The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
“Thank you.”
She sat down on the edge of a deep chair upholstered with some heavy fabric treated to afford additional resistance to stains and burns. Holding her knees primly together, her body erect, she laid her purse on the knees and folded her hands on the purse. Watching him measure ingredients into a shaker, she was poised and perfectly still. The rise and fall of her breasts was barely discernible in the quiet cadence of her breathing. When he brought her martini to her, she took it and nodded her thanks and wet her lips in it and waited. Crossing to a chair opposite hers, with perhaps five feet of gray carpet between, he sat down facing her and crossed his legs and seemed for a moment considering what he should say. Lifting his fragile glass, containing one of the martinis he hardly ever drank, he performed what might have been a subtle salute to her beauty, or possibly to the perfect poise that disturbed him more than he liked to admit or intended to show.
“You are much lovelier than I expected,” he said. “Frankly, I’m reluctant to waste our time with the dull conditions of a business arrangement.”
“Do you concede, then, that it’s a waste of time?”
“Not at all. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“We’ll see. Suppose you state the conditions.”
“They’ve already been stated. I did that over the phone. We have met, I think, to consummate them.”
“Nevertheless, you had better repeat them. I want to be certain where I stand.”
“Certainly. Happy to oblige, of course. You are to hand me fifty thousand dollars with which to pay for my fine brandy that you are not fond of. In return for this reasonable sum, I guarantee my silence regarding a period of your life with which we are both familiar.”
“Are we?”
“I assure you that I know very nearly as much about this regrettable time as you do yourself.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“Surely you don’t want me to give you an account in detail. I’m quite sincere in saying that I’d rather not subject you to the embarrassment.”
“Never mind that. I’ll try to bear it.”
Looking at her across the five feet of space, lifting his glass to his lips again, he was once more aware of genuine admiration for her poise. Also for her beauty. He wished for a second that he could have approached her from a different position, with a different intention. He wished it, for the second, in spite of the fifty thousand dollars and all the brandy it would buy. For another second, following the first, he was uncomfortably incredulous that this sleek woman had actually committed the extraordinary follies, and worse, far worse, that constituted the substance of the savory little case history he had begun by chance and completed by design. Both seconds passed, however, and the wish and the doubt with the seconds.
“Whatever you say,” he said. “For your sake, I’ll restrict myself to essentials. Just enough to convince you once again that I’m not running a bluff.”
“Thank you so much. I’m grateful for your consideration.”
“Sarcasm? You seemed disturbed enough on the telephone, Mrs. Fenimore — so much so that I took none of the usual secondary precautions — no messages left in case of my death, you see. Well, no matter. To get on with our business, you were born in this city thirty years ago.”
“Please. Twenty-eight.”
“Very well. I allow you the two years. What’s more important, you had the good luck to be born the only daughter of Reuben Webster, which made you heir to several million of dollars.”
“That’s public knowledge. If you know anything significant, you had better get to it.”
“Sorry. I promised to restrict myself to essentials, I know, but you must admit that the millions are essential. If it weren’t for them, I’d scarcely have gone to so much time and effort to develop my proposition. All right, then. You were the only daughter of Reuben Webster, and at the age of twenty by my account, eighteen by yours, you disappeared. Not many people knew that. Very few. It was feared at first that you had been abducted, but of course you hadn’t. You had merely run away. You wrote your father once from St. Louis to assure him you were all right. You wrote him once more, quite a while later, from Los Angeles. That was all. If you will pardon me for saying it, I have learned that you had, as a girl, what is commonly known as a queer streak. A proclivity, let’s say, for the unconventional. The sensational. Even, unfortunately, the illegal. The thing that saved you, so far as your father was concerned, was that he had the same proclivity. Therefore, he was inclined to forgive you. He wanted you to come home, but he did not insist, and when he died four years ago, he left you his fortune without any strings, just as if you had been a good, obedient girl instead of what you were.”
“You’re being quite a bore. I haven’t yet heard a word that is worth the smallest fraction of fifty thousand dollars.”
“You want me to go on? I’d much prefer not having to become any more personal than I’ve already been compelled to be.”
“And I’d much prefer not having to hand you fifty thousand dollars.”
“I see your point.” He distorted his lips to show that the taste of what he was going to say was already sour in his mouth. “Well, your father devised an explanation for your absence. He said you were in Switzerland, I believe, but that’s irrelevant to the matter in hand. You were actually, of course, elsewhere. Los Angeles and points south, to be precise. Much of the time in Mexico City. I suppose, actually, that it would take a corps of psychiatrists to explain this period in your life. Let’s just say that you were living with your queer streak. Satisfying a rather perverted need for questionable thrills. Many things were involved. Narcotics for a while. A number of men, naturally. You were known to everyone as Maria Melendez. Your appearance and a fluency in Spanish made it quite easy for you to pass as a cultured Mexican woman. Have I said enough?”
“Not quite.”
“You’re very hard to convince, Mrs. Fenimore. I admire your spirit, and I truly regret the necessity for taking my present position in this.”
“It’s possible that you’ll regret it even more before you’re finished. I understand, however, that one must pay his brandy bill. Go on, please.”
“One more point should be sufficient. Among the men Maria Melendez knew was one named Brannigan. He had a private lodge in the mountains. He died there one night. Shot to death. There was some evidence of a woman’s having been there at the time. The police worked on that angle but never came up with anything conclusive. I knew Brannigan. Many people even thought we were friends, but that was something of an exaggeration. Believe me, I did not grieve for him then, and I don’t regret his death now. Vengeance, I mean, is no consideration. Anyhow, I had access to certain information that the police did not have, and I know that there was, in fact, a woman at the lodge, and I know who she was. Her name was Maria Melendez.”
“Can you prove this?”
“I’m sure I can. However, I’m equally sure that I’ll not be called upon to do so. Maria Melendez is dead. Mrs. Fenimore, I think, does not want her resurrected.”
“True. Maria Melendez is dead. Without benefit of psychiatry. Did you ever see her? Do you know what she looked like?”
His brows arched in the faintest expression of surprise. “Allowing for the possibility of a little dye and certain tricks of dress and makeup, I rather fancy that she looked like you, Mrs. Fenimore. However, I never saw her, actually.”
“You don’t, then, actually know what she looks like now.”
“Oh, yes. Certainly. Would you like me to describe her? It will be a pleasure after the regrettable things I’ve been forced to say about her.” His eyes made a leisurely inventory of the woman opposite him. “She is quite tall and slender. Beautiful body. Incredibly lovely face. Very dark brown hair which she wisely pulls back simply into a bun. Impeccable taste in clothes. Truly a ravishing woman.”