Free 1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid by James Hadley Chase Page B

with ash-blonde hair, the quality of spun silk. She was sensationally beautiful in the classic tradition and her eyes were the colour and seemed to have the same texture as those giant mauve-black pansies you see from time to time at the better flower shows.
    She was high-breasted, long-legged, with hips that had curve and just the right weight. She was wearing a white evening gown with a plunging neckline, and around her throat was a string of diamonds that had probably been given to her on her twenty—first anniversary and must have set old man Creedy’s bank balance back quite a long way.
    She wore elbow-length gloves, and around one wrist was a diamond-and-platinum watch, and on her little finger, worn over the glove, was a long flat ruby set in a thin gold hoop.
    She looked what she was: every inch a multi-millionaire’s daughter. All in all I could understand why Mrs. Creedy had found her hard to compete with. She must have flung her bonnet over the roof when this young woman had packed her bags and left home.
    “I would be glad if you would excuse me for making such a late call, Miss Creedy,” I said. “I wouldn’t be troubling you only my business is urgent.”
    She gave me a small smile. It was neither friendly nor hostile: a hostess welcoming a stranger in her home, a show of good manners; no more, no less.
    “Has it something to do with my father?”
    “Well, no: remotely perhaps, but to be honest I didn’t think you would see me unless I mentioned your father’s name.” I gave her a boyish smile, but it made no impression.
    She was now looking straight at me and her dark eyes had a disconcerting directness. “I am head of the Star Inquiry Agency,” I went on. “I’m hoping you might be willing to help me.”
    She stiffened a little and frowned. Although she looked severe, she still managed to look beautiful.
    “You mean you are a private detective?”
    “That is right. I am working on a case and you could help me, Miss Creedy.”
    I could see she was beginning to freeze.
    “Help you? I really don’t know what you mean. Why should I help you?” The freeze was now in her voice.
    “No reason at all except some people don’t mind helping others now and then.” I tried the boyish smile again, but still with no results. “This business might interest you if you will let me tell you about it.”
    She hesitated, then she waved to a chair.
    “Well, all right,” she said. “Perhaps you had better sit down.”
    I waited until she had sat down on the settee opposite before I dropped into the chair she had indicated.
    “Five days ago, Miss Creedy,” I said, “my partner Jack Sheppey came here from our office in San Francisco on an assignment he received over the telephone. The caller didn’t give his name to the girl who handles our switchboard. I was away at the time. Sheppey left without saying who the caller was, but he did write your father’s name on his blotter.”
    While I talked, I watched her and I could see I was holding her attention. She was thawing out.
    “Sheppey sent me a cable asking me to come down here. I arrived this morning. I went to the hotel where he was staying but he had gone out. A little later, the police came for me to identify him: he had been murdered in a bathing cabin out at Bay Beach.”
    Her eyes widened.
    “Why, of course. I saw it in the evening paper. I didn’t realize . . . was he your partner?”
    “Yes.”
    “You say he wrote my father’s name down on his blotter?” she said, frowning at me. “Why should he have done that?”
    “I don’t know unless it was your father who called him.”
    She looked away then and began to turn the ruby ring around on her finger. I had an idea she was suddenly uneasy.
    “Daddy wouldn’t do that. If he wanted an inquiry agent, he would get his secretary to do it.”
    “Unless it happened to concern a matter of an extremely confidential nature,” I said.
    She continued to look away.
    “I really can’t see what