Росс Макдональд: The Wycherly Woman

Coming over the pass you can see the whole valley spread out below. On a clear morning, when it lies broad and colored under a white sky, with the mountains standing far back on either side, you can imagine it’s the promised land.

Maybe it is for a few. But for every air-conditioned ranchhouse with its swimming pool and private landing strip, there are dozens of tin-sided shacks and broken-down trailers where the lost tribes of the migrant workers live. And when you leave the irrigated areas you find yourself in gray desert where nobody lives at all. Only the oil derricks grow there, an abstract forest casting no shade. The steady pumps at their bases nod their heads like clockwork animals.

Meadow Farms lay on the edge of this rich and ugly desert. From a distance it was a typical lost valley city thrown down helter-skelter at the foot of barren-looking mountains and garnished with a little alkali dust. When I drove into it past the euphoric sign at the city limits, Fastest-Growing City in the Valley, I could see some differences. The main street was clean and freshly paved; the buildings along it included substantial new ones, and others going up; the people on the street had a hustling, prosperous look.

I stopped at a downtown corner for gas and information. When the leather-faced attendant had filled the tank of my car, I asked him the way to Homer Wycherly’s house. He pointed along the main street to the outskirts where oil tanks gleamed like stacks of minted silver in the sun:

“Straight on through town, you can’t miss it. It’s the big stone house on the side of the hill. I heard Mr. Wycherly just got back last night.”

“Back from where?”

“He took one of them luxury cruises to Australia and the South Seas. Been gone over two months. Myself, I got enough South Seas when I was in the Marines. You a friend of his?”

“I never met him.”

“I know him well, knew his old man before him.” He gave me and my car a quick once-over. It wasn’t a recent model, and neither was I. “If you’re selling, don’t waste your time on Mr. Wycherly. He’s a hard man to sell to.”

“Maybe I’ll buy something from him.” The man grinned. “You just did. I’m one of the outlets for Wycherly gas. That will be four-forty.”

I paid him and drove out of town past the silver tanks and a cracking station whose Disney towers smelled faintly of rotten eggs. The house stood high above the road at the top of a winding private drive. Its stone face was forbidding, like a castle built to dominate a countryside. From the old-fashioned verandah I could look down into the town and out across the valley.

A big man with wavy brown hair and a stomach answered the door. His hair was too uniformly brown for a man of his age: he probably had it dyed. He had a strong nose and a weak chin and a sort of in-between mouth. He wore imported-looking tweeds buttoned over his stomach. On his face he wore a home-grown expression of dismay.

“I’m Homer Wycherly. You must be Mr. Archer.”

I acknowledged that I was. His expression didn’t change much; it crinkled a bit around the mouth and eyes. It was the smile of a man who wanted to be liked and hadn’t always been.

“You made good time from Los Angeles. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

“I started out before dawn. You said on the phone the matter was urgent.”

“Very urgent indeed. But do come in.” He led me along a dim hallway under old deer heads into a sitting room, keeping up a stream of half-apologetic chatter: “I’m afraid I can’t offer anything much in the way of hospitality. I’ve just reopened the house, there isn’t a servant in the place. The fact is, I didn’t intend to come back here at all. I only did so on the off-chance that Phoebe might have come home.” He sniffed. “But Phoebe hasn’t.”

The sitting room had the closed musty atmosphere of a Victorian parlor. Some of the furniture was sheeted; the heavy drapes were closed against the morning. Wycherly turned on an overhead light, looked around at the effect with disapproval, and went to the windows. I was struck by the violent way he jerked at the draw-cord of the drapes. Like a man hanging a cat.

Sunlight poured in, migrating across the room to a small picture on the wall above the marble fireplace. Composed of blobs and splashes of raw color, it was one of those paintings which are either very advanced or very backward, I never can tell which. Wycherly looked at the painting as if it was a Rorschach test, and he had failed it.

“Some of my wife’s work.” He added to himself, “I’m going to have it taken down.”

“Is your wife the one who’s missing?”

“Heavens, no. It’s Phoebe. My only daughter. Sit down, Mr. Archer, let me explain the situation, if I can.” He subsided into a chair and waved me into another. “I found out yesterday when I returned to this country – I’ve been on a cruise – I found out that Phoebe had dropped out of school away back in November. No one seems to have seen her since that time. Naturally I’m worried sick.”

“What school?”

“Boulder Beach College. You’ve got to get her back for me, Mr. Archer. A girl of her tender years, with her protected upbringing–”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-one, but she’s a complete innocent.”

“Has she ever done this before – gone away without telling you where she was going?”

“She has not. Phoebe’s always been a well-conducted girl. She’s had her problems, of course, but there have been no problems between her and me. She’s always confided in me. We get along beautifully.”

“Who did she have problems with?”

“Her mother.” He glanced at the Rorschach painting over the mantel. His face became heavier and, duller. “But we won’t go into the subject of that.”

“I’d like to talk to Phoebe’s mother, if she’s available.”

“She isn’t,” he said flatly. “I don’t know where Catherine is and I’ll be frank to tell you I don’t care. She and I decided to go our separate ways last spring. There’s no point in rehashing the gory details. Our divorce had nothing to do with Phoebe’s disappearance.”

“There’s no chance that she’s with her mother?”

“No. After the spectacle Catherine made of herself–”

He compressed his mouth over the rest of the sentence. I waited, but he didn’t finish it.

“Exactly how long has Phoebe been gone? This is January the eighth. You say she left college in November. What time in November?”

“Early November. I haven’t been able to pin it down precisely. That’s your job. I did get Phoebe’s roommate on the phone last night – her ex-roommate. But she’s a rattlebrain.”

“Two months is a long time,” I said. “Is this your first attempt to have your daughter traced?”

“It’s not my fault. I’m not responsible.”

He rose in an angry pouncing movement, came up against magnetic lines of force which seemed to web the room and hem him in invisibly. He began to pace back and forth like a caged animal remembering jungle:

“You’ve got to understand, I’ve been out of the country. I didn’t even know about it till yesterday. I’ve been cruising around the Pacific while God knows what has been going on behind my back.”

“When did you see her last?”

“The day I sailed. She came up to San Francisco to bid me bon voyage . If I can trust what her roommate says, she never went back to Boulder Beach.” He stopped in his tracks, and turned to me with murky eyes. “I’m desperately afraid that something has happened to her. And I blame myself,” he added. “It really is my fault. I was thinking exclusively of myself when I embarked on that cruise. I was trying to put the whole wretched family trouble behind me. I deserted Phoebe in her hour of need.”