What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the… - Raymond Chandler

He smiled his first smile of the day. He probably allowed himself four.
[...]
He was doing an awful lot of smiling that day. Using up a whole week's supply.

A occasional whiff of his personality drifted back to me.

I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one