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Page 19
"Just what do you mean, then?" Kennedy was sharp, impatient.
"She made a fool of me, and--and I was engaged to Marilyn Loring--"
"Were engaged? The engagement--"
"Marilyn broke it off last night and wouldn't listen to me, even
though I came to my senses and saw what a fool I had been."
"Was"--Kennedy framed his question carefully--"was your
infatuation for Miss Lamar of long duration?"
"Just a few weeks. I--I took her out to dinner and to the theater
and--and that was all."
"I see!" Kennedy walked away, nodding to Mackay.
"Will you have Miss Loring next?" asked the district attorney.
Kennedy nodded.
Marilyn Loring was a surprise to me. Stella Lamar both on the
screen and in real life was a beauty. In the films Marilyn was a
beauty also, apparently of a cold, unfeeling type, but in the
flesh she was disclosed as a person utterly different from all my
preconceived notions. In the first place, she was not
particularly attractive except when she smiled. Her coloring,
hair frankly and naturally red, skin slightly mottled and pale,
produced in photography the black hair and marble, white skin
which distinguished her. But as I studied her, as she was now,
before she had put on any make-up and while she was still dressed
in a simple summer gown of organdie, she looked as though she
might have stepped into the room from the main street of some
mid-Western town. In repose she was shy, diffident in appearance.
When she smiled, naturally, without holding the hard lines of her
vampire roles, there was the slight suggestion of a dimple, and
she was essentially girlish. When a trace of emotion or feeling
came into her face the woman was evident. She might have been
seventeen or thirty-seven.
To my surprise, Kennedy made no effort to elicit further
information concerning the personal animosities of these people.
Perhaps he felt it too much of an emotional maze to be
straightened out in this preliminary investigation. When he found
Marilyn had watched the taking of the scenes he compared her
account with those which he had already obtained. Then he
dismissed her.
In rapid succession, for he was impatient now to follow up other
methods of investigation, he called in and examined the remaining
possible witnesses of the tragedy. These were the two extra
players--the butler and the maid, the assistant director,
Phelps's house servants, and Emery Phelps himself. For some
unknown reason he left the owner of the house to the very last.
"Why did you wish these scenes photographed out here?" he asked.
"Because I wanted to see my library in pictures."
"Were you watching the taking of the scenes?"
"Yes!"
"Will you describe just what happened?"
Phelps flushed. He was irritated and in no mood to humor us any
more than necessary. A man of perhaps forty, with the portly
flabbiness which often accompanies success in the financial
markets, he was accustomed to obtaining rather than yielding
obedience. A bachelor, he had built this house as a show place
merely, according to the gossip among newspaper men, seldom
living in it.
"Haven't about a dozen people described it for you already?" he
asked, distinctly petulant.
Kennedy smiled. "Did you notice anything particularly out of the
way, anything which might be a clue to the manner in which Miss
Lamar met her death?"
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