Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“That’s true. And you say her husband died?”

“Yes. She married a wealthy husband in Canada, and he died.”

“Is that what Hester told you?’

“No. Mrs. Campbell told me. I don’t know Hester myself.” Her face went blank suddenly. “I certainly hope it’s not a false alarm. We were all so thrilled when Mrs. Campbell got the news. She’s a dear, really, such a cute little duck for her age, and she used to have money, you know. Nobody begrudges her good fortune.”

“When did she find out about it?”

“A couple of weeks ago. She only quit the beginning of this week. She’s moving in with her daughter.”

“Then she can tell me where her daughter is. If you’ll tell me where she lives.”

“I have her address someplace.”

“Doesn’t she have a phone?”

“No, she uses a neighbor’s phone. Teeny Campbell’s had hard sledding these last few years.” She paused, and gave me a liquid look. “I’m not going to give you her address if it means trouble for her. Why are you looking for Hester?”

“One of her Canadian relatives wants to get in touch with her.”

“One of her husband’s relatives?”

“Yes.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die.”

“Cross my heart,” I said. It felt like the kind of lie that would bring me bad luck. It was. “And hope to die.”

Mrs. Campbell lived on a poor street of stucco and frame cottages half hidden by large, ancient oak trees. In their sun-flecked shadows, pre-school children played their killing games: Bang bang, you’re dead; I’m not dead; You are so dead . A garbage truck on its rounds started a chorus of dogs barking in resentment at the theft of their masters’ garbage.

Mrs. Campbell’s cottage stood behind a flaked stucco wall in which a rusty gate stood permanently open. There was a new cardboard FOR SALE sign wired to the gate. In the courtyard, red geraniums had thrust up through a couple of stunted lime trees and converted them into red-flowering bushes which seemed to be burning in the sun. The thorned and brighter fire of a bougainvillea vine surged up the front porch and the roof.

I stepped in under its cool shade and knocked on the screen door, which was tufted with cotton to ward off flies. A tiny barred window was set in the inner door. Its shutter snapped open, and an eye looked out at me. It was a blue eye, a little faded, surrounded with curled lashes and equipped with a voice like the sparrows’ in the oak trees: “Good morning, are you from Mr. Gregory?”

I mumbled something indistinguishable which might have been, yes, I was.

“Goodie, I’ve been expecting you.” She unlocked the door and opened it wide. “Come in, Mr.–?”

“Archer,” I said.

“I’m absotively delighted to see you, Mr. Archer.”

She was a small, straight-bodied woman in a blue cotton dress too short and frilly for her age. This would be about fifty, though everything about her conspired to deny it. For an instant in the dim little box of a hallway, her bird voice and quick graces created the illusion that she was an adolescent blonde.

In the sunlit living-room, the illusion died. The dry cracks of experience showed around her eyes and mouth, and she couldn’t smile them away. Her ash-blond boyish bob, was fading into gray, and her neck was withering. I kind of liked her, though. She saw that. She wasn’t stupid.

She ankled around the small living-room, lifting clean ashtrays and setting them down again. “Do have a chair, or would you prefer to stand up and look around? How nice of you to be interested in my little nest. Please notice the sea view, which is one of the little luxuries I have. Isn’t it lovely?”

She posed her trim, small body, extended her arm toward the window and held it stiff and still, slightly bent up at the elbow, fingers apart. There was a view of the sea: a meager blue ribbon, tangled among the oak-tree branches.

“Very nice.” But I was wondering what ghostly audience or dead daddy she was playing to. And how long she would go on taking me for a prospective buyer.

The room was crammed with dark old furniture made for a larger room, and for larger people: a carved refectory table flanked by high-backed Spanish chairs, an overstuffed red plush divan, thick red drapes on either side of the window. These made a cheerless contrast with the plaster walls and ceiling, which were dark green and mottled with stains from old leaks in the roof.

She caught me looking at the waterstains. “It won’t happen again, I can guarantee you that. I had the roof repaired last fall, and, as a matter of fact, I’ve been saving up to redecorate this room. When all of a sudden my big move came up. I’ve had the most wondrous good luck, you know, or should I say my daughter has.” She paused in a dramatic listening attitude, as if she were receiving a brief message in code on her back fillings. “But let me tell you over coffee. Poor man, you look quite peaked. I know what house-hunting is.”

Her generosity disturbed me. I hated to accept anything from her under false pretenses. But before I could frame an answer she’d danced away through a swinging door to the kitchen. She came back with a breakfast tray on which a silver coffee set shone proudly, laid it on the table, and hovered over it. It was a pleasure to watch her pour. I complimented the coffeepot.

“Thank you very mooch, kind sir. It was one of my wedding presents, I’ve kept it all these years. I’ve held on to a lot of things, and now I’m glad I did, now that I’m moving back into the big house.” She touched her lips with her fingertips and chuckled musically. “But of course you can’t know what I’m talking about, unless Mr. Gregory told you.”

“Mr. Gregory?”

“Mr. Gregory the realtor.” She perched on the divan beside me, confidentially. “It’s why I’m willing to sell without a cent of profit, as long as I get my equity out of this place. I’m moving out the first of the week, to go and live with my daughter. You see, my daughter is flying to Italy for a month or so, and she wants me to be in the big house, to look after it while she’s gone. Which I’ll be very happy to do, I can tell you.”

“You’re moving into a larger house?”

“Yes indeedy I am. I’m moving back into my own house, the one my girls were born in. You might not think it to look around you, unless you have an eye for good furniture, but I used to live in a grand big house in Beverly Hills.” She nodded her head vigorously, as though I’d contradicted her. “I lost it – we lost it way back before the war when my husband left us. But now that clever daughter of mine has bought it back! And she’s asked me to live with her!” She hugged her thin chest. “How she must love her little mother! Eh? Eh?”

“She certainly must,” I said. “It sounds as if she’s come into some money.”

“Yes.” She plucked at my sleeve. “I told her it would happen, if she kept faith and worked hard and made herself agreeable to people. I told the girls the very day we moved cut that someday we’d move back. And, sure enough, it’s happened, Hester’s come in to all this uranium money.”

“She found uranium?”

“Mr. Wallingford did. He was a Canadian mining tycoon. Hester married an older man, just as I did in my time. Unfortunately the poor man died before they’d been married a year. I never met him.”

“What was his name?”

“George Wallingford,” she said. “Hester draws a substantial monthly income from the estate. And then she’s got her movie money, too. Everything seems to have broken for her at once.”

I watched her closely, but could see no sign that she was lying consciously.

“What does she do in the movies?”

“Many things,” she said with a wavy flip of her hand. “She dances and swims and dives – she was a professional diver – and of course she acts. Her father was an actor, back in the good old days. You’ve heard of Raymond Campbell?”