The Chill la-11

by Ross Macdonald

  The office door closed behind her. I strolled past it after a while and heard the murmur of female voices inside, but nothing intelligible. From Dean Bradshaw's office across the hall the heads of departments emerged in a body. In spite of their glasses and their foreheads and their scholars' stoops, they looked a little like schoolboys let out for recess.

  A woman with a short razorblade haircut came into the building and drew all their eyes. Her ash-blonde hair shone against the deep tan of her face. She attached herself to a man standing by himself in the doorway of the Dean's office.

  He seemed less interested in her than she was in him. His good looks were rather gentle and melancholy, the kind that excite maternal passions in women. Though his brown wavy hair was graying at the temples, he looked rather like a college boy who twenty years after graduation glanced up from his books and found himself middle-aged.

  Dean Sutherland opened the door of her office and made a sign to him. "Can you spare me a minute, Dr. Bradshaw? Something serious has come up." She was pale and grim, like a reluctant executioner.

  He excused himself. The two Deans shut themselves up with Dolly. The woman with the short and shining haircut frowned at the closed door. Then she gave me an appraising glance, as if she was looking for a substitute for Bradshaw. She had a promising mouth and good legs and a restless predatory air. Her clothes had style.

  "Looking for someone?" she said.

  "Just waiting."

  "For Lefty or for Godot? It makes a difference."

  "For Lefty Godot. The pitcher."

  "The pitcher in the rye?"

  "He prefers bourbon."

  "So do I," she said. "You sound like an anti-intellectual to me, Mr. --"

  "Archer. Didn't I pass the test?"

  "It depends on who does the grading."

  "I've been thinking maybe I ought to go back to school. You make it seem attractive, and besides I feel so out of things when my intellectual friends are talking about Jack Kerouac and Eugene Burdick and other great writers, and I can't read. Seriously, if I were thinking of going back to college, would you recommend this place?"

  She gave me another of her appraising looks. "Not for you, Mr. Archer. I think you'd feel more at home in some larger urban university, like Berkeley or Chicago. I went to Chicago myself. This college presents quite a contrast."

  "In what way?"

  "Innumerable ways. The quotient of sophistication here is very low, for one thing. This used to be a denominational college, and the moral atmosphere is still in Victorian stays." As if to demonstrate that she was not, she shifted her pelvis. "They tell me when Dylan Thomas visited here--but perhaps we'd better not go into that. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_."

  "Do you teach Latin?"

  "No, I have small Latin and less Greek. I try to teach modern languages. My name is Helen Haggerty, by the way. As I was saying, I wouldn't really recommend Pacific Point to you. The standards are improving every year, but there's still a great deal of dead wood around. You can see some of it from here."

  She cast a sardonic glance toward the entrance, where five or six of her fellow professors were conducting a post-mortem of their conference with the Dean.

  "That was Dean Bradshaw you were talking to, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. Is he the one you want to see?"

  "Among others."

  "Don't be put off by his rather forbidding exterior. He's a fine scholar--the only Harvard doctor on the faculty--and he can advise you better than I ever could. But tell me honestly, are you really serious about going back to college? Aren't you kidding me a little?"

  "Maybe a little."

  "You could kid me more effectively over a drink. And I could use a drink, preferably bourbon."

  "It's a handsome offer." And a sudden one, I thought. "Give me a rain check, will you? Right now I have to wait for Lefty Godot."

  She looked more disappointed than she had any right to be. We parted on fairly good, mutually suspicious terms.

  The fatal door I was watching opened at last. Dolly backed out thanking the two Deans effusively, and practically curtsying. But I saw when she turned around and headed for the entrance that her face was white and set.

  I went after her, feeling a little foolish. The situation reminded me of a girl I used to follow home from Junior High. I never did work up enough nerve to ask her for the privilege of carrying her books. But I began to identify Dolly with that unattainable girl whose name I couldn't even remember now.

  She hurried along the mall that bisected the campus, and started up the steps of the library building. I caught up with her.

  "Mrs. Kincaid?"

  She stopped as though I had shot her. I took her arm instinctively. She flung away my hand, and opened her mouth as if to call out for help. No sound came out. The other students around us, passing on the wide mall or chatting on the steps, paid no attention to her silent scream.

  "I'd like very much to talk to you, Mrs. Kincaid."

  She pushed her hair back, so forcefully that one of her eyes slanted up and gave her a Eurasian look. "Who are you?"

  "A friend of your husband's. You've given Alex a bad three weeks."

  "I suppose I have," she said, as if she had only just thought of it.

  "You must have had a bad three weeks yourself, if you're fond of him at all. Are you?"

  "Am I what?" She seemed to be slightly dazed.

  "Fond of Alex."

  "I don't know. I haven't had time to think about it. I don't wish to discuss it, with you or anyone. Are you really a friend of Alex's?"

  "I think I can claim to be. He doesn't understand what you're doing to him. He's a pretty sad young man."

  "No doubt he caught it from me. Spreading ruin is my specialty."

  "It doesn't have to be. Why don't you call it off, whatever you're doing, and give it another try with Alex? He's waiting for you here in town right now."

  "He can wait till doomsday, I'm not going back to him."

  Her young voice was surprisingly firm, almost harsh. There was something about her eyes I didn't like. They were wide and dry and fixed, eyes which had forgotten how to cry.

  "Did Alex hurt you in some way?"

  "He wouldn't hurt a fly. You know that, if you're really a friend of his. He's a nice harmless boy, and _I_ don't want to hurt _him_." She added with conscious drama: "Tell him to congratulate himself on his narrow escape."

  "Is that the only message you have for your husband?"

  "He isn't my husband, not really. Tell him to get an annulment. Tell him I'm not ready to settle down. Tell him I've decided to finish my education."

  She made it sound like a solitary trip to the moon, one-way.

  I went back to the Administration Building. The imitation flagstone pavement of the mall was flat and smooth, but I had the feeling that I was walking knee-deep in gopher holes. Dean Sutherland's door was closed and, when I knocked, her "Come in" was delayed and rather muffled.

  Dean Bradshaw was still with her, looking more than ever like a college student on whom light frost had fallen during the night.

  She was flushed, and her eyes were bright emerald green. "This is Mr. Archer, Brad, the detective I told you about."

  He gave my hand a fiercely competitive grip. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. Actually," he said with an attempt at a smile, "it's rather a mixed pleasure under the circumstances. I very much regret the necessity of your coming here to our campus."

  "The kind of work I do has to be done," I said a little defensively. "Mrs. Kincaid ran out on her husband, and some explanation is due him. Did she give any to you?"

  Dean Sutherland put on her grim face. "She's not returning to him. She found out something on their wedding night so dreadful--"

  Bradshaw raised his hand. "Wait a minute, Laura. The facts she divulged to you are in the nature of professional confidences. We certainly don't want this chap running back to her husband with them. The poor girl is frightened enough as it is."

  "F
rightened of her husband? I find that hard to believe," I said.

  "She didn't pour out her heart to you," Laura Sutherland cried warmly. "Why do you suppose the poor child used a fake name? She was mortally afraid that he would track her down."

  "You're being melodramatic, you know." Bradshaw's tone was indulgent. "The boy can't be as bad as all that."

  "You didn't hear her, Brad. She told me things, as woman to woman, that I haven't even told you, and I don't intend to."

  I said: "Perhaps she was lying."

  "She most assuredly was not! I know the truth when I hear it. And my advice to you is to go back to that husband of hers, wherever he is, and tell him that you haven't been able to find her. She'll be safer and happier if you do."

  "She seems to be safe enough. She certainly isn't happy. I talked to her outside for a minute."

  Bradshaw tilted his head in my direction. "What did she say?"

  "Nothing sensational. She made no accusations against Kincaid. In fact she blamed herself for the breakup. She says she wants to go on with her education."

  "Good."

  "Are you going to let her stay here?"

  Bradshaw nodded. "We've decided to overlook her little deception. We believe in giving young people a certain amount of leeway, so long as it doesn't impinge on the rights of others. She can stay, at least for the present, and continue to use her pseudonym if she likes." He added with dry academic humor: "'A rose by any other name,' you know."

  "She's going to have her transcripts sent to us right away," Dean Sutherland said. "Apparently she's had two years of junior college and a semester at the university."

  "What's she planning to study here?"

  "Dolly is majoring in psychology. According to Professor Haggerty, she has a flair for it."

  "How would Professor Haggerty know that?"

  "She's Dolly's academic counselor. Apparently Dolly is deeply interested in criminal and abnormal psychology."

  For some reason I thought of Chuck Begley's bearded head, with eyes opaque as a statue's. "When you were talking with Dolly, did she say anything about a man named Begley?"

  "Begley?" They looked at each other and then at me. "Who," she asked, "is Begley?"

  "It's possible he's her father. At any rate he had something to do with her leaving her husband. Incidentally I wouldn't put too much stock in her husband's Asiatic perversions or whatever it was she accused him of. He's a clean boy, and he respects her."

  "You're entitled to your opinion," Laura Sutherland said, as though I wasn't. "But please don't act on it precipitately. Dolly is a sensitive young woman, and something has happened to shake her very deeply. You'll be doing them both a service by keeping them apart."

  "I agree," Bradshaw said solemnly.

  "The trouble is, I'm being paid to bring them together. But I'll think about it, and talk it over with Alex."

  chapter 6

  In the parking lot behind the building Professor Helen Haggerty was sitting at the wheel of the new black Thunderbird convertible. She had put the top down and parked it beside my car, as if for contrast. The late afternoon sunlight slanting across the foothills glinted on her hair and eyes and teeth.

  "Hello again."

  "Hello again," I said. "Are you waiting for me?"

  "Only if you're left-handed."

  "I'm ambidextrous."

  "You would be. You threw me a bit of a curve just now."

  "I did?"

  "I know who you are." She patted a folded newspaper on the leather seat beside her. The visible headline said: "Mrs. Perrine Acquitted." Helen Haggerty said: "I think it's very exciting. The paper credits you with getting her off. But it's not quite clear how you did it."

  "I simply told the truth, and evidently the jury believed me. At the time the alleged larceny was committed here in Pacffic Point, I had Mrs. Perrine under close surveillance in Oakland."

  "What for? Another larceny?"

  "It wouldn't be fair to say."

  She made a mock-sorrowful mouth, which fitted the lines of her face too well. "All the interesting facts are confidential. But I happen to be checked out for security. In fact my father is a policeman. So get in and tell me all about Mrs. Perrine."

  "I can't do that."

  "Or I have a better idea," she said with her bright unnatural smile. "Why don't you come over to my house for a drink?"

  "I'm sorry, I have work to do."

  "Detective work?"

  "Call it that."

  "Come _on_." With a subtle movement, her body joined in the invitation. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You don't want to be a dull boy and make me feel rejected. Besides, we have things to talk about."

  "The Perrine case is over. Nothing could interest me less."

  "It was the Dorothy Smith case I had in mind. Isn't that why you're on campus?"

  "Who told you that?"

  "The grapevine. Colleges have the most marvelously efficient grapevines, second only to penitentiaries."

  "Are you familiar with penitentiaries?"

  "Not intimately. But I wasn't lying when I told you my father was a policeman." A gray pinched expression touched her face. She covered it over with another smile. "We do have things in common. Why don't you come along?"

  "All right. I'll follow you. It will save you driving me back."

  "Wonderful."

  She drove as rapidly as she operated, with a jerky nervousness and a total disregard for the rules of the road. Fortunately the campus was almost empty of cars and people. Diminished by the foothills and by their own long shadows, the buildings resembled a movie lot which had shut down for the night.

  She lived back of Foothill Drive in a hillside house made out of aluminum and glass and black enameled steel. The nearest rooftop floated among the scrub oaks a quarter of a mile down the slope. You could stand in the living room by the central fireplace and see the blue mountains rising up on one side, the gray ocean falling away on the other. The offshore fog was pushing in to the land.

  "Do you like my little eyrie?"

  "Very much,"

  "It isn't really mine, alas. I'm only renting at present, though I have hopes. Sit down. What will you drink? I'm going to have a tonic."

  "That will do nicely."

  The polished tile floor was almost bare of furniture. I strolled around the large room, pausing by one of the glass walls to look out. A wild pigeon lay on the patio with its iridescent neck broken. Its faint spreadeagled image outlined in dust showed where it had flown against the glass.

  I sat on a rope chair which probably belonged on the patio. Helen Haggerty brought our drinks and disposed herself on a canvas chaise, where the sunlight would catch her hair again, and shine on her polished brown legs.

  "I'm really just camping for now," she said. "I haven't sent for my furniture, because I don't know if I want it around me any more. I may just leave it in storage and start all over, and to hell with the history. Do you think that's a good idea, Curveball Lefty Lew?"

  "Call me anything, I don't mind. I'd have to know the history."

  "Ha. You never will." She looked at me sternly for a minute, and sipped her drink. "You might as well call me Helen."

  "All right, Helen."

  "You make it sound so formal. I'm not a formal person, and neither are you. Why should we be formal with each other?"

  "You live in a glass house, for one thing," I said smiling. "I take it you haven't been in it long."

  "A month. Less than a month. It seems longer. You're the first really interesting man I've met since I arrived here."

  I dodged the compliment. "Where did you live before?"

  "Here and there. There and here. We academic people are such nomads. It doesn't suit me. I'd like to settle down permanently. I'm getting old."

  "It doesn't show."

  "You're being gallant. Old for a woman, I mean. Men never grow old."

  Now that she had me where she apparently wanted me, she wasn't crowding so hard, b
ut she was working. I wished that she would stop, because I liked her. I downed my drink. She brought me a second tonic with all the speed and efficiency of a cocktail waitress. I couldn't get rid of the dismal feeling that each of us was there to use the other.

  With the second tonic she let me look down her dress. She was smooth and brown as far as I could see. She arranged herself on the chaise with one hip up, so that I could admire the curve. The sun, in its final yellow fiareup before setting, took possession of the room.

  "Shall I pull the drapes?" she said.

  "Don't bother for me. It'll be down soon. You were going to tell me about Dolly Kincaid alias Dorothy Smith."

  "Was I?"

  "You brought the subject of her up. I understand you're her academic counselor."

  "And that's why you're interested in me, n'est-ce pas7' Her tone was mocking.

  "I was interested in you before I knew of your connection with Dolly."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Here I am to prove it."

  "Here you are because I lured you with the magic words Dorothy Smith. What's she doing on this campus anyway?" She sounded almost jealous of the girl.

  "I was sort of hoping you knew the answer to that."

  "Don't you?"

  "Dolly gives confficting stories, probably derived from romantic fiction--"

  "I don't think so," she said. "She's a romantic all right--one of these romantic idealists who are always a jump or two behind her unconscious mind. I ought to know, I used to be one myself. But I also think she has some real trouble--appalling trouble."

  "What was her story to you?"

  "It was no story. It was the lousy truth. We'll come to it later on, if you're a good boy." She stirred like an odalisque in the dying light, and recrossed her polished legs. "How brave are you, Mr. Lew?"

  "Men don't talk about how brave they are."

  "You're full of copybook maxims," she said with some malice. "I want a serious answer."

  "You could always try me."

  "I may at that. I have a use--I mean, I need a man."

  "Is that a proposal, or a business proposition, or are you thinking about some third party?"

  "You're the man I have in mind. What would you say if I told you that I'm likely to be killed this weekend?"