Sinful Woman
- Автор: Кейн Джеймс Маллахэн
- Год: 1947
- Язык: английский
- Год: Avon
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Sinful Woman». Краткое содержание книги:
The flood of vigorous emotions, of love so deadly that it slays, packs “Sinful Woman” from start to smashing finish. You can’t lay it down once the striking Sylvia Shoreham, vivid movie star, hits the Reno gambling halls for a show-down with Baron Adlerkkreutz, her hot-blooded, woman-killer husband. You’ll be gripped by Sheriff Lucas as his mad desire for Sylvia runs head-on into his oath to uphold law and order; you’ll be caught by the Hollywood conniving of Dimmy Spiro, Sylvia’s producer, and by the colorful impact of Cain’s with other boldly drawn characters. And throughout the whole book you’ll be held at fever pitch by the deadly puzzle of Sylvia’s sister Hazel, whose knockout beauty underlines every scene with the tension of a fast-ticking bomb.
The Sheriff looked at Tony, who licked his lips and said: “I keep seven guns out here, on account of our heavy stock of cash, four rifles and three pistols, all registered to me and all under permits I got on file. I didn’t want to lend them any gun. I don’t want to lend anybody a gun ever. But they were friends of Miss Shoreham’s, and she’d been such a good customer and all, and they acted like it was important, so I took out the clip and handed over the automatic I keep in the desk.”
“If you took out the clip—”
“I must have forgot the shell in the barrel.”
“Pretty careless you’re getting.”
“Sheriff, if Mr. Spiro feels upset, I feel it double, because I ought never to have lent the gun in the first place. I thought I threw the ejector and snapped the trigger, that’s all I can say; but a wholesaler’s man was waiting for me out back and—”
The Sheriff nodded at Dmitri, who went on: “And so, Bushy, he showed Vicki how we can do the scene, so Sylvia will love it. He say ‘Vicki, girls fight till dresses are torn to rags, and maybe Sylwia don’t look good in a scene where her dress is all torn off. So one piece of the dress, one piece of the other girl’s dress, catches in the gun — the trigger. We cut in, show the dress caught in the trigger, but the girls don’t see it. So, Sylvia almost has the gun. She twists the gun from the other girl’s hand, but oh! — oh! — oh! — oh! People see the piece of the torn dress pull tighter, tighter, tighter — and boom! The gun goes off, and there is the other girl dead on the floor. So we tie one henadkerchief to Vicki’s leg, one to the gun tryger, tie the henadkerchiefs together. Vicki takes the gun, I grab it, twist his hand. Bushy, he stands by the camera, which was an electric fan on the water cooler. Bushy, he say, ‘come around slow now, so it’s in close to the camera.’ So we come around slow, handkerchiefs tighten, Vicki say, ‘Ah yes, I see now, is very good, yes, yes — come up very slow’ — and boom! There was Vicki on the floor, and I can’t believe it. I say ‘Vicki, Vicki, speak to me.’ I say—”
“O. K.”
The Sheriff, who had evidently found this recital a little difficult to keep up with, knit his brows and in a moment said to Mr. La Bouche: “I didn’t see any signs of a fight.”
“What fight?”
“Well—?”
“Oh, they didn’t do the fight, if that’s what you mean. We allowed for that. A fight, it’s like jungle stuff, it’s a cutter’s job anyway. You shoot five hundred feet, or whatever you need, and he puts it together. All that mattered was the torn dress and the gun. So we laid it out how that would break. We figured the cell would be nine feet long, five feet wide, with two out for the bunk. So we marked the set with the ashtrays and chairs, set up the camera over the water cooler, and started her going. I mean, it was an electric fan. The henadkerchiefs were the torn dress.”
The Sheriff asked a number of questions of the doctor, checked the routine work that had been done by his men and Mr. Britten’s, asked the Coroner if there were questions he wanted to ask. The Coroner wanted more information from the young interne, and was pretty exact about rigor mortis, the extent of internal bleeding, and such things. He said he thought he would be ready for the inquest tonight, if the autopsy showed nothing to extend the inquiry. The Sheriff nodded to the undertaker. “O. K., you can move him. Hold him for autopsy and the police will instruct you. You can open any time, Tony.”
Departure of the body cleared out quite a lot of vehicles out front, to say nothing of many uniforms inside. It gave Tony a chance to set his office to rights, and the undertaker’s truck was hardly out the gate before he had charwomen at work in there, and was busy himself, setting things in order. When the room was restored to its former condition the Sheriff asked: “Is Miss Shoreham here?”
“I had the maid take her to the ladies’ room.”
“Will you ask her to step in?”
“Right away, Sheriff.”
Her astonishment, when she saw him, was complete. He went over, took her hand, and led her to a chair. “You have a time remembering I’m sheriff of this county, don’t you?”
“All I saw was police.”
“They help. But it’s my case.”
“I’m sorry about the lunch.”
“I too. I was there waiting.”
“I kept thinking about it, believe it or not.”
She had let her hand stay in his, and now leaned her head against his arm with the trust of a weary child. “I guess I just wanted to be with somebody that loves me.”
“You think I love you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, you’re right.”
He sat on the arm of her chair, and put his arm around her, and she caught it in her hand and held it close, and cradled her head against his coat. They sat that way a long time. Then he said: “What happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. I was over by the stream, and I haven’t got it straight what they tried to tell me. They were rehearsing some kind of scene.”
“They said you didn’t like it.”
“It wasn’t that. It was them.”
“I kind of wondered about that part.”
“It didn’t make any difference how they did it, I wasn’t going to do the picture or have any more to do with them. They could just have well — never started their rehearsing.”
She began to cry, and he knelt beside her and wiped her eyes with his big bandanna, and blew her nose.
Then he got up, went to the window, stood for a long time looking over toward the mountain stream. When he spoke it was with the utmost casualness:
“Who killed this man?”
She stopped crying suddenly, and he turned around and looked at her. Then she said: “I did.”
“Why?”
She started to talk, and rehearsed the events of the morning. At the end she said: “I’m not ashamed of what I did, though I’m not proud of it. I love my sister more than I love anybody. She’s not responsible, and what he was about to do, what he would have done, was a shocking, horrible thing. I feel I did right. It was the only way out that I could see.”
“What did your sister say about it?”
“I don’t know if she knows it yet. I suppose she must, but I haven’t heard from her. While we were talking, Vicki thought I might go out there, where she was parked just outside the door here, and get her to come with me, and take her away from him. Or, I guess that’s what was in his mind. Anyway, he went to the door and told her to drive in and he’d meet her at the hotel, and she went.”
“Why did Spiro make it accident?”
“Hays office.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
“If I get smeared, Spiro can’t release Sugar Hill Sugar. It cost him a million, and if it stays in the can he’s ruined.”
“Now, I get it.”
Presently he asked, “And why did you make it accident? They couldn’t lie to me, if you didn’t back them up.”
“My sister.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“My sister loved this man, and I love her. There is nothing I won’t do to prevent her from ever finding out what I did. Don’t try to use what I’ve told you against me. I want you to know the truth, but if you try to convict me, I shall say I never told you any such thing, and they’ll believe me. I’m not one of the leading actresses of the world for nothing.”
“Will they believe her?”
“She knows nothing to tell.”
“Do you remember the ending of that picture, The Glory of Edith Cavell? Where Cavell marched to the wall for something that was done by somebody else?”
“Vaguely. Why?”
“I remember it very well. When she was before that court, telling her story, she looked a lot like you looked just now. You remember the court didn’t believe her?”