Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

Chalmers’s head sank lower. The fingers supporting it raked up through his hair. “You’re talking about Mr. Rawlinson, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“This is infinitely depressing to me,” he said. “You’re twisting a harmless relationship between an elderly man and a mature woman–”

“Let’s forget about the relationship.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t forget about it.” His head had sunk closer to the table, guarded by his hands and arms.

“I’m not judging anyone, Mr. Chalmers, certainly not your mother. The point is simply that there was a connection between her and Samuel Rawlinson. Rawlinson ran a bank, the Pasadena Occidental, and it was ruined by embezzlement around the time of the burglary. His son-in-law, Eldon Swain, was blamed for the embezzlement, perhaps correctly. But it’s been suggested to me that Mr. Rawlinson may have looted his own bank.”

Chalmers sat up rigidly. “Who suggested that, for heaven’s sake?”

“Another figure in the case – a convicted burglar named Randy Shepherd.”

“And you’d take the word of a man like that, and let him blacken my mother’s name?”

“Who said anything about your mother?”

“Aren’t you about to offer me the precious theory that my mother took stolen money from that whoremaster? Isn’t that what you have on your rotten mind?”

Hot wet rage had flooded his eyes. He stood up blinking and swung an open hand at my face. It was a feeble attempt. I caught his arm by the wrist and handed it back to him.

“I’m afraid we can’t talk, Mr. Chalmers. I’m sorry.”

I went out to my car and turned downhill toward the freeway. Fog still lay in a grey drift across the foot of the town.

Inland in Pasadena the sun was hot. Children were playing in the road in front of Mrs. Swain’s house. Truttwell’s Cadillac, which stood at the curb, acted like a magnet on the children.

Truttwell was sitting in the front seat, engrossed in business papers. He glanced up impatiently at me.

“You took your time about getting here.”

“Something came up. Also, I can’t afford a Cadillac.”

“I can’t afford to waste hours waiting for people. The woman said she’d be here at twelve.”

It was twelve thirty by my wristwatch. “Is Mrs. Swain driving from San Diego?”

“I presume so. I’ll give her until one o’clock to get here.”

“Maybe her car broke down, it’s pretty old. I hope nothing’s happened to her.”

“I’m sure nothing has.”

“I wish I could be sure. The leading suspect in her daughter’s death was seen in Hemet last night. Apparently, he was heading this way in a stolen car.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Randy Shepherd. He’s the ex-con who used to work for Mrs. Swain and her husband.”

Truttwell didn’t seem much interested. He turned to his papers, and rattled them at me. From what I could see of them, they were Xeroxed copies of the articles of incorporation of something called the Smitheram Foundation.

I asked Truttwell what it was. He didn’t answer me, or even look up. Irritated by his bad manners, I went and got the envelope of letters out of the trunk of my car.

“Have I mentioned,” I said in a casual voice, “that I recovered the letters?”

“Chalmers’s letters? You know very well you haven’t. Where did you get hold of them?”

“They were in Nick’s apartment.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “Let’s have a look at them.”

I slid into the front seat beside him and handed him the envelope. He opened it and peered at its contents:

“God, but this brings back the past. Estelle Chalmers lived for these letters, you know. The early ones were nothing much, as I recall. But Larry’s epistolary style improved with practice.”

“You’ve read them?”

“Some of them. Estelle gave me no choice. She was so proud of her young hero.” His tone was just faintly ironic. “Toward the end, when her sight failed completely, she asked us – my wife and me – to read them aloud to her as they came. We tried to persuade her to hire a nurse-companion, but she refused. Estelle had a very strong sense of privacy, and it got stronger as she got older. The main burden of looking after her fell on my wife.” He added in quiet regret: “I shouldn’t have let it happen to my young wife.”

He fell into a silence, which I finally broke: “What was the matter with Mrs. Chalmers?”

“I believe she had glaucoma.”

“She didn’t die of glaucoma.”

“No. I think she died of grief – grief for my wife. She gave up eating, she gave up everything. I took the liberty of calling a doctor, very much against her wishes. She lay in bed with her face to the wall and wouldn’t let the doctor examine her, or even look at her. And she wouldn’t let me try to get Larry home from overseas.”

“Why not?”

“She claimed to be perfectly well, though obviously she wasn’t. She wanted to die alone and unseen, I think. Estelle had been a real beauty, and some of it lasted almost to the end. Also, as she grew older, she became a bit of a miser. You’d be surprised how many older women do. The idea of having a doctor come to the house, or hiring a nurse, seemed like a horrible extravagance to Estelle. Her poor-mouthing actually had me convinced. But of course she’d been quite wealthy all along.

“I’ll never forget the day following her funeral. Larry was finally en route home after the usual snafu, and in fact he arrived a couple of days later. But the County Administrator didn’t want to wait to check the house and its contents. As a member of the courthouse crowd he’d known Estelle all his life, I think he knew or suspected that she kept her money in the house, as Judge Chalmers had before her. And of course there had been the attempted burglary. If I had been in full possession of my faculties, I’d have checked the safe the morning after the break-in. But I had troubles of my own.”

“You mean your wife’s death?”

“The loss of my wife was the main disaster, of course. It left me with full responsibility for an infant girl.” He looked at me with painful candor. “A responsibility I haven’t handled too well.”

“The point is that it’s over. Betty’s grown up. She has to make her own choices.”

“But I can’t let her marry Nick Chalmers.”

“She will if you keep saying that.”

Truttwell went into another of his silences. He seemed to be catching up at last with great stretches of lost time. When his eyes changed back to present time, I said:

“Do you have any idea who killed your wife?”

He shook his white head. “The police failed to come up with a single suspect.”

“What was the date of her death?”

“July 3, 1945.”

“Exactly how did it happen?”

“I’m afraid I don’t really know. Estelle Chalmers was the only surviving witness, and she was blind and saw nothing. Apparently my wife noticed something wrong at the Chalmers house and went over there to investigate. The thieves chased her out into the road and ran her down with their car. Actually it wasn’t their car – it had been stolen. The police recovered it in the tules below San Diego. There were – physical evidences on the bumper that proved it had been used to murder my wife. The murderers probably escaped over the border.”

Truttwell’s forehead was shining with sweat. He wiped it with a silk handkerchief.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more about the events of that night. I was in Los Angeles on business. I got home in the small hours and found my wife in the morgue and my little girl being cared for by a policewoman.”