If Death Ever Slept Read online

  “Very well,” he said. He pushed his chair back, got up, and told Jarrell, “You will excuse me. Mr. Goodwin will know what information he needs.” He circled around the red leather chair and marched out.

  I sat at my desk, got notebook and pen, and swiveled to the client. “First,” I said, “all the names, please.”

  Chapter 2

  I CAN’T UNDERTAKE TO make you feel at home in that Fifth Avenue duplex penthouse because I never completely got the hang of it myself. By the third day I decided that two different architects had worked on it simultaneously and hadn’t been on speaking terms. Jarrell had said it had twenty rooms, but I think it had seventeen or nineteen or twenty-one or twenty-three. I never made it twenty. And it wasn’t duplex, it was triplex. The butler, Steck, the housekeeper, Mrs. Latham, and the two maids, Rose and Freda, slept on the floor below, which didn’t count. The cook and the chauffeur slept out.

  Having got it in my notebook, along with ten pages of other items, that Wyman, the son, and Lois, the daughter, were Jarrell’s children by his first wife, who had died long ago, I had supposed that there were so many variations in taste among the rooms because Jarrell and the first wife and the current marital affliction, Trella, had all had a hand at it, but was set right on that the second day by Roger Foote, Trella’s brother. It was decorators. At least eight decorators had been involved. Whenever Jarrell decided he didn’t like the way a room looked he called in a decorator, never one he had used before, to try something else. That added to the confusion the architects had contributed. The living room, about the right size for badminton, which they called the lounge because some decorator had told them to, was blacksmith modern-black iron frames for chairs and sofas and mirrors, black iron and white tile around the fireplace, black iron and glass tables; and the dining room, on the other side of an arch, was Moorish or something. The arch itself was in a hell of a fix, a very bad case of split personality. The side terrace outside the dining room was also Moorish, I guess, with mosaic tubs and boxes and table tops. It was on the first floor, which was ten stories up. The big front terrace, with access from both the reception hall and the lounge, was Du Pont frontier. The tables were redwood slabs and the chairs were chromium with webbed plastic seats. A dozen pink dogwoods in bloom, in big wooden tubs, were scattered around on Monday, the day I arrived, but when I went to the lounge at cocktail time on Wednesday they had disappeared and been replaced by rhododendrons covered with buds. I was reminded of the crack George Kaufman made once to Moss Hart-“That just shows what God could do if only he had money.”

  Jarrell’s office, which was called the library, was also on the first floor, in the rear. When I arrived with him, Monday afternoon, he took me straight there after turning my luggage over to Steck, the butler. It was a big square room with windows in only one wall, and no decorator had had a go at it. There were three desks, big, medium, and small. The big desk had four phones, red, yellow, white, and black; the medium one had three, red, white and black; and the small one had two, white and black. All of one wall was occupied by a battery of steel filing cabinets as tall as me. Another was covered by shelves to the ceiling, crammed with books and magazines; I found later that they were all strictly business, everything from Profits in Oysters to North American Corporation Directory for the past twenty years. The other wall had three doors, two big safes, a table with current magazines-also business-and a refrigerator.

  Jarrell led me across to the small desk, which was the size of mine at home, and said, “Nora, this is Alan Green, my secretary. You’ll have to help me show him the ropes.”

  Nora Kent, seated at the desk, tilted her head back to aim a pair of gray eyes at me. Her age, forty-seven, was recorded in my notebook, but she didn’t look it, even with the gray showing in her soft brown hair. But the notebook also said that she was competent, trustworthy, and nobody’s fool, and she looked that. She had been with Jarrell twenty-two years. There was something about the way she offered a hand that gave me the feeling it would be more appropriate to kiss it than to grip it, but she reciprocated the clasp firmly though briefly.

  She spoke. “Consider me at your service, Mr. Green.” The gray eyes went to Jarrell. “Mr. Clay has called three times. Toledo operator seven-nineteen wants you, a Mr. William R. Bowen. From Mrs. Jarrell there will be three guests at dinner; the names are on your desk, also a telegram. Where do you want me to start with Mr. Green?”

  “There’s no hurry. Let him get his breath.” Jarrell pointed to the medium-sized desk, off to the right. “That’s yours, Green. Now you know your way here, and I’ll be busy with Nora for a while. I told Steck-here he is.” The door had opened and the butler was there. “Steck, before you show Mr. Green to his room take him around. We don’t want him getting lost. Have you told Mrs. Jarrell he’s here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jarrell was at his desk. “Don’t come back, Green. I’ll be busy. Get your bearings. Cocktails in the lounge at six-thirty.”

  Steck moved aside for me to pass, pulled the door shut as he backed out, said, “This way, sir,” and started down the corridor a mile a minute.

  I called to him, “Hold it, Steck,” and he braked and turned.

  “You look harassed,” I told him. He did. He was an inch taller than me, but thinner. His pale sad face was so long and narrow that he looked taller than he was. His black tie was a little crooked. I added, “You must have things to do.”

  “Yes, sir, certainly, I have duties.”

  “Sure. Just show me my room.”

  “Mr. Jarrell said to take you around, sir.”

  “You can do that later, if you can work it in. At the moment I need a room. I want to gargle.”

  “Yes, sir. This way, sir.”

  I followed him down the corridor and around a corner to an elevator. I asked if there were stairs and was told that there were three, one off the lounge, one in the corridor, and one for service in the rear. Also three elevators. The one we were in was gold-plated, or possibly solid. On the upper floor we went left, then right, and near the end of the hall he opened a door and bowed me in. He followed, to tell me about the phones. A ring would be for the green one, from the outside world. A buzz would be for the black one, from somewhere inside, for instance from Mr. Jarrell. I would use that one to get Steck when I was ready to be taken around. I thanked him out.

  The room was twelve by sixteen, two windows with Venetians, a little frilly but not bad, mostly blue and lemon-yellow except the rugs, which were tan with dark brown stripes. The bed was okay, and so was the bathroom. Under ordinary circumstances I would have used the green phone to ring Wolfe and report arrival, but I skipped it, not wanting to rub it in. After unpacking, taking my time, deciding not to shave, washing my hands, and straightening my tie, I got out my notebook, sat by a window, and turned to the list of names:

  Mrs. Otis Jarrell (Trella)

  Lois Jarrell, daughter by first wife

  Wyman Jarrell, son by ditto

  Mrs. Wyman Jarrell (Susan)

  Roger Foote, Trella’s brother

  Nora Kent, stenographer

  James L. Eber, ex-secretary

  Corey Brigham, friend of family who queered deal

  The last two didn’t live there, but it seemed likely that they would need attention if I was going to get anywhere, which was doubtful. If Susan was really a snake, and if the only way to earn a fee was to get her bounced out of the house and the family, leaving her husband behind, it would take a lot of doing. My wristwatch said there was still forty minutes before cocktail time. I returned the notebook to my bag, the small one, which contained a few personal items not appropriate for Alan Green, locked the bag, left the room, found the stairs, and descended to the lower floor.

  It would be inaccurate to say I got lost five times in the next quarter of an hour, since you can’t get lost when you have no destination, but I certainly got confused. Neither of the architects had had any use for a straightaway, but they had had conflicting i
deas on how to handle turns and corners. When I found myself passing an open door for the third time, recognizing it by the view it gave of a corner of a grand piano, and the blah of a radio or TV, with no notion of how I got there, I decided to call it off and make for the front terrace, but a voice came through to my back. “Is that you, Wy?”

  I backtracked and stepped through into what, as I learned later, they called the studio.

  “I’m Alan Green,” I said. “Finding my way around.”

  She was on a couch, stretched out from the waist down, with her upper half propped against cushions. Since she was too old for either Lois or Susan, though by no means aged, she must be Trella, the marital affliction. There was a shade too much of her around the middle and above the neck-say six or eight pounds. She was a blue-eyed blonde, and her face had probably been worthy of notice before she had buried the bones too deep by thickening the stucco. What showed below the skirt hem of her blue dress-from the knees on down-was still worthy of notice. While I noticed it she was reaching for a remote-control gadget, which was there beside her, to turn off the TV.

  She took me in. “Secretary,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I acknowledged. “Just hired by your husband-if you’re Mrs. Otis Jarrell.”

  “You don’t look like a secretary.”

  “I know, it’s a handicap.” I smiled at her. She invited smiles. “I try to act like one.”

  She put up a hand to pat a yawn-a soft little hand. “Damn it, I’m still half asleep. Television is better than a pill, don’t you think so?” She patted the couch. “Come and sit down. What made you think I’m Mrs. Otis Jarrell?”

  I stayed put. “To begin with, you’re here. You couldn’t be Miss Lois Jarrell because you must be married. You couldn’t be Mrs. Wyman Jarrell because I’ve got the impression that my employer feels a little cool about his daughter-in-law and it seemed unlikely he would feel cool about you.”

  “Where did you get the impression?”

  “From him. When he told me not to discuss his business affairs with anyone, including members of the family, I thought he put some emphasis on his daughter-in-law.”

  “Why must I be married?”

  I smiled again. “You’ll have to pardon me because you asked. Seeing you, and knowing what men like, I couldn’t believe that you were still at large.”

  “Very nice.” She was smiling back. “Very nice. My God, I don’t have to pardon you for that. You don’t talk like a secretary, either.” She pushed the remote-control gadget aside. “Sit down. Do you like leg of lamb?”

  I felt that a little braking was required. It was all very well to get on a friendly basis with the mistress of the house as soon as possible, since that might be useful in trapping the snake, and the smiling and sit-downing was very nice, but her concern about feeding the new secretary right after only three minutes with him was going too far too quick. Since I didn’t look a secretary or talk like one, I thought I had better at least act like one, and I was facing up to it when help came.

  There were footsteps in the corridor and a man entered. Three steps in he stopped short, at sight of me. He turned to her. “Oh. I don’t need to wake you.”

  “Not today, Wy. This is your father’s new secretary. Green. Alan Green. We were getting acquainted.”

  “Oh.” He went to her, leaned over, and kissed her on the lips. It didn’t strike me as a typical filial operation, but of course she wasn’t his mother. He straightened up. “You don’t look as sleepy as usual. Your eyes don’t look sleepy. You’ve had a drink.”

  “No, I haven’t.” She was smiling at him. She gestured at me. “He woke me up. We’re going to like him.”

  “Are we?” He turned, moved, and extended a hand. “I’m Wyman Jarrell.”

  He was two inches shorter than me and two inches narrower across the shoulders. He had his father’s brown eyes, the rest of him came from somebody else, particularly his tight little ears and thin straight nose. There were three deep creases down the middle of his brow, which at his age, twenty-seven, seemed precocious. He was going on. “I’ll be talking with you, I suppose, but that’s up to my father. I’ll be seeing you.” He turned his back on me.

  I headed for the door, was told by Mrs. Jarrell there would be cocktails in the lounge at six-thirty, halted to thank her, and left. As I moved down the corridor toward the front a female in uniform came around a corner and leered at me as she approached. Taken by surprise, I leered back. Evidently, I thought, this gang doesn’t stand on formality. I was told later by somebody that Freda had been born with a leer, but I never went into it with Freda.

  I had stepped out to the front terrace for a moment during my tour, so had already met the dogwoods and glanced around the layout of redwood slabs and chrome and plastic, and now I crossed to the parapet for a look down at Fifth Avenue and across to the park. The sun was smack in my eyes, and I put a hand up to shade them for a view of a squirrel perched on a limb high in a tree, and was in that pose when a voice came from behind.

  “Who are you, Sitting Bull?”

  I pivoted. A girl all in white with bare tanned arms and a bare tanned throat down to the start of the curves and a tanned face with dimples and greenish brown eyes and a pony tail was coming. If you are thinking that is too much to take in with a quick glance, I am a detective and a trained observer. I had time not only to take her in but also to think, Good Lord, if that’s Susan and she’s a snake I’m going to take up herpetology, if that’s the word, and I can look it up.

  She was still five steps off when I spoke. “Me good Indian. Me good friend white man, only you’re not a man and you’re not white. I was looking at a squirrel. My name is Alan Green. I am the new secretary, hired today. I was told to get my bearings and have been trying to. I have met your husband.”

  “Not my husband, you haven’t. I’m a spinster named Lois. Do you like squirrels?”

  “It depends. A squirrel with integrity and charm, with no bad habits, a squirrel who votes right, who can be counted on in a pinch, I like that squirrel.” At close quarters they weren’t what I would call dimples, just little cheek dips that caught shadows if the light angle was right. “I hope I don’t sound fussy.”

  “Come here a minute.” She led me off to the right, put a hand on the tiled top of the parapet, and with the other pointed across the avenue. “See that tree? See the one I mean?”

  “The one that lost an arm.”

  “That’s it. One day in March a squirrel was skipping around on it, up near the top. I was nine years old. My father had given my brother a rifle for his birthday. I went and got the rifle and loaded it, and came out and stood here, right at this spot, and waited until the squirrel stopped to rest, and shot it. It tumbled off. On the way down it bumped against limbs twice. I yelled for Wy, my brother, and he came and I showed it to him, there on the ground not moving, and he-but the rest doesn’t matter. With anyone I might possibly fall in love with I like to start off by telling him the worst thing I ever did, and anyway you brought it up by saying you were looking at a squirrel. Now you know the worst, unless you think it’s worse that several years later I wrote a poem called ‘Requiem for a Rodent.’ It was published in my school paper.”

  “Certainly it’s worse. Running it down by calling it a rodent, even though it was one.”

  She nodded. “I’ve suspected it myself. Some day I’ll get analyzed and find out.” She waved it away, into the future. “Where did you ever get the idea of being a secretary?”

  “In a dream. Years ago. In the dream I was the secretary of a wealthy pirate. His beautiful daughter was standing on the edge of a cliff shooting at a gopher, which is a rodent, down on the prairie, and when she hit it she felt so sorry for it that she jumped off the cliff. I was down below and caught her, saving her life, and it ended romantically. So I became a secretary.”

  Her brows were lifted, opening her eyes as wide as they would go. “I can’t imagine how a pirate’s daughter happened to be standin
g on a cliff on top of a prairie. You must have been dreaming.”

  No man could stop a conversation as dead in its tracks as that. It takes a woman. But at least she had the decency to start up another one. With her eyes back to normal, she cocked her head a little to the side and said, “You know, I’m bothered. I’m sure I’ve seen you before somewhere, and I can’t remember where, and I always remember people. Where was it? Have you forgotten too?”

  I had known that might come from one or more of them. My picture hadn’t been in the papers as often as the president of Egypt’s, or even Nero Wolfe’s, and the latest had been nearly a year ago, but I had known it might happen. I grinned at her. I hadn’t been grinning in any published picture. One thing, it gave me a chance to recover the ball she had taken away from me.

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t forget. I only forget faces I don’t care to remember. The only way I can account for it, you must have seen me in a dream.”

  She laughed. “All right, now we’re even. I wish I could remember. Of course I may have seen you in a theater or restaurant, but if that’s it and I do remember I won’t tell you, because it would puff you up. Only you’ll need puffing up after you’ve been here a while. He’s my dear father, but he must be terrible to work for. I don’t see-Hi, Roger. Have you met Alan Green? Dad’s new secretary. Roger Foote.”

  I had turned. Trella’s brother bore as little resemblance to her as Wyman Jarrell did to his father. He was big and broad and brawny, with no stuffing at all between the skin and the bones of his big wide face. If his size and setup hadn’t warned me I might have got some knuckles crushed by his big paw; as it was, I gave as good as I got and it was a draw.

  “Muscle man,” he said. “My congratulations. Trust the filly to arch her neck at you. Ten to one she told you about the squirrel.”