The Guilty Are Afraid

There was a longish pause. I looked through the glass door of the booth and admired a blonde girl, wearing a French swimsuit, who came into the drug store, climbed up on a high stool and ordered a hamburger with onions. I was glad I wasn’t going to be the boy to be taking her out this night.

The cool, efficient voice said, “Mrs. Creedy will see you at three o’clock if that will be convenient.”

I smiled into the receiver.

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.

I walked out of the drug store, got into the Buick and driving slowly, I drifted along the crowded promenade, packed with glittering Cadillacs and Clippers, until I was within sight of the Creedy’s residence. I pulled into a space between two cars, lit a cigarette and let the sun, coming through the open car window, add another layer to my sunburn.

At five minutes to three, I started the engine and drove along the private road leading to the Creedy estate. The two guards came over as I pulled up before the barrier.

“Mrs. Creedy,” I said to one of them.

He looked me over. I could see my rolled-up shirtsleeves and slacks were causing him pain, but he decided against making remarks. He walked over to the barrier and raised it. There was no list to be consulted, no telephoning the house, no nothing. Mrs. Creedy wasn’t important, but ask for her husband and then see the trouble you’d buy yourself.

I drove up the now-familiar drive, past the massed rosebeds and the Chinese gardeners, who had just finished the third bed of begonias and were sitting on their haunches, staring at the begonias as if willing them to remain on their best behaviour and produce large and continuous blooms.

I parked the car next to a big black Rolls-Royce, got out and walked up the steps, along the terrace to the front door. The butler opened the door two minutes after I had rung the bell. He gave me his steady, searching stare, said, “Mr. Brandon?” But not in the way an old friend greets another.

“Yes,” I said. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Creedy.”

He took me down a passage, through a door, up some stairs, along another passage, then opened a door and stood aside.

“You should buy yourself a Vespa,” I said, as I moved past him. “It would save your legs.”

He went away smoothly as if he were on wheels, not looking back and with no change of expression. Frivolous remarks were a sprinkle of rain in a desert to him. I walked into a small room, fitted as an office with filing cabinets and a desk. At the desk was the girl I had seen at the inquest. She was wearing the same grey linen frock, set off by white cuffs and a white collar, and, of course, the rimless glasses.

“Mr. Brandon?”

“How did you know?”

“I recognized you.”

“Oh, yes: we were at the inquest together.”

She flushed a little and looked pretty and slightly confused.

“Will you sit down? Mrs. Creedy won’t keep you long.”

I sat down on an upright chair and tried to look less like a tourist than I knew I looked. I decided I should have gone back to the bungalow and put on my best suit: a shirt and slacks were scarcely the right attire to be in in a place like this.

The girl busied herself with a typewriter. Every now and then she looked over the top of her glasses at me as if to assure herself she was seeing a man in shirtsleeves and slacks and wasn’t just imagining it.

At a quarter past three, I decided not to be pushed around any longer.

I got to my feet.

“Well, thanks for the chair,” I said, with a wide, friendly smile. “It’s been nice breathing the same air as you. It’s been nice too to see how quick you are on the typewriter. Tell Mrs. C. any time she would like to talk to me I can be found in the bungalow out at Arrow Point.” And I started towards the door.

I thought that would get some action and it did.

“Mr. Brandon . . .”

I paused, turned and looked pleasantly inquiring.

“Yes?”

“I think Mrs. Creedy will see you now. Please let me go and ask her.”

She looked flustered and worried. In spite of her rimless glasses she was a pretty thing and I didn’t want to distress her.

“Sure, go ahead,” I said, and looked at my watch. “I’ll be out of here in two minutes, so let’s snap it up.”

She crossed the room, opened the door, went into a room and closed the door behind her.

She was gone fifty-five seconds by my watch, then she appeared, holding the door open.

“Mrs. Creedy will see you now.”

As I passed her to enter the room I gave her a quick wink. It may have been my imagination, but I fancied her eyelid flickered in return.

Bridgette Creedy was standing in the bay window that overlooked the rose garden. She was wearing a pale green shirt and yellow slacks. She had the figure for slacks and she knew it.

She turned slowly the way they are taught to turn in Hollywood and gave me a careful, cold stare. This was scene 234 of a heartthrob movie directed by Cecil B. de Mille, complete with the ornate room, rose beds seen through the window and the slightly fading actress who, in the past, has won a number of Oscars and is still considered pretty sound, but possibly slipping.