Out of Time Read online

  As I turned back from front yard to house, my van seemed desperately out of key, a clanger in an otherwise perfectly executed scale.

  I took a breath of humid air, resolved to forget myself, and pulled the handle marked ‘bell’.

  Inside I heard a bell, confirmation of the fundamental rationality of the world.

  After a time locks were cleared. It took several seconds, however, before the front door opened and revealed a woman of about twenty-five in a fire-red dress cut about six inches above the knee. With a slightly pinched face ringed by braids of yellow hair and an otherwise Rubensesque body, she made a remarkable sight for a humble private eye to eye so early in a working day.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She smiled.

  ‘Are you the owner of this house?’

  ‘Me? Miss Edwards?’ She shook her head. ‘No way,’ she said.

  ‘Miss Edwards is the owner?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is she related to the late George Bennett Raymond Edwards?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Is it possible for me to speak to Miss Edwards?’

  She sucked on her lower lip, blinking her eyes in thought. ‘I s’pose,’ she said. ‘What about?’

  ‘I hope she will be able to help me with a little information.’

  The girl seemed surprised. ‘Miss Edwards?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Not much of a talker. Miss Edwards.’

  ‘Would you mind asking her? I won’t take much of her time and it’s just possible that she could help me a lot.’

  ‘Sure. O.K.,’ the girl said. She pivoted sharply and slipped into the interior of the house.

  I quickly tired of ducking drizzle drops on the front step. I crossed the threshold and, as a gesture of goodwill and energy conservation, closed the front door behind me as I passed from the entrance chamber of the tower into the front hall itself.

  I needn’t have worried about escaping heat. The place was virtually as cold inside as out, and the chilly atmosphere wasn’t softened in the slightest by minimal furnishings and a bare stone floor.

  I didn’t get the opportunity to peer into the rooms which led off the hall, because the girl in the red dress returned from the back of the house quickly.

  ‘Found your way in,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t know whether tradespeople were supposed to stay in the porch, but I decided to take a chance.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ she said with a flicker of sympathy. ‘I’m just hired help here myself.’

  ‘What do you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Personal secretary,’ she said.

  ‘And companion? That kind of thing?’

  ‘No, no. I have a list of duties and there are special jobs sometimes. But we don’t socialise. It’s not for an employee to say, but she’s pretty withdrawn. I get my room and board, and a lot of time to myself. Perfect for a writer.’

  ‘You’re a writer?’

  ‘In the flesh,’ she said.

  ‘What sort of things do you write?’

  ‘Non-fiction bestsellers,’ she said.

  I scratched my head. ‘Would I know your name?’

  ‘Oh, not yet. I’m still doing research for my first book. But you’ll know it one day. Jane Smith.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘Which,’ she said more slowly, ‘brings me to what I wanted to ask you. Do you know anything about maxi orgasms in men?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘There’s been books like that done for women, see. But I’m working on it from the men’s side of things. I’ve tracked down a technique for male multiple orgasm, when the guy holds back on the semen delivery after he’s had the feeling. It’s not necessary for them to be part of the same event, see.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But now I’m on the trail of the male maxi. Doesn’t ring a bell?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Tone deaf.’

  Miss Edwards received me in a glass enclosed porch which was, blessedly, warm. She was working at a large table which was covered with dried ‘everlasting’ flowers of several kinds. A few were soaking up to their heads in a shallow pan of water and the focus of the work was a green styrene block which was riddled with wires projecting in a fan of angles. A few of the flowers were already in place. Miss Edwards worked carefully, but dexterously, and was twining three stems.

  She was a small woman, and lightly built. I put her somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies.

  She didn’t rush and I didn’t make impatient sounds, but after a while she placed the flowers she had worked together on a rack and fixed their now joint stem in place with pins. She turned in her chair by means of three short movements to face me.

  ‘Jane says you have something to say to me.’ She spoke clearly and watched me with a concentration which in no way suggested inability to communicate. Perhaps if she didn’t socialise with Jane Smith it was only because she had nothing to say to her.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m grateful that you will allow me to interrupt you so early in the morning.’

  A gold watch dangled as a pendant from a chain around her neck and she looked at it.

  ‘This isn’t early for me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been up for nearly five hours. How long have you been up?’

  ‘About half that.’

  ‘Should I thank you for getting out so early in your day to visit me?’ She answered her own question. ‘Of course not. Just who are you and what do you want?’

  I explained that I was a private detective and that a client wanted me to find out what had happened to a woman.

  ‘Private detective,’ she repeated. ‘This isn’t one of those ugly divorce situations, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Terrible, those things. Some investigators don’t accept that sort of work. Do you?’

  ‘I do if it’s offered.’

  ‘Ugly business,’ she said, clearly tarring me with the subject. ‘Ugly.’ Then, again she said, ‘Ugly.’

  It stopped me for a moment.

  But I said, ‘The woman I’m looking for may be a relative of my client’s and he wants to find her or find out about her. In 1936 she lived in a house which was bought by a man named George Bennett Raymond Edwards.’

  I had been intending to continue, but Miss Edwards reacted so sharply that I stopped involuntarily.

  She rose, eyes wide open, shocked. Her mouth worked, but without sound. She dropped back on to her chair. She raised her hands to her eyes and leaned forward.

  ‘Benny,’ she moaned. ‘My poor Benny.’ She sobbed.

  It lasted a long time. But when she lowered her hands and sat back in her chair again, her eyelids remained closed.

  She breathed deeply, and irregularly, but even before she seemed completely calm she said to me, ‘What is your name again?’

  I told her.

  ‘Bennett was my only brother.’

  ‘If—’

  ‘You said that someone lived in a house. Who?’

  ‘The name I have is Daisy Wines,’ I said.

  I saw, or thought I saw, a slight tremor. But wasn’t certain whether it was reaction to the name or residue from the distress that mention of her brother had caused before.

  I continued. ‘But it is possible that Daisy Wines’ – and I watched carefully as I said it again, but saw nothing – ‘was a stage name and that she was a night-club performer. I haven’t confirmed this yet though.’

  ‘Yes . . .?’ she said, asking me to go on.

  ‘The name doesn’t mean anything to you?’

  ‘To me? Certainly not. But, of course, I had virtually nothing to do with my brother’s private life once he got married.’ She opened her eyes. ‘His wife murdered him, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Shot him, in cold blood.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘In
this room.’

  Despite myself, I felt a wave of shock.

  ‘Did . . .? Was she . . .?’ I had begun to speak before I decided what to say.

  ‘Scot free. Batted her eyelashes at the jury and walked out with a halo.’

  I waited again.

  ‘No comment about that?’ she challenged.

  ‘It’s difficult to know what to say. Miss Edwards.’

  ‘All men,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Twelve good men and true crawling over each other to let her go because of her pretty face and her innocent eyes. But of course, you wouldn’t understand that, being a man yourself.’

  ‘I would hope that if I were on a jury–’

  ‘There was no justice at that trial.’ She shook her head several times, short violent shakes. ‘None at all. The only, tiny, saving grace was that she didn’t get as much as she thought she would,’ Miss Edwards said.

  ‘As much what?’

  ‘Money, of course. She got a fortune out of killing Benny, but not everything. Not this place. And maybe only half what she married him for. We kept her from that. We did.’

  The memory of this limited success seemed to satisfy her for the moment.

  I used the pause to ask again, ‘Would you know of anybody who might remember something about the people who lived in a house your brother owned? A lawyer or . . . anybody?’

  ‘I know the house you mean,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Benny only ever owned the one. A dreary little rooming establishment.’ She paused. ‘He bought it for her because she had a friend there, some sort of concierge I believe.’

  ‘I’ve talked to Mrs Murchison.’

  ‘Ah yes. Murchison.’

  The name cued a reverie, and not a pleasant one. But after a moment Miss Edwards smiled slightly and said, ‘You’ve talked to the Murchison woman. So she is still alive?’

  ‘She’s a resident at a nursing home called Biarritz House,’ I said.

  ‘And did she help you?’

  ‘She is sometimes not very lucid. But I hope she will.’

  ‘Still being looked after, no doubt,’ Miss Edwards said sourly.

  ‘Can you tell me about Mrs Murchison?’ I asked.

  ‘What? I hardly knew of her. My brother’s employee.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ I asked, ‘happen to know the whereabouts of your brother’s wife?’

  ‘I always said that if I ever found her again I would kill her.’ Miss Edwards shivered and shrugged. ‘I haven’t been put to the test. She left town after the miscarriage of justice. I never found her. Benny’s lawyers know where she is but they won’t tell me.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They won’t tell you either.’

  ‘But they might pass a message to her for me.’

  She wagged her head as if I was being pedantic. ‘They were my lawyers too, but I dropped them when they wouldn’t help me.’ She pursed her lips, then said, ‘Barker, McKay and Gay. They used to practise in the Wright Building, downtown. But of course, I don’t know whether they’re still in business.’

  I said, ‘I appreciate your talking to me very much, Miss Edwards.’

  She was quiet for a moment before she said, ‘I haven’t talked about Benny for decades.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.’

  ‘It is all so clear to me, so clear.’ She hesitated. ‘I should thank you for reminding me.’ Then, ‘That’s it, is it? Well, I haven’t helped you at all.’

  ‘I’m grateful for your time.’

  ‘Then if you come across my brother’s wife, perhaps you will let me know where she is?’

  ‘And make myself an accessory?’

  She didn’t smile. ‘What danger could I be to her any more?’ She sighed. ‘Of course, she’s probably married and killed off half a dozen other poor boys by now, so who can tell where she would be these days.’

  Jane Smith, bestseller-to-be, popped out in front of me as I walked through the house towards the front door.

  ‘You must have gotten on famously with her to stay that long. I can’t remember a visitor since I began here who got near that much of her highness’s time.’

  I said, ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Six months next week. Hey, slow down. Can I ask you another question?’

  Inside the tower, I stopped.

  She needed no further invitation. ‘What do you know about power parties?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Power parties. The host hires some people to come in and act like kidnappers or psychos and wave guns around and make the guests do sexual things with each other. You ever been to one?’

  Chapter Ten

  On my way home I stopped at Barker, McKay and Gay, Attorneys at Law.

  Whatever setback the loss of Miss Edwards as a client had represented, the exterior trappings of the partnership hadn’t suffered. The pile of the carpet came over the sides of my shoes and tickled me through my socks.

  I explained to the receptionist that I wanted a brief word with whoever dealt with the affairs of Mrs George Bennett Raymond Edwards.

  The receptionist sent a note to a secretary who sent it to a clerk who sent it back to a secretary. The ascertaining of who was responsible for what took five minutes, an age compared to the time it took for a tall slim grey-haired man to come looking for me once the memo had been passed to an inner office.

  He introduced himself as P. Donald Barker and asked, ‘What would your business with Mrs Edwards be, Mr Samson?’

  ‘I would like to speak to her,’ I said.

  ‘That is not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It is, simply, not possible.’

  His tone of voice suggested I could have been a President for all the chance I had to get a change in reaction. Democratic exclusion, if nothing else.

  I described what I was trying to do and the slimness of the chance that Mrs Edwards could help. The fact that my interest was not in Mrs Edwards herself relaxed Barker slightly and when I suggested that he might pass on a message if I wrote one, he said he would pass it to the ‘appropriate member of the firm for consideration’.

  I didn’t know what to make of that but it was the best offer I was going to get.

  Barker obtained some paper for me and I spent several minutes writing a request for information about the residents of the New York Street house. I wrote in my best handwriting and offered to visit Mrs Edwards anytime, anywhere, if she would be willing to see me.

  ‘Anytime, anywhere,’ rang artificially enthusiastic, but, after all, I was to ‘spare no expense.’

  And, I was curious to know if she had killed off six more husbands since 1940.

  There was a message on the machine to call Miller when I got back.

  ‘I’m getting worried about you,’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever go out on cases?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, but there was an element of reserve in his voice which made me wonder if I had stumbled on to an issue.

  He didn’t give me a chance to push it, even if I had been inclined to. He said, ‘What’s this Champaign Cable Company business?’

  ‘They called you?’

  ‘Yeah, they called me.’

  ‘Then you probably know more about it than I do.’

  He hesitated. ‘So, it’s not a joke? Tell me straight, Al. If you’re screwing around, tell me.’

  ‘They called me, and I passed them on to you because you are discontented with what you’re doing. Any screwing around is strictly their responsibility.’

  He seemed to think about what I said. Then, ‘I’m going out to lunch with this Winslow woman today. It can’t hurt.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  Wishing not to be pressed further on the ambitions and hopes which had sprung fresh born from Wendy Winslow’s phone call. Miller said, ‘How’s your work going?’

  ‘Slowly. I might have some more names to be checked through s
oon, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ he said, but I had the feeling that his mind was elsewhere. In a limelight, perhaps.

  I called Maude at the Star.

  ‘Mr Samson,’ she said, in a tone of voice which acknowledged that it was rare for me to contact her twice in a month, much less twice in a week. ‘Things must be looking up.’

  She has known me when my economic situation was even worse. But we both like to forget those days.

  ‘I want you to examine what you have on a Daisy Wines. She might have been a night-club performer in the thirties.’

  ‘I see.’

  She waited. ‘Is that it?’

  I hadn’t planned it, but on impulse I said, ‘There was a murder case in 1940 that I want to know about. A Mrs George Bennett Raymond Edwards was tried and acquitted of killing a Mr of the same name. It would have been front-page stuff because they had money.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘And while you are at it, have a look for a Miss Edwards, sister of the deceased, and a man called Normal Bates.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you,’ she said after saying she would get to work on it later in the afternoon.

  I sat at my desk and wondered whether I should worry about the ease with which I was becoming able to spend other people’s money. Even to satisfy my curiosity, once I got in the mood.

  In the early afternoon I managed to find out that the other former owner of the New York Street house, S. H. Garrison, had died in 1948. I tracked down a granddaughter who convinced me that I would have little hope of getting any kind of lead through Garrison relatives.

  Then I spent some time musing on the state of play. I had requests for information about Daisy Wines out with Charlie Carson and with Maude. If they both came up as blank as Miller had, I could, perhaps, go to the Belters and regretfully sign off the case. Next stop Normal Bates, regular employment, riches.

  I decided I would call Bates to tell him that it was possible I would be free by the end of the day.

  But I didn’t get a chance because I heard someone come into my outer office. I straightened the papers on my desk, and put away the pad I was doodling on.

  Whoever it was began to play my piano.

  I don’t know music. Occasionally I pick at the thing, when I’m looking for a way to break the silence of the phone not ringing.