Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

I nodded. The name belonged to a swashbuckling silent-movie star who had tried to make the transition to the talkies. and been tripped by advancing years and a tenor voice. I could remember a time in the early twenties when Campbell’s serials filled the Long Beach movie houses on Saturday afternoons. Me they had filled with inspiration: his Inspector Fate of Limehouse series had helped to make me a cop, for good or ill. And when the cops went sour, the memory of Inspector Fate had helped to pull me out of the Long Beach force.

She said: “You do remember Raymond, don’t you? Did you know him personally?”

“Just on the screen. It’s been a long time. What ever happened to him?”

“He died,” she said, “he died of a broken heart, way back in the depression. He hadn’t had a picture for years, his friends turned against him, he was terribly in debt. And so he died.” Her eyes became glazed with tears, but she smiled bravely through them like one of Raymond Campbell’s leading ladies. “I carried on the faith, however. I was an actress myself, before I subordinated my life to Raymond’s, and I brought up my girls to follow in his footsteps, just as he would have wished. One of them, at least, has made the most of it.”

“What does your other daughter do?”

“Rina? She’s a psychiatric nurse, can you imagine? It’s always been a wonder to me that two girls so close in age and looks could differ so in temperament. Rina actually doesn’t have any temperament. With all the artistic training I gave her, she grew up just as cold and hard and practical as they come. Why, I’d drop dead with shock if Rina ever offered me a home. No!” she cried melodramatically. “Rina would rather spend her time with crazy people. Why would a pretty girl do a thing like that?”

“Maybe she wants to help them.”

Mrs. Campbell looked blank. “She could have found a more feminine way. Hester brings real joy to others without demeaning herself.”

A funny look must have crossed my face. She regarded me shrewdly, then snapped her eyelids wide and turned on her brights. “But I mustn’t bore you with my family affairs. You came to look at the house. It’s got just the three rooms, but it’s most convenient, especially the kitchen.”

“Don’t bother with that, Mrs. Campbell. I’ve been imposing on your hospitality.”

“Why, no you haven’t. Not at all.”

“I have, though. I’m a detective.”

“A detective?” Her tiny fingers clawed at my arm and took hold. She said in a new voice, a full octave lower than her bird tones: “Has something happened to Hester?”

“Not that I know of. I’m simply looking for her.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“She may be.”

“I knew it. I’ve been so afraid that something would go wrong. Things never work out for us. Something goes wrong, always.” She touched her face with her fingertips: it was like crumpled paper. “I’m in a damned hole,” she said hoarsely. “I gave up my job on the strength of this, and I owe half the people in town. If Hester falls down on me now, I don’t know what I’ll do.” She dropped her hands, and raised her chin. “Well, let’s have the bad news. Is it all a bunch of lies?”

“Is what a bunch of lies?”

“What I’ve been telling you, what she told me. About the movie contract and the trip to Italy and the rich husband who died. I had my doubts about it, you know – I’m not that much of a fool.”

“Part of it may be true. Part of it isn’t. Her husband isn’t dead. He isn’t old, and he isn’t rich, and he wants her back. Which is where I come in.”

“Is that all there is to it? No.” Her eyes regarded me with hard suspicion. The shock had precipitated a second personality in her, and I wondered how much of the hardness belonged to her, and how much to hysteria. “You’re holding out on me. You admitted she’s in trouble.”

“I said she may be. What makes you so sure?”

“You’re a hard man to get information out of.” She stood up in front of me, planting her fists on her insignificant hips and leaning forward like a bantam fighter. “Now don’t try to give me the runaround, though God knows I’m used to it after thirty years in this town. Is she or isn’t she in trouble.”

“I can’t answer that, Mrs. Campbell. So far as I know, there’s nothing against her. All I want to do is talk to her.”

“On what subject?”

“The subject of going back to her husband.”

“Why doesn’t he talk to her himself?”

“He intends to. At the moment he’s a little under the weather. And we’ve had a lot of trouble locating her.”

“Who is he?”

“A young newspaperman from Toronto. Name’s George. Wall.”

“George Wall,” she said. “George Wallingford.”

“Yes,” I said, “it figures.”

“What sort of a man is this George Wall?”

“I think he’s a good one, or he will be when he grows up.”

“Is he in love with her?”

“Very much. Maybe too much.”

“And what you want from me is her address?”

“If you know it.”

“I ought to know it. I lived there for nearly ten years. 14 Manor Crest Drive, Beverly Hills. But if that’s all you wanted, why didn’t you say so? You let me beat my gums and make a fool of myself. Why do that to me?”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t very nice. But this may be more than a runaway-wife case. You suggested yourself that Hester’s in trouble.”

“Trouble is what the word detective means to me.”

“Has she been in trouble before?”

“We won’t go into that.”

“Have you been seeing much of her this winter?”

“Very little. I spent one weekend with her – the weekend before last.”

“In the Beverly Hills house?”

“Yes. She’d just moved in, and she wanted my advice about redecorating some of the rooms. The people who had it before Hester didn’t keep it up – not like the days when we had our Japanese couple.” Her blue gaze strained across the decades, and returned to the present. “Anyway, we had a good time together, Hester and I. A wonderful weekend all by our lonesomes, chatting and tending to her clothes and pretending it was old times. And it ended up with Hester inviting me to move in the first of the year.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Wasn’t it? I was so surprised and pleased. We hadn’t been close at all for several years. I’d hardly seen her, as a matter of fact. And then, out of the blue, she asked me to come and live with her.”

“Why do you think she did?”

The question seemed to appeal to her realistic side. She sat on the edge of her chair, in thinking position, her fingertips to her temple. “It’s hard to say. Certainly not on account of my beautiful blue eyes. Of course, she’s going to be away and she needs someone to stay in the house and look after it. I think she’s been lonely, too.”

“And frightened?”

“She didn’t act frightened. Maybe she was. She wouldn’t tell me if she was. My girls don’t tell me anything.” She inserted the knuckle of her right thumb between her teeth, and wrinkled her face like a baby monkey. “Will I still be able to move the first of the year? Do you think I will?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“But the house must belong to her. She wouldn’t spend all that money on redecorating. Mr. Archer – is that your name? Archer? – where is all the money coining from?”

“I have no idea,” I said, though I had several.

MANOR CREST DRIVE was one of those quiet palm-lined avenues which had been laid out just before the twenties went into their final convulsions. The houses weren’t huge and fantastic like some of the rococo palaces in the surrounding hills, but they had pretensions. Some were baronial pseudo-Tudor with faked half-timbered façades. Others were imitation Mizener Spanish, thick-walled and narrow-windowed like stucco fortresses built to resist imaginary Moors. The street was good, but a little disappointed-looking, as though maybe the Moors had already been and gone.