Росс Макдональд: The Wycherly Woman

He was ready to explain them to me, but I didn’t want to understand his feelings. I could end up baby-sitting with Wycherly instead of doing the job he’d hired me for. I stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“San Francisco, naturally.”

“What are you going to do in San Francisco?”

“I’ll find out when I arrive.” I looked at my watch: it was nearly two. “I should be able to get there before dark. One other thing, Mr. Wycherly. In the light of what you’ve told me about those letters, do you want to reconsider about giving me your ex-wife’s address?”

“I don’t have it,” he snapped. “In any case, I don’t want you talking to her under any circumstances. Give me your word on that.”

I gave him my word, with a mental reservation.

In the doorway I passed the waiter carrying a tray of French pastries. Wycherly looked at the tray with greedy, grief-stricken eyes.

I stopped in town at Imported Motors and got the license number of Phoebe’s car before I headed north. GL3741.

The ship rose like a chalk cliff over the dock. Gulls circled above it, flashing in the late afternoon sunlight. I climbed the forward gangway unchallenged. The main deck was practically deserted.

A man in white coveralls was cleaning the bottom of an empty swimming pool with a long-handled vacuum brush. Most of the officers were ashore, he told me above the whine of his machine. Maybe the purser was still aboard. He directed me to his office.

It was an artificially lighted cubicle below decks, occupied by a moon-faced bald man wearing a white shirt and blue uniform trousers. He remembered Mr. Wycherly very well. Mr. Wycherly had occupied one of their best staterooms on the voyage just completed. I told him that I represented Mr. Wycherly.

“In what capacity?”

“I’m a private detective.”

He gave me a heavily insured look. “I’m sure Mr. Wycherly was satisfied with his accommodations. He shook my hand and thanked me before he left us yesterday.”

“There’s no beef about the ship,” I said. “It has to do with Mr. Wycherly’s daughter Phoebe. She came aboard to say goodbye the day you sailed. She hasn’t been seen since.”

He put his hand on top of his naked scalp as if I’d blown cold on him. “You’re not suggesting she stowed away or anything like that? Or that we’re in any way responsible?”

“It hardly seems likely. I’m trying to trace her, and this is the obvious place to start. I need your help.”

“We’ll be glad to help in any way we can, of course.” He stood up and gave me his hand, adding in a more personal tone: “I have a daughter. My name is Clement.”

“Archer.” I took out my notebook. “Now what was the date you sailed?”

“November second. That is to say, November second was the scheduled sailing date. We had a little mechanical trouble and didn’t actually get under way until early the following morning. But Mr. Wycherly came aboard on the afternoon of November second. His daughter was with him, as you say.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I remember the occasion very well,” Clement said. “I have reason to.”

“How so?”

“Well, there was quite a hullabaloo in Mr. Wycherly’s stateroom. This woman – apparently she was Mr. Wycherly’s divorced wife – was stirring up a dreadful fuss in front of some of the other passengers. The steward couldn’t quiet her, so he sent down for me. I’m afraid I couldn’t quite handle her, either. She was one of those big blonde furies, if you know what I mean. Bleached blonde,” he added snidely. “And very much in her cups. Eventually I had to get our master-at-arms to persuade her to leave the ship. The way that woman talked!” He threw up his hands.

“What was she saying?”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember her exact words. They wouldn’t be repeatable, anyway. You can imagine how I felt. We like our sailings to be gay affairs, and there she was in the middle of the festivities howling out obscenities. She’d taken off her shoe, and was hammering with the heel at Mr. Wycherly’s door. It left welts in the paint.”

“You must have some idea of what she said.”

“Well, she wanted in, of course. They wouldn’t let her in. She claimed that they were betraying her, turning their backs and leaving her in the lurch. She threatened to get back at them.”

“Just who was she threatening?”

“The people in the stateroom – Mr. Wycherly and his daughter, and I believe a couple of other relatives who’d come to see him off. She said she’d ruin them all if they didn’t let her in and talk to her.”

“Who were the other relatives?”

“I really couldn’t say. Quite a crowd had begun to gather round. When I remonstrated with the woman, she actually menaced me with the heel of her shoe. She looked at me like a basilisk, I mean it. Much as I hated to do it, I had no choice but to call in the master-at-arms. He managed to get her off the ship, with some help from the daughter.”

“Did Phoebe leave the ship with her mother?”

“I believe so. Once things were under control, more or less, the girl came out of the stateroom and talked to the woman. Apparently she said the right things. They walked down the gangway with their arms around each other.”

“Did the girl come back aboard?”

“I really didn’t notice. I always have so many things on my mind, sailing day. Mr. McEachern may be able to tell you. He’s our master-at-arms, and he kept a closer eye on the party than I did.”

“Is McEachern on the ship now?”

“He should be. He’s on duty.” Clement picked up an intramural telephone.

I talked to McEachern on the upper deck. He leaned on the rail, a rawboned slab of man in a petty-officer’s uniform. There was something nautical in his bearing, and something of the hotel dick.

“Sure I remember her,” he said. “The lady was looped, if you want my opinion. I don’t mean falling-down looped. She could probably walk a chalk-line and handle herself physically. But she had that varnished look they get when they’ve been drinking hard, maybe stayed up a couple of nights drinking. Some people it gives the fantods to.”

“Did it her?”

He spat into the oily water forty feet below. “She wasn’t making much sense there for a while. She called me every name in the book. The lady has a sensational vocabulary.”

“Did she threaten anybody with bodily harm?”

“You mean Mr. Wycherly?”

“The husband or the daughter. Anybody.”

“Not in my hearing. The purser said she made some threats before I got there. She was going to castrate all the males in sight. You never can tell whether to take that stuff seriously – I see a lot of hysterical drunks in my work, male and female. She calmed down all right when the girl came out and talked to her.”

“What did the girl say?”

“She said that she was sorry. They both said they were sorry.” McEachern grinned, and the wrinkles fanned out from his eyes. “They didn’t say what they were sorry about.”

“But they had some kind of reconciliation?”

“That’s right. They went ashore together. I followed along, just to make sure that everything was all right. The girl had a taxi waiting on the dock. I helped them into it–”

“Both of them?”

“Yeah, and they tooled away as though nothing had happened. So maybe,” he added hopefully, “it wasn’t such a bad split in the family after all. I wouldn’t want to be judged myself by what I say and do when I’m plastered. By the way, would you like a short snort? I have some very fine Scotch which I picked up in Hong Kong.”

“Thanks, I don’t have time. I’m wondering where the two of them tooled away to.”