Росс Макдональд: The Wycherly Woman

221 had a discreet sign painted on a board: Oceano Palms. It was a three-storied stucco building girdled by tiers of balconies on which the individual apartments opened. I knocked on the door of number one.

It opened slightly. A woman with iron-gray hair looked out at me as if she was expecting bill-collectors.

“Are you the landlady, ma’am?”

“I’m the manager of these apartments,” she said in a tone of correction. “We’re all filled up for the spring semester.”

“I’m not looking for living space. Mr. Wycherly sent me.

She said after a pause: “The young lady’s father?”

“Yes. We were hoping you could tell me something more about her. May I come in?”

She looked me up and down with eyes that had seen them all and found most of them wanting.

“I very seldom have trouble with my girls. Practically never, you might say. Are you a policeman?”

“A private investigator. My name is Archer. I’m sure you don’t object to telling me what you know about Phoebe Wycherly.”

“I hardly knew her. My conscience is clear.” But her thick figure blocked the doorway. “I think you should take it up with the college authorities. When a girl drops out of school like that, it’s their headache, not mine. Wandering off heaven knows where with heaven knows who. Whom. She only lived here for less than two months.”

“Was she a good tenant?”

“As good as most, I guess. I’m not sure I ought to be talking to you. Why don’t you go over and talk to the college people?”

“Mr. Wycherly is doing that. It will be nice if he can tell them that you co-operated with our investigation.”

She considered this proposition, biting her upper lip and then remembering not to. A tuft of black hairs on her heavy chins quivered at me like displaced antennae.

“Come in then.”

Her living room smelled faintly of incense and widowhood. A square-faced man with an oblong moustache smiled from a black frame propped up on top of a closed upright piano. The walls were hung with mottoes, one of which said: “The smoke ascends as lightly from the cottage hearth as from the haughty palace.” A radio murmured through the ceiling like a mild threat of modernity.

“I’m Mrs. Doncaster,” my hostess said. “Sit down if you can find a place.”

There was nothing on any of the chairs, nothing out of place in the small stuffy room. Except me. I took a platform rocker which creaked when I moved, so I sat rigidly still. Mrs. Doncaster sat down about eight feet away.

“It’s a blow to me, losing a girl like this. I practically never have trouble with my girls. If they do get into trouble – I don’t mean serious trouble, we don’t have that – they come to me for help. I give them good advice, at least I try to make it good. Mr. Doncaster was a minister in the Church of Christ.”

She bowed towards the picture on the piano. The movement seemed to dislodge her stuck feelings:

“Poor Phoebe, I wonder what happened to her?”

“What do you think happened?”

“She didn’t like it here, that’s my opinion. She was used to a different style of living entirely. So she simply picked herself up and went away, to someplace she liked better. She had the money and the freedom to do it. Her parents gave her too much freedom, if you want to know what I think. And I don’t know what Mr. Wycherly thought he was doing – traipsing off around the globe and leaving his young daughter to fend for herself. It isn’t natural .”

“Did Phoebe take her things with her when she left?”

“No, but she had plenty of things, and she could always buy more. She took her car.”

“Can you tell me the make and model?”

“It was a little green car, one of these German imports, Volkswagen? Anyway, she bought it here in town, and you should be able to find out all about it. Most of my girls don’t have cars of their own, and they’re better off without them.”

“I take it you disapproved of Phoebe Wycherly.”

“I didn’t say that.” She gave me a hard defensive look, as if I’d accused her of wishing the girl into limbo. “I never really got a chance to know her. She was in and out, and back and forth in that little green car of hers. She had better things to do than talk to me.”

“How was she doing in her studies?”

“I don’t know. The college could tell you that. I never knew of her opening a book, but maybe she was so brilliant she didn’t have to.”

“Was she – is she brilliant?”

“The other girls seemed to think so. You can talk to her roommate Dolly Lang about that, and other things. Dolly’s a good girl, you can count on her to tell you the truth as far as she understands it.”

“Is Dolly in the building?”

“I think so. Would you like me to call her?” She started to get up.

“In a minute, thanks. What does Dolly have to say about her?”

Mrs. Doncaster hesitated. “I think I’ll let Dolly speak for herself. We don’t entirely agree.”

“Where’s the point of disagreement?”

“Dolly thinks she meant to come back. I don’t. If she meant to come back, why didn’t she come back? Because she didn’t want to, that’s my opinion. This place wasn’t good enough for Miss Wycherly. She was constantly complaining about the facilities, objecting to perfectly sensible regulations. She wanted something fancier and freer.”

“Did she say so?”

“Not in so many words, perhaps. But I know the type. The first thing she did when she moved in was tear out all my good drapes, and put in her own. Without even asking permission.”

“That sounds as if she meant to stay, and to come back.”

“That isn’t what it means to me. It means that she was thoughtless – a spoiled rich brat who cared for nobody!”

The ugly phrase hung in the room. A vaguely appalled expression crept over Mrs. Doncaster’s face, changing the hard mouth and transforming the eyes. They went to the pictured face on the piano with something approaching shame, or even fear. She said to the smiling oblong moustache, not to me:

“I’m sorry. I’m all upset, I’m not fit to talk to man nor beast.” She got up and moved to the door. “I’ll call Dolly down for you.”

“I’d just as soon go up. I want to see the apartment, anyway. What number is it?”

“Seven, on the second floor.”

I faced her in the narrow doorway. “Is there anything important you haven’t told me about Phoebe? About her relations with men, for example?”

“I hardly knew the girl. She didn’t confide in me.”

Her mouth closed like a mousetrap, not the kind that would ever cause the world to beat a path to her door.

I went up the outside stairs to the second floor. Behind the door of number seven, a typewriter was stuttering. I knocked, and a girl’s voice answered wearily:

“Come in.”

She was sitting at a desk by the window, with the heavy drapes closed and the reading-lamp on. A small rabbit-shaped girl in a bulky white Orion sweater and blue slacks. Her eyes were blurred with what was probably thought, and her legs were twisted around the legs of her chair. She didn’t bother to disentangle them.

“Miss Lang? I’d like to speak to you. Are you busy?”

“I’m horribly busy.” She tugged at her short dark bangs, miming advanced despair, and gave me a quick little ghastly smile. “I have this Socio paper due at three o’clock this afternoon and my semester grade depends on it and I can’t concentrate my quote mind unquote. Do you know anything about the causes of juvenile delinquency?”

“Enough to write a book, I think.”

She brightened. “Really? Are you a sociologist?”

“A kind of poor-man’s sociologist. I’m a detective.”