Росс Макдональд - The Chill

“We might as well use his name,” I said. “Was it Godwin?”

“Hell no. It was Roy Bradshaw. He used to be a professor at the college.” He added with a kind of mournful pride: “Now he’s the Dean out there.”

He wouldn’t be for long, I thought; his sky was black with chickens coming home to roost.

“Bradshaw was one of Dr. Godwin’s patients,” McGee was saying. “That’s where he and Connie met, in Godwin’s waiting room. I think the doctor kind of encouraged the thing between them.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Bradshaw told me himself the doctor said it was good for them, for their emotional health. It’s a funny thing, I went to Bradshaw’s house to get him to lay off Connie, even if I had to beat him up. But by the time he was finished talking he had me half-convinced that he and Connie were right, and I was wrong. I still don’t know who was right and who was wrong. I know I never gave her any real happiness, after the first year. Maybe Bradshaw did.”

“Is that why you didn’t inject him into your trial?”

“That was one reason. Anyway, what was the use of fouling it up? It would only make me look worse.” He paused. A deeper tone rose from a deeper level of his nature: “Besides, I loved her. I loved Connie. It was the one way I had to prove I loved her.”

“Did you know that Bradshaw was married to another woman?”

“When?”

“For the last twenty years. He divorced her a few weeks ago.”

McGee looked shocked. He’d been living on illusions for a long time, and I was threatening his sustenance. He pulled himself back into the bunk, almost out of sight.

“Her name was Letitia Macready – Letitia Macready Bradshaw. Have you ever heard of her?”

“No. How could he be married? He was living at home with his mother.”

“There are all kinds of marriages,” I said. “He may not have seen his wife in years, and then again he may have. He may have had her living here in town, unknown to his mother or any of his friends. I suspect that was the case, judging from the lengths he went to to cover up his divorce.”

McGee said in a confused and shaken voice: “I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

“It may have a very great deal. If the Macready woman was in town ten years ago, she had a motive for killing your wife – a motive as strong as your own.”

He didn’t want to think about the woman. He was too used to thinking about himself. “I had no motive. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of her head.”

“You did, though, once or twice.”

He was silent. All I could see of him was his wavy gray hair, like a dusty wig, and his large dishonest eyes trying to be honest:

“I hit her a couple of times, I admit it. I suffered the tortures of the damned afterward. You’ve got to understand, I used to get mean when I got plastered. That’s why Connie sent me away, I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her for anything. I blame myself.” He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

I offered him a cigarette, which he refused. I lit one for myself. The bright trembling patch of sunlight was climbing the bulkhead. It would soon be evening.

“So Bradshaw had a wife,” McGee said. He had had time to absorb the information. “And he told me he intended to marry Connie.”

“Maybe he did intend to. It would strengthen the woman’s motive.”

“You honestly think she did it?”

“She’s a prime suspect. Bradshaw is another. He must have been a suspect to your daughter, too. She enrolled in his college and took a job in his household to check on him. Was that your idea, McGee?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t understand her part in all this. She hasn’t been much help in explaining it, either.”

“I know,” he said. “Dolly’s done a lot of lying, starting away back when. But when a little kid lies you don’t put the same construction on it as you would an adult.”

“You’re a forgiving man.”

“Oh no I’m not. I went to her with anger in my heart that Sunday I saw her picture in the paper, with her husband. What right did she have to a happy marriage after what she did to me? That’s what was on my mind.”

“Did you tell her what was on your mind?”

“Yessir, I did. But my anger didn’t last. She reminded me so of her mother in appearance. It was like going back twenty years to happier times, when we were first married. We had a real good year when I was in the Navy and Connie was pregnant, with her.”

His mind kept veering away from his current troubles. I could hardly blame him, but I urged him back to them:

“You gave your daughter a hard time the other Sunday, didn’t you?”

“I did at first. I admit that. I asked her why she lied about me in court. That was a legitimate question, wasn’t it?”

“I should say so. What was her reaction?”

“She went into hysterics and said she wasn’t lying, that she saw me with the gun and everything and heard me arguing with her mother. Which was false, and I told her so. I wasn’t even in Indian Springs that night. That stopped her cold.”

“Then what?”

“I asked her why she lied about me.” He licked his lips and said in a hushed voice: “I asked her if she shot her mother herself, maybe by accident, the way Alice kept that revolver lying around loose. It was a terrible question, but it had to come out. It’d been on my mind for a long time.”

“As long ago as your trial?”

“Yeah. Before that.”

“And that’s why you wouldn’t let Stevens cross-examine her?”

“Yeah. I should have let him go ahead. I ended up cross-questioning her myself ten years later.”

“What was the result?”

“More hysterics. She was laughing and crying at the same time. I never felt so sorry for anybody. She was as white as a sheet and the tears popped out of her eyes and ran down her face. Her tears looked so pure .”

“What did she say?”

“She said she didn’t do it, naturally.”

“Could she have? Did she know how to handle a gun?”

“A little. I gave her a little training, and so did Alice. It doesn’t take much gun-handling to pull a trigger, especially by accident.”

“You still think it could have happened that way?”

“I don’t know. It’s mainly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

These words seemed to release him from an obscure bondage. He climbed down out of the upper bunk and stood facing me in the narrow aisle. He had on a seaman’s black turtleneck, levis, and rubber-soled deck shoes.

“You’re in a position to go and talk to her,” he said. “I’m not. Mr. Stevens won’t. But you can go and ask her what really happened.”

“She may not know.”

“I realize that. She got pretty mixed up the other Sunday. God knows I wasn’t trying to mix her up. I only asked her some questions. But she didn’t seem to know the difference between what happened and what she said in court.”

“That story she told in court – did she definitely admit she made it up?”

“She made it up with a lot of help from Alice. I can imagine how it went. ‘This is the way it happened, isn’t it?’ Alice would say. ‘You saw your old man with the gun, didn’t you?’ And after a while the kid had her story laid out for her.”

“Would Alice deliberately try to frame you?”

“She wouldn’t put it that way to herself. She’d know for a fact I was guilty. All she was doing was making sure I got punished for my crime. She probably fed the kid her lines without knowing she was faking evidence. My dear sister – sister-in-law was always out to get me, anyway.”

“Was she out to get Connie, too?”

“Connie? She doted on Connie. Alice was more like her mother than her sister. There was fourteen-fifteen years’ difference in their ages.”