Росс Макдональд - The Galton Case

“You haven’t seen Fredericks?”

“Fredericks has gone away, she wouldn’t tell me where. But I’ll find him.”

“He can’t be far. He was at home an hour ago.”

“Damn you! Why didn’t you say so?”

“I just did. I’m wondering now if I made a mistake.”

John got the message. He didn’t speak again until we were a few blocks from his mother’s house. Then he turned in the seat and said across Sheila:

“Don’t worry about me. There’s been enough death and violence. I don’t want any more of it.”

Along the riverside street the rooftops thrust their dark angles up against a whitening sky. I watched the boy as he got out of the car. His face was pinched and pale as a revenant’s. Sheila held his arm, slowing his abrupt movements.

I knocked on the front door. After a long minute, the door was unlocked from the inside. Mrs. Fredericks peered out at us.

“Yes? What now?”

John brushed past me, and faced her on the threshold:

“Where is he?”

“He went away.”

“You’re a liar. You’ve lied to me all your life.” His voice broke, and then resumed on a different, higher note. “You knew he killed my father, you probably helped him. I know you helped him to hush it up. You left the country with him, changed your name when he did.”

“I’m not denying that much,” she said levelly.

His whole body heaved as if in nausea. He called her an ugly name. In spite of his promise to me, he was on the thin edge of violence. I laid one hand on his shoulder, heavily:

“Don’t be too hard on your mother. Even the law admits mitigation, when a woman is dominated or threatened by a man.”

“But that isn’t the case. She’s still trying to protect him.”

“Am I?” the woman said. “Protect him from what?”

“From punishment for murder.”

She shook her head solemnly. “It’s too late for that, son. Fredericks has took his punishment. He said he would rather have digger get him than go back behind walls. Fredericks hung himself, and I didn’t try to argue him out of doing it.”

We found him in a back room on the second floor. He was on an old brass bed, in a half-sitting position. A piece of heavy electrical cord was tied to the head of the bed and wrapped several times around his neck. The free end of the cord was clenched in his right hand. There was no doubt that he had been his own executioner.

“Get Sheila out of here,” I said to John.

She stood close to him. “I’m all right. I’m not afraid.”

Mrs. Fredericks came into the doorway, heavy and panting. She looked at her son with her head up:

“This is the end of it. I told him it was him or you, and which it was going to be. I couldn’t go on lying for him, and let you get arrested instead of him.”

He faced her, still the accuser. “Why did you lie for so long? You stayed with him after he killed my father.”

“You got no call to judge me for doing that. It was to save your life that I married him. I saw him cut off your daddy’s head with an ax, fill it with stones, and chunk it in the sea. He said that if I ever told a living soul, that he would kill you, too. You were just a tiny baby, but that wouldn’t of stopped him. He held up the bloody ax over your crib and made me swear to marry him and keep my lips shut forever. Which I have done until now.”

“Did you have to spend the rest of your life with him?”

“That was my choice,” she said. “For sixteen years I stood between you and him. Then you ran away and left me alone with him. I had nobody else left in my life excepting him. Do you understand what it’s like to have nobody at all, son?”

He tried to speak, to rise to the word, but the gorgon past held him frozen.

“All I ever wanted in my life,” she said, “was a husband and a family and a place I could call my own.”

Sheila made an impulsive movement toward her. “You have us.”

“Aw, no. You don’t want me in your life. We might as well be honest about it. The less you see of me, the better you’ll like it. Too much water flowed under the bridge. I don’t blame my son for hating me.”

“I don’t hate you,” John said. “I’m sorry for you, Mother. And I’m sorry for what I said.”

“You and who else is sorry?” she said roughly. “You and who else?”

He put his arm around her, awkwardly, trying to comfort her. But she was past comforting, perhaps beyond sorrow, too. Whatever she felt was masked by unfeeling layers of flesh. The stiff black silk she was wearing curved over her breast like armor.

“Don’t bother about me. Just take good care of your girl.”

Somewhere outside, a single bird raised its voice for a few notes, then fell into abashed silence. I went to the window. The river was white. The trees and buildings on its banks were resuming their colors and shapes. A light went on in one of the other houses. As if at this human signal, the bird raised its voice again.

Sheila said: “Listen.”

John turned his head to listen. Even the dead man seemed to be listening.

The End