Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (24 page)

 
          
“The
money you delivered to Gaines and your wife today—it may be the first
installment and this is the second.”

 
          
“You
think that
Salaman
is behind the kidnapping?”

 
          
“It
wasn’t a kidnapping, Colonel. That seems to be clear by now. I keep getting
further evidence that your wife conspired with Gaines to collect that money.
She may have needed it to pay these gambling debts, if these really are
gambling debts. Did she ever mention them to you?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Or
ask you for large sums of money?”

 
          
“She
didn’t have to. I provided her with ample funds for her needs.”

 
          
“Maybe
she didn’t think so. A drug habit, for instance, can be terribly expensive.”

 
          
“You
may think I’m a fool,” he said, “but I simply cannot believe that she is an
addict, or ever was. I’ve been living with her here for six months, and never
noticed the slightest indication.”

 
          
“No
peculiar-smelling cigarettes around the house?”

 
          
“Holly
doesn’t even smoke tobacco.”

 
          
“Does
she possess a hypodermic syringe? Have needle-marks on her arms or legs?”

 
          
“The
answer is no to both questions. Her limbs were as clean as a peeled willow.”

 
          
“Did
she use barbiturates?”

 
          
“Very occasionally.
I disapproved of them. Holly often said
that whiskey was the only tranquillizer she needed.”

 
          
“She
drank quite heavily, didn’t she?”

 
          
“We
both did.”

 
          
“Drinking
doesn’t often go with drug addiction. She may have stopped using drugs and
started using alcohol as a substitute. Has she always been a heavy drinker?”

 
          
“No.
When I first met her in Vancouver, she hardly touched the stuff. I suppose I
taught her to drink. She was rather—she was frightened at first, in our
relationship. Drinking made it easier for her. But she hasn’t been drinking
nearly so much in the last few weeks.”

 
          
“Pregnant
women usually do cut down.”

 
          
“That’s
it.” Ferguson’s eyes were moist and bright in his craggy face. “She was afraid
of injuring the child—Gaines’s child!”

 
          
“How
do you know it’s his? It could be yours.”

 
          
“No.”
He shook his head despondently. “I know where I
stand,
I won’t try to blink the facts. I had no right to expect so much out of life. I
tell you, it’s a judgment on me. I’ve had it coming to me, all these years.”

 
          
“Judgment for what?”

 
          
“My moral rottenness.
Years ago I got a young girl pregnant,
then
I turned my back on her. When Holly turned her
back on me, I was only getting my just deserts.”

 
          
“That’s
not rational thinking.”

 
          
“Is
it not? My father used to say that the book of life is like a giant ledger. He
was right.
Your
good actions and your bad actions,
your good luck and your bad luck, balance out. Everything comes back to you.
The whole thing works like clockwork.”

 
          
He
made a downward guillotining gesture with the edge of his hand. “I threw that
little girl in Boston out of my life, gave her a thousand dollars to shut her
up. And when I did that, I condemned myself. Condemned myself to the hell of
money, do you understand me? In my life everything comes back to money. But
Good Christ, I’m not made of money. I care for other things. I care for my
wife, no matter what she’s done to me.”

 
          
“What
do you think she’s done to you?”

 
          
“She’s
defrauded and betrayed me. But I can forgive her, honestly. I owe it not only
to her. I owe it to that little girl in Boston. You don’t know me, Gunnarson.
You don’t know the depths of evil in me. But I have depths of forgiveness in
me, too.”

 
          
He
had been taking a moral beating, and wasn’t handling it well. I said: “We’ll
talk it over tomorrow. Before you make any final decisions, you’ll want all the
facts about your wife and her activities.”

 
          
He
closed his fists on his knees and cried hoarsely: “I don’t care what she’s
done!”

 
          
“Surely
that will depend on the extent of her crimes.”

 
          
“No.
Don’t say that.”

 
          
“You
still want her back, don’t you?”

 
          
“If I can have her.
Do you think there’s a chance?” His
hands turned over and opened and clutched air.

 
          
“I
guess there’s always a chance.”

 
          
“You
don’t see any hope in the situation,” Ferguson stated. “But I do. I know
myself, I know my wife. Holly’s a lost child who has done some foolish things.
I can forgive her, and I feel sure we can make a go of it.”

 
          
His
eyes shone with a false euphoric brightness. It made me uneasy.

 
          
“There’s
not much use in talking about that now. I’m on my way out of town. I’m hoping
to find out something more definite about her background and her connection
with Gaines. Will you hold off everything until tomorrow?
Including
too much thinking.”

 
          
“Where
are you going?”

 
          
“A town in the valley, Mountain Grove.
Did Holly ever speak
of the place?”

 
          
“I
don’t believe so. Did she use to live there?”

 
          
“Possibly.
I’ll report to you in the morning. Will you be
all right tonight?”

 
          
“Of
course,” he said. “I haven’t given up hope, not by a long shot. I’m full of
hope.”

 
          
Or
of despair so sharp, I thought, that he couldn’t feel its edge biting into him.

 
          
THE
MOUNTAINS WHICH GAVE the town its name
lay
on the
horizon to the west and south like giants without eyes. Against their large
darkness and the larger darkness of the sky, the lights on the main street
flung a meretricious challenge.

 
          
It
was like a hundred other hinterland main streets, with its chain stores and
clothing stores closed for the night, restaurants and bars and movie houses
still open. Perhaps there were more people on the sidewalks, more cars in the
road,
then
you’d see in the ordinary town after ten at
night. Most of the pedestrians were men, and many of them wore the hats and
high-heeled boots of ranch hands. The young men at the wheels of the cars drove
like an army in rout.

 
          
I
stopped at a gas station, bought two dollars worth of gas out of my last
ten-dollar bill, and asked the proprietor to let me consult his telephone
directory. He was an old man with a turkey-red face and eyes like chips of
mica. He watched me through the window of his office to make sure that I didn’t
steal the directory off its chain.

 
          
It
said that Mrs. Adelaide Haines lived at 225 Canal Street, which was the address
that Mrs. Weinstein had set down. The red-faced man told me where it was. I
drove across town at the legal speed limit, fighting down my excitement.

 
          
Canal
Street was lined with trees and houses a generation old. Number 225 was a
wooden bungalow with a light on the porch, filtered green through a passion
vine which grew thick to the eaves. A card in the front window became legible
as I mounted the front steps: VOICE AND PIANO TAUGHT.

 
          
I
pressed the bell push beside it, but no audible bell rang. I knocked on the
screen door. The holes in the screen had been ineffectually mended with what
looked like hairpins. An aging woman, for whom the idea of hairpins had
prepared me, opened the inside door.

 
          
She
was tall and fine-boned and thin to the point of emaciation. Her face and neck
were roughened by years of valley sun, and the fingers at her throat were
conscious of it. In spite of this, she had some style, and a kind of desperate,
willful youthfulness. Her thick black hair was coiled on her head like sleeping
dangerous memories.

 
          
“Mrs.
Haines?”

 
          
“Yes.
I am Mrs. Haines.” The cords in her throat worked like pulleys to produce the
syllables. “Who are you, sir?”

 
          
I
gave her my card. “I’m William Gunnarson, a lawyer from
Buenavista
.
You have a son named Harry, I believe.”

 
          
“Henry,”
she corrected me. “I called him Harry when he was a child. His grownup name is
Henry.”

 
          
“I
see.”

 
          
Threading
her genteel accents was a wild and off-key note. I looked at her face more
closely. She was smiling, but not as mothers smile when they speak of their
sons. Her lips seemed queerly placed against the bone structure. They were open
and stretched to one side, in an off-center leer.

 
          
“Henry
isn’t at home, as you probably know.” She looked past me at the dark street.
“He hasn’t lived at home for years. But you know that. He’s living in
Buenavista
.”

 
          
“May I come in, Mrs. Haines?
You may be interested in what I
have to say. I know I’d like to talk to you.”

 
          
“I’m
all alone here. But of course you realize that. We won’t have a chaperone.”

 
          
A
nervous giggle escaped the hand which she pressed to her mouth a second too
late. Lipstick came off on her fingers. They were vibrating like a tuning fork
as she unlocked the screen door.

 
          
Her
perfume flooded over me as I entered. She was wearing so much perfume that it
hinted at panic.

 
          
She
ushered me into a fair-sized front room which was obviously her studio. An
upright grand piano as old as the house stood against one inner wall. A Siamese
cat jumped straight up into the air from a mohair armchair which was in process
of being disemboweled. The cat hung in the air for a long instant, glaring at
me with its hazel eyes, then reached for the arm of the chair with stretching
legs. It landed on the piano stool with all four feet together like a mountain
goat, struck one angry chord on the keyboard, and rebounded to the piano top.
There it slunk and slalomed among metronomes and music racks, and crouched
behind
a
old-fashioned photograph of a girl in a
cloche hat.

 
          
On
second glance, it was a very fine photograph. The arrogant good looks of the
girl jumped to the eye like a mask of pride and pain.

 
          
“That
was taken in San Francisco,” Mrs. Haines said conversationally, “by San
Francisco’s leading photographer. I was very beautiful, wasn’t I? I gave
recitals in Sacramento and Oakland. The Oakland Tribune said I had great
promise. Then, unfortunately, I lost my voice. One misfortune followed another.
My second husband fell from a window just as he was about to make a killing on
the stock market. My third husband deserted me. Yes, deserted me. He left me to
support our infant son as best I could with what remained of my music.”

 
          
It
was a speech from a play, a shadow play in the theater of her mind. She stood
by the piano and declaimed it without feeling or gestures, in a monotone.

 
          
“But
you know all this, don’t you? I don’t want to borrow you—bore you with my
sorrows. In any case, the clouds have silver linings. Hell has its hindrances.”
She smiled her disorganized smile. “Sit down, don’t be bashful,
let
me make you some coffee. I still have my silver
percolator, at least.”

 
          
“No
thanks.”

 
          
“Afraid
I’ll poison your cup?” Perhaps it was meant to be a humorous remark. It fell
with a thud, and she went on as if it had been uttered by someone else, a third
person in the room.

 
          
“As
I was saying, life has its compensations. Among my compensations, my voice is
coming back, as happens in a woman’s prime occasionally.” She sang a cracked
scale to prove it, sat down at the piano, and struck a cluster of notes as
discordant as the cat’s chord. “Since my pupils dropped away—none of them had
any talent anyway—I’ve had an opportunity to work with my voice again, and even
do some composing. Words and music come to me together, out of thin air. Like
that.”

 
          
She
snapped her fingers, struck another discord, and burst into improvised song.
“Out of thin air, I don’t know where,
You
brought me a
love so rich and rare. That’s two songs in five minutes.”

 
          
“What
was the other one?”

 
          
“No
chaperone,” she said. “It started to sing itself to me as soon as I said those
words.” She raised her voice again to the same tuneless tune. “We’re all alone,
No chaperone,
And
no one to bother on the telephone.”

 
          
She
laughed and turned on the piano stool to face me. The cat drifted onto her
shoulder like a piece of brown floating fur, and ran down her body to the
floor, where it stationed itself between her high-heeled feet.

 
          
“He’s
jealous,” she said with her nervous giggle. “He can tell that I’m attracted to
you.”

 
          
I
sat on the arm of the disemboweled chair and looked as forbidding as I knew
how. “I wanted to talk to you about your son, Mrs. Haines. Do you feel up to
talking about him?”

 
          
“Why not?” she said.
“It’s a pleasure. I really mean it. The
neighbors don’t believe me when I tell them how well Henry is doing. They think
I can’t tell the difference between my dreams. In fact, I seldom have an
opportunity to converse with a person of cultivation. The neighborhood has gone
downhill, and I’m seriously thinking of moving.”

 
          
“Moving
where?” I said, in the hope of switching her mind to a more realistic track.

 
          
“
Buenavista
, perhaps.
I’d like
that, but Henry’s opposed. He doesn’t want me getting in his way, I realize
that. And I’m not equal to the high-flying people that he has the opportunity
to rub elbows with. Perhaps I’ll just stay here and renovate the house.” She
looked around the shabby room. The rug was threadbare, the wallpaper was
fading,
spiders
had fogged the corners of the ceiling.
“God knows it needs it.”

 
          
The
dream was wearing thin at the edges. I chopped at it with the harshest words I
could bring myself to speak to her. “What are you going to use for money?”

 
          
“Henry
is generous with me, are you surprised? I hate to take money from him. He is,
after all, a young man on his way up. He needs fluid capital, which is why I
keep working at my little songs. One of them will be a hit, you know, and then
I won’t be a burden on Henry’s shoulders. I fully expect to write a song which
will sell a million copies. I’m not a stupid woman. And I recognize other
intelligent people at sight. But you know that.”

 
          
Her
assumption that I knew whatever she knew was the most disquieting thing about
her, of several disquieting things. I sat there caught between pity and
something close to panic, wondering what Henry’s childhood had been like. Had
he walked on the walls of her fantasies and believed they were solid earth? Or
doubted the earth itself when his feet broke through the wallboard?

 
          
“How
does Henry make his money?”

 
          
“He’s
in business,” she answered with satisfaction. “Buying and selling art objects
to a private clientele. It’s just a temporary thing, of course. Henry hasn’t
given up his own artistic aspirations, as I’m sure you are aware. But Mr.
Speare told him the time wasn’t ripe for him yet. He needed further study. So
Henry went into business, he has a fine eye for value. Which it’s only fair to
say he inherited from his mother.” Her smile was wide and toothy, a sudden
manifestation which her mouth could hardly contain. “Do you know Henry well?”

 
          
“Not
as well as I’d like to. Were you referring to Michael Speare the agent?”

 
          
“Yes.
Henry hoped that Mr. Speare would represent him. But Mr. Speare said he needed
more work before he made his professional debut. Art is a hard taskmistress, as
I have good reason to know.”

 
          
She
spread out her fingers and flexed them several times. The cat rose on its hind
legs and batted upward, playfully, at her hands.

 
          
“Down,
Harry,” she said. “I call him Harry.”

 
          
I
said from far left field: “Did Harry make contact with Speare through Hilda
Dotery?”

 
          
“Henry,”
she corrected me. “I prefer not to discuss that. There are certain people I
will not sully my tongue with. The
Doterys
are at the
head of my personal blacklist.”

 
          
“But
Henry knows Hilda Dotery? They were in a high-school play together, weren’t
they?”

 
          
Without
obvious alteration, her smile had become an angry grin. “I won’t discuss her.
She brought filth into my house. Henry was a good clean-living young man before
she corrupted him. That Dotery girl was the source of all his terrible
troubles.”

 
          
“What
did she do to him?”

 
          
“She
attached herself to him like a succubus, she taught him wicked things. I caught
them in the attic, right in this very house.” The cat had begun to moan and
pace, whipping back and forth
like
a bigger cat in a
cage. “They pretended to be dressing up, trying on costumes for a play, but I
knew what they were doing. She had a bad name already at that early age. I
picked up a piece of rope that was on the wall, and I drove her out of here
half dressed as she was, down the attic stairs and out the back door. I’m not a
violent woman, you know that. But Christ drove the money changers out of the
temple, didn’t he? You know your
Bible,
I’m sure, a
man of your brain power.”