Free McNally's Secret by Lawrence Sanders Page B

nasty.”
    “That it is,” she said, nodding vigorously. “I-do-not-like-it-one-bit.”
    “I won’t take up any more of your time, Mrs. Marsden. Anyone else around I can talk to?”
    “Harry Smythe and his wife are out on the north terrace. Playing chess.”
    “Nice people?” I asked her.
    “I wouldn’t know, sir,” she said, the perfect servant.
    I found my way to the north terrace—the one in the shade—and walked into a family squabble. Nothing vulgar, but as I arrived he swept the chessboard clear with a sweep of his arm and she gave him a high-intensity glare. If looks could kill, he would have been dead on the scene. And these were the people chef Jean Cuvier had described as “cold”?
    I stooped to pick up a rook and a pawn, and set them upright on the board. “Checkmate,” I said with what I hoped was a soothing smile. It wasn’t.
    “And just who the hell are you?” he demanded in a BBC accent.
    I was tempted to give him a brash response like “Mickey Mouse” or “King Tut” but obviously neither of them was in the mood for levity.
    “Archibald McNally,” I said. “And you must be Doris and Harry Smythe. Surely Lady Horowitz told you I’d be around asking questions about her missing stamps.”
    “It’s got nothing to do with us,” the woman said in the surliest way imaginable. “So bug off.”
    Unbidden, I pulled up a chair, sat down, crossed my legs, and gave them a taste of the McNally insolence. “Of course it concerns you,” I said stonily. “You were on the premises when the Inverted Jennies disappeared. So naturally you are suspect. The theft has now been reported to the local authorities. If you refuse to answer my questions, I shall be forced to report your uncooperative attitude to Sergeant Al Rogoff, who is heading the official investigation. He has been known to make recalcitrant witnesses talk by beating them about the kidneys with a rubber truncheon.”
    I really thought I had gone too far, and they’d immediately dismiss me as a demented freak. But perhaps it was the influence of American movies and TV shows that caused them to stare at me in horrified astonishment, wondering if I might be telling the truth about the interrogative techniques of Florida cops.
    “We know absolutely nothing about it,” Harry Smythe said, tugging at his ridiculously wispy Vandyke.
    “Not a thing,” his wife chimed in.
    I looked at them. What a pair they were! Both long and stretched, all pale skin and tendons. Both wore their hair parted in the middle, but his was sparse and straw yellow while hers was thick chestnut and quite long. And both had the dazed eyes and clenched jaws of the luckless. I hoped Mrs. Marsden would count the silver before they left.
    I spent an unpleasant twenty minutes putting the Smythes through my inquisition. But as I seemingly accepted all their answers without objection, their aplomb returned, and Harry took to staring at my pastel silk sports jacket with chilly disdain. He was wearing a Harris tweed with suede patches on the elbows—in South Florida yet!
    I didn’t find it bothersome if he thought me foppish. That was his opinion—and my father’s. His idea of sartorial splendor is wearing a Countess Mara tie.
    “There is nothing you can add to what you’ve already told me?” I asked finally.
    “I think someone on the staff took the stamps,” he offered.
    “Thank you both very much,” I said, rising. “I’ll probably be back with more questions, and I imagine Sergeant Rogoff will want to hear your story as well. Now go back to your chess game. It’s such a lovely day for it.”
    I marched back into the house and met Lady Cynthia Horowitz entering from the front door. She looked like a million dollars. But I speak metaphorically. Actually she looked like a hundred million dollars which, according to Palm Beach gossip, was her approximate net worth. Anyway, she was smashing in a Donna Karan sheath of beige linen. She also had a tennis bracelet