Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

I walked across the street to the Rodeo Hotel and asked the desk clerk where Mamie Hagedorn lived.

He looked up brightly. “Mamie retired from business.”

“Good. My intentions are social.”

“I see. She lives up the road a piece, on the way to Centerville. It’s a big red-brick house, the only red-brick house on that side of town.”

I drove out of town past the rodeo grounds and up into the hills. The red-brick house stood high on one of them, commanding the whole scene. It was a gray overcast day, and the sea was like a wornout mirror reflecting the sullen sky.

I went up the gravel drive and knocked on the door of the big house. It was answered by a Spanish American woman wearing a black uniform and white cap with a black velvet bow. She was the first maid in uniform I’d seen in quite a while.

She started to give me an oral quiz on who and what I was, and why I was here. It was interrupted by a woman’s voice which came from the front parlor: “Send him in! I’ll talk to him.”

The maid took me into a room filled with ornate Victorian furniture, complete with antimacassars. It underlined the feeling I had when I came to the north county, though the gantries of Vandenberg were just over the county line, that I was stepping back into prewar time.

Mamie Hagedorn sustained the illusion. She was sitting on a couch, a small woman whose gold-slippered feet dangled clear of the parquet floor. She was wearing a rather formal high-necked dress. She had a pouter pigeon bosom, a rouged and raddled face, hair or a wig which was a peculiarly horrible shade of iridescent red. But I liked the way her smile broke up her face.

“What’s on your mind?” she said. “Sit down and tell Mamie.”

She raised her hand, on which a diamond winked. I sat beside her.

“I was talking to Al Simmons last night in Centerville. He mentioned that you once knew Laurel Blevins.”

“Al talks too much for his own good,” she said cheerfully. “As a matter of fact I knew Laurel very well. She lived with me after her husband died.”

“Then it was her husband who died under the train?”

She thought about this. “I’m not sure it was. It never came out officially.”

“Why not?”

She moved uneasily. Her dress rustled and gave off a whiff of lavender. To my stretched nerves she seemed like the past itself stirring in its shroud.

“I wouldn’t want to queer things for Laurel. I always liked Laurel.”

“Then you’ll be sorry to hear that she’s dead.”

“Laurel? She’s just a young woman.”

“She didn’t die of old age. She was beaten to death.”

“Holy cripes!” the woman said. “Who did that?”

“Jack Fleischer’s a prime suspect.”

“But he’s dead, too.”

“That’s right. You can’t hurt either of them by talking, Mrs. Hagedorn.”

“Miss . I never married.” She put on horn-rimmed glasses which made her look severe, and studied my face. “Just who are you, anyway?”

I told her. Then she asked me about the case. I laid it out for her, with the names and the places.

“I knew most all of those people,” she said in a rusty voice, “going all the way back to Joe Krug and his wife Alma. I liked Joe. He was a fine figure of a man. But Alma was a Bible-thumping sobersides. Joe used to come and visit me sometimes – I ran a house in Rodeo City in case you didn’t know – and Alma never forgave me for leading him astray. I think I was one of the main reasons she made him move to Los Angeles. Cripes, that was forty years ago. What happened to Joe?”

“He’s dead now. Alma’s alive.”

“She must be old. Alma’s older than I am.”

“How old is that?”

She answered with her broken smile: “I never tell my age. I’m older than I look.”

“I bet you are.”

“Don’t flatter me.” She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “Joe Krug was a good man, but he never had any luck in this neck of the woods. I heard he had a little before he died, after he moved to Los Angeles.”

“What kind of luck?”

“Money luck. Is there any other? He got himself a job with some big company and married his daughter Etta to the boss.”

“Etta?”

“Henrietta. They called her Etta for short. She was married before to a man named Albert Blevins. And he was the father of Jasper Blevins who married Laurel, poor dear.” The old woman seemed to take pride in her genealogical knowledge.

“Who killed Jasper, Miss Hagedorn?”

“I don’t know for sure.” She gave me a long shrewd look. “If I tell you what I do know, what do you plan to do with it?”

“Open up the case and let the daylight in.”

She smiled a little sadly. “That reminds me of a hymn, an old revival hymn. I was converted once, would you believe it? It lasted until the boy evangelist ran away with the week’s offerings and my best friend. What are you after, Mr. Evangelist? Money?”

“I’m being paid.”

“Who by?”

“Some people down south.”

“Why are they paying you?”

“It would take all day to explain.”

“Then why not drop it, leave it lay? Let the dead people rest in peace.”

“There are getting to be too many of them. It’s been going on for a long time now. Fifteen years.” I leaned toward her and said in a quiet voice, “Did Laurel kill her husband? Or was it Jack Fleischer?”

She countered with another question, which seemed to contain an answer hidden in it: “You said Laurel is dead. How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

“Call the L.A.P.D., Purdue Street Station. Ask for Sergeant Prince or Sergeant Janowski.”

I recited the number. She slid off the couch, with the help of a needlepoint footstool, and left the room. I heard a door close down the hall. A few minutes later I heard the same door open.

She came back much more slowly. The rouge stood out on her slack cheeks. She climbed back onto the couch, reminding me for an instant of a child dressed up in attic finery, wearing an ancestor’s wig.

“So Laurel really is dead,” she said heavily. “I talked to Sergeant Prince. He’s going to send somebody up here to interview me.”

“I’m here now.”

“I know that. With Laurel dead, and Jack, I’m willing to answer your question. The answer is yes. She killed Jasper Blevins, smashed in his head with the blunt end of an ax. Jack Fleischer got rid of the body under a train. He put it down on the books as an accident, victim unknown.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Laurel told me herself. Before she left here Laurel and I were as close as mother and daughter. She told me how she killed Jasper, and she told me why. I didn’t ever blame her for a minute.” Mamie Hagedorn took a deep shuddering breath. “The only thing I blamed her for was leaving the little boy the way she did. That was a terrible thing to do. But she was bound to travel light and make her way in the world. The little boy was evidence against her.”

“She came back to him finally,” I said. “By that time it was too late for either of them.”

“You think her own boy killed her?”

“I didn’t until now. He had no motive. But if he found out that she killed his father–” I left the sentence unfinished.

“She didn’t, though.”

“You just said she did.”

“No, I said she killed her husband Jasper Blevins. He wasn’t the little boy’s father.”

“Who was?”

“Some rich fellow in Texas. Laurel got herself pregnant by him before she ever left there. His family gave her some money and shipped her off to California. Jasper married her for that money, but he never had normal relations with her. I never could respect a man who didn’t like normal meat-and-potatoes–”