Росс Макдональд - The Doomsters

“Contusions?” I prompted softly.

“Yeah, the contusions on the back and head. You often get them in drownings along this coast, with the rocks and the heavy surf. I’ve seen some cadavers that were absolutely macerated, poor things. At least they got Mrs. Hallman before that happened to her. But she was bad enough. They ought to print a few of my pictures in the papers. There wouldn’t be so many suicides walking into the water. Not so many women, anyway, and most of them are women.”

“Is that what Mrs. Hallman did, walk into the water?”

“Probably. Or else she jumped from the pier. Of course there’s always an outside chance that she fell, and that’s how she got the contusions. The Coroner’s Jury called it an accident, but that was mainly to spare the family’s feelings. Elderly women don’t normally go down to the ocean at night and accidentally fall in.”

“They don’t normally commit suicide, either.”

“True enough, only Mrs. Hallman wasn’t what you’d call exactly normal. Scott talked to her doctor after it happened and he said she’d been having emotional trouble. It’s not fashionable these days to talk about hereditary insanity, but you can’t help noticing certain family tie-ups. This one in the Hallman family, for instance. It isn’t pure chance when a woman subject to depression has a son with a manic-depressive psychosis.”

“Mother had blue genes, eh?”

“Ouch.”

“Who was her doctor?”

“G. P. in town named Grantland.”

“I know him slightly,” I said. “He was out here today. He seems like a good man.”

“Uh-huh.” In the light of the medical code that inhibits doctors from criticizing each other, his grunt was eloquent.

“You don’t think so?”

“Hell, it’s not for me to second-guess another doctor. I’m not one of these medical hotshots with the big income and the bedside manner. I’m purely and simply a lab man. I did think at the time he should have referred Mrs. Hallman to a psychiatrist. Might have saved her life. After all, he knew she was suicidal.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told Scott. Until he did, Scott thought it could be murder, in spite of the physical evidence. But when he found out she’d tried to shoot herself – well, it all fitted into a pattern.”

“When did she try to shoot herself?”

“A week or two before she drowned, I think.” Lawson stiffened perceptibly, as if he realized that he’d been talking very freely. “Understand me, I’m not accusing Grantland of negligence or anything like that. A doctor has to use his own judgment. Personally I’d be helpless if I had to handle one of these–”

He noticed that I wasn’t listening, and peered into my face with professional solicitude. “What’s the trouble, fellow? You got a cramp?”

“No trouble.” At least no trouble I wanted to put into words. It was the Hallman family that really had trouble: father and mother dead under dubious circumstances, one son shot, the second being hunted. And at each high point of trouble, Grantland cropped up. I said: “Do you know what happened to the gun?”

“What gun?”

“The one she tried to shoot herself with.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. Maybe Grantland would.”

“Maybe he would.”

Lawson tapped the lengthening ash from his cigar. It splattered silently on the gravel between us. He drew on the cigar, its glowing end pale salmon in the sun, and blew out a cloud of smoke. The smoke ascended lazily, almost straight up in the still air, and drifted over my head toward the house.

“Or Ostervelt,” he said. “I wonder what’s keeping Ostervelt. I suppose he’s trying to make an impression on Slovekin.”

“Slovekin?”

“The police reporter from the Purissima paper. He’s talking to Ostervelt in the greenhouse. Ostervelt loves to talk.”

Ostervelt wasn’t the only one, I thought. In fifteen or twenty minutes, a third of a cigar length, Lawson had given me more information than I knew what to do with.

“Speaking of causes of death,” I said, “did you do the autopsy on Senator Hallman?”

“There wasn’t any,” he said.

“You mean no autopsy was ordered?”

“That’s right, there was no question about cause of death. The old man had a heart history. He’d been under a doctor’s care practically from day to day.”

“Grantland again?”

“Yes. It was his opinion the Senator died of heart failure, and I saw no reason to question it. Neither did Ostervelt.”

“Then there was no indication of drowning?”

“Drowning?” He looked at me sharply. “You’re thinking about his wife, aren’t you?”

His surprise seemed real, and I had no reason to doubt his honesty. He wore the glazed suit and frayed shirt of a man who lived on his salary.

“I must have got my signals switched,” I said.

“It’s understandable. He did die in the bathtub. But not of drowning.”

“Did you examine the body?”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

“Who said it wasn’t necessary?”

“The family, the family doctor, Sheriff Ostervelt, everybody concerned. I’m saying it now,” he added with some spirit.

“What happened to the body?”

“The family had it cremated.” He thought about this for a moment, behind his glasses. “Listen, if you’re thinking that there was foul play involved, you’re absolutely wrong. He died of heart failure, in a locked bathroom. They had to break in to get to him.” Then, perhaps to put his own doubts to rest: “I’ll show you where it happened, if you like.”

“I would like.”

Lawson pressed out his cigar against the sole of his shoe, and dropped the smelly butt in his side pocket. He led me through the house to a large rear bedroom. With blinds drawn, dust covers on the bed and the other furniture, the room had a ghostly air.

We went into the adjoining bathroom. It contained a six-foot tub supported on cast-iron feet. Lawson switched on the lofty ceiling fixture above it.

“The poor old man was lying in here,” he said. “They had to force the window to get to him.” He indicated the single window high above the basin.

“Who had to force the window?”

“The family. His two sons, I believe. The body was in the bathtub most of the night.”

I examined the door. It was thick and made of oak. The lock was the old-fashioned kind that has to be turned with a key. The key was in the keyhole.

I turned it back and forth several times, then pulled it out and looked at it. The heavy, tarnished key told me nothing in particular. Either Lawson was misinformed, or the Senator had died alone. Or I had a locked-room mystery to go with the other mysteries in the house.

I tried a skeleton key on the door, and after a little jiggling around, it worked. I turned to Lawson. “Was the key in the lock when they found him?”

“I couldn’t say, really. I wasn’t here. Maybe Ostervelt could tell you.”

WE RAN INTO OSTERVELT in the front hallway, ran into him almost literally as he came out of the living-room. He pushed between us, his belly projecting like a football concealed in his clothes. His jowls became convulsive: “What goes on?”

“Mr. Archer wanted to see the Senator’s bathroom,” Lawson said. “You remember the morning they found him, Chief. Was the key in the lock?”

“What lock, for Christ sake?”

“The lock on the bathroom door.”

“I don’t know.” Ostervelt’s head jerked as he hammered out the words: “I’ll tell you what I do know, Lawson. You don’t talk official business to strangers. How many times do we have to go into that?”

Lawson removed his glasses and wiped them with the inside of his tie. Without them, his face looked unformed and vulnerable. But he had guts and some professional poise: “Mr. Archer isn’t a stranger, exactly. He’s employed by the Hallman family.”