The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler Page B

stretched out in front of him, the other leg bent up and his forehead resting against it. He didn’t move or look up as we came down behind him.
    Patton took the pint bottle of Mount Vernon off his hip and unscrewed the top and handed it.
    “Drink hearty, Bill.”
    There was a horrible, sickening smell in the air. Bill Chess didn’t seem to notice it, nor Patton nor the doctor. The man called Andy got a dusty brown blanket out of the car and threw it over the body. Then without a word he went and vomited under a pine tree.
    Bill Chess drank a long drink and sat holding the bottle against his bare bent knee. He began to talk in a stiff wooden voice, not looking at anybody, not talking to anybody in particular. He told about the quarrel and what happened after it, but not why it had happened. He didn’t mention Mrs. Kingsley even in the most casual way. He said that after I left him he had got a rope and stripped and gone down into the water and got the thing out. He had dragged it ashore and then got it up on his back and carried it out on the pier. He didn’t know why. He had gone back into the water again then. He didn’t have to tell us why.
    Patton put a cut of tobacco into his mouth and chewed on it silently, his calm eyes full of nothing. Then he shut his teeth tight and leaned down to pull the blanket off the body. He turned the body over carefully, as if it might come to pieces. The late afternoon sun winked on the necklace of large green stones that were partly imbedded in the swollen neck. They were roughly carved and lustreless, like soapstone or false jade. A gilt chain with an eagle clasp set with small brilliants joined the ends. Patton straightened his broad back and blew his nose on a tan handkerchief.
    “What you say, Doc?”
    “About what?” the bug-eyed man snarled.
    “Cause and time of death.”
    “Don’t be a damn fool, Jim Patton.”
    “Can’t tell nothing, huh?”
    “By looking at that? Good God!”
    Patton sighed. “Looks drowned all right,” he admitted. “But you can’t always tell. There’s been cases where a victim would be knifed or poisoned or something, and they would soak him in the water to make things look different.”
    “You get many like that up here?” the doctor enquired nastily.
    “Only honest to God murder I ever had up here,” Patton said, watching Bill Chess out of the corner of his eye, “was old Dad Meacham over on the north shore. He had a shack in Sheedy Canyon, did a little panning in summer on an old placer claim he had back in the valley near Belltop. Folks didn’t see him around for a while in late fall, then come a heavy snow and his roof caved in to one side. So we was over there trying to prop her up a bit, figuring Dad had gone down the hill for the winter without telling anybody, the way them old prospectors do things. Well by gum, old Dad never went down the hill at all. There he was in bed with most of a kindling axe in the back of his head. We never did find out who done it. Somebody figured he had a little bag of gold hid away from the summer’s panning.”
    He looked thoughtfully at Andy. The man in the lion hunter’s hat was feeling a tooth in his mouth. He said:
    “ ’Course we know who done it. Guy Pope done it. Only Guy was dead nine days of pneumonia before we found Dad Meacham.”
    “Eleven days,” Patton said.
    “Nine,” the man in the lion hunter’s hat said.
    “Was all of six years ago, Andy. Have it your own way, son. How you figure Guy Pope done it?”
    “We found about three ounces of small nuggets in Guy’s cabin along with some dust. Never was anything bigger’n sand on Guy’s claim. Dad had nuggets all of a pennyweight, plenty of times.”
    “Well, that’s the way it goes,” Patton said, and smiled at me in a vague manner. “Fellow always forgets something, don’t he? No matter how careful he is.”
    “Cop stuff,” Bill Chess said disgustedly and put his pants on and sat down again to put on his shoes and