Read Online The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online

shirt. When he had them on he stood up and reached down for the bottle and took a good drink and laid the bottle carefully on the planks. He thrust his hairy wrists out towards Patton.
    “That’s the way you guys feel about it, put the cuffs on and get it over,” he said in a savage voice.
    Patton ignored him and went over to the railing and looked down. “Funny place for a body to be,” he said. “No current here to mention, but what there is would be towards the dam.”
    Bill Chess lowered his wrists and said quietly: “She did it herself, you darn fool. Muriel was a fine swimmer. She dived down in and swum under the boards there and just breathed water in. Had to. No other way.”
    “I wouldn’t quite say that, Bill,” Patton answered him mildly. His eyes were as blank as new plates.
    Andy shook his head. Patton looked at him with a sly grin. “Crabbin’ again, Andy?”
    “Was nine days, I tell you. I just counted back,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said morosely.
    The doctor threw his arms up and walked away, with one hand to his head. He coughed into his handkerchief again and again looked into the handkerchief with passionate attention.
    Patton winked at me and spat over the railing. “Let’s get on to this one, Andy.”
    “You ever try to drag a body six feet under water?”
    “Nope, can’t say I ever did, Andy. Any reason it couldn’t be done with a rope?”
    Andy shrugged. “If a rope was used, it will show on the corpse. If you got to give yourself away like that, why bother to cover up at all?”
    “Question of time,” Patton said. “Fellow has his arrangements to make.”
    Bill Chess snarled at them and reached down for the whiskey. Looking at their solemn mountain faces I couldn’t tell what they were really thinking.
    Patton said absently: “Something was said about a note.”
    Bill Chess rummaged in his wallet and drew the folded piece of ruled paper loose. Patton took it and read it slowly.
    “Don’t seem to have any date,” he observed.
    Bill Chess shook his head somberly. “No. She left a month ago, June 12th.”
    “Left you once before, didn’t she?”
    “Yeah.” Bill Chess stared at him fixedly. “I got drunk and stayed with a chippy. Just before the first snow last December. She was gone a week and came back all prettied up. Said she just had to get away for a while and had been staying with a girl she used to work with in L.A.”
    “What was the name of this party?” Patton asked.
    “Never told me and I never asked her. What Muriel did was all silk with me.”
    “Sure. Note left that time, Bill?” Patton asked smoothly.
    “No.”
    “This note here looks middling old,” Patton said, holding it up.
    “I carried it a month,” Bill Chess growled. “Who told you she left me before?”
    “I forget,” Patton said. “You know how it is in a place like this. Not much folks don’t notice. Except maybe in summertime where there’s a lot of strangers about.”
    Nobody said anything for a while and then Patton said absently: “June 12th you say she left? Or you thought she left? Did you say the folks across the lake were up here then?”
    Bill Chess looked at me and his face darkened again. “Ask this snoopy guy—if he didn’t already spill his guts to you.”
    Patton didn’t look at me at all. He looked at the line of mountains far beyond the lake. He said gently: “Mr. Marlowe here didn’t tell me anything at all, Bill, except how the body come up out of the water and who it was. And that Muriel went away, as you thought, and left a note you showed him. I don’t guess there’s anything wrong in that, is there?”
    There was another silence and Bill Chess stared down at the blanket-covered corpse a few feet away from him. He clenched his hands and a thick tear ran down his cheek.
    “Mrs. Kingsley was here,” he said. “She went down the hill that same day. Nobody was in the other cabins. Perrys and Farquars ain’t been up at all this