Rose's Last Summer

by Margaret Millar

  Charley bent over and pretended to be engrossed in ty­ing the lace of one of his workboots.

  “Charley.”

  The old man straightened up, making a funny little sound that was barely audible.

  “I presume you still work here, Charley?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jack.”

  “I’ve had to warn you before about standing around talking like this.”

  “A little talk never hurt—”

  “I’m sure your friend here will excuse you while you go on your rounds.”

  Jack Goodfield gave Frank one sweeping and contemp­tuous glance and then marched back into the building like a general who hadn’t yet discovered that his army had been cut down behind him.

  Charley took out a black and white bandana and blew his nose into it and cursed. Frank, who had heard, and been the object of, considerable cursing, was impressed by Charley’s vocabulary.

  “Sorry if I caused you any trouble,” Frank said. “I came here to see Goodfield, as a matter of fact.”

  But Charley had apparently lost interest in the whole affair. Getting up, he adjusted his shoulder holster and began to shuffle toward the side of the building. The gen­eral still had one man left.

  The air inside the building was very warm and dry after the cold dampness of the fog. At the desk where the work­ers punched the time clock, a young girl was writing a let­ter on deep mauve stationery. Through the glass partition behind her Frank could see two rows of women at work over a long table. They looked as identical as the dolls’ heads they were painting.

  Seeing Frank, the girl put down her pen but made no attempt to hide the letter. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Jack Goodfield.”

  “If it’s a matter of employment, we’re full up.”

  “It’s not.”

  “All right. That’s Mr. Goodfield’s office right across the hall. Just walk in. His secretary, Mrs. Hiller, is right there —I think.” She added the last two words with a curiously deliberate air, and then she picked up her pen and re­sumed writing on the mauve notepaper. Before he turned away Frank noticed that she wrote uphill, in a disturbed fashion.

  He crossed the hall, unconsciously straightening his shoulders as if to shake off the office he was still carrying four hundred miles from home.

  Mrs. Hiller was not at her desk but her name card was: Evangeline Hiller. It was a new and very elaborate name card in a blue plastic container. The rest of the office seemed shabby by comparison.

  Frank sat down to wait opposite a blown-up photograph of an office picnic dated in ink at the bottom, July 4, 1932, Muir Park.

  The door marked John J. Goodfield opened suddenly and Mrs. Hiller plunged into the room with the reluctant thrust of a diver plunging into cold water. Her body, wrapped in a tight silk jersey dress, was mature and full­blown. Above the shoulders she looked very young and surprised as if she couldn’t understand what in the world had happened below. She was flushed, her long, brown hair was mussed and she was breathing fast and hard. It seemed to Frank that she had been running, a lap or two, perhaps, around the building to set a good example for Charley.

  To cover her confusion she addressed Frank in a voice that sounded much too genteel. “If you wish to speak to Mr. Goodfield, sir, I’m afraid he just stepped out a mo­ment ago.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Oh, he won’t be back. That is, he won’t be back today, I mean. He had an urgent call.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Very urgent.” Mrs. Hiller swallowed hard, her whole throat convulsing. “Sickness.”

  “Whose?”

  “Somebody got sick, is all. A friend of Jack’s—Mr. Goodfield’s.”

  “And Mr. Goodfield went to soothe the fevered brow?”

  “Sure he did. I guess.” Mrs. Hiller’s gentility had van­ished, like a popsicle on the sidewalk leaving a small ir­regular sticky puddle. “He’ll be back maybe tomorrow.”

  From inside the office came a soft sound like the drawer of a desk or a filing cabinet sliding into place. The girl heard it, too. She clutched at her throat as if she was chok­ing, and said loudly, “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. This friend of his is, real sick.”

  Frank wondered if the friend was as sick as Mrs. Hiller looked. “I’m afraid I can’t wait that long.”

  She attempted to disguise her obvious relief by saying, “Oh dear, that’s too bad, isn’t it? I mean, Jack—Mr. Goodfield will be terribly sorry to’ve missed you.”

  “He doesn’t know me.”

  “Well, he—he—just hates to miss people. Anyone.”

  “A friendly type, eh?”

  “Oh yes, very. Now if you’ll just leave your name, I’ll make sure that he finds out you were here.”

  “My name’s Frank Clyde.”

  “And your business?”

  “I’m a social worker.”

  “A—social worker?” Mrs. Hiller’s mouth gaped like a hungry carp’s. “Oh? I don’t believe it.”

  “Why shouldn’t you believe it?”

  “Well, because. What would a social worker have to do with Jack? Jack’s a millionaire.”

  There was a brief silence before Frank spoke again in a friendly, reasonable way as if he was addressing a strange child. “Does this look like a millionaire’s office to you?”

  The girl glanced around the tiny room, biting the edge of her lower lip. “Well, gee, I don’t know, I never saw a millionaire’s office before.”

  “Have you seen any office before?”

  “Just what do you mean by that? I’m a secretary. A pri­vate secretary. I took a course. I graduated.”

  “Did—”

  “With honors. So don’t go making any more crumby re­marks about me being a birdbrain. I’m sick of being called a birdbrain by a lot of other birdbrains.”

  “I didn’t call you anything. I just wondered if this was your first job.”

  Mrs. Hiller stuck her head in the air and held the pose. “Don’t you go social-workering me, Mr. Social Worker. I don’t need any.”

  “Your conception of a social worker is—”

  “And don’t go saying any dirty words either.”

  “I’m afraid you misunderstood.”

  “Oh, did I? Don’t tell me I don’t know a dirty word if I hear one.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Well, that’s better.” Mrs. Hiller seemed slightly molli­fied. “And don’t tell me I don’t know about social workers either. Back when I was a kid we were on relief and those creeps were always coming around to see that we spent enough money on milk. Milk, yet. Nobody ever got filled up on milk. Just try it sometime.”

  “I don’t check up on any family finances.” Except my own, he added silently.

  “My finances happen to be swell. This dress I got on cost forty dollars plus tax.”

  “It’s very pretty.”

  “You think so?” The girl smiled, without meaning to. She was as sensitive to a compliment as she was to a criti­cism. “I think so, too. It’s from Magnin’s. I only got it on Saturday at a sale. It was regular $59.95 and the pleats will stay in forever.”

  Frank wondered which pleats would persist longer, the ones outside Mrs. Hiller or the ones inside. “Is this your first job?”

  “In a way. I don’t have to work. I’ve got a husband; he’s a cook in the army, stationed at Fort Ord. He supports me. And Jack—Mr. Goodfield pays me very well.”

  Frank didn’t have to ask what for.

  He said goodbye to Mrs. Hiller and she responded very pleasantly. It was clear that she thought she had given a good account of herself, that she had, in her own fashion, bitten the leg of the social worker who’d come to check up on the milk; and having administered

  the bi
te, she felt no further resentment.

  Outside, the sheets of fog had coagulated into a flabby grey wall. Moisture condensed on Frank’s forehead and ran down his cheeks like cold griefless tears.

  Charley’s chair stood by the gate looking empty and for­lorn.

  Frank let himself out through the gate and walked down the driveway, the wall of fog moving always a little ahead of him in a tantalizing way. Before he reached the street, a man’s figure appeared suddenly out of the fog.

  It was Charley. He was shivering with cold and his leather jacket and peaked cap were dripping wet, but he had a funny little grin on his face.

  “You find Mr. Jack, buddy?”

  “No.”

  “Want to know why not? He ain’t there.”

  “So I found out.”

  “He took a powder. Jumped into that convertible of his and beat it like he was shot out of a cannon. Which it’s too bad he wasn’t. Now I just wonder why he left so sudden­-like, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “While you were inside there I gave you a little figuring-out in my head. You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

  Frank was vaguely flattered. He had no idea that he looked in the least authoritative or official. “No, I’m not.”

  Charley seemed disappointed. “I was hoping maybe you’d come to pick up Evangeline and take her to a deten­tion home. Evangeline. Say, how do you like that for the name of a slut. Evangeline.” He spit on the sidewalk vig­orously. “Wiggles her hips in and out that gate twenty times a day. Gotta go down to the drugstore for coffee, she says. Or gotta have her hair done. Or gotta go shopping. If Mrs. Goodfield knew what was going on, she’d have a stroke. She’s real strict about things.”

  Frank wondered. From what Greer had told him about the old lady, he gathered that she wasn’t quite as strict as she pretended.

  “The girl’s married,” Frank said.

  “Since when does being married keep a slut from slut­ting? Since never. To tell you confidential, I got a sneak­ing sympathy for Mr. Jack. He’ll never be the same, mark my words. Well, I gotta go now. It’s been nice talking to you.” Charley held out his gnarled hand and Frank shook it. “Soon as you came up to the gate I said to myself, now that’s a nice open face.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You come back again. Maybe by that time I’ll have Sweetheart all fixed up pretty like she used to be.”

  “I may be back.”

  “You do that.”

  “Goodbye, Charley,” Frank said.

  He turned and headed for his car. Sweetheart witnessed his departure without interest.

  12

  The noon traffic was heavy, slowed by fog and lunch-hour pedestrians, and cable cars that moved up and down the impossibly steep and narrow streets with slow, staggering dignity like drunken duchesses.

  Frank drove up Powell Street. With each hill the traf­fic lessened and the street changed. Cigar and candy shops gave way to hotels and nightclubs and finally apartment houses jammed so close together that they seemed to be one continuous building. There were no lawns, no flow­ers. Land was too scarce and expensive to use for anything but shelter. People stepped down directly from their vesti­bules or parlors to the sidewalk, and stepped back up again with no contact with the growing things that were buried under concrete.

  What Charley had called the old Goodfield mansion was at the top of the last hill. It may have been a mansion once but now it was curiously dwarfed by the apartment houses that towered above it on each side. It still had its distinc­tion, though—two patches of lawn like green scatter rugs, and, flanking the sidewalk and front steps, a hundred or more potted plants of all colors and all sizes. They lent an air of welcome to the forbidding Gothic door. There was no chime or bell at the door, only a little silver Buddha with jeweled eyes. Frank raised the Buddha’s folded arms and let them fall again. They fell with a soft musical twinkle and the little jeweled eyes flashed as if in anger at this invasion of his privacy.

  The heavy door opened inward two or three inches and a woman spoke through the crack: “Who is it, please?”

  “Miss Goodfield?”

  The woman laughed. In contrast to her voice, which sounded tired, her laugh was gay and full of genuine amusement. “Heavens, I almost said yes. That’s what comes of returning to the old homestead.”

  “Sorry I don’t know your married name. I’m Frank Clyde.”

  “I’m Shirley Gunnison, the Miss-Goodfield-that-was, as a maid of ours used to say.” She mentioned the maid with intentional casualness as if to make it clear that she hadn’t always had to answer the door herself. “If you’re working your way through college, don’t count on me to help.”

  “I worked my way through college some time ago.”

  “Selling subscriptions?”

  “Diving for abalone.”

  There was a pause. Then, “Well, that’s different, I must say. I don’t want to buy any old abalones, however.”

  But she opened the door wider as if her curiosity, or her desire to talk to someone, had overridden her judgment.

  She turned out to be a short stockily built woman in her late twenties. Though there were lines of strain and weari­ness around her eyes, she seemed essentially a cheerful and gregarious person. Her features were too large for prettiness, but her face and body had a vital quality. Even in the way she stood, with one arm resting on the doorjamb, there was a subtle air of victory, an inconclusive victory after a battle of guerrillas.

  She said, “Since you’re not selling anything and I’m not buying anything, won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you.”

  She stood aside to let him enter. As he passed her Frank was aware of her very careful scrutiny. It didn’t fit in with the rather casual way she talked and her informal manners. He wondered whether she frequently invited strangers into her home, or whether he was an exception; if he was, why?

  The hall was vast and cold. Its high, narrow windows didn’t let in enough sun to dispel the dampness from the corners. It was more like a museum than a place where people lived. Horace’s “valuables and antiques” lined the room; everything from a huge bronze statue of the goddess of plenty to tiny coins and medallions in glass cases, and silk prints in lacquered frames on the walls.

  “Junk,” Shirley said. “Most of it.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t either. But Mother had an appraiser from Gump’s up one day and he wasn’t very enthusiastic. Come in here, won’t you?”

  She led him into a small library with a wood fire burn­ing in the grate. There was nothing Chinese or Eastern in the room except a pair of backscratchers lying on a table, tiny ivory hands with sharp, carved fingernails on the ends of two long sticks.

  Shirley picked them up with a disdainful glance and put them away in a drawer.

  “I don’t mind Chinese people but they certainly have some macabre ideas.” She sat down on a low, leather has­sock in front of the fire. “The children are at a movie to­day. It’s lonesome around here. I’ve got to the point where I can’t stand silence anymore.”

  “Is that why you invited me in?”

  “No. I had a reason, though.”

  “I’d like to know what it is.”

  Shirley reached in her pocket for a cigarette and lit it before she answered. “Jack phoned from the factory and said you’d probably come here looking for him. He told me not to let you in and not to answer any questions. So—” she moved her shoulders in an eloquent shrug—“naturally, my curiosity was aroused.”

  “Naturally it would be.”

  “Are you going to ask me any questions?”

  “Are you going to answer?”

  “That depends,” Shirley said. “I might answer some and I might refuse to answer others. Jack said you were a de­tective. Are you?”<
br />
  “No.”

  “He’s got detectives on the brain. You’re the third this week.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are you the third? I don’t know. Maybe he has a guilty conscience. Or maybe the other two were real.”

  “Did they come here?”

  “No. Jack spotted them downtown and got away by min­gling with the lunch crowd in the lobby of the St. Francis and then walking out through the kitchen. That’s his story. I think he went out through the kitchen all right. But as far as the two men are concerned, they were probably a couple of convention delegates looking for the lavatory. After all, why should detectives be following Jack? He hasn’t done anything—has he?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Well, if he has, you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be caught.” Picking up the brass poker, she gave the log burn­ing in the grate a vicious little prod. Sparks streamed up the chimney.

  “Your brother lives here?”

  “Yes. On the second floor.”

  “Is he in?”

  A slight hesitation. “I didn’t hear him come in. He never comes home at noon. Why?”

  “I’m interested.”

  “Why should you be, if you’re not a detective?”

  “I met Willett Goodfield and his wife in La Mesa. I had to come north on business, so I thought I’d look up Jack and yourself while I was here.”

  “You mean you took such a profound liking to Willett and Ethel that you wanted to enlarge your circle of Goodfields?”

  “Ah—in a way.”

  “Honestly.” Shirley was laughing. “I never heard a sil­lier explanation.”

  “I can do better.”

  “I hope so.”

  “The fact is that a woman called Rose French was found dead on your brother’s property. You probably know about it.”

  “Yes. I read it in the paper, and also Mother wrote to me about it, or at least dictated a letter to someone called Murphy. It was the first letter I’d had from her in months. Ethel is the one who usually writes.”

  “What was your mother’s reaction?”