Ross MacDonald - Strangers in Town - Three Newly Discovered Mysteries

She went back into the bungalow, moving as quietly as a cat. I found my way to the dining room, where Al was just finishing his breakfast.

"I talked to John Swain," he said. "He's coming right over from Pedro in a taxi."

"How did he take it?"

"He was upset all right. But I guess it didn't floor him."

"Could anyone have gotten into the pueblo last night after we left Mr. Ralston?"

"We locked the gates at midnight. After that the only way to get in is through the lobby, and there's always somebody on duty there. Nobody but a guest or an employee could get in, unless he climbed the wall."

"Would that be hard?"

"You saw it." The wall was solid brick, about eight feet high, and topped with iron spikes. "Why? You're not thinking somebody got in and killed the old man?"

"It sounds impossible, doesn't it? But a man has to be pretty drunk to go swimming by himself after midnight at the age of seventy-three. Drunker than Mr. Ralston was."

"I don't know," Al said.

After I had eaten a quick breakfast we went to look for Mr. Whittaker. He was in his office sitting on the corner of the desk and swinging a leg in time like a metronome.

"Dr. Wiley will be here in a few minutes," he said. "He said we'd better wait for him."

I told him the nurse's story, that she'd slept through the night and hadn't heard a thing. Then Dr. Wiley arrived, a large cheerful man dressed for golf but carrying a medical bag.

"I don't anticipate any serious reaction," Dr. Wiley said. "But it's just as well to be prepared. There's no telling how a woman who is not at all well will react to a shock of this nature."

"I dread this," Mr. Whittaker said. "This is going to be an ordeal."

When we reached the bungalow Mrs. Ralston was sunning herself in front of it in a wheelchair, her legs swathed in a steamer rug. Even under the rug the lower half of her body looked pathetically feeble, but from the waist up she seemed at first glance to be a healthy woman of forty. Her bosom was impressive and her shoulders were handsome in a light linen blouse. Her face was strong and beautiful in a bold and striking way, but there were shadows in it. Until now, it seemed to me, she had held out against her disease, but now she was approaching the point of surrender. There were daubs of grey in her carefully dressed brown hair.

Yet she waived gaily at her doctor and showed her white even teeth in a smile. "I wasn't expecting you this morning," she said.

Al and I stood back and pretended to look at the trees while Whittaker and Dr. Wiley walked up to her without speaking. The nurse stood in the background looking worried.

"I have bad news for you," Dr. Wiley said. "Mr. Ralston — " He hesitated.

"Why, Mr. Ralston is sleeping in his room." She turned her head to the nurse and I saw the tendons in her neck. "Isn't Mr. Ralston still asleep, Jane?"

Jane bit her lower lip, which was full and purplish like a plum.

"Mr. Ralston is dead," the doctor said. "He drowned in the pool last night."

Mrs. Ralston's hands closed on the arms of her wheelchair. She sat bold upright, supported by her straining arms. The bony structure of her face became apparent, and the shadows there deepened.

"Poor Henry," she said. "How did it happen?"

Before anyone could answer she fell backward and covered her face with her long and graceful hands.

A young man in neat sailor blues appeared at the gate and came running across the grass towards us. He went by us like a blue streak, half-kneeled by the wheelchair and took hold of Mrs. Ralston's shoulders. "Mother," he said. "How are you feeling, darling?"

"Johnny," said Mrs. Ralston, removing her hands from her face, where the convulsions of grief gave way to the convulsions of maternal feeling. "My dear boy, I'm so glad you've come."

"Yes, how are you feeling, Mrs. Ralston?" said Dr. Wiley. "I think I should take your pulse."

He and Mr. Whittaker hovered around her for a few minutes more, attending to her physical comfort and telling her the details of her husband's death. Then they moved away to rejoin us, leaving her alone with her son and her nurse.

"An amazing woman," said Dr. Wiley. "She took it better than I could have expected."

"She has courage," said Mr. Whittaker.

"Courage is her middle name," said Dr. Wiley. "You'd never think to look at her that she has no more than three months to live."

"Three months to live?" I said.

"I've consulted with the leading specialists in the country," Dr. Wiley said. "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive disease, and can never be fully arrested. She can't live more than three months, and she knows it. But what a stiff upper lip she maintains!"

Before we entered the hotel I looked back at Mrs. Ralston. Johnny Swain was still half-kneeling beside her, supporting her head on his shoulder. The nurse was still standing in the background, looking worried.

The police lieutenant who was handling the case was waiting in the lobby. He wanted to interview Mrs. Ralston and her nurse, and line up the other witnesses for the inquest.

"Is the autopsy completed?" I asked him.

"Dr. Shantz is working on it now."

"What's the dope so far?"

"A straight case of drowning. What did you expect?"

"A straight case of drowning," I said.

I took Al aside and told him, "I'm going down to the police lab and talk to Dr. Shantz. There are a couple of things you can be doing. Check Johnny Swain's alibi. Find out for sure whether he was aboard his ship last night. And see if you can find anything to shake the nurse's story that she spent the night in bed. She didn't look to me as if she did."

"Right," said Al, who seemed glad to have something to do.

I took my car out of the parking lot across the street and drove downtown to see Dr. Shantz. He was in his office when I got there, having completed the autopsy, but he still had on his surgical whites. With his domelike belly and three chins, he looked more like the popular idea of a chef than a medico-legal expert.

He said to me when I came in, "I didn't know you were interested in this cadaver, Joe."

"I'm always interested. I'm an occupational necrophile."

"I've got a beautiful Lysol burn in the back room. Want to see it?"

"Not just now, thanks. The hotel hired me to check on the Ralston accident. They don't like people drowning in their swimming pool. No signs of foul play, I suppose?"

"None whatever."

"Heart failure?"

"Nope, except in the sense that the heart usually stops when you die. The old man drowned. His lungs were full of water."

"No foreign substance of any kind?"

"You can't make a murder case out of this one, Joe. Mr. Ralston was killed by pure city water. I applied Gettler’s test to the blood content of the heart, and that's definite."

"When did he die?"

"It's hard to say exactly. His stomach was empty, except for some water, and he ate dinner at seven. His temperature was almost down to the temperature of the water. Between two and three in the morning, I'd say."

"That was about my guess," I said. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. That Lysol burn will still be here tomorrow if you want to see it."

"Thanks again," I said and went out. I was almost certain now that a murder had been committed, since I'd never known Shantz to make a professional mistake. I decided to go and see Mr. Ralston's brother Alexander. He got ten thousand dollars out of Mr. Ralston's death. How badly did he need ten thousand dollars?

I found him in the phone book and drove to his address, a one-story stucco house on a middling street in South Los Angeles. He answered the doorbell, a scrawny man in his sixties with thin grey hair and stooping shoulders. His thick glasses made his eyes seem unnaturally large and solemn.