Росс Макдональд: The Way Some People Die

The house was in Santa Monica on a cross street between the boulevards, within earshot of the coast highway and rifleshot of the sea. The street was the kind that people had once been proud to live on, but in the last few years it had lost its claim to pride. The houses had too many stories, too few windows, not enough paint. Their history was easy to guess; they were one-family residences broken up into apartments and light-housekeeping rooms, or converted into tourist homes. Even the palms that lined the street looked as if they had seen their best days and were starting to lose their hair.

I parked in front of the number I had been given and leaned sideways in the seat to have a look at the house. The numerals, 1348, were made of rusted metal and tacked diagonally across one of the round porch pillars. A showcard above, printed black on white offered ROOMS FOR TOURISTS. There were several rattan chairs and a faded green glider on the porch, which covered the width of the house. A second-story porch, with more rattan, was surrounded by a wooden railing that looked unsafe. The third story had Gothic-looking towers at each corner, fake battlements that time had taken and made ridiculous. The roller blinds were low over the windows on all three levels, so they stared at me sleepy-eyed.

The house didn’t look as if it had money in it, or ever would have again. I went in anyway, because I’d liked the woman’s voice on the telephone.

She came to the door in a hurry when I knocked. A tall woman in her fifties with worried vague dark eyes in a worried long face, a black crepe dress over a thick corseted body. A detective was an occasion in her life. Her iron-gray hair was set in a sharp new wave that smelt of the curling-iron, her nose and cheeks and thin were stark with powder. The light fell through the purple glass in the fanlight over the door and made her complexion livid.

The woman’s voice was her best feature, gentle and carefully modulated, in a low register: “I’m Mrs. Samuel Lawrence. You’re Mr. Archer, of course? You got here in no time at all.”

“The traffic’s not so bad between nine and ten.”

“Come in, Mr. Archer. Let me make you a cup of tea. I’m just having a mid-morning snack myself. Since I’ve been doing all my own work, I find I need a bit between meals to sustain me.”

I stepped inside, and the screen door swung to languidly behind me. The hall was still and cool and smelt of wax. The floor was old parquetry, and its polished patterns glowed like jewels. A carpeted stairway climbed to the high dim ceiling. An ancient oak hat-stand with polished brass hangers stood at the foot of the stairs. The contrast with the traffic I’d been fighting gave me a queer feeling, as if I’d stepped backward in time, or out of it entirely.

She led me to an open door at the rear. “This is my own little sitting-room, if you please. I reserve the front parlor for guests, though I must say they haven’t been using it lately. Of course it’s the off-season, I only have the three just now, my regular, and a lovely young couple from Oregon, honeymooners! If only Galley had married a man like that – but sit down, Mr. Archer.”

She pulled out a chair from the heavy refectory table in the middle of the room. It was a small room, and it was as crowded with coffee- and end-tables, chairs and hassocks and bookcases, as a second-hand furniture store. The horizontal surfaces were littered with gewgaws, shells and framed photographs, vases and pincushions and doilies. If the lady had come down in the world, she’d brought a lot down with her. My sensation of stepping into the past was getting too strong for comfort. The half-armed chair closed on me like a hand.

I took the present by the tail and dragged it into the room: “Galley,” I said. “Is she the daughter you mentioned?”

The question struck her like an accusation, disorganizing her charm. She didn’t like the look of the present at all. She faced it when she had to, with a face clouded by bewilderment and shame. “Yes, my daughter Galatea. It’s why I phoned you, as I said.” Her gaze wandered, and lighted on the teapot that stood on the table. “You must let me pour you some tea before we get down to business. It’s freshly made.”

Her hand on the teapot was cracked and grained by dirty work, but she poured with an air. I said I took mine straight. The tea tasted like a clear dark dripping from the past. My grandmother came back with it, in crisp black funeral silks, and I looked out of the window to dispel her. I could see the Santa Monica pier from where I sat, and beyond it the sea and the sky like the two curved halves of a blue Easter egg.

“Nice view you have from here.”

She smiled over her teacup. “Yes. I bought it for the view. I shouldn’t really say I’ve bought it. It’s mortgaged, after all.”

I finished my tea and set the thin white cup in the thin white saucer. “Well, Mrs. Lawrence, let’s have it. What happened to your daughter?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what upsets me so. She simply disappeared a couple of months ago–”

“From here?”

“No, not from here. Galley hasn’t lived at home in recent years, though she always came to visit me at least once a month. She was working in Pacific Point, a special-duty nurse in the hospital there. I always hoped for something better for Galley – my husband Dr. Lawrence was a medical man, and a very well respected one, too – but she wanted to be a nurse and she seemed to be very happy in the work–”

She was veering away from the present fact again. “When did she disappear?”

“Last December, a few days before Christmas.” This was the middle of March, which made it about three months. “Galley always came home for Christmas. We never failed to decorate a tree. Last Christmas for the first time I spent Christmas by myself. Even her card came a day late.” And the vague eyes swam with self-pity.

“If you’ve heard from her, I wouldn’t call it a disappearance. Can I have a look at the card?”

“Of course.” She took a black leather volume of Swedenborg out of the bookcase, opened it, and drew out a large square envelope which she handed to me as if it contained a check. “But she has disappeared, Mr. Archer. I haven’t seen her since early in December. None of her friends has seen her since the first of the year.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-four. She’ll be twenty-five next month, April the 9th, if she’s alive.”

She bowed her face in her hands, having brought herself to tears.

“She’ll probably have many happy returns,” I said. “A twenty-five-year-old registered nurse can look after herself.”

“You don’t know Galley,” the damp voice said from the hidden face. “She’s always been so fascinating to men, and she’s never realized how evil men can be. I’ve tried to unknow the error, but it does no good. I keep thinking of the Black Dahlia, all the young girls that have been stolen away and destroyed by evil men.” The wide gold wedding band on her hand over her face gleamed dully like a despairing hope.

I took out the card, which was large and expensive, decorated with a sparkling mica snow scene. Inside it said:

It was subscribed in green ink by a bold and passionate hand: “Much love, Galley.” The envelope had been mailed in San Francisco on December 24.

“Did – does your daughter have friends in San Francisco?”