Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (33 page)

 
          
“Your way to where?”

 
          
He
didn’t try to answer that question. It was rhetorical, anyway. I lay there
wondering how much weight his conscience was able to bear. Though I felt sorry
for the man, I couldn’t see any way out of telling him what I suspected.
Perhaps it was in him already, unrecognized and
unadmitted
,
but eating away at his marrow like moral strontium.

 
          
“Why
did you marry Holly?” I said.

 
          
“I’ve
told you why. When I saw her on the screen, then met her in the flesh, she was
like my youth come back to me—a second springtime.” He broke off, shaking his
head. “I must sound like a romantic fool.”

 
          
“I
think you were looking for something impossible. The worst of it is, when you
want something impossible, you often get it. You married Holly because she
resembled a girl you knew in Boston twenty-five years ago. Did you ever think
of questioning that resemblance?”

 
          
“I
don’t understand you.”

 
          
“What
was the girl’s name?”

 
          
“
Mulloy
.
Kathleen
Mulloy
. I called her Katie.”

 
          
“Did
Holly ever tell you who her mother was?”

 
          
“No.”
He got up and came to the side of the bed. He walked with his eyes down,
slowly, watching each step. “What sort of a woman is her mother? You mentioned
that you spoke to her last night.”

 
          
“She’s
not a bad sort of woman, and quite good-looking. She looks like your wife
twenty-five years older. Her name, as I think I said, is Kate Dotery. I don’t
know what her maiden name was, but I can guess. She came originally from
Boston, and she told me that Hilda was her eldest daughter. She also said
something suggesting that Hilda was not a legitimate child.”

 
          
Ferguson
hung over me like a man falling through space at the end of a long tether. He
reached the end of the tether. His head came up with a jerk.

 
          
He
walked mechanically to the window and stood with his rigid back to me. My room
was four stories up. I hoped he wasn’t thinking of taking the final fall. Then
the first deep shock hit him.

 
          
He
let out a coughing groaning grunt: “
Augh
!”

 
          
I
sat up with my legs over the edge of the bed, ready to go for him if he opened
the window. He made a stumbling run for the bathroom door. I heard him being
sick behind it.

 
          
I
got up and started to put on my clothes. I was half dressed when Ferguson came
out.

 
          
He
looked like a man who had passed through a desperate crisis, a nervous
breakdown, or an almost mortal illness. His eyes in their deep cavities were
very bright, not with hope. His mouth was like blue iron. “What are you doing?”

 
          
“I
have to talk to your wife. Take me to her, will you?”

 
          
“I
will, if it has to be. Forgive my outburst. I’m not myself.”

 
          
He
helped me on with my shirt and jacket, and tied my shoelaces for me. He spoke
like a supplicant from his kneeling position. “You won’t tell her, will you?
What you just told me?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“It
would drive her out of her mind.”

 
          
Perhaps
it already had.

 
          
SHE
WAS SITTING UP in the long chair by the window, with the sky and sea behind
her. The sea was ruffled and burnished by wind. Spinnakers stood on the
horizon, as still to the eye as traveling moons.

 
          
She
looked like a young barbarous queen. A scarf worn like a turban and held in
place by jeweled pins concealed the places where the fire had scorched her
hair. Jeweled dark harlequin spectacles hid her eyes. A silk robe covered her
legs and the lower part of her body.

 
          
“I
thought you were never going to come back,” she said to Ferguson. “Who’s your
friend?”

 
          
“This
is Mr. Gunnarson, Holly.
The man who rescued you from the
fire.”

 
          
“I’m
very pleased to meet you, Mr. Gunnarson.”

 
          
She
held out her hand in a rather regal gesture and kept it out until I took it. It
was limp and cold. What I could see of her face had a pale and lunar look.

 
          
Her
voice barely moved her lips. “I’ve
been wanting
to
thank you in person for all you did. You really plucked me burning, didn’t you?
Like in that poem which my husband bought me a record of.
By T. S. Eliot.
I never heard of the label before, but
the poem certainly sent me.”

 
          
Except
for the last line, the little speech sounded rehearsed. The
expressionlessness
of her face gave it a
ventriloquial
effect. The
entire scene had a staged quality.

 
          
If
I had been feeling stronger, I’d have gone along with it for a while. But my
knees were shaking with weakness and anger and doubt. “We’ve met before, Mrs.
Ferguson.”

 
          
“I
guess you could say we have, in a way. I wouldn’t remember, drugged like I was.
The dirty
ba
—the dirty beggars drugged me.”

 
          
“You
don’t remember shooting me?”

 
          
The
room was silent for a long moment. I could hear the susurrus of the waves like
whispering at the windows. The woman tipped up her chin to Ferguson, carefully,
so as not to destroy the beauty of her pose. “What is he talking about, Ian?”

 
          
“Mr.
Gunnarson claims you shot him last night.” He was watching her like a
photographer, ready to click the shutter of his judgment. “There’s no doubt he
was shot.”

 
          
“I
didn’t shoot him, for gosh sake. Why would I shoot the man that was trying to
help me?”

 
          
“That’s
one of the questions I came here to ask you.”

 
          
“Are
there others? You keep on pitching low curves at me like that one, I’ll ask my
husband to chuck you out on your ear.”

 
          
Ferguson
shook his head at her.

 
          
I
said: “Why did you shoot me? You know perfectly well you did.”

 
          
“I
don’t know anything of the sort. And don’t stand over
me,
I hate people standing over me.” A thin edge of hysteria had entered her voice.

 
          
Ferguson
picked up a chair and placed it for me, a safe distance from her long chair.
“Please sit down. There’s no need to stand, after all.”

 
          
I
noticed as I sat down that Dr. Trench had slipped in behind me and was standing
quietly just inside the door. The woman appealed to her husband, holding up
both hands to him with the fingers stiff and spread. “Tell him he’s making a mistake,
Fergie
. You know I couldn’t have done
it,
I was out like a light. It must have been somebody else
shot him. Or else he’s nuttier than a fruitcake himself.”

 
          
“Was
somebody else there, Mrs. Ferguson?”

 
          
“I
don’t know, honest. I don’t know who was there. They had me drugged, and I lost
two whole days. You don’t have to take my word, ask Dr. Trench.” She craned her
pretty neck to look past me.

 
          
The
doctor stood there polishing his glasses. “This is no time to try to settle
anything. Why don’t you let it lie for now, Gunnarson? Mrs. Ferguson’s had a
rough two days.”

 
          
The
third day was turning out to be no less rough. I heard a car coming down the
lane and thought it was Wills, arriving on cue. I went with Ferguson to the
door. It was
Salaman
.

 
          
“I
want to talk to the lady in person,” he said.

 
          
“Say
whatever you have to say to me. My—wife is far from well.”

 
          
“She’ll
be farther from it unless she pays her bills.”

 
          
Ferguson
said in an old, weary voice: “I’ll pay you. I’ll give you a check on the Bank
of Montreal.”

 
          
“Don’t
you do it,
Fergie
.
” The woman had come up behind us in the hallway. She
brushed past me and leaned on Ferguson’s arm. “This character knows we’re in
trouble, he’s trying to shake you down. I don’t owe him or anybody else any
sixty-five thou. I don’t owe him sixty-five cents.”

 
          
“She’s
lying
her little head off,”
Salaman
said. “She thinks she can gamble my money away and lie herself out of it.”

 
          
“I
never gambled in my life. I never even put a dollar in a slot machine.”

 
          
“You’ve
never even been in Miami, I bet.”

 
          
“That’s
right, I haven’t.”

 
          
“Liar.
You slept with me in Miami two months running last
summer. What’s more, you liked it. Maybe you want to forget it, now that you’re
married to Pops here, but I’m here to tell you that you can’t.”

 
          
“Which
two months last summer?” I said.

 
          
“July and most of August.
I wasn’t planning to bring this
up, but the lady forced me to.”

 
          
“I
was in Canada all through August,” she said.

 
          
“That’s
true,” Ferguson said. “I can vouch for it.”

 
          
“It
takes more than that. I don’t like using muscle, but why are the ones with the
most the hardest to collect from?”
Salaman’s
voice
was rising. His hand went under his gabardine jacket, as if he felt a pain
there, and came out holding an automatic. “Make with the checkbook, Pops. And
take my
advice,
don’t try to stop the check.”

 
          
“I
don’t know what goes on here,” the woman said, “but we’re not paying money we
don’t owe.”

 
          
Salaman
leaned toward her. “You’re Holly May, ain’t you?”

 
          
“That’s
my name, little man. It gives you no right—”

 
          
“You’re
the movie actress, ain’t you?”

 
          
“I
used to be in the movies.”

 
          
“You
remember me, don’t you?
Hairy-legs
Salaman
with the loving disposition?”

 
          
“I
never saw you before in my life and I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

 
          
“I
hear you saying it. You used to tell it different.”

 
          
Ferguson
looked at her in bitter doubt. She answered his look. “This boy has got me
tabbed for somebody else. It happened another time last year, before I went to
Canada. Some stores in Palm Springs sent me bills, and I hadn’t been in Palm
Springs all winter.”

 
          
“Aw,
cut it out.”
Salaman
reached for her face in a sudden
movement and snatched off her harlequin glasses.

 
          
“Don’t
you dare, you!”

 
          
“Hey!”
Salaman
said. “Come out in the light. I want to look
at you.”

 
          
He
took hold of her wrist, not roughly, but with an easy assumption of superior
force, and pulled her out into the sun.

 
          
“Let
go of my wife,” Ferguson cried. “I’ll break your bloody neck.”

 
          
Ferguson
started to move on him. I tried to hold him. A bullet in the bowels was all he
needed to complete his disaster. I couldn’t hold him with one arm. He tore
himself out of my grasp.

 
          
The
woman swung her body between her husband and the gun. She jerked her wrist free
and grabbed her dark glasses out of
Salaman’s
hand.
Salaman’s
eyes remained intent on her face. Then he looked
around at us. The gun muzzle followed his glance.

 
          
“What
are you trying to pull on me? She ain’t Holly May. Where’s the real McCoy?”

 
          
“How
would I know? There’s thousands of people look like me. They used to send me
their pictures in the mail.” The woman let out a laugh of savage enjoyment.
“Too bad, lover-boy, some gal conned you good. You better get out of here
before somebody steals your wallet. And put that firearm away before you hurt
somebody.”

 
          
“That
isn’t a bad idea,” Trench said at my elbow. He walked toward
Salaman
with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. “Put
the cap pistol away and get out of here. I happen to be a skeet shooter, and
this shotgun is loaded. Now get.”

 
          
Salaman
got.

 
          
I
noted his license number, and telephoned it in to the police station. If he had
a criminal record, as he almost certainly had, concealed-weapons charges would
keep him out of mischief for some time. This pleasant duty accomplished, I
asked for Lieutenant Wills.

 
          
Wills
was on his way in from the mountains. The desk sergeant said if it was urgent
he could direct him by radio to Ferguson’s house. I told him it was urgent, and
went back to the big front room. Meeting Trench in the hall, I asked him to
absent himself for a while.

 
          
The
moony spinnakers were strung out down the sea, ballooning home. Ferguson sat on
a stool beside the woman’s chair, holding her hand. Or perhaps she was holding
his hand. She was a powerful woman, whoever she was.

 
          
“Take
off your glasses again, Mrs. Ferguson. Would you mind?”

 
          
She
made a mouth at me. “I hate to. I look awful with this black eye.”

 
          
But
she removed the harlequin glasses and let me look at her. The bruise was an old
one, already turning green and yellow at the edges. She couldn’t have received
it within the past fifteen hours. Besides, it was on the wrong side. Gaines was
right-handed. The woman in the mountain house had been struck on the left side
of the head by his revolver.

 
          
There
were other, more subtle differences between that woman and the one in front of
me. She had had a frozen face, as hard as a silver mask, and eyes like
blowtorches which had burned holes in it. The face I was looking at was mobile
and lively, in spite of the damage to it. The eyes and mouth were smiling.

 
          
“You’ll
remember me.”