Росс Макдональд - The Chill

“I know where it is. In fact I just got in from attending a dinner with Dean Bradshaw. I have another call to make, and then I’ll be right with you.”

I hung up and sat quite still for a moment in Bradshaw’s leather-cushioned swivel chair. The walls of books around me, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. I hated to get up.

Mrs. Bradshaw was waiting in the hallway. Maria had disappeared. The old woman was breathing audibly, as if the excitement was a strain on her heart. She clutched the front of her pink wool bathrobe against her loosely heaving bosom.

“What’s the trouble with the girl?”

“She’s emotionally upset.”

“Did she have a fight with her husband? He’s a hothead, I could hardly blame her.”

“The trouble goes a little deeper than that. I just called Dr. Godwin the psychiatrist. She’s been his patient before.”

“You mean to tell me the girl is–?” She tapped her veined temple with a swollen knuckle.

A car had stopped in the driveway, and I didn’t have to answer her question. Roy Bradshaw came in the front door. The fog had curled his hair tight, and his thin face was open. It closed up when he saw us standing together at the foot of the stairs.

“You’re late,” Mrs. Bradshaw said in an accusing tone. “You go out wining and dining and leave me here to cope all by myself. Where were you, anyway?”

“The Alumni banquet. You can’t have forgotten that. You know how those banquets drag on, and I’m afraid I made my own contribution to the general boredom.” He hesitated, becoming aware of something in the scene more serious than an old woman’s possessiveness. “What’s up, Mother?”

“This man tells me the little girl in the gatehouse has gone out of her mind. Why did you have to send me a girl like that, a psychiatric patient?”

“I didn’t send her.”

“Who did?”

I tried to break in on their foolishness, but neither of them heard me. They were intent on their game of emotional ping-pong, which had probably been going on since Roy Bradshaw was a boy.

“It was either Laura Sutherland or Helen Haggerty,” he was saying. “Professor Haggerty is her counselor, and it was probably she.”

“Whichever one it was, I want you to instruct her to be more careful next time. If you don’t care about my personal safety–”

“I do care about your safety. I care very much about your safety.” His voice was strained thin between anger and submissiveness. “I had no idea there was anything the matter with the girl.”

“There probably wasn’t,” I said. “She’s had a shock. I just called a doctor for her. Dr. Godwin.”

Bradshaw turned slowly in my direction. His face was strangely soft and empty, like a sleeping boy’s.

“I know Dr. Godwin,” he said. “What kind of a shock did she sustain?”

“It isn’t clear. I’d like to talk to you in private.”

Mrs. Bradshaw announced in a trembling voice: “This is my house, young man.”

She was telling me, but she was also reminding Bradshaw, flicking the economic whip at him. He felt its sting:

“I live here, too. I have my duties to you, and I try to perform them satisfactorily. I also have my duties to the students.”

“You and your precious students.” Her bright black eyes were scornful. “Very well. You can have your privacy. I’ll go outside.”

She actually started for the front door, drawing her bathrobe around her lumpy body as if she was being cast out into a blizzard. Bradshaw went after her. There were pullings and haulings and cajolings and a final goodnight embrace, from which I averted my eyes, before she climbed heavily up the stairs, with his assistance.

“You mustn’t judge Mother too harshly,” he said when he came down. “She’s getting old, and it makes it hard for her to adjust to crises. She’s really a generous-hearted soul, as I have good reason to know.”

I didn’t argue with him. He knew her better than I did.

“Well, Mr. Archer, shall we go into my study?”

“We can save time if we talk on the road.”

“On the road?”

“I want you to take me to Helen Haggerty’s place if you know where it is. I’m not sure I can find it in the dark.”

“Why on earth? Surely you’re not taking Mother seriously? She was simply talking to hear herself talk.”

“I know. But Dolly’s been doing some talking, too. She says that Helen Haggerty is dead. She has blood on her hands, by way of supporting evidence. I think we’d better go up there and see where the blood came from.”

He gulped. “Yes. Of course. It isn’t far from here. In fact it’s only a few minutes by the bridle path. But at night we’ll probably get there faster in my car.”

We went out to his car. I asked him to stop at the gatehouse, and glanced in. Dolly was lying on the studio bed with her face turned to the wall. Alex had covered her with a blanket. He was standing by the bed with his hands loose.

“Dr. Godwin is on his way,” I said in a low voice. “Keep him here till I get back, will you?”

He nodded, but he hardly appeared to see me. His look was still inward, peering into depths he hadn’t begun to imagine until tonight.

Bradshaw’s compact car was equipped with seat-belts, and he made me fasten mine before we set out. Between his house and Helen’s I told him as much as I thought he needed to know about Dolly’s outpourings. His response was sympathetic. At my suggestion, he left his car by the mailbox at the foot of Helen’s lane. When we got out I could hear a foghorn moaning from the low sea.

Another car, a dark convertible whose shape I could barely make out through the thickening air, was parked without lights down the road. I ought to have shaken it down. But I was pressed by my own private guilt, and eager to see if Helen was alive.

Her house was a faint blur of light high among the trees. We started up the hairpinning gravel driveway. An owl flew low over our heads, silent as a traveling piece of fog. It lit somewhere in the gray darkness, called to its mate, and was answered. The two invisible birds seemed to be mocking us with their sad distant foghorn voices.

I heard a repeated crunching up ahead. It resolved itself into footsteps approaching in the gravel. I touched Bradshaw’s sleeve, and we stood still. A man loomed up above us. He had on a topcoat and a snap-brim hat. I couldn’t quite see his face.

“Hello.”

He didn’t answer me. He must have been young and bold. He ran straight at us, shouldering me, spinning Bradshaw into the bushes. I tried to hold him but his downhill momentum carried him away.

I chased his running footfalls down to the road, and got there in time to see him climbing into the convertible. Its engine roared and its parking lights came on as I ran toward it. Before it leaped away, I caught a glimpse of a Nevada license and the first four figures of the license number. I went back to Bradshaw’s car and wrote them down in my notebook: FT37.

I climbed up the driveway a second time. Bradshaw had reached the house. He was sitting on the doorstep with a sick look on his face. Light poured over him from the open door and cast his bowed shadow brokenly on the flagstones.

“She is dead, Mr. Archer.”

I looked in. Helen was lying on her side behind the door. Blood had run from a round bullet hole in her forehead and formed a pool on the tiles. It was coagulating at the edges, like frost on a dark puddle. I touched her sad face. She was already turning cold. It was nine-seventeen by my watch.

Between the door and the pool of blood I found a faint brown hand-print still sticky to the touch. It was about the size of Dolly’s hand. She could have fallen accidentally, but the thought twisted through my head that she was doing her best to be tried for murder. Which didn’t necessarily mean that she was innocent.