“I hope you don’t think Francis—?”
“I don’t think about him, I don’t understand him.”
“He’s simple enough, I should think—a perfectly nice boy. His income’s been cut off by the British government, and he’s trying desperately to stay in the United States. His family’s the fox-hunting sort, he can’t abide them.” The chattering stopped abruptly, and her voice went shy: “What do you think of Cathy?”
“She’s a bright kid. How old?”
“Nearly sixteen. Isn’t she lovely, though?”
“Lovely,” I said, wondering what ailed the woman. Almost a total stranger, I was being asked to approve of herself and her daughter. Her insecurity went further back than the letter she had given me. Some guilt or fear was drawing her backward steadily, so that she had no enthuse and emote and be admired in order to stay in the same place.
“Loveliness runs in the family, doesn’t it?” I said. “Which reminds me, I’d like to meet you mother-in-law.”
“I don’t understand why—”
“I’m trying to get a picture, and she’s a central figure in it, isn’t she? Put it this way. You’re not so worried about who sent the first letter—that’s safe in my pocket—as you are about the possible effects of a second letter. If I can’t stop the letters at their source, I might be able to circumvent their effects.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. The main thing is that your husband, and your daughter, and your mother-in-law, shouldn’t take the letters seriously. Your husband might divorce you, your daughter might despise you—”
“Don’t say that.” She set down her glass peremptorily on the coffee-table between us.
I went on evenly: “Your mother-in-law might cut off your income. I’ve been thinking, if I launched a poison-pen campaign against the whole family, and made a lot of different accusations, the one that hurts could get lost in the shuffle, couldn’t it?”
“God no! I couldn’t stand it, none of us could.” The violence of her reaction was surprising. Her whole body heaved in the zebra-striped dress, and her breasts pressed together like round clenched fists in the V of her neckline.
“I was only playing with the idea. It needs refining, but there’s something there.”
“No, it’s horrible. It would cover us all with filth to hide one thing.”
“All right,” I said, “all right. To get back to your mother-in-law, she’s the one that would break you, isn’t she? I mean it’s her money that runs the house?”
“It’s really James’s, too. She handles the income in her lifetime, but his father’s will requires her to provide for him. Her idea of providing is three hundred a month, a little more than she pays the cook.”
“Could she afford to pay more?”
“If she wanted to. She has income from half a million, and this property is worth a couple of million. But she refuses to sell an acre of it.”
“A couple of million? I didn’t realize it was that big.”
“There’s oil under it,” she said bitterly. “As far as Olivia is concerned, the oil can stay in the ground until we all dry up and blow away.”
“I take it there’s no love lost between you and you mother-in-law.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I gave up trying long ago. She’s never forgiven me for marrying James. He was her pampered darling, and I married him young.”
“Three hundred a month isn’t exactly pampering, not if she has a couple of million in capital assets.”
“It’s the same as he got in college.” The details of her grievances poured out, as if she’d been waiting for a long time to borrow somebody’s ear. “She never increased it even when Cathy was born. For a while before the war we managed to live on it in a house of our own. Then prices went up, and we came home to mama.”
I put the important question as tactfully as I could: “And what does James do?”
“Nothing. He was never encouraged to think of making a living. He was her only son, and she wanted him around. That’s the idea of the allowance, of course. She’s got him.”
Her eyes were looking past me at a flat desert of time that stretched backward and forward as far as she could see. It occurred to me for an instant that I’d be doing her a favor if I showed her mother-in-law the letter in my pocket, and broke up the family for good. It was even possible that that was her own unconscious wish, the motive behind her original indiscretion. But I wasn’t even certain that there had been an indiscretion, and she would never talk. After sixteen years of waiting for her share, and planning for her daughter, she was going to wait for the end.
She rose suddenly. “I’ll take you to meet Olivia, if you must. She’s always in the garden in the late afternoon.”
The garden had fieldstone walls higher than my head. Inside, the flowers broke the light into almost every shade of the spectrum, and held it glowing. The sun was nearly down behind the western mountains and the light was fading, but Mrs. Slocum’s flowers burned brightly on as if with fires of their own. There were fuchsias, pansies, tuberous begonias, great shaggy dahlias like separate pink suns. Olivia Slocum was working among them with a pair of shears, when we came up to the gate. Of indeterminate shape and size in a faded linen dress and a wide straw hat, she was bent far over among the blooms.
Her daughter-in-law called to her, with a slight nagging tone in her voice: “Mother! You shouldn’t be straining yourself like that. You know what the doctor said.”
“What did the doctor say?” I asked her under my breath.
“She has a heart condition—when it’s convenient.”
Olivia Slocum straightened up and came toward us, removing her earth-stained gloves. Her face was handsome in a soft, vague, sun-flecked way, and she was much younger than I’d expected. I’d imagined her as a thin and sour lady pushing seventy, with gnarled hands grasping the reins she held on other people’s lives. But she wasn’t over fifty-five at most, and she carried her age easily. The three generations of Slocum women were a little too close for comfort.
“Don’t be ridiculous, my dear,” she said to Maude. “The doctor says mild exercise is beneficial to me. Anyway, I love to garden in the cool of the day.”
“Well, as long as you don’t overtire yourself.” The younger woman’s voice was grudging, and I suspected that the two never agreed on anything. “This is Mr. Archer, mother. He came up from Hollywood to see Francis’s play.”
“How nice. And have you seen it, Mr. Archer? I’ve heard James is quite distinguished in the leading role.”
“He’s very accomplished.” The lie came easier as I repeated it, but it still left a bad taste on my tongue.
With a queer look at me, Maude excused herself and went back to the house. Mrs. Slocum raised both arms to take off her woven straw hat. She held the pose a moment too long, and turned her head so that I could see her profile. Vanity was her trouble; she was fixed on her own lost beauty, and couldn’t grow old or let her son grow up. The hat came off after the long moment. Her hair was dyed bright red, and combed over her forehead in straight bangs.
“James is one of the most versatile people in the world,” she said. “I brought him up to take a creative interest in everything, and I must say he’s justified my faith. Of course you know him only as an actor, but he paints quite passably, and he has a beautiful tenor voice as well. He’s even taken to writing verse lately. Francis has been a great stimulus to him.”
“A brilliant man,” I said. I had to say something to stem her flow of words.
“Francis? Oh, yes. But he doesn’t have a tithe of James’s energy. It would be a boon to him if he could rouse some Hollywood interest in his play. He’s been urging me to back it, but naturally I can’t afford to speculate in that sort of thing. I presume that you’re connected with the studios, Mr. Archer?”
“Indirectly.” I didn’t want to get involved in explanations. She chattered like a parrot, but her eyes were shrewd. To change the subject, I said: “As a
matter of fact, I’d like to get out of Hollywood. It’s ulcer territory. A quiet life in the country would suit me fine, if I could get a piece of property in a place like this.”
“A place like this, Mr. Archer?” She spoke guardedly, and her green eyes veiled themselves like a parrot’s eyes.
Her reaction surprised me, but I blundered on: “I’ve never seen a place I’d rather live in.”
“I see, Maude sicked you on me.” Her voice was unfriendly and harsh. “If you represent the Pareco people, I must ask you to leave my property at once.”
“Pareco?” It was the name of a gasoline. My only connection with it was that I used it in my car occasionally. I told her that.
She looked closely into my face, and apparently decided I wasn’t lying. “The Pacific Refinery Company has been trying to get control of my property. For years they’ve been laying siege to me, and it’s made me a little suspicious of strangers, especially when they express an interest in real estate.”
“My interest is entirely personal,” I said.
“I’m sorry if I’ve maligned you, Mr. Archer. The events of the last few years have embittered me, I’m afraid. I love this valley. When my husband and I first saw it, more than thirty years ago, it seemed our earthly paradise, our valley of the sun. When we could afford to, we bought this lovely old house and the hills around it, and when he retired we came here to live. My husband is buried here—he was older than I—and I intend to die here myself. Do I sound sentimental?”
“No.” Her feeling for the place was stronger than sentimentality, and a little frightening. Her heavy body leaning on the gate was monumental in the evening light. “I can understand your attachment to a place like this.”
“I am a part of it,” she continued throatily. “They’ve ruined the town and desecrated the rest of the valley, but they shan’t touch my mesa. I told them that, though they’ll never take no for an answer. I told them that the mountains would be here long after they were gone. They didn’t know what I was talking about.” She rolled a cold green eye in my direction: “I believe you understand me, Mr. Archer. You’re very sympathetic.”
I muttered some kind of an affirmative. I understood a part of her feeling all right. A friend of mine who lectured in economics at UCLA would call it the mystique of property. What I failed to understand was the power of her obsession. Perhaps it was explained by the fact that she felt besieged, with her daughter-in-law a fifth column in the house.
“I sometimes feel that the mountains are my sisters—” She cut herself off short, as if she’d suddenly realized that she was going off the deep end. I was thinking that she had enough ego to equip a dictator and leave enough over for a couple of gauleiters. Perhaps she noticed the change in my expression.
“I know you’re wanting to go to the party,” she said, and gave me her hand briefly. “It was nice of you to come and talk to an old woman like me.”
I started back to the house through an aisle of tall Italian cypress. It opened on a lawn in which a small swimming-pool was sunk, its filter system masked by a cypress hedge. At the far end a burlap-covered springboard stuck out over the water. The water in the pool was so still it seemed solid, a polished surface reflecting the trees, the distant mountains, and the sky. I looked up at the sky to the west, where the sun had dipped behind the mountains. The clouds were writhing with red fire, as if the sun had plunged in the invisible sea and set it flaming. Only the mountains stood out dark and firm against the conflagration of the sky.
Chapter 5
The sound of an approaching motor stopped me at the corner of the veranda. There were several more cars on the apron of the drive: a Jaguar roadster, a fishtail Cadillac, an ancient Rolls with wire wheels and a long, square British nose. Another car came into sight between the lines of palms, a quiet black machine with a red searchlight mounted on the front. I watched it being parked. A police car in that company seemed as out of place as a Sherman tank at a horse show.
A man got out of the black car and came up the flagstone walk which ascended the terraces in front of the house. He was tall and thick, a bifurcated chunk of muscle that moved with unexpected speed and silence. Even in slacks and a sports jacket, with a silk shirt open at the neck, he had the authority of a uniform, the bearing of a cop or a veteran soldier. Shadowed eyes, cragged nose, wide mouth, long jaw; his face was a relief map of all the male passions. Short hair the color of faded straw bristled on his head and sprouted from the shirt-opening at the base of his heavy red neck.
I moved a step to show myself and said: “Good evening.”
“Good evening.” He bit the words off with clean white teeth, smiling automatically, then mounted the steps to the veranda.
He glanced around as though he were ill at ease, before knocking on the door. I watched him over the veranda railing, and our eyes met for a meaningless instant. I was about to speak again—something about the weather—when I noticed Cathy curled in the porch swing as she’d been an hour before. She was leaning forward, watching the man intently.
His eyes shifted to her, and he took a step toward her. “Cathy? How are you, Cathy?” Hesitant and uncertain, the tone of a man talking to a child he didn’t know.
Her only answer was a clucking deep in her throat. With a slow boldness she rose from the swing and walked toward him in silence. Past him and down the steps and round the far corner of the veranda, without once turning her head. He pivoted on his heels and half-raised one hand, which stayed forgotten in the air until she was out of sight. The large hand, open and futile, curled into a fist. He turned to the door and struck it twice as if it had a human face.
I climbed the steps behind him while he was waiting. “Fine weather we’re having,” I said.
He looked at me without hearing what I said or seeing my face. “Yeah.”
Maude Slocum opened the door and took us in in a single swift glance. “Ralph?” she said to the other man. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I met James downtown today, and he asked me to come over for a drink.” His heavy voice was apologetic.
“Come in then,” she said, without graciousness. “Since James invited you.”
“Not if I’m not wanted,” he answered sullenly.
“Oh, come in, Ralph. It would look rather strange if you came to the door and went away again. And what would James say to me?”
“What does he usually say?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.” If they had a joke between them, it didn’t fit my wave length. “Come in and have your drink, Ralph.”
“You twisted my arm,” he said wryly, and passed her in the doorway. Almost imperceptibly, her body arched away from his. Hatred or some other feeling had drawn her as tight as a bowstring.
She remained in the doorway and moved her lips so that she blocked my way. “Please go away, Mr. Archer. Pretty please?” She tried to make it pleasant and light, but failed.
“You are kind of inhospitable, aren’t you? Apart from the curious fact that you hired me to come up here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid a situation is developing, and I simply couldn’t stand the extra strain of having you around.”
“And here was I, thinking I was a welcome addition to any group gathering. You lacerate my ego, Mrs. Slocum.”
“It’s no laughing matter,” she told me sharply. “I don’t lie very well. So I avoid situations in which lying is necessary.”
“Then who’s the large character with the thirst?”
“One of James’s friends. I don’t see the point of these questions.”
“Does James have many policeman friends? I didn’t think he was the type.”
“Do you know Ralph Knudson?” Surprise made her face look longer.
“I’ve seen the pattern they’re made from.” Five years on the Long Beach force were in my record. “What’s a tough cop doing at an arty party in the hills?”
“You’ll have to ask James—but not now. He takes peculiar fancies to people.”
She wasn’t a competent liar. “Of course, Mr. Knudson isn’t an ordinary policeman. He’s the Chief of Police in town, and I understand he has a rather distinguished record.”
“But you don’t really want him at your parties, is that it? I used to be a cop, and I’m still one in a way. I’ve felt that kind of snobbery myself.”
“I’m not a snob!” she said fiercely. Apparently I’d touched something she valued. “My parents were ordinary people, and I’ve always hated snobs. But why I should be defending myself to you!”
“Then let me come in for a drink. I promise to be very suave and smooth.”
“You’re so terribly persistent—as if I didn’t have enough to contend with. What makes you so persistent?”
“Curiosity, I guess. I’m getting interested in the case. It’s quite an interesting setup you’ve got here; I’ve never seen a fishline with more tangles.”
“I suppose you realize I can dismiss you, if you continue to make yourself completely obnoxious.”
“You won’t.”
“And why won’t I?”
“I think you’re expecting trouble. You said yourself that something was building up. I can feel it in the air. And it’s possible your policeman friend didn’t come up here for fun.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. And he isn’t my friend. Frankly, Mr. Archer, I’ve never had to deal with a more difficult—employee, than you.”
I didn’t like the word. “It might help you,” I said, “if you thought of me as an independent contractor. In this case I’m expected to build a house without going near the lot.” Or perhaps demolish a house, but I didn’t add that.
She looked at me steadily for twenty or thirty seconds. Finally a smile touched her generous mouth and parted it. “You know, I think I rather like you, damn it. Very well, come in and meet the wonderful people, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“You talked me into it.”
I got my drink and lost my hostess in the same motion, as soon as we entered the big living-room. Ralph Knudson, the big man who was no friend of hers, caught her eye as she handed me my glass. She went to him. Her husband and Francis Marvell were sitting on the piano bench with their heads together, leafing through a thick volume of music. I looked around at the rest of the wonderful people. Mrs. Galway, the amateur actress, with the professional smile clicking off and on like a white electric sign. A bald-headed man in white flannels setting off his mahogany tan, who daintily smoked a small brown cigarillo in a long green-gold holder. A fat man with a cropped gray head, in a tweed suit with padded shoulders, who turned out to be a woman when she moved her nyloned legs. A woman leaning awkwardly on the arm of the chair beside her, with a dark long tragic face and an ugly body. A youth who moved gracefully about the room, pouring drinks for everybody and smoothing the receding hair at his temples. A round little woman who tinkled on and on, whose bracelets and earrings tinkled when her voice paused.
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