Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“Are you waiting for me?”

“If you’re Mr. Archer.” Her voice was soft and tentative.

“I am. Come in, Miss–”

“Maclish,” she said. “Sandra Maclish.”

I unlocked the door. She moved across the waiting room with a kind of furtive charm, as if she wanted to be there and not there at the same time. I decided on the spur of the moment to buy a new carpet and have the old green furniture redone in tasteful colors. Like brown and beige.

I took her into the inner office and yanked up the venetian blind. Light poured in, reflected from the stucco buildings across the boulevard.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” I said.

She looked at the morning with something approaching dismay. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

“If the light bothers your eyes, I can close the blind again.”

“Oh, my eyes are all right. Thank you. I’m wearing these glasses because I didn’t want to be seen coming here.”

“They’re not a very effective disguise. In fact, they might tend to call attention to you. You’re not the type that generally wears dark glasses.”

“Yes I am. I wear them all the time on the beach. But I’ll take them off if you like.”

She did so. Handsome wasn’t the word for Miss Maclish. Her eyes were shadowed green lights. In a year or two, when she had gained assurance, or whatever it is that distinguishes women from girls, the word would be beautiful.

She put the glasses in her bag and sat in the chair I placed for her, facing away from the window. I pulled my swivel chair around to the other side of the desk.

“Are you being followed, Miss Maclish?”

This startled her. “No. At least, I hope not. Though I wouldn’t put it past Father. He doesn’t approve of my interesting myself in – well, what I’m interested in.”

“And what is that?”

“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.”

Her voice was small and thin. She swallowed, and her throat shimmered. The shadow across her eyes seemed to be cast by an image in the air in front of her. She looked up at the image as if it had a head and eyes of its own. Then she averted her face.

“I mean,” she said after a while, “I don’t understand it myself. So how can I explain it to you?”

“Are you in trouble?”

“A friend of mine is.”

“Trouble with the law?”

“It hasn’t come to that, yet. In a way, it’s worse than that. But please don’t ask me to talk about it. I can’t give away other people’s confidences.”

“You’re doing a fine job of not giving anything away.”

She lit up with a little flare of anger, suppressed it, and produced a small wan smile. “I know. I haven’t been making too much sense, up to now, have I? And I had my whole speech so carefully planned.”

“How old are you, Miss Maclish?”

“Twenty-one. Is it important?”

“It probably is to you.”

She lifted her chin. “I’m old enough to employ a detective on my own responsibility.”

“Sure you are. I don’t have age limits. Some of my favorite clients have been babes-in-arms. One of them wasn’t even born yet.”

“You’re joking.”

“It’s a free country. But what I said is true. I once represented an unborn child whose father was killed in a hunting accident.”

“All this is very interesting, but we’re not getting anywhere.”

“I agree. Why don’t you give me the speech that you had so carefully planned?”

“I can’t. It wouldn’t sound right. I mean, you’re different from what I expected. And so am I. It’s always happening to me.”

I didn’t ask her what she meant by that. I waited for her to continue. It took some time, but I didn’t mind. I was content to sit across the desk from her while the passing seconds stitched together a kind of silent intimacy. Her voice threaded through it:

“A man I know, a lawyer in Lamarina, told me that you were one of the best detectives in California. Does that mean you’re frightfully expensive?”

“I charge a hundred dollars a day.”

“I see. When you find out things about people – if you do, I mean – do you keep them to yourself?”

“I try to protect my clients. It isn’t always possible, where there’s crime involved. Is there crime involved?”

“I don’t know,” she said soberly. “I want you to try and find out for me. Just for me, nobody else. Then I’ll know what to do.”

For a while she had seemed very young. She seemed much older. Her face had a bony look that reminded me of the tragic skeleton we all contained. The skull beneath the skin.

“You say you’ve talked to a lawyer in Lamarina. What was his advice?”

“I didn’t ask Mr. Griffin for his advice. I asked him for the name of a good detective. I haven’t talked to anybody about it.”

“Not even me.”

“I know. I’ve been wasting your time, holding back like this. It’s simply that it could be so important, to quite a number of people. Especially me.”

“Is it a matter of life and death?” I offered helpfully.

“Maybe. That was part of the speech. I do know it’s a matter of someone’s sanity.”

“Yours?”

She closed her eyes. Deprived of their light, her face was like a death mask. “No, not mine.” She opened them and turned them full on my face. “You say you protect your clients, Mr. Archer?”

“I try to.”

“What about other people? Say your client had someone dear to her, or him. Would you protect him or her? I mean, if you stumbled over something very unpleasant?”

“It would depend on the circumstances. I don’t have a lawyer’s right of silence where clients are concerned. Even a lawyer’s right is severely restricted. We all have to live with the law, you know.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

“What are you asking me to do? It’s about time we got to that, don’t you think?”

“Yes. I just want your word that you won’t go running to people with what I tell you, or what you find out on your own.”

“You have my word on that. I’m the closest-mouthed man you ever met. And you’re the closest-mouthed girl I ever met. Tell me one thing. Has there been a crime?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you suspect one?”

“Yes.”

“Murder?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. No, it wouldn’t be murder.” She twisted her mouth. “It’s a terrible word, isn’t it?”

“A terrible fact. Now who is involved in this non-murder?”

She looked at me as if she hated me. The unobtrusive lipstick on her mouth came out bright red against her pallor. She fumbled at the catch of her bag, produced the dark glasses, put them on. I was afraid that she was going to leave.

I didn’t want her to. I wanted her to stay and share her trouble with me. Call it romanticism – the late romanticism that boils up sometimes in middle age and spills a kind of luster on certain faces. But my impulse was more paternal than anything else. It stayed that way.

“I have a suggestion, Miss Maclish. If you want better security, you can employ me through your lawyer friend in Lamarina. Then anything I find out, anything I’m told, has the same legal status as information confided to a lawyer. What did you say his name was? Griffith?”

“Griffin. But I can’t do that. He’d have to know all about it if I did that. Sooner or later he’d go to Father with it. Mr. Griffin is one of Father’s attorneys.”

Published in The Archer Files (Crippen & Landru, 2007).

I got into the Garvin case late, when it was just about all over but the gas chamber. Garvin was due to be shipped to San Quentin in the morning. He seemed already to be holding his breath.