Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

“No, and I don’t want you getting ideas. I have no desire to see them tracked down. Is that understood? I want nothing done to either of them.”

“That may be hard to manage.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He was back in conflict with himself, wrestling with the obscure guilt he felt. “I blame myself, you see, almost as much as I blame her. I should never have talked her into marrying me. She belonged to another generation, she needed younger blood. I was a dreaming fool even to imagine I had anything to offer to a young, beautiful woman.”

“Your attitude is very unselfish, Ferguson. I’m not so sure it’s wise.”

“That’s a private matter, between me and my-me and my conscience.”

“It isn’t wholly private. Gaines is a known criminal, wanted by the police.” I said in response to his hot and wounded look: “No, I haven’t broken your confidence and gone to the police. Gaines is wanted on other charges, burglary for one. If your wife is taken with him, there’ll be hell to pay all round. And what you want isn’t going to affect the outcome much.”

“I know I can’t assume responsibility for what happens to her.” His generosity had limits after all, which made me believe in it more. “I simply refuse to have anything to do with hunting them down myself.”

“That needs more thought, perhaps. Your wife may be more innocent than you assume. Gaines seems to be a con artist-one of those people who can talk birds out of trees. He may have sold her some fantastic story-”

“Holly is not a fool.”

“Any woman can be, when she’s infatuated. I take it you’re morally certain they’re lovers?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s been sniffing after her for months. I let it go on right under my nose.”

“Did you ever catch them in flagrante delicto ?”

“Nothing like that. I was gone a lot of the time, though. They had no end of opportunities. He danced attendance on her like a gigolo. They spent whole evenings together, in my house, pretending to read plays.”

“How do you know?”

“I was there myself more than once. On other occasions Holly told me about it. No doubt she was afraid I’d find out anyway.”

“What sort of explanation did she give you?”

“The theory was that she was developing the fellow’s acting talent, and her own as well. She claimed she had to have someone to work out with.” He grunted. “I shouldn’t have been taken in by such a thin story. But she managed to convince me that she cared nothing for him personally. I actually thought she considered him a bit of an outsider, that she was simply using him for her own professional purposes.”

I made a left turn onto the highway, and climbed the ramp which rose across lower town. “Did they have professional plans together?”

“Not to my knowledge. Holly was thinking of trying the legitimate stage eventually.”

“With your backing?”

“That was the idea, I suppose.”

“Did she ever try to persuade you to back Gaines?”

“No. She knew what I thought of the fellow-a cheap gigolo.”

“Did she pay him for his company?”

“That would hardly be necessary. I fail to see what you’re getting at.”

“I’m trying to find out if they had business dealings of any kind, before today’s transaction. Was he supplying her with drugs, by any chance?”

He snorted at me: “The notion is ridiculous!”

“It’s not as strange as what we know she’s done. Leave the personal part out of it and consider. Your wife walked out on an assured fortune, and a man who would give her anything she wanted, in order to share the chances of a wanted criminal. Does it make any sense to you?”

“Yes. I’m afraid it does.” He sounded querulous. The dressing in his nose had lightened and thinned his voice. “I’m the reason. I’m physically disgusting to her.”

“Did she ever say so?”

“I’m saying so. It’s the only possible inference. She married me for my money, but even that couldn’t hold her.”

I looked sideways at him. Pain leered like skull bones through the flesh of his face. “I was simply a dirty old man pawing at her. I had no right to her.”

“You’re not exactly an octogenarian. How old are you?”

“We won’t discuss it.”

“Fifty?”

“Older than that.”

“How much money are you worth?”

His eyes veiled themselves like a bird’s. “I’d have to ask my accountants.”

“Give me a bracket, anyway, to help fill in the picture. Let me assure you, I’m not trying to figure out the size of my retainer. We’ll set it at five hundred now, if that’s all right with you.”

“Very well.” He actually smiled, at least on my side. God knew what he was doing with the other side of his face. “I suppose I could realize ten or twelve million if I had to. Why do you think it’s important?”

“If your wife had been out for the money, she could have taken you for a lot more than two hundred thousand. Without sharing it with Gaines.”

“How?”

“By divorcing you. It happens every day, or don’t you read the papers?”

“I’ve given her no grounds.”

“Never an unkind word?”

“Practically never. I was very much in love with my wife. The fact is, I still am.”

“Would you take her back if you had the chance?”

“I don’t know. I think so.” His voice had changed, as his eyes had changed when I mentioned money. We had left the highway and were approaching the green lane that led to his house. “It’s hard to imagine her ever coming back.”

But he had leaned forward, urging the car along in wild unconscious hopefulness.

His shoulders slumped as he got out of the car. The house on the cliff had an abandoned air.

Far out over the sea, a flight of birds blew in a changing line like a fragmentary sentence whose meaning was never quite intelligible. All the way in to Beverly Hills I kept thinking about those birds. They’d been too far out for me to identify, but it was the season when certain kinds of sea birds migrated, I didn’t know exactly where or why.

THE BUILDING WAS long and low, almost hidden from the street by discreet plantings. It had pastel pink walls and lavender doors which opened directly onto a kind of veranda. Michael Speare’s name was tastefully printed on one of the doors in lower-case letters, like a line from a modern poem.

It was one of those so-called studio offices, meant to suggest that doing business with the occupants was an aesthetic experience. The girl at the front desk underlined the suggestion. She had Matisse lines, and a voice like violins at a nuptial feast. She used it to tell me that Mr. Speare wasn’t back from his afternoon calls. Did I have an appointment?

I said I had, at three. She glanced at the clock imbedded in the blonde mahogany wall. It had no numbers on its face, but it seemed to indicate that it was ten minutes after three.

“Mr. Speare must have been delayed. I expect him at any moment. Will you sit down, sir? And what was your name?”

“William Gunnarson. It still is.”

She looked at me like a startled doe, but “Thank you, sir,” was all she said. I sat down on an arrangement of molded plywood and glass tubing which turned out to be comfortable enough. The girl returned to her electric typewriter, and began to play kitten on the keys.

I sat and watched her. She had reddish-brown hair, but in other respects her resemblance to Holly May was striking. It was a phenomenon I’d noticed before: whole generations of girls looked like the movie actresses of their period. Perhaps they made themselves over to resemble the actresses. Perhaps the actresses made themselves up to embody some common ideal. Or perhaps they became actresses by virtue of the fact that they already resembled the common ideal.