Росс Макдональд - The Name is Archer

“I think I see what it’s all about,” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong. Cave spent the night with you – the night he was supposed to have shot his wife. But you don’t want to testify at his trial. It would give your ex-husband legal ammunition to use in the custody fight for Janie.”

“You’re not wrong.” She lowered her eyes, not so much in shame as in submission to the facts. “We got talking in the bar at the club that afternoon. I hardly knew him, but I – well, I was attracted to him. He asked if he could come and see me that night. I was feeling lonely, very low and lonely. I’d had a good deal to drink. I let him come.”

“What time did he arrive?”

“Shortly after eight.”

“And he stayed all night?”

“Yes. He couldn’t have killed Ruth Cave. He was with me. You can understand why I’ve been quietly going crazy since they arrested him – sitting at home and biting on my nails and wondering what under heaven I should do.” Her eyes came up like green searchlights under her fair brow. “What shall I do, Mr. Archer?”

“Sit tight for a while yet. The trial will last a few more days. And he may be acquitted.”

“But you don’t think he will be, do you?”

“It’s hard to say. He didn’t do too well on the stand this morning. On the other hand, the averages are with him, as he seems to realize. Very few innocent men are convicted of murder.”

“He didn’t mention me on the stand?”

“He said he was with a woman, no names mentioned. Are you two in love with each other, Mrs. Kilpatrick?”

“No, nothing like that. I was simply feeling sorry for myself that night. I needed some attention from a man. He was a piece of flotsam and I was a piece of jetsam and we were washed together in the dark. He did get rather – emotional at one point, and said that he would like to marry me. I reminded him that he had a wife.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said his wife wouldn’t live forever. But I didn’t take him seriously. I haven’t even seen him since that night. No, I’m not in love with him. If I let him die, though, for something I know he didn’t do – I couldn’t go on living with myself.” She added, with a bitter grimace, “It’s hard enough as it is.”

“But you do want to go on living.”

“Not particularly. I have to because Janie needs me.”

“Then stay at home and keep your doors locked. It wasn’t smart to go to the club today.”

“I know. I needed a drink badly. I’m out of liquor, and it was the nearest place. Then I saw you and I panicked.”

“Stay panicked. Remember if Cave didn’t commit that murder, somebody else did – and framed him for it. Somebody who is still at large. What do you drink, by the way?”

“Anything. Scotch, mostly.”

“Can you hold out for a couple of hours?”

“If I have to.” She smiled, and her smile was charming. “You’re very thoughtful.”

When I got back to the courtroom, the trial was temporarily stalled. The jury had been sent out, and Harvey and the D.A. were arguing in front of the judge’s bench. Cave was sitting by himself at the far end of the long attorneys’ table. A sheriff’s deputy with a gun on his thigh stood a few feet behind him, between the red-draped windows.

Assuming a self-important legal look, I marched through the swinging gate into the well of the courtroom and took the empty chair beside Cave. He looked up from the typed transcript he was reading. In spite of his prison pallor he was a good-looking man. He had a boyish look about him and the kind of curly brown hair that women are supposed to love to run their fingers through. But his mouth was tight, his eyes dark and piercing.

Before I could introduce myself, he said, “You the detective Rod told me about?”

“Yes. Name is Archer.”

“You’re wasting your time, Mr. Archer, there’s nothing you can do for me.” His voice was a dull monotone, as if the cross-examination had rolled over his emotions and left them flat.

“It can’t be that bad, Cave.”

“I didn’t say it was bad. I’m doing perfectly well, and I know what I’m doing.”

I held my tongue. It wouldn’t do to tell him that his own lawyer had lost confidence in his case. Harvey’s voice rose sharp and strained above the courtroom mutter, maintaining that certain questions were irrelevant and immaterial.

Cave leaned towards me and his voice sank lower. “You’ve been in touch with her?”

“She brought me into the case.”

“That was a rash thing for her to do, under the circumstances. Or don’t you know the circumstances?”

“I understand that if she testifies she risks losing her child.”

“Exactly. Why do you think I haven’t had her called? Go back and tell her that I’m grateful for her concern but I don’t need her help. They can’t convict an innocent man. I didn’t shoot my wife, and I don’t need an alibi to prove it.”

I looked at him, admiring his composure. The armpits of his gabardine suit were dark with sweat. A fine tremor was running through him.

“Do you know who did shoot her, Cave?”

“I have an opinion. We won’t go into it.”

“Her new man?”

“We won’t go into it,” he repeated, and buried his aquiline nose in the transcript.

The judge ordered the bailiff to bring in the jury. Harvey sat down beside me, looking disgruntled, and Cave returned to the witness stand.

What followed was moral slaughter. The D.A. forced Cave to admit that he hadn’t had gainful employment since his release from the army, that his sole occupations were amateur tennis and amateur acting, and that he had no means of his own. He had been completely dependent on his wife’s money since their marriage in 1946, and had used some of it to take extended trips in the company of other women.

The prosecutor turned his back on Cave in histrionic disgust. “And you’re the man who dares to impugn the morals of your dead wife, the woman who gave you everything.”

Harvey objected. The judge instructed the D.A. to rephrase his “question.”

The D.A. nodded, and turned on Cave. “Did you say this morning that there was another man in Mrs. Cave’s life?”

“I said it. It was true.”

“Do you have anything to confirm that story?”

“No.”

“Who is this unknown vague figure of a man?”

“I don’t know. All I know is what Ruth told me.”

“She isn’t here to deny it, is she? Tell us frankly now, Mr. Cave, didn’t you invent this man? Didn’t you make him up?”

Cave’s forehead was shining with sweat. He took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his forehead, then his mouth. Above the white fabric masking his lower face, he looked past the D.A. and across the well of the courtroom. There was silence for a long moment.

Then Cave said mildly, “No, I didn’t invent him.”

“Does this man exist outside your fertile brain?”

“He does.”

“Where? In what guise? Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Cave said on a rising note. “If you want to know, why don’t you try and find him? You have plenty of detectives at your disposal.”

“Detectives can’t find a man who doesn’t exist. Or a woman either, Mr. Cave.”

The D.A. caught the angry eye of the judge, who adjourned the trial until the following morning. I bought a fifth of scotch at a downtown liquor store, caught a taxi at the railroad station, and rode south out of town to Mrs. Kilpatrick’s house.

When I knocked on the door of the redwood cottage, someone fumbled the inside knob. I pushed the door open. The flaxen-haired child looked up at me, her face streaked with half-dried tears.

“Mummy won’t wake up.”