Invitation to Murder. Leslie Ford

so dead against sleeping pills. He raised hell the other night when Alla offered me something she uses. But if I don’t tell him I’m taking them—”

      She broke off, pushing her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know what’s happened to me, Fish. I’ve gone all to pieces, all of a sudden.” She shook her head quickly. “Just leave me alone a minute. I’ll be all right. Go on and wash your face, and come over when my child gets there. Go on . . . please.”

      She pulled the door shut. Fish Finlay stood there, listening to her pacing back and forth on the balcony. Then he heard her go down the stairs and the car door slam. He went back and looked out of the window, his face grave, and saw her car reach the house. She got out and ran quickly around the black car and up the steps. He looked up at the front bedroom. The dressing-room door was closed. That pleasant interlude—casual rather than illicit, he thought suddenly—probably accounted for some of her distress. He started to turn away when Dodo flashed into the room from the other side. She stopped, balancing herself for a moment, before she threw her arms around the heavy post at the corner of the bed and clung to it, breaking away almost immediately as a maid in a black uniform and white apron came in.

      He went across the room and stood looking out of the hayloft window at the end, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. De Gradoff’s opposition to the sleeping pills, so in reverse of what had seemed to be the pattern. And he’d made her go to the doctor, she said. Fish sharpened his attention then, seeing de Gradoff strolling around from the back of the house, in a yellow sports jacket and brown slacks now. He glanced casually at Dodo’s car and continued his stroll calmly down out of sight among the roses. He’d made her go to the doctor, but he was certainly controlling his impatience to learn the doctor’s verdict, Fish thought.

      As he reached down to get his bags and go find the drains, a glint of gold on the sofa caught his eye. He went over. It was a compact that had slipped out of Dodo’s bag, and under it was a small green bottle with a black screw cap. He picked it up.

      “One every four hours for sleep when necessary,” the label read. “Dr. M. McNair.” Under it was a red sticker. “It is necessary for your physician to authorize the refilling of this prescription.” He unscrewed the cap and poured the twelve small capsules out into his hand. They were the mildest form of sedation the doctor could give her. She could take the whole batch at a gulp without serious consequences.

      He put them back in the bottle, dropped it into his pocket, thought for a moment, went over to the telephone and picked up the book. Dr. Malcolm McNair, 24 Roger William Street, 684. He picked up the phone, heard a woman’s voice and started to put it down when the operator came in, in front of the woman’s voice dribbling steadily on about a dress sale.

      He gave the number. Another woman’s voice came on in front of the backdrop of the dress sale. “Dr. McNair’s office.”

      “Does Dr. McNair have evening hours?”

      “By appointment. He’s in tonight. He could see you at 9:15.”

      “I’ll be there. Put me down, please.”

      He put the phone back quickly before she could ask his name, and stood there with his hand on it. Caxson Reeves might know Dr. McNair and give him a green light to ask questions and get answers. But if the voice of the anonymous woman could filter through the old-fashioned phone system, so could his, no telling to whose ears.

      He got his bag and went through into the kitchen. Dodo had been far more upset coming out of it than she had been looking across the courtyard at Nikki and Alla Emlyn. He looked around. There was nothing he could see that could have upset her. He crossed the room and looked out the window over the sink. Below him was a vegetable garden, trim weedless squares enclosed with fruit trees neatly cordoned along iron pipes. Up beyond them, behind a high screen of lilac trees, were the greenhouses, the stronghold of the two old monsters, Vranek and McTaggert. He could see them now, perched on stepladders with orange-handled clippers, pruning a vine or tree espaliered along the inside of the roof, caught in the rays of the sun through the squares of glass opened high for ventilation.

      They looked more like gnomes than monsters, in their dusty blue denims and brown derby hats, slow-moving, methodical little men minding their own business in their own domain, hardly worth Dodo de Gradoff’s bitterness. But the whole setup was fantastic, of course, and bitterness hardly cares what food it eats.

      He heard a car come in then, hidden behind the lilacs, and saw one of the gardeners put his clippers down and lean out through the open square of the glass roof. Fish picked up his bag again and went through into a small foyer and on into a bedroom with a bath. He washed up and changed his shirt in concentrated silence, thinking about the dilemma that had faced him when Dodo wanted to know if she should tell de Gradoff about the Trust. What would he have done if the view of Nikki and Alla Emlyn hadn’t distracted her? Would he have said, “Don’t tell him?” Would he, in other words, have said, It’s okay if de Gradoff kills you, as long as he doesn’t hurt Jennifer? Was that what he had in mind?

      He shook his head and took a final swipe at his rusty short-clipped thatch, catching an unaccustomed full-length view of himself in the mirror on the bathroom door. He might not have patina, but at least he was a far cry from the driver of the battered truck in April in Virginia. He grinned in spite of himself as he went out into the hall and down the stairs.

      The woven cedar fence between the stables and the rim of purple beeches hid the blue convertible in front of the greenhouses from view on the ground level, just as the lilacs had hidden it from the kitchen window when Jan Vranek leaned out to look down at the disappointed face of the dark-haired girl behind the wheel.

      “Oh . . . I’ve missed him again!”

      She looked up and saw the dour face peering down at her.

      “Oh, Mr. Vranek! Hello! I’m looking for a friend of mine. A girl said she saw a New Jersey car come in here to Enniskerry. But you’ve forgotten me, haven’t you. I’m Jennifer Linton.” She opened the car door and got out. “May I come in and see the flowers?”

      The two old men looked at each other in wooden silence.

      “Mr. Vinlay at the stable,” Vranek said.

      The other nodded and went on with his work. Jan Vranek climbed down the ladder and trudged dourly along between the benches to the girl looking delightedly around her in the greenhouse door.