuse me of having gone to bed with him. He’s actually beaten me at such times.”

“Actually?”

“Actually,” she said a little sharply. “Then I began finding lipstick on his handkerchiefs. Of course you see what happened.”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Linda.”

“You men! You stick together, don’t you? What’s behind all George’s jealousy, obviously, is the guilt he feels over his own adultery. He’s justifying his infidelities by transferring them to me.”

“I see,” Layton said respectfully. These do-it-yourself psychiatrists! he thought. “Then Mr. Hathaway has no basis for his jealousy?”

“You’re trying to ferret out another man, aren’t you, Tim?” she said with another smile. Layton groaned inwardly. He would be Tim Clayton to her until she died. “Well, of course, many men have admired me. I certainly can’t help that.”

“Certainly not,” Layton said in a warm tone.

“The last time I accused George of taking up with some trollop or other,” the woman in the bikini went on, “he beat me so brutally I was under my doctor’s care for a month. I began to fear for my life. So I locked him out of the house and got a court injunction to keep him out. Have you interviewed George yet?” she asked suddenly.

“Not about the divorce,” Layton said. “I saw him yesterday on a different story.”

“The Tutter King suicide, I suppose.” She shrugged. “When you do interview him about the divorce, he’ll undoubtedly fill you full of psychotic lies about me. You know, of course, that he’s countercharging adultery with numerous young men. He claims I maintain a whole stable of them — stable! That’s his word, Tim, as if I were some sort of brood mare or something. He’s so transparent. He’s just making a fool of himself.”

Layton promptly moved into the opening. “Talking about the Tutter King business,” he said, “do you think maybe the strain of the payola scandal and its possible effect on Mr. Hathaway’s position at KZZX might have had something to do with his emotional condition?”

“Rubbish,” she snapped. “Our troubles came to a head long before that story broke.”

“Maybe he knew it was on its way, and the worry—”

“He never mentioned it to me.”

“Well, it certainly has him on the ragged edge now,” Layton said ruefully. “He nearly chewed my head off yesterday when I asked him a perfectly harmless question.”

“That’s George,” she said, nodding. “So you know what a vicious temper he has. Though I should think the subject of payola would upset him.” she laughed. “I was so amused when I read that sanctimonious statement he authorized at the time he fired King.”

“How come?” Layton asked in a carefully careless tone.

“Because George was as guilty as King. He accepted payola from the record companies, too.”

Layton repressed his elation with difficulty. Was it possible she didn’t realize the implications of her statement? He decided not to look a gift harpy in the mouth.

“That’s interesting,” Layton said. “Is he that much of a hypocrite?”

“George? There isn’t a sincere bone in his head,” she said, laughing again. “What’s worse, he’s a stupid hypocrite. You’d think if he was going to take payola, he’d make it worth his while. Instead, he accepted peanuts. I don’t think the total ever amounted to more than four or five thousand dollars a year. Can you imagine that?”

Layton shook his head. “Unbelievable. What was he supposed to do in return?”

“Nothing,” she said indifferently.

“Nothing?”

“He wasn’t to interfere with Tutter King’s subsidized plugging of certain songs, that’s all.”

“I get it.” Layton chuckled. He was thinking furiously. He decided to take a calculated risk. “I don’t want to stray too far from the main purpose of our interview, Linda, but I wonder if this story about Hathaway doesn’t tie in with your divorce action. It would certainly make him look bad.”

“It certainly would,” she said softly.

So she had spilled it to him deliberately. Layton relaxed. He could take off the velvet gloves.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course, an unsupported charge of this seriousness, Linda, can’t be printed. What I need is proof. If I had some documentation, the Bulletin wouldn’t hesitate to plaster it all over the front page.”

“What kind of documentation?”

“Correspondence, records, bank deposits — anything like that. Did Hathaway take all his personal effects with him when you sent him packing?”

“He was lucky I let him have his clothes,” she said lazily. “I don’t know exactly what there is, Tim... Suppose I have a look.”

“That would be fine,” Layton murmured.

The aging woman pattered down the long, curved staircase from upstairs and through the wide archway into her living room with an eagerness as nearly naked as her bikini-clad body. She was carrying a big cardboard box filled with Christmas cards and what looked like letters. She dumped the box on a low tiled table before the huge sofa from which Layton had risen and flung herself into a baroque Italian chair opposite.

“It’s all Christmas stuff,” she said, “but I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

Linda Norman had taken off her sunglasses. The stony eyes were glittering. Medusa, Layton thought, and he went to work.

The cards yielded nothing; among them were many from record companies, but they were the customary seasonal pap. The letters were all on the stationery of different record companies, the majority handwritten — Christmas greetings of a more personal nature from company executives. The rest, also bearing Christmas greetings, were typed. It was among these that Layton struck pay dirt. Some of them went back five years.

One was typed on the letterhead of The Best-Play Recording Company, was addressed to George Hathaway at his Carmelita Avenue address, and read:

Not all the secretarial typists had made the automatic error of “nj.” On some there was no “Enc.: Check #— for$—.—,” althought Layton had no doubt that in these cases, too, checks for several hundred dollars had been “Enc.”-ed with the harmless-sounding message. But there were enough examples of the ironies of secretarial habit to hang George Hathaway several times over.

“You’re going to let me have these, Linda, aren’t you?”

“With my blessing, darling,” the woman said. “They’re what you want?”

“They’re what I want, all right.” Layton tucked the incriminating letters, folded, away in his inside breast pocket.

She smiled, and for a few minutes she chattered on about her post-divorce plans — she might try the movie comeback, she might take a trip around the World instead, oh, she had so many plans, although none of them included remarriage... Layton let her rattle away, on the lookout for an excuse to escape.

It came unexpectedly. The front doorbell chimed, and as the maid passed the living room Linda Norman Hathaway called, “You find out who it is, Alice, before you open that door. Mind?” and Alice said, “Yes, ma’am,” and Layton heard the door open and Alice call out — was there the merest touch of malice in her voice — “Oh, it’s only Mr. Gerald, Miss Linda. Come in, Mr. Gerald,” and before the old woman could get to her feet a young man bounded into the room.

He could not have been more than twenty. Layton had seen scores of him around the Pacific beaches — the deeply tanned, broad-shouldered, hipless blond athletic boys, handsome Nordic counterparts of their darker brothers of the Hawaiian beaches — emotionless, alien to the youth Layton remembered, without conscience or direction, superb male flesh catering to the starved appetites of well-heeled women. This specimen wore the most expensive-looking sports jacket Layton had ever seen.

The boy stopped short at the sight of Layton. He glanced curiously at the old woman in the bikini and said, “Why all the bare skin, baby? It ain’t that hot today.”

Hathaway’s wife was glaring at her maid. Alice vanished.

“Why didn’t you phone, Gerald?” the old woman said, sugar-voiced. “I want you to meet Mr. Clayton. Tim, this is Gerald Jacnewski, a friend of my husband and me.”

The young man laughed. “Especially of her husband.” Before Layton could stir he was across the room and crushing Layton’s hand. “That’s for nothing,” he said. “Now do something.”

“Gerald!” the woman said in a furious voice.

Gerald grinned at her and made for the bar.

“Well, Linda, I’ve got to be going,” Layton said. “And thanks.”

“Thank you, Tim. Here, I’ll see you out.”

Layton lingered outside, blowing gently on his numb hand. Through the open living-room windows he could hear the woman shrilling, “Did you have to show up without warning, you idiot? That man’s a reporter!”

“So? It’s no bark off my ash,” the young man’s voice said. “Say, Hot Pants, I got a real cool date tonight and I need some dinero. Gimme a hundred.”

“Damn you!” Layton heard her cry.

Still blowing on his hand, Layton got into his heap and drove away.