Free The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler

claim to be a very good newspaper woman. And we wouldn’t print anything that would embarrass Jim Patton. Jim’s the salt of the earth. But it does open up, doesn’t it?”
    “Don’t draw any wrong conclusions,” I said. “I had no interest in Bill Chess whatever.”
    “No interest in Muriel Chess?”
    “Why would I have any interest in Muriel Chess?”
    She snuffed her cigarette out carefully into the ashtray under the dashboard. “Have it your own way,” she said. “But here’s a little item you might like to think about, if you don’t know it already. There was a Los Angeles copper named De Soto up here about six weeks back, a big roughneck with damn poor manners. We didn’t like him and we didn’t open up to him much. I mean the three of us in the Banner office didn’t. He had a photograph with him and he was looking for a woman called Mildred Haviland, he said. On police business. It was an ordinary photograph, an enlarged snapshot, not a police photo. He said he had information the woman was staying up here. The photo looked a good deal like Muriel Chess. The hair seemed to be reddish and in a very different style than she has worn it here, and the eyebrows were all plucked to narrow arches, and that changes a woman a good deal. But it did look a good deal like Bill Chess’s wife.”
    I drummed on the door of the car and after a moment I said, “What did you tell him?”
    “We didn’t tell him anything. First off, we couldn’t be sure. Second, we didn’t like his manner. Third, even if we had been sure and I had liked his manner, we likely would not have sicked him on to her. Why would we? Everybody’s done something to be sorry for. Take me. I was married once—to a professor of classical languages at Redlands University.” She laughed lightly.
    “You might have got yourself a story,” I said.
    “Sure. But up here we’re just people.”
    “Did this man De Soto see Jim Patton?”
    “Sure, he must have. Jim didn’t mention it.”
    “Did he show you his badge?”
    She thought and then shook her head. “I don’t recall that he did. We just took him for granted, from what he said. He certainly acted like a tough city cop.”
    “To me that’s a little against his being one. Did anybody tell Muriel about this guy?”
    She hesitated, looking quietly out through the windshield for a long moment before she turned her head and nodded.
    “I did. Wasn’t any of my damn business, was it?”
    “What did she say?”
    “She didn’t say anything. She gave a funny little embarrassed laugh, as if I had been making a bad joke. Then she walked away. But I did get the impression that there was a queer look in her eyes, just for an instant. You still not interested in Muriel Chess, Mr. Marlowe?”
    “Why should I be? I never heard of her until I came up here this afternoon. Honest. And I never heard of anybody named Mildred Haviland either. Drive you back to town?”
    “Oh no, thanks. I’ll walk. It’s only a few steps. Much obliged to you. I kind of hope Bill doesn’t get into a jam. Especially a nasty jam like this.”
    She got out of the car and hung on one foot, then tossed her head and laughed. “They say I’m a pretty good beauty operator,” she said. “I hope I am. As an interviewer I’m terrible. Goodnight.”
    I said goodnight and she walked off into the evening. I sat there watching her until she reached the main street and turned out of sight. Then I got out of the Chrysler and went over towards the telephone company’s little rustic building.

 
    TEN
    A tame doe deer with a leather dog collar on wandered across the road in front of me. I patted her rough hairy neck and went into the telephone office. A small girl in slacks sat at a small desk working on the books. She got me the rate to Beverly Hills and the change for the coin box. The booth was outside, against the front wall of the building.
    “I hope you like it up here,” she said. “It’s very quiet, very