Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Waiting for the water to be drawn, she wandered to a window. The high fog still held the day against the sun, a dense, cold pall of grey, as flat as a metal plate, closing out the blue, closing in an atmosphere lifeless and bleak.

She thought of Lynn fighting for his life, perhaps losing, perhaps already still in defeat.

And Nelly … at whose fate one could only guess…

She recalled that bright hour of sunset, so clear and warm, through which she had motored in gladness toward his arms whom she had called her beloved, that hour in the dread light of this so weirdly unreal, so inconceivably remote; and the old, embittered plaint of Abdu-el-Yezdi found a melancholy echo in her heart:

"Strange that Life's Registrar should call

That day a day, this day a day." …

Bel came in about ten, by that many sleepless, active, anxious hours more jaded than when she had seen him last. Road-dust powdered his face and hands and lay caked in the folds of his coat, and he carried the arm in the sling with more open confession of acute distress. Lucinda herself opened for him, and he met her eyes with a short nod.

"You've found her, Bel? Where?"

He glanced round the room, caught sight of the maid through the open door to the bedchamber, and indicated her with a brusque jerk of his head.

Lucinda called the woman. "You've had no breakfast?" she added.

"No time. Been on the road all night. Just got in."

"Let me order you something…"

"Well … I would be glad of a cup of coffee – nothing else, thanks."

Lucinda sent the maid on the errand, and as soon as they were alone gave intuition voice: "Bel: something has happened to her? she's dead?"

With a weary nod, Bel dropped into a chair. "We got as far as Santa Barbara without picking up a sign," he said. "It was getting daylight then, and I made up my mind we'd taken the wrong road, that Nelly had lied or changed her mind about the way she meant to go. But she hadn't. When we turned back we found her … what had been her…"

He bent forward with his sound elbow on his knee, covering his eyes as if to hide their reminiscent horror.

"There had been an accident?"

"She ran your car off the road at a turn and over a low cliff to a rocky beach. Must have been killed instantly. If so, it was a mercy, for nobody had noticed the wreck till a few minutes before we turned up. I happened to catch sight of the crowd on the beach and made my chauffeur stop…"

He didn't look up, and neither spoke again till the maid returned. Then Lucinda made another pretext to get rid of her for another while, apparently to her considerable annoyance.

"How much does she know?" Bellamy asked, as the woman took herself off with an aggrieved flounce.

"There's been nothing for her to know, Bel," Lucinda returned without resentment.

"I didn't mean … I was merely wondering if she knew where you were expecting to dine last night. She must have helped you dress."

"I don't recall saying…"

"Better give her a good present and make her understand a tight mouth pays."

"Very well."

Bel sipped his coffee, frowning. "Heard anything from your friends the Lontaines this morning?"

"Not yet. Fanny will call up, of course, or come round to see me as soon as she hears."

"Risky to wait. Better get hold of her at once, let her hear about this business first of all from you, and tell her she's got to protect you if she has to lie like Sapphira."

"But surely we can count on Fanny's discretion!"

"Can we?" Bel's grin was skeptical. "I'm not so sure. Nolan knew last night you'd been due at Summerlad's for dinner. Told Zinn he had his information from Mrs. Lontaine."

"Barry Nolan! I don't understand…"

"Only know what Nolan told Zinn. Stopped in at the studio just now, saw Zinn for a few minutes… By the way" – Bel's manner was studiously casual – "it may interest you to know, the latest reports say Summerlad's holding his own."

"I am glad," Lucinda said simply. And Bel's eyes wavered under her level regard, lightly charged as it was with contempt. "You were telling me about Nolan…"

"Zinn says he telephoned all over Los Angeles last night trying to locate Nolan – because he and Summerlad had always been so close – but had no luck till about three this morning, when Nolan got home and found Zinn's message waiting for him. Then he hurried over to the bungalow – with at least three sheets in the wind, according to Zinn – and the first question he asked was where you'd been when the shooting took place. Zinn swore you hadn't been there, and the Jap backed him up nobly… But there you are, if you're asking for proof that your friend Fanny tells everything she knows."

Lucinda coloured resentfully. "I am sure," she insisted, "Fanny never dreamed of hurting me when she told Mr. Nolan – whatever it was she did tell him. But it's easy enough to find out…"

She took up the telephone, but had to wait, receiver at ear, several minutes before the Lontaine's number answered. Then a voice with a drowsy sound, like a tired and husky imitation of Fanny's: "Yes? Hello! who is it?" And when Lucinda made herself known a brief stammer prefaced a shift to honeyed accents: "Oh! is it you, Cindy darling? Heavens! what time is it?"

Lucinda named the hour, heard Fanny give a smothered exclamation, and added: "Did I wake you up?"

"I was simply dead to the world when the telephone rang," Fanny declared with an equivocal giggle. "The poor dear eyes are hardly open even now."

"I'm so sorry, dear. I supposed of course… Is Harry there?"

The reply came readily and without suggestion of uncertainty: "Why, no, darling: he isn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite – "

"I mean," Lucinda persisted, in some perplexity, "if you've just waked up, you've hardly had time to find out."

"Oh!" Fanny interrupted herself with an uneasy laugh. "Oh, but I know he isn't! I … he … I mean to say, darling, Harry must have gone out quite early. I mean … O dear!" An audible yawn and then an apologetic noise. "I'm simply drugged with sleepiness, Cindy. What I'm trying to say is, I was awake when Harry left the house, but went to sleep again. Have you tried the studio? If he isn't there, I'm sure I haven't the remotest notion where he can be." Then with a quite unmistakable accent of apprehension: "Why, darling? is something the matter?"

"I'll explain when I see you," Lucinda temporized – "if you wouldn't mind running round to the hotel when you've had your breakfast."

"Mind, darling! I'll simply fly into my clothes, be there in no time at all."

The meditative expression with which Lucinda put the telephone aside drew from Bellamy the direct question: What had Fanny said?

"It wasn't what she said, it was the funny, embarrassed way she said it. As a general thing, Fanny's as transparently candid as – as a plate of glass."

Bellamy made a doubting mouth. "You're pretty thick, you two," he supposed – "you tell her everything?"

Irritation in a gust shook Lucinda till her voice shook in sympathy.