Росс Макдональд: The Far Side of the Dollar

The boy said to Hillman: “Why didn’t you tell me? It could have made a difference.”

“It still can,” Hillman said with a hopefulness more grinding than despair. “Son?”

He moved toward Tom, who evaded his outstretched hands and left the room. Walking rather unsteadily, Hillman followed him. I could hear them mounting the stairs, on different levels, out of step.

Dick Leandro got up from his place, rather tentatively, as if he had been liberated from an obscure bondage. He went into the alcove, where I heard him making himself a drink.

Elaine Hillman was still thinking about money. “What about it, Mr. Archer? Can you be bought?”

Her voice was quite calm. The engines of her anger had run down.

“I can’t be bought with anything you’ve offered.”

“Will you have mercy on me, then?”

“I don’t have that much mercy.”

“I’m not asking for a great deal. Just let me sleep one more night in my own house.”

“What good would that do you?”

“This good. I’ll be frank with you. I’ve been saving sleeping pills for a considerable time–”

“How long?”

“Nearly a year, actually. I’ve been in despair for at least that long–”

“You should have taken your pills sooner.”

“Before all this, you mean?”

She waved her hand at the empty room as if it was a tragic stage littered with corpses.

“Before all this,” I said.

“But I couldn’t die without knowing. I knew my life was empty and meaningless. I had to find out why.”

“And now it’s full and meaningful?”

“It’s over,” she said. “Look, Mr. Archer, I was frank with you today. Give me a quid pro quo . All I’m asking for is time to use my pills.”

“No.”

“You owe me something. I helped you as much as I dared this afternoon.”

“You weren’t trying to help me, Mrs. Hillman. You only told me what I already knew, or what I was about to find out. You gave me the fact that Tom was adopted in such a way that it would conceal the more important fact that he was your husband’s natural son. You kept alive the lie that your husband was sterile because it hid your motive for murdering Carol Harley.”

“I’m afraid your reasoning is much too subtle for me.”

“I hardly think so. You’re a subtle woman.”

“I? Subtle? I’m a ninny, a poor booby. The people in the streets, the scum of the earth knew more about my life than I–” She broke off: “So you won’t help me.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. The police are on their way now.”

She regarded me thoughtfully. “There would still be time for me to use the gun.”

“No.”

“You’re very hard.”

“It, isn’t me, really, Mrs. Hillman. It’s just reality catching up.”

The sheriffs car was in the driveway now. I rose and went as far as the sitting-room door and called out to Bastian to come in. Elaine sighed behind me like a woman in passion.

Her passion was a solitary one. She had picked up her knitting in both hands and pressed both steel needles into her breast. She struck them into herself again before I reached her.

By the middle of the following day she had succeeded in dying.

The End