Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

Both slugs were twenty-two long, and had been fired from the same long-barreled revolver, location unknown. That is what the police ballistics experts said. Theodore Marfeld said – the quotation ended the article: “Our daughters must be protected. I am going to solve this hideous crime if it takes the rest of my life. At the moment I have no definite clues.”

I looked up at Tony. “Nice fellow, Marfeld.”

“Yah.” He heard the irony. “You know him, huh?”

“I know him.”

I stood up. Tony took the magazine from my hand, tossed it into the suitcase, kicked the suitcase under the bed. He reached for the string that controlled the light, and jerked the grief-stricken room downward into darkness.

I WENT upstairs and along the gallery to Bassett’s office. He still wasn’t in it. I went in search of a drink. Under the half-retracted roof of a great inner court, dancers were sliding around on the wax tiles to the music of a decimated orchestra. JEREMY CRANE AND HIS JOY so was the legend on the drum. Their sad musicians’ eyes look down their noses at the merrymaking squares. They we playing lilting melancholy Gershwin: “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

My diving friend whose hips didn’t bounce was dancing with the perennial-bachelor type who loved taking pictures. Her diamonds glittered on his willowy right shoulder. He didn’t like it when I cut in, but he departed gracefully.

She had on a tiger-striped gown with a slashed neckline and a flaring skirt which didn’t become her. Her dancing was rather tigerish. She plunged around as if she was used to leading. Our dance was politely intense, like an amateur wrestling match, with no breath wasted on words. I said when it ended: “Lew Archer is my name. May I talk to you?”

“Why not?”

We sat at one of several marble-topped tables separated by a glass windscreen from the pool. I said: “Let me get you a drink.”

“Thank you, I don’t drink. You’re not a member, and you’re not one of Sime Graff’s regulars. Let me guess.” She fingered her pointed chin, and her diamonds flashed. “Reporter?”

“Guess again.”

“Policeman?”

“You’re very acute, or am I very obvious?”

She studied me from between narrowed eyelids, and smiled narrowly. “No, I wouldn’t say you’re obvious. It’s just you asked me something about Hester Campbell before. And it kind of made me wonder if you were a policeman.”

“I don’t follow your line of reasoning.”

“Don’t you? Then how does it happen that you’re interested in her?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. My lips are sealed.”

“Mine aren’t,” she said. “Tell me, what is she wanted for? Theft?”

“I didn’t say she was wanted.”

“Then she ought to be. She’s a thief, you know.” Her smile had a biting edge. “She stole from me. I left my wallet in the dressing-room in my cabaña one day last summer. It was early in the morning, no one was around except the staff, so I didn’t bother locking up the place. I did a few dives and showered, and when I went to dress, my wallet was gone.”

“How do you know she took it?”

“There’s no doubt whatever that she did. I saw her slinking down the shower-room corridor just before I found it missing. She had something wrapped in a towel in her hand, and a guilty smirk on her face. She didn’t fool me for a minute. I went to her afterwards and asked her point-blank if she had it. Of course she denied it, but I could see the deceitful look in her eyes.”

“A deceitful look is hardly evidence.”

“Oh, it wasn’t only that. Other members have suffered losses, too, and they always coincided with Miss Campbell’s being around. I know I sound prejudiced, but I’m not, really. I’d done my best to help the girl, you see. I considered her almost a protégée at one time. So it rather hurt when I caught her stealing from me. There was over a hundred dollars in the wallet, and my driver’s license and keys, which had to be replaced.”

“You say you caught her.”

“Morally speaking, I did. Of course she wouldn’t admit a thing. She’d cached the wallet somewhere in the meantime.”

“Did you report the theft?” My voice was sharper than I intended.

She drummed on the tabletop with blunt fingertips. “I must say, I hardly expected to be cross-questioned like this. I’m voluntarily giving you information, and I’m doing so completely without malice. You don’t understand, I liked Hester. She had bad breaks when she was a kid, and I felt sorry for her.”

“So you didn’t report it.”

“No, I didn’t, not to the authorities. I did take it up with Mr. Bassett, which did no good at all. She had him thoroughly hoodwinked. He simply couldn’t believe that she’d wrong – until it happened to him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Hester stole from him, too,” she said with a certain complacency. “That is, I can’t swear that she did, but I’m morally certain of it. Miss Hamblin, his secretary, is a friend of mine, and I hear things. Mr. Bassett was dreadfully upset the day she left.” She leaned toward me across the table: I could see the barred rib-cage between her breasts. “And Miss Hamblin said he changed the combination of his safe that very day.”

“All this is pretty tenuous. Did he report a theft?”

“Of course he didn’t. He never said a word to anybody. He was too ashamed of being taken in by her.”

“And you’ve never said a word to anybody, either?”

“Until now.”

“Why bring it all out now?”

She was silent, except for her drumming fingers. The lower part of her face set in a dull, thick expression. She had turned her head away from the source of light, and I couldn’t see her eyes. “You asked me.”

“I didn’t ask you anything specific.”

“You talk as if you were a friend of hers. Are you?”

“Are you?”

She covered her mouth with her hand, so that her whole face was hidden, and mumbled behind it: “I thought she was my friend. I could have forgiven her the wallet, even. But I saw her last week in Myrin’s. I walked right up to her, prepared to let bygones be bygones, and she snubbed me. She pretended not to know me.” Her voice became deep and harsh, and the hand in front of her mouth became a fist. “So I thought, if she’s suddenly loaded, able to buy clothes at Myrin’s, the least she can do is repay me my hundred dollars.”

“You need the money, do you?”

Her fist repelled the suggestion, fiercely, as if I’d accused her of having a moral weakness or a physical disease. “Of course I don’t need the money. It’s the principle of the thing.” After a thinking pause she said: “You don’t like me the least little bit, do you?”

I hadn’t expected the question, and I didn’t have an answer ready. She had the peculiar combination of force and meanness you often find in rich, unmarried women. “You’re loaded,” I said, “and I’m not, and I keep remembering the difference. Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. You don’t understand.” Her eyes emerged from shadow, and her meager breast leaned hard against the table edge. “It isn’t the money, so much. Only I thought Hester liked me. I thought she was a true friend. I used to coach her diving, I let her use Father’s pool. I even gave a party for her once – a birthday party.”

“How old was she?”

“It was her eighteenth birthday. She was the prettiest girl in the world then, and the nicest. I can’t understand – what happened to all her niceness?”

“It’s happening to a lot of people.”

“Is that a crack at me?”

“At me,” I said. “At all of us. Maybe it’s atomic fallout or something.”