Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

His head sank like an exhausted bull’s. He didn’t look at his wife.

“Stella Dolphine made trouble for you, and she was in a position to make more trouble. You decided to put an end to it by finishing her off. Is that the way it happened?”

“The sinister habit,” he said. “The sinister habit of asking questions, as Cocteau calls it. You’ve got a bad case of it, Archer.”

“Liars bring it out in me.”

“All right,” he said to the floor. “If I admit it, and take the blame, will you let Maude go free, back to Chicago with her brother?”

She pressed her face against his bowed shoulder and said: “No. You didn’t do it, Leonard. You’re only trying to protect me.”

“Did you? ”

She shook her head slowly against his body. He turned and held her. I looked past them out the window to the darkening sea. They were fairly decent people, as people go, harried by the future and the past but holding together on the sharp ridge of the instant. And I was tormenting them. The case turned over behind my eyes again, a many-headed monster struggling to be born out of my mind.

Harlan opened the bathroom door and came out shakily. His nose was bleeding. He looked at me with hatred, at the lovers with desolation. Unnoticed by them, he stood like a wallflower against the doorframe.

“I should never have come here,” he said bitterly.

I turned to them. “This has gone far enough.”

They were blind and deaf, alone together on the sharp ridge, held flesh to flesh. A door creaked. I thought it was Harlan closing the bathroom door, and I looked in the wrong direction. Dolphine was in the room before I saw him. A heavy service revolver wavered in his hand. He advanced on Lister and his wife.

“You killed her, you devils.”

Lister tried to get up from the bed. The woman held him. Her back was to the gun.

The gun spoke once, very loudly, its echoes rumbling like delayed thunder. Harlan had crossed to the center of the room, perhaps with some idea of defending his sister. He took the slug in the body. It stopped him like a wall. He fell. I fired across him.

Dolphine dropped his revolver. He spread his hands across his stomach and backed against the wall, where he sat down. He was wheezing. Water ran from his eyes and nose. His face worked, trying to realize his grief and failing. Blood began to run between his fingers. I stood over him.

“How do you know they killed her?”

“I saw them. I saw it all.”

“You were in bed.”

“No, I was in the garage. They threw her down the steps, and came down after and choked her. Lister did. I saw him.”

“You didn’t call the police.”

“No. I–” His mouth groped for words. “I’m a sick man. I was too sick to call them. Upset. I couldn’t talk.”

“You’re sicker now, but you’re going to have to talk. It wasn’t Lister, was it? It was you.”

He choked, and began to cough blood. Great pumping sobs forced red words out of his mouth.

“She got what she deserved. I thought when I told her he’d married the other one, that she would come back to my bed. But she wouldn’t look at me. All she could think about was getting him back. When I was the one that loved her.”

“I can see that.”

“I did. I loved her.”

He lifted his red-laced hands in front of his eyes and began to scream. He rolled sideways with his face to the wall, screaming. He died that night.

Harlan was dead already. He should never have come there.

Published as “The Beat-Up Sister” in Manhunt , October 1953.

I picked her up on the Daylight. Or maybe she picked me up. With some of the nicest girls, you never know.

She seemed to be very nice, and very young. She had a flippant nose and wide blue eyes, the kind that men like to call innocent. Her hair bubbled like boiling gold around her small blue hat. When she turned from the window to hear my deathless comments on the landscape and the weather, she wafted spring odors towards me.

She laughed in the right places, a little hectically. But in between, when the conversation lagged, I could see a certain somberness in her eyes, a pinched look around her mouth like the effects of an early frost. When I asked her to join me in the buffet car for a drink, she said:

“Oh, no. Thank you. I couldn’t possibly.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not quite twenty-one, for one thing. You wouldn’t want to contribute to the delinquency of a minor?”

“It sounds like a pleasant enterprise.”

She veiled her eyes and turned away. The green hills plunged backward past the train window like giant dolphins against the flat blue background of the sea. The afternoon sun was bright on her hair. I hoped I hadn’t offended her.

I hadn’t. After a while she leaned towards me and touched my arm with hesitant fingertips.

“Since you’re so kind, I’ll tell you what I would like.” She wrinkled her nose in an anxious way. “A sandwich? Would it cost so very much more than a drink?”

“A sandwich it is.”

On the way to the diner, she caught the eye of every man on the train who wasn’t asleep. Even some of the sleeping ones stirred, as if her passing had induced a dream. I censored my personal dream. She was too young for me, too innocent. I told myself that my interest was strictly paternal.

She asked me to order her a turkey sandwich, all white meat, and drummed on the tablecloth until it arrived. It disappeared in no time. She was ravenous.

“Have another,” I said.

She gave me a look which wasn’t exactly calculating, just questioning. “Do you really think I should?”

“Why not? You’re pretty hungry.”

“Yes, I am. But–” She blushed. “I hate to ask a stranger – you know?”

“No personal obligation. I like to see hungry people eat.”

“You’re awfully generous. And I am awfully hungry. Are you sure you can afford it?”

“Money is no object. I just collected a thousand-dollar fee in San Francisco. If you can use a full-course dinner, say so.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t accept that. But I will confess that I could eat another sandwich.”

I signaled to the waiter. The second sandwich went the way of the first while I drank coffee. She ate the olives and slices of pickle, too.

“Feeling better now? You were looking a little peaked.”

“Much better, thank you. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I hadn’t eaten all day. And I’ve been on short rations for a week.”

I looked her over deliberately. Her dark blue suit was new, and expensively cut. Her bag was fine calfskin. Tiny diamonds winked in the white-gold case of her wristwatch.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “I could have pawned something. Only I couldn’t bear to. I spent my last cent on my ticket – I waited till the very last minute, when I had just enough to pay my fare.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“To hear from Ethel. But we won’t go into that.” Her eyes shuttered themselves, and her pretty mouth became less pretty. “It’s my worry.”

“All right.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, or ungrateful. I thought I could hold out until I got to Los Angeles. I would have, too, if you hadn’t broken me down with kindness.”

“Forget about my kindness. I hope there’s a job waiting for you in Los Angeles. Or maybe a husband?”

“No.” The idea of a husband, or possibly a job, appealed to her sense of humor. She giggled like a schoolgirl. “You have one more guess.”

“Okay. You flunked out of school, and couldn’t face the family.”

“You’re half right. But I’m still enrolled at Berkeley, and I have no intention of flunking out. I’m doing very well in my courses.”