The Indigo Necklace Read online

  Captain Jonas turned into Royal and drove at the high speed all drivers seem to think au fait in the narrow streets of the Quarter. Under the old iron balconies people seemed to move languidly, or gathered in limp, aimless clumps. Wide treeless Canal Street was blistering and nakedly modern in its expanse of efficient concrete. Captain Jonas put on his siren and we sped past red lights. Even the siren sounded hot.

  “How did you happen to find the nurse?” Patrick asked Captain Jonas.

  “Routine check-up. Hospitals, and so on.”

  “Why didn’t they report her before this?”

  “She was brought in less than an hour ago. Dead drunk.”

  “Drunk?” I said.

  ‘That’s right, Mrs. Abbott. Sorry to have to drag you along to see a woman in that state.”

  I had seen drunks before, though I’d never seen at close hand a drunk black nurse. His politeness seemed rather quaint in these days of serious drinking.

  The Captain asked, “Would you two care to eat lunch with me at Galatoire’s?”

  “Oh, it’s so early!” I said.

  “It won’t be so early by the time we get fed,” Captain Jonas said. His manner became slightly playful. “I want to have a good long talk with you, young lady. I think you know more than you’re telling. I’m not saying you’re deliberately holding out on me, but maybe if we could all sit down quietly and have a good meal together you’d remember things you’ve kind of forgot.”

  “A good meal in the middle of the day just makes me sleepy, Captain Jonas.”

  Patrick said nothing at all. He was looking ahead as the detective sped along, using his siren to clear the traffic. We were soon at the hospital and were swiftly ushered up to the ward where a middle-sized Negress lay on a white bed. She wore what was once a white dress and also a string of blue-glass beads, but she was not Victorine Delacroix.

  “Well, that’s that,” Jonas said, as we went back out on the hot sidewalk and got into the hot car. He drove back toward Canal. “I’m going to lunch. You haven’t said yes, but I might insist that you two join me, Mrs. Abbott.”

  “You won’t have to,” Patrick said. “We’ll come.”

  “I can’t go to lunch without my bag and things, Captain Jonas,” I said. “I’ve got to go home first.”

  “If you do we’d have to stand in line, Mrs. Abbott.” Jonas’s jaw looked hard. He was not going to stand in any queue just for my sake.

  Patrick said, “Why don’t we pick up a cab and go home for a lipstick while you go ahead to the restaurant?”

  The detective agreed to this and dropped us off at Carondelet and Canal. We were lucky and got a taxi at once. I complained all the way home via Chartres Street about having to lunch with the policeman. The heat was getting worse every minute. The tree-shaded benches on Jackson Square were deserted. Shades and shutters were closed in all the houses. When we got out of the cab a boat was whistling on the river and even its siren sounded weary and hot. I felt cross and oppressed.

  “How could you?” I stormed at Patrick, as he let us in.

  “How could we not have? He’s the Law.”

  “I guess Jonas thinks that I’ll babble something if he buys me a cocktail. I don’t know anything. Do you think he thinks that drunk woman was Victorine, and that I held out on him for some reason?”

  “Walk in, Little Lady,” Patrick said.

  He made me furious. But I didn’t say anything because Toby Wick was sauntering toward us with a handful of mint.

  He waved it and smiled his sleepy all-knowing smile. “Hiya, Abbotts. Come on into my place and I’ll make you a julep.”

  “Nice day for a julep,” Patrick said.

  Toby was looking at me, being himself once again, that feline look of secret mockery all over his face.

  “I’m sorry, but we haven’t the time,” I said.

  “I don’t know why not,” Patrick said. “I’ll go make a phone call and we’ll be there.”

  “You can phone from my place,” Toby said.

  “It’s business and my notes are upstairs,” Patrick lied.

  “Well, you don’t have to help him phone, do you, Honey-Eyes?”

  I controlled a couple of squirms. “We came home so I could change, Toby. Pat’s memory lapses.”

  I was cross, but Patrick chose to ignore it.

  “I lapse all over when somebody says julep, Jeanie.”

  “Well, you know where I live,” Toby said.

  He went out the front door, walking like a big cat, his head swaying a little. We went up to our apartment the front way. The lid of the big mahogany chest at the back of the hall had been pulled away from the wall and stood open. We went back and looked inside. It was empty. “I suppose the police opened it,” I said, shuddering as I thought why. Upstairs Patrick headed straight for the kitchenette. Tice’s Practice of Medicine, Volume X, was gone from the drawer he’d dropped it in. He tried all the others. It was missing. I supposed that the police had taken it.

  He stooped and picked up two tiny dark things. He held them toward me on the palm of his hand. I sniffed at them.

  “That’s dill,” I said. “It grows in the herb garden. That’s the seed.”

  Patrick got another envelope from the desk. One of mine—and paper getting very hard to get!

  “Did they also get your blue bead sliver, dear?”

  “It’s in my pocket.”

  “Look, what will you do about lunching with Captain Jonas?”

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me,” Patrick said. He went to the phone, rang up the restaurant, and left word that we would be a little late.

  “You get some funny ideas,” I complained, unzipping my dress and stepping out of it. I took off my slip, then everything, and managed a very quick shower. I put on a fresh bra and step-ins and hunted out another slip. This weather was certainly death on a limited wartime wardrobe. I would wear my white shantung which looked so cool and nice with my emerald engagement ring. I put on my imitation-emerald ear-hoops, my green-linen pumps, wondering as usual how soon this humid heat they had down here would ruin my New Mexican sun-tan which now served me for stockings. I put on the dress, zipped it, fixed my hair and my mouth. Patrick went into the bathroom and came out with his hair damp from the shower, in another set of summer army cottons. “Look, I meant to tell you about Ava, Pat.” I chose some white and yellow flowers for my hair instead of a hat. “She’s got something on Toby Wick. Instead of giving him yearning glances every minute she’s got him eating out of her hand.”

  “Maybe he’s just noticed how attractive she is, Jeanie.”

  I felt a jealous twinge, but I said, dispassionately, I hope, “It’s more than that. She’s snared him. She’s so sure of him all at once she’s smug. You should have seen her in the drawing room, before you and Jonas came in.”

  Patrick got into his coat, or blouse as the Marines call it. “Ava would be happy with Toby,” he said.

  “My goodness! Nobody would.”

  “She’s in love with him, isn’t she?”

  “Love. Animal attraction, you mean.”

  “You against that?”

  “Well, it’s nice to like people along with it....”

  “Very nice.”

  He kissed me. I said, “Idiot!” A little time passed.

  Patrick then took a look around the apartment. I straightened up my flowers and patched up my lipstick again and said, “We-ll...”

  “Look at Uncle George and Aunt Dollie” Patrick said, continuing to prowl around the place. “Was that a strictly spiritual union, do you think? But they get along fine. Maybe Toby and Ava will be the same. You oughtn’t to theorize about such things. Naturally Toby doesn’t want to get hooked, no man does.” I winced. “But Ava is a gorgeous-looking gal and he’ll be glad. Let’s go, Jeanie.”

  I picked up the green bag which matched my shoes.

  “Pat,” I said, “Toby killed Helen Clary!

  “I’m sure of it. Remember the grass on his shoes?
Ava knows, and she’s holding it over him. She wouldn’t care if he did. All she wants is Toby. But Toby wants Carol, so he did away with Helen, using that curare extract that only doctors know much about as yet so that it would point to Roger Clary at once and get him electrocuted or whatever they do in Louisiana, and that way he would get Carol. But somehow Ava found out the truth and so Toby is hooked. Please don’t look as though I’ve got no sense, dear. You haven’t been around here day after day seeing Ava eyeing Toby like a sick cat and then suddenly today being all triumphant and glowing and smug. Very coincidental, as your friend Captain Jonas would say. I don’t think Ava herself would kill her, though. I mean she might kill Helen so that Roger and Carol would marry and leave her a clear field with Toby Wick, but...”

  “If you don’t mind,” Patrick said, with an eyebrow up, “we’ll simplify everything by saying Aunt Dollie did it and go and drink juleps.”

  “Don’t make jokes! Maybe he’ll put curare in the juleps....”

  “He won’t,” Patrick said, taking my elbow and marching me toward a gallery exit. “Wick may be a wolf, but he’s no fool. He won’t bump us off in his own apartment with the police hovering round.”

  We halted at the top of the gallery steps. Aunt Rita was on her way up, followed by a warlike Paulette.

  “Did those policemen upset your apartment?” Aunt Rita asked, as she reached the top. Paulette had politely gone down to give gangway. We said they hadn’t. “I’m glad.” Aunt Rita was a little breathless from the climb. “They upset some of the rooms frightfully. It makes so much work for poor Hugo and Paulette.” She dismissed Paulette, who said yes’m and sauntered across the courtyard toward the kitchen. “They searched the drawing room and library after you left. They looked in everything. Do you think they believed that Victorine was really hiding somewhere on the premises?”

  “It’s what they call routine, Miss Clary,” Patrick said. Then he said, “If you remember, you’ve offered several times to show us the house. Could you manage it this afternoon?” Her eyebrows rose, and no wonder. I gave Patrick’s jacket a jerk. “I should warn you that I shall also be searching your house, Miss Clary. But nothing will be left in disorder.”

  The old lady’s hands remained linked together in perfect quiet. Only her black eyes showed that she was shocked and offended.

  “In private life I am a detective,” Patrick said. “Roger has asked me to help him.”

  Aunt Rita looked bewildered. Slowly her manner changed.

  “A detective?” she asked. “But how very fortunate! Of course, I will gladly do anything you think might help Roger, Lieutenant Abbott. But the house has already been searched. I assure you they overlooked nothing. They beat about the shrubbery. They went meticulously through the storehouse. They looked in every chest and wardrobe. They tapped on all the walls and the floors. They took books out of their shelves. Victorine couldn’t possibly be on the place.”

  “There might be some clue to her whereabouts outside the house, which has been overlooked, and which I might have the good luck to find, Miss Clary.”

  Aunt Rita nodded slowly and then, with the first break I had seen in her composure, she said, “It would be splendid if you could find her, Lieutenant Abbott. The police suspect Roger. He could not possibly have done a thing like that. Rogers so kind. It was like him to bring Helen here, where she would have every comfort and kindness and not be distressed, as people even in her condition can be, even for a short time, if in some unsympathetic institution or other. Once in Dr. Postgate’s hospital she would have been perfectly cared for. Roger had her here for only that reason. If he could have guessed—no, no, he is too kind.”

  Patrick was silent.

  She drew herself up.

  “I’m keeping you, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

  Toby had the julep glasses frosting in the icebox but suggested showing us his apartment before we had the drinks. I had a flick of conscience—though not overwhelming—because Captain Jonas was waiting in the restaurant, but I was glad that Patrick wanted to see Toby’s place. It was an amazing set-up, in this house, with not an old thing in it, save one mirror and the monogrammed-and-marguerited ironwork on a little curving stairs which led to the bedroom overhead. There was a costly modern bath, a tricky kitchenette. The deep carpets and chairs and the walls, and even the hardwood furniture, were all in a creamy fawn color. Toby was rather that color himself, as he padded proudly about, showing us this and that. The antique mirror in the living room was one of the finest I had seen in the house. “It was far too good to put in the storehouse,” Toby admitted, smiling as if that was funny. “The rest of the furniture was that early New Orleans mahogany stuff which weighs tons and reminds you of death. I guess you’ve got that stuff in your place, probably. It’s all over the house. I told Aunt Rita she’d have to get it out of here before I’d move in.” We were back downstairs and he was fetching the glasses, frosted snow-white with vividly green mint blowing out the top. “Rye or bourbon in your juleps?”

  Patrick said anything but rum.

  We chose bourbon.

  Toby himself drank absinthe. He had chilled an old-fashioned cocktail glass and had it about a third full of cracked ice. He let the absinthe drip down on the ice drop by drop and kept stirring it with a spoon all the time, till it looked frosty.

  I had not yet picked up my julep, which of course was scented with its green fresh mint, so the smell of the absinthe came distinctly. It eluded and fascinated me. Suddenly I recognized it. It was the smell I had smelled last night just before I’d been bashed on the head by that curtain pole!

  Medical book, I mean.

  XI

  THOUGH WE drank the juleps and ran, forty-five minutes passed from the time Lieutenant of the U.S. Marines and Mrs. Patrick Abbott parted from Captain of Detectives Jonas on Canal Street and rejoined him at the French restaurant, Galatoire’s. The detective had drunk two glasses of Dubonnet wine but he was beginning to be fretful when we arrived. All traces of the same vanished, however, when the waiter set before us a wondrous collection of crabmeat and hors d’oeuvres called, I believe, a Dinkelspiel Salad. It was too late, Jonas said, for us to drink an apéritif and still allow the proper amount of time to go by before we ate this first course, but he recommended it just the same, and shook his head disconsolately when we confessed the juleps. Maybe juleps dim the palate but I can’t imagine how the dish could have tasted more distinguished. I began to feel very kindly toward Captain Jonas. He was quite a nice guy. His face was too wide at the bottom and his mouth was too thin and his eyes were uncanny above the liverish pouches, but he himself was okay. I felt mean when I remembered being annoyed this A.M. because Patrick had paid too quickly for the coffee and doughnuts at the coffee stand.

  The restaurant was as full as possible of people eating, and hurrying waiters, and the clatter of cutlery and plates, and conflicting elegant aromas, but fans swirled on the lofty ceiling and there was coolness or its illusion. The detective was soon saying that he didn’t mind our being late. He had used the time to collect his faculties, get a slant on the case. He had, of course, continued to be in touch with headquarters. There was no further word from Victorine, but the contents of the drawer taken from her room on Dauphine Street had been analyzed as a mixture of garden herbs only, not messed up with the dried toads and snakes and fungi which voodoo practice was said to require. There was a lot of hooey talked about voodoo. His men—perhaps we had heard?—had thoroughly searched the Clary house, including Wick’s apartment, and nothing suspicious had been brought to light. They had left rather a mess, thanks to haste, except in Wick’s place which Jonas, with gleaming eyes, guaranteed would not look as if it had been entered.

  I remembered, as Jonas talked, that while I was sipping the julep and thinking about the absinthe Toby held in one soft white hand, that Patrick had kept probing for dear life and that Toby evidently didn’t realize it. He had tossed out insolent questions and Patrick’s diffident replies had been
questions themselves which Toby had not recognized, I had felt with satisfaction that after all Patrick did suspect Toby. Or maybe it was the julep. A good drink made you think over-clearly, for a while, and afterwards what you thought and said at that time was neither clear nor important.

  “They didn’t go through your place,” Jonas said. “I figured you did that yourself. You knew it was murder before I did.”

  The police had not searched our apartment!

  Then who took the book? Who took Tice on Mental Disorders, Volume X?

  Patrick nodded, mentioned that the search had upset Aunt Rita on account of the work of cleaning up, and the detective said he was sorry but that they were pressed for time, the force being short as it was. “We were honestly wasting our time fooling with Wick’s place. I don’t see why he would be mixed up in the thing in any way, but he’s the kind that takes watching.

  “His name,” Patrick said, “isn’t Wick.”

  Captain Jonas had a quick look over one shoulder.

  “You know that, Lieutenant Abbott?”

  Patrick said, spearing a piece of hard-boiled egg deliciously tricked up with caviar, “I can’t seem to recall his real name, Captain Jonas. I’ve been puzzling it all along.” When Jonas didn’t fall for it at once, Patrick said, “It seems to me it wasn’t too different from Wick, though.”

  More people were coming in. The head waiter was ushering a tweedy woman in a wonderful hat like those you see in London to a white-covered table in the corner of the room. New Orleans restaurants always have a few wonderful old ladies.

  Jonas looked about cautiously again.

  “It’s Villers. He changed it when he came to New Orleans.”

  “Two years ago now?” Patrick murmured.

  “Nearer three. I didn’t know you knew about him, Lieutenant!”

  Patrick merely wagged his head. He was pretending all along, and I knew it. Or was he? “It had something to do with his bouncing somebody out of his bar in Chicago....”

  “Not out of it. In it. The trouble was that the guy he bounced was the son of one of Chicago’s prosperous politicians and papa ran our Toby out of town.”