LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES
JAMES HADLEY
CHASE
COPYRIGHT Š 1950
LAY HER AMONG THE
LILIES
By
JAMES HADLEY CHASE
ROBERT HALE LIMITED
63 Old Brompton Road London S.W.7
James Hadley Chase – Lay Her Among The Lilies – Copyright Š 1950
Chapter I
I
It was one of those hot, breathless July mornings, nice if you’re in a swim-suit on the beach
with your favourite blonde, but hard to take if you’re shut up in an office as I was.
The sound of the mid-morning traffic on Orchid Boulevard, the drone of aircraft circling
the beach and the background murmur of the surf drifted in through the open windows. The
air-conditioning plant, hidden somewhere in the bowels of Orchid Buildings, coped
efficiently with the rising temperature. Sunshine, hot and golden, made patterns on the office
rug Paula had bought to impress the customers, and which always seemed to me too
expensive to walk on.
I sat behind the flat-topped desk on which I had scattered a few old letters to convince
Paula if she should come in suddenly that I was working. A highball, strong enough to crack
concrete, hid behind a couple of impressive-looking law books, and clinked ice at me
whenever I reached for it.
It was now just over three and a half years since I founded Universal Services: an
organization which undertook any job from exercising a pet poodle to stamping on a
blackmailer feeding on a client’s bankroll. It was essentially a millionaire’s service, as our
rates came high, but then, in Orchid City, millionaires were almost as numerous as grains of
sand on a beach. During those three and a half years we had fun and games, made a little
money and had a variety of jobs: even murder we had taken in our stride.
For the past few days business had been as quiet as a spinster eating a bun in a lecture-hall.
The routine stuff was coming in all right, but Paula Bensinger took care of that. It was only
when something out-of-the-way reared its head that I and my leg-man, Jack Kerman, went to
work. And nothing out-of-the-way had reared its head, so we were just sitting around waiting
and punching holes in a bottle of Scotch and making out to Paula we were busy.
Sprawled out in the armchair reserved for clients, Jack Kerman, long, lean and dapper, with
a broad streak of white in his thick black hair and a Clark Gable moustache, rubbed the
frosted glass of his highball against his forehead and relaxed. Immaculate in an olive-green
tropical suit and a yellow and red striped tie, his narrow feet gaudy in white buckskin shoes
with dark green explosions, he looked every inch a fugitive from the pages of Esquire.
Out of a long, brooding silence, he said: “What a dish! Take her arms off and she’d have
5
LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES
knocked Venus for a loop.” He shifted into a more comfortable position and sighed. “I wish
someone had taken her arms off. Boy! Was she strong! And I was sucker enough to think she
was a pushover.”
“Don’t tell me,” I pleaded, reaching for my highball. “That opening has a familiar ring. The
last thing I want to hear on a morning like this is an extract from your love-life. I’d rather
read Krafft-Ebing.”
“That old goat won’t get you anywhere,” Kerman said scornfully. “He wrote all the nifty
bits in Latin.”
“And you’d be surprised at the number of guys who learned Latin just to find out what he
said. That’s what I call killing two birds with one stone.”
“That brings us right back to my blonde,” Kerman said, stretching out his long legs. “I ran
into her last night in Barney’s drug store …”
“I’m not interested in blondes,” I said firmly. “Instead of sitting around here talking about
women, you should be out trying to hustle up new business. Sometimes I wonder what the
hell I pay you for.”
Kerman considered this, a surprised expression on his face.
“Do you want any new business?” he asked eventually. “I thought the idea was to let Paula
do all the work, and we live on her.”
“That’s the general set-up, but once in a while it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to do
something to earn your keep.”
Kerman looked relieved.
“Yeah; once in a while. For a moment I thought you meant now.” He sipped his highball
and closed his eyes. “Now this blonde I keep trying to tell you about. She’s a cute trick if ever
there was one. When I tried to date her up she said she didn’t run after men. Know what I
said?”
“What did you say?” I asked, because he would have told me anyway, and if I didn’t listen
to his lies, who was going to listen to mine?
5
LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES
Kerman chortled.
“‘Lady,’ I said, ‘ maybe you don’t run after men, but a mousetrap doesn’t have to run after
mice, either.’ Smart, huh? Well, it killed her. You needn’t look so damned sour. Maybe you
have heard it before, but she hadn’t, and it knocked her dead.”
Then before I could hide the highball the door jerked open and Paula swept in.
Paula was a tall, dark lovely, with cool, steady brown eyes and a figure full of ideas—my
ideas, not hers. She was quick on the uptake, ruthlessly efficient and a tireless worker. It had
