Page 78 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

designed, I took it, to strike terror into the hearts of felons). In
poorer areas of the city the same defensive posture was struck with
bars on the windows and vicious dogs in the yard, but here the
middle-class householder relied on electronic alarm systems and
private police forces. Art Lesley had no need to go far afield to find
inspiration for his book.
I parked in front of the address Fletcher Mallard had given me and
walked to the front gate. Art Lesley had installed a somewhat taller
and heavier-duty iron fence than his neighbors, something I hadn’t
noticed driving up to the place. With the garage door closed, his
house looked impregnable, at least from the street side. No doubt the
back yard was equally protected, perhaps with a moat containing
misanthropic alligators. After pushing the doorbell (or is it a
gatebell?), I idly wondered if the roof could be hardened against sky-
diving second-story men or the basement wired to detect tunneling
tomb-robbers.
“Yes? Who is it?” squawked an intercom box inches from my left
ear.
“It’s Lance O’Bleakley, ma’am,” I squawked back, not knowing
how loud to cast my voice. “From Mallard Books.”
The gate unlocked with a click and a buzz. As I approached the
front door it opened and Ruth Lesley came out to greet me, bangles
jangling on both wrists. She was one of those older women trying to
look young, succeeding only in looking hard: tanned hide, enameled
nails (all twenty), lacquered hair, corseted midsection. I guess it’s
scary to see forty just around the corner.
“Well, you’re on time, I guess. I’m Ruth. Come in. I’m just tidying
up a few things in here. Art seems never to have thrown anything
away. Now it’s all going to have to go.”
All? I was about to lodge my employer’s probable objections to
any such wholesale clean-out of the premises when she took my hand
and drew me into the house. Her fingers were cool but her nails were
sharp.
“Now you can see for yourself what an impossible man he was to
live with. I don’t know how I ever put up with him for six years,
slowly getting edged out of his life by piles of paper, boxes of books,
mountains of magazines, cabinets chock-full of broken bits of old
appliances and closets chock-a-block with tools and leftover building

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