Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

I crossed the walled courtyard and knocked on the ironbound front door. A dark-suited servant with a face that belonged in a Spanish monastery opened the door and took my name and left me standing in the reception hall. It was an enormous two-storied room that made me feel small and then, in reaction, large and self-assertive.

I could see into the great white cave of the living room. Its walls were brilliant with modern paintings. Its doorway was equipped with black wrought-iron gates, shoulder high, which gave the place a museum atmosphere.

This was partly dispelled by the dark-haired woman who came in from the garden to greet me. She was carrying a pair of clippers and a clear red Olé rose. She laid the clippers down on a hall table but kept the rose, which exactly matched the color of her mouth.

Her smile was bright and anxious. “Somehow I expected you to be older.”

“I’m older than I look.”

“But I asked John Truttwell to get me the head of the agency.”

“I’m a one-man agency. I co-opt other detectives when I need them.”

She frowned. “It sounds like a shoestring operation to me. Not like the Pinkertons.”

“I’m not big business, if that’s what you want.”

“It isn’t. But I want somebody good, really good. Are you experienced in dealing with – well–” Her free hand indicated first herself and then her surroundings –“people like me?”

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

“But you’re the one we’re talking about.”

“I assume Mr. Truttwell recommended me, and told you I was experienced.”

“I have a right to ask my own questions, don’t I?”

Her tone was both assertive and lacking in self-assurance. It was the tone of a handsome woman who had married money and social standing and never could forget that she might just as easily lose these things.

“Go ahead and ask questions, Mrs. Chalmers.”

She caught my gaze and held it, as if she were trying to read my mind. Her eyes were black and intense and impervious.

“All I really want to know is this. If you find the Florentine box – I assume John Truttwell told you about the gold box?”

“He said that one was missing.”

She nodded. “Assuming you find it, and find out who took it, is that as far as it goes? I mean, you won’t march off to the authorities and tell them all about it?”

“No. Unless they’re already involved?”

“They aren’t, and they’re not going to be,” she said. “I want this whole thing kept quiet. I wasn’t even going to tell John Truttwell about the box, but he wormed it out of me. However, him I trust. I think.”

“And me you think you don’t?”

I smiled, and she decided to respond. She tapped me on the cheek with her red rose, then dropped it on the tile floor as if it had served its purpose. “Come into the study. We can talk privately there.”

She led me up a short flight of steps to a richly carved oak door. Before she closed it behind us I could see the servant in the reception hall picking up after her, first the clippers, then the rose.

The study was an austere room with dark beams supporting the slanting white ceiling. The single small window, barred on the outside, made it resemble a prison cell. As if the prisoner had been looking for a way out, there were shelves of old law books against one wall.

On the facing wall hung a large picture which appeared to be an oil painting of Pacific Point in the old days, done in primitive perspective. A seventeenth-century sailing vessel lay in the harbor inside the curve of the point; beside it naked brown Indians lounged on the beach; over their heads Spanish soldiers marched like an army in the sky.

Mrs. Chalmers seated me in an old calf-covered swivel chair in front of a closed roll-top desk.

“These pieces don’t go with the rest of the furniture,” she said as if it mattered. “But this was my father-in-law’s desk, and that chair you’re sitting in was the one he used in court. He was a judge.”

“So Mr. Truttwell told me.”

“Yes, John Truttwell knew him. I never did. He died a long time ago, when Lawrence was just a small boy. But my husband still worships the ground his father walked on.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting your husband. Is he at home?”

“I’m afraid not. He went to see the doctor. This burglary business has him all upset.” She added: “I wouldn’t want you to talk to him, anyway.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

She moved away from me, leaning over a black oak refectory table. She fumbled a cigarette from a silver box and lit it with a matching table lighter. The cigarette, which she puffed on furiously, laid down a blue smokescreen between us.

“Lawrence didn’t think it was a good idea to use a private detective. I decided to go ahead with you anyway.”

“Why did he object?”

“My husband likes his privacy. And this box that was stolen – well, it was a gift to his mother from an admirer of hers. I’m not supposed to know that, but I do.” Her smile was crooked. “In addition to which, his mother used it to keep his letters in.”

“The admirer’s letters?”

“My husband’s letters. Larry wrote her a lot of letters during the war, and she kept them in the box. The letters are missing, too – not that they’re of any great value, except maybe to Larry.”

“Is the box valuable?”

“I think it is. It’s covered with gold, and very carefully made. It was made in Florence during the Renaissance.” She stumbled on the word, but got it out. “It has a picture on the lid, of two lovers.”

“Insured?”

She shook her head, and crossed her legs. “It hardly seemed necessary. We never took it out of the safe. It never occurred to us that the safe could be broken into.”

I asked to be allowed to see the safe. Mrs. Chalmers took down the primitive painting of the Indians and the Spanish soldiers. Where it had hung a large cylindrical safe was set deep in the wall. She turned the dial several times and opened it. Looking over her shoulder, I could see that the safe was about the diameter of a sixteen-inch gun and just as empty.

“Where’s your jewelry, Mrs. Chalmers?”

“I don’t have much, it never has interested me. What I do have, I keep in a case in my room. I took the case along with me to Palm Springs. We were there when the gold box was taken.”

“How long has it been missing?”

“Let me see now, this is Tuesday. I put it in the safe Thursday night. Next morning we went to the desert. It must have been stolen after we left, so that makes four days, or less. I looked in the safe last night when we got home, and it was gone.”

“What made you look in the safe last night?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” she added, making it sound like a lie.

“Did you have some idea that it might be stolen?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“What about the servant?”

“Emilio didn’t take it. I can vouch for him, absolutely.”

“Was anything taken besides the box?” She considered the question. “I don’t think so. Except the letters, of course, the famous letters.”

“Were they important?”

“They were important to my husband, as I said. And of course to his mother. But she’s been dead a long time, since the end of the war. I never met her myself.” She sounded a little worried, as if she’d been denied a maternal blessing, and still felt defrauded.

“Why would a burglar take them?”

“Don’t ask me. Probably because they were in the box.” She made a face. “If you do find them, don’t bother to bring them back. I’ve already heard them, or most of them.”

“Heard them?”

“My husband used to read them aloud to Nick.”