Safer Dead

‘I thought everyone knew her. My goodness! Even if I did have her money, I would know better than to make an exhibition of myself the way she does. Why Piero doesn’t go down on hands and knees when he shows her to her table I can’t imagine. He does everything else.’

I leaned forward and trying, without a lot of success, to keep my voice from shouting, repeated, ‘Who - is - she?’

‘I’m not deaf,’ Suzy said, recoiling. ‘Cornelia Van Blake if you must know.’ She lifted her elegant shoulders. ‘I should have thought even someone from New York would have known that.’

‘Cornelia Van Blake?’

I stared at Suzy, frowning. Where had I heard the name before? In what connection had I heard it?

‘Does she live in Tampa City?’

‘Of course. She has a house on West Summit and an estate of ten acres. In case you don’t know, West Summit is the high tone district of Tampa City. Only millionaires can afford to live there.’

Millionaires.

I felt a sudden creepy sensation crawl up my spine.

Of course! I remembered now. Cornelia Van Blake was the millionairess Joan Nichols had met in Paris. I remembered Janet Shelley’s exact words: Joan had an amazing talent for making friends with people with money. When she was in Paris she got friendly with Mrs.

Cornelia Van Blake, the millionaire’s wife. Don’t ask me how she did it, but she did. Twice she went to Mrs. Van Blake’s hotel and had dinner with her.

I looked again at the dark girl who was scanning the menu that the maître d’hôtel was holding for her. She didn’t look the type to me who would fraternize with an unsuccessful showgirl: she didn’t look the type to fraternize with anyone. If she ever sat next to an iceberg I would bet even money the iceberg would be the first to stoke up the fire.

‘Which one of those well fed guys is her husband?’ I asked.

Suzy wriggled impatiently.

‘My dear man, she is a widow. Her husband died last year. Don’t you know anything?’

‘That was his hard luck,’ I said, and making an effort, I dragged my eyes away from Mrs. Cornelia Van Blake and continued to bone my river trout.

I found I wasn’t hungry any more - anyway, not for the trout.

CHAPTER NINE

I

It wasn’t until Suzy and I had been dancing for some little time and had broken off to go to the bar for a drink that I brought Mrs. Cornelia Van Blake up again as a subject for conversation. Suzy had discovered I could dance. I haven’t a lot of talent beside concocting a good yarn, but dancing is one of my specialities. Suzy was pretty good herself, and after we had done one circuit of the floor, she unbent enough to say I was good. A second circuit found her unbending even more, and at the end of a particularly dashing tango, she was behaving almost like a human being.

‘Let’s get outside two big highballs,’ I said, ‘then we’ll come back and show them how it really should be done.’

‘Where did you learn to dance like that, Chet?’ she asked, linking her arm through mine.

Chet.

Well, it takes different ways and means to break them down. I wondered under what conditions, if any, Cornelia Van Blake would break down.

‘My dear woman, it’s not something you learn; it’s something you’re born with,’ I said airily.

Suzy giggled.

‘That serves me right. All right, I apologize for being high hat, but the men Hart asks me to take out sometimes are really the limit. You can’t imagine.’

‘Think nothing of it. A girl’s got to keep her dignity if she doesn’t keep anything else.’

She gave me an old-fashioned look.

‘And don’t think because you can dance, there’s anything else to it, because there isn’t.’

I pushed open the bar door.

‘Don’t start screaming for help until you’re being crowded,’ I said. ‘Who said I wanted anything else?’

‘I know an opening gambit when I hear one,’ she returned and climbed up on a stool and flapped her hands at the barman.

‘Two highballs,’ I said, climbing up on the stool beside her. I took a quick look around the crowded bar in the hope of seeing Mrs. Van Blake again, but she wasn’t in the room. ‘I’ve often thought it would be nice to be a millionaire. If I wasn’t naturally lazy, I’d do something about it,’ I said after I had paid three times too much for the highballs. ‘Take that Van Blake girl. How much did you say she was worth?’

‘I didn’t say. No one knows. Her husband is supposed to have left her five million, but everyone thinks there was more than that. He invented some gadget to do with oil drilling, and they say the royalties on that alone are worth thousands a year. She’s lousy with money. Van Blake put the money up for this club. He had a controlling interest in it, but when he died, Cornelia sold out to Royce. He owns and runs it now.’

‘I wonder what he paid her?’ I said, looking around the plush bar.

Suzy shrugged.