The Chill

by Ross Macdonald

  “No. I met her today for the first time.”

  Bradshaw, who had been hanging around us in various anxious attitudes, spoke up: “I can vouch for the truth of that, Sheriff, if it will save you any time.”

  Sheriff Crane thanked him and turned back to me: “So it was a purely business proposition between her and you?”

  “It would have been if I had been interested.” I wasn’t telling the precise truth, but there was no way to tell it to Crane without sounding foolish.

  “You weren’t interested. Why not?”

  “I had other business.”

  “What other business?”

  “Mrs. Kincaid had left her husband. He employed me to locate her.”

  “I heard something about that this morning. Did you find out why she left him?”

  “No. My job was to locate her. I did.”

  “Where?”

  I glanced up at Bradshaw. He gave me a reluctant nod. I said: “She’s a student at the college.”

  “And now you say she’s under a doctor’s care? What doctor?”

  “Dr. Godwin.”

  “The psychiatrist, eh?” The Sheriff uncrossed his heavy legs and leaned toward me confidentially. “What does she need a psychiatrist for? Is she out of her head?”

  “She was hysterical. It seemed like a good idea to call one.”

  “Where is she now?”

  I looked at Bradshaw again. He said: “At my house. My mother employed her as a driver.”

  The Sheriff got up with a rowing motion of his arms. “Let’s get over there and talk to her.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Bradshaw said.

  “Who says so?”

  “I do, and I’m sure the doctor would concur.”

  “Naturally Godwin says what his patients pay him to say. I’ve had trouble with him before.”

  “I know that.” Bradshaw had turned pale, but his voice was under rigid control. “You’re not a professional man, Sheriff, and I rather doubt that you understand Dr. Godwin’s code of ethics.”

  Crane reddened under the insult. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Bradshaw went on:

  “I very seriously doubt that Mrs. Kincaid can or should be questioned at the present time. What’s the point of it? If she had anything to hide, she wouldn’t have rushed to the nearest detective with her dreadful news. I’m sure we don’t want to subject the girl to cruel and unusual punishment, simply for doing her duty as a citizen.”

  “What do you mean, cruel and unusual punishment? I’m not planning to third-degree her.”

  “I hope and trust you’re not planning to go near the child tonight. That would be cruel and unusual punishment in my opinion, Sheriff, and I believe I speak for informed opinion in this county.”

  Crane opened his mouth to expostulate, perhaps realized the hopelessness of trying to outtalk Bradshaw, and shut it again. Bradshaw and I walked out unaccompanied. I said when we were out of hearing of the house:

  “That was quite a job you did of facing down the Sheriff.”

  “I’ve always disliked that blustering bag of wind. Fortunately he’s vulnerable. His majority slipped badly in the last election. A great many people in this county, including Dr. Godwin and myself, would like to see more enlightened and efficient law enforcement. And we may get it yet.”

  Nothing had changed visibly in the gatehouse. Dolly was still lying on the studio bed with her face turned to the wall. Bradshaw and I hesitated at the door. Walking with his head down, Alex crossed the room to speak to us.

  “Dr. Godwin went up to the house to make a phone call. He thinks she ought to be in a nursing home, temporarily.”

  Dolly spoke in a monotone: “I know what you’re saying. You might as well say it out loud. You want to put me away.”

  “Hush, darling.” It was a brave word.

  The girl relapsed into silence. She hadn’t moved at all. Alex drew us outside, keeping the door open so that he could watch her. He said in a low voice:

  “Dr. Godwin doesn’t want to run the risk of suicide.”

  “It’s that bad, eh?” I said.

  “Í don’t think so. Neither does Dr. Godwin, really. He says it’s simply a matter of taking reasonable security precautions. I told him I could sit up with her, but he doesn’t think I should try to do it myself.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Bradshaw said. “You’ll need to have something left for tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow.” Alex kicked at the rusty boot-scraper attached to the side of the doorstep. “I better call Dad. Tomorrow’s a Saturday, he ought to be able to come.”

  Footsteps approached from the direction of the main house. A big man in an alligator coat emerged from the fog, his bald head gleaming in the light from the doorway. He greeted Bradshaw warmly:

  “Hello, Roy. I enjoyed your speech, what I heard of it. You’ll elevate us yet into the Athens of the West. Unfortunately a patient dragged me out in the middle of it. She wanted to know if it was safe for her to see a Tennessee Williams movie all by herself. She really wanted me to go along with her and protect her from bad thoughts.” He turned to me. “Mr. Archer? I’m Dr. Godwin.”

  We shook hands. He gave me a look of lingering intensity, as if he was going to paint my portrait from memory. Godwin had a heavy, powerful face, with eyes that changed from bright to dark like lamps being turned down. He had authority, which he was being careful not to use.

  “I’m glad you called me. Miss McGee—Mrs. Kincaid needed something to calm her down.” He glanced in through the doorway. “I hope she’s feeling better now.”

  “She’s much quieter,” Alex said. “Don’t you think it will be all right for her to stay here with me?”

  Godwin made a commiserating face. His mouth was very flexible, like an actor’s. “It wouldn’t be wise, Mr. Kincaid. I’ve made arrangements for a bed in a nursing home I use. We don’t want to take any chances with her life.”

  “But why should she try to kill herself?”

  “She has a lot on her mind, poor girl. I always pay attention to suicide threats, or even the slightest hint of them.”

  “Have you found out just what she does have on her mind?” Bradshaw said.

  “She didn’t want to talk much. She’s very tired. It can wait till morning.”

  “I hope so,” Bradshaw said. “The Sheriff wants to question her about the shooting. I did my best to hold him off.”

  Godwin’s mobile face became grave. “There actually has been a murder then? Another murder?”

  “One of our new professors, Helen Haggerty, was shot in her home tonight. Mrs. Kincaid apparently stumbled on the body.”

  “She’s had dreadful luck.” Godwin looked up at the low sky. “I sometimes feel as though the gods have turned their backs on certain people.”

  I asked him to explain what he meant. He shook his head: “I’m much too tired to tell you the bloody saga of the McGees. A lot of it has faded out of my memory, mercifully. Why don’t you ask the courthouse people for the details?”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea, under the circumstances.”

  “It wouldn’t, would it? You can see how tired I am. By the time I get my patient safely disposed of for the night I’ll have just enough energy left to make it home and to bed.”

  “We still need to talk, doctor.”

  “What about?”

  I didn’t like to say it in front of Alex but I said it, watching him: “The possibility that she committed this second murder, or let’s say the possibility that she’ll be accused of it. She seems to want to be.”

  Alex rose to her defense: “She was out of her head, temporarily, and you can’t use what she said—”

  Godwin laid a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, Mr. Kincaid. We can’t settle anything now. What we all need is a night’s sleep—especially your wife. I want you to come along with me to the nursing home in case I need help with her on the way. You,” he said to me, “can follow along in your car
and bring him back. You’ll want to know where the nursing home is, anyway, because I’ll meet you there tomorrow morning at eight, after I’ve had an opportunity to talk to Mrs. Kincaid. Got that?”

  “Tomorrow morning at eight.”

  He turned to Bradshaw. “Roy, if I were you I’d go and see how Mrs. Bradshaw is feeling. I gave her a sedative, but she’s alarmed. She thinks, or pretends to think, that she’s surrounded by maniacal assassins. You can talk her out of it better than I could.”

  Godwin seemed to be a wise and careful man. At any rate, his authority imposed itself. All three of us did as he said.

  So did Dolly. Propped between him and Alex, she came out to his car. She didn’t struggle or make a sound, but she walked as though she was on her way to the execution chamber.

  chapter 10

  AN HOUR LATER I was sitting on one of the twin beds in my motel room. There was nothing more I could do right now, except possibly stir up trouble if I went for information to the local authorities. But my mind kept projecting on the plaster wall rapid movies of actions I could be performing. Run down Begley-McGee. Capture the man from Nevada.

  I shut off the violent images with an effort of will and forced myself to think about Zeno, who said that Achilles could never traverse the space between him and the tortoise. It was a soothing thought, if you were a tortoise, or maybe even if you were Achilles.

  I had a pint of whisky in my bag. I was getting it out of its sock when I thought of Arnie Walters, a Reno colleague of mine who had split more than one pint with me. I put in a long-distance call to his office, which happened to be the front room of his house. Arnie was at home.

  “Walters Detective Agency,” he said in a reluctant midnight voice.

  “This is Lew Archer.”

  “Oh. Good. I didn’t really want to go to bed. I was only modeling my pajamas.”

  “Irony isn’t your forte, so drop it. All I’m asking for is a small service which I will repay in kind at the earliest opportunity. Are you recording?”

  I heard the click of the machine, and told it and Arnie about Helen’s death. “A couple of hours after the shooting, the man I’m interested in came out of the murder house and drove away in a black or dark blue convertible, I think a late-model Ford, with a Nevada license. I think I got the first four figures—”

  “You think?”

  “It’s foggy here, and it was dark. First four figures are probably FT37.The subject is young and athletic, height about five-eleven, wearing a dark topcoat and dark snap-brim fedora. I couldn’t make out his face.”

  “Have you seen your oculist lately?”

  “You can do better than that, Arnie. Try.”

  “I hear senior citizens can get free glaucoma tests nowadays.”

  Arnie was older than I was, but he didn’t like to have this pointed out. “What’s bugging you? Trouble with the wife?”

  “No trouble,” he said cheerfully. “She’s waiting for me in bed.”

  “Give Phyllis my love.”

  “I’ll give her my own. In case I come up with anything, which seems unlikely in view of the fragmentary information, where do I contact you?”

  “I’m staying at the Mariner’s Rest Motel in Pacific Point. But you better call my answering service in Hollywood.”

  He said he would. As I hung up, I heard a gentle tapping on my door. It turned out to be Alex. He had pulled on his trousers over his pajamas.

  “I heard you talking in here.”

  “I was on the phone.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “I’m through phoning. Come in and have a drink.”

  He entered the room cautiously, as if it might be booby trapped. In the last few hours his movements had become very tentative. His bare feet made no sound on the carpet.

  The bathroom cupboard contained two glasses wrapped in wax paper. I unwrapped and filled them. We sat on the twin beds, drinking to nothing in particular. We faced each other like mirror images separated by an invisible wall of glass.

  I was conscious of the differences between us, particularly of Alex’s youth and lack of experience. He was at the age when everything hurts.

  “I was thinking of calling Dad,” he said. “Now I don’t know whether I should or not.”

  There was another silence.

  “He won’t say ‘I told you so,’ in so many words. But that will be the general idea. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread and all that jazz.”

  “I think it makes just as much sense if you reverse it. Angels rush in where fools are afraid to tread. Not that I know any angels.”

  He got the message. “You don’t think I’m a fool?”

  “You’ve handled yourself very well.”

  “Thank you,” he said formally. “Even if it isn’t actually true.”

  “It is, though. It must have taken some doing.”

  Whisky and the beginnings of human warmth had dissolved the glass wall between us. “The worst of it,” he said, “was when I put her in the nursing home just now. I felt as if I was—you know, consigning her to oblivion. The place is like something out of Dante, with people crying and groaning. Dolly’s a sensitive girl. I don’t see how she’ll be able to take it.”

  “She can take it better than some other things, such as wandering around loose in her condition.”

  “You think she’s insane, don’t you?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. We’ll get an expert opinion tomorrow. There’s no doubt she’s temporarily off base. I’ve seen people further off, and I’ve seen them come back.”

  “You think she’ll be all right then?”

  He’d grabbed at what I said like a flying trapeze and swung up into hopefulness. Which I didn’t think ought to be encouraged:

  “I’m more concerned about the legal situation than the psychiatric one.”

  “You can’t really believe she killed this friend of hers— Helen? I know she said so, but it isn’t possible. You see, I know Dolly. She isn’t aggressive at all. She’s one of the really pro-life people. She doesn’t even like to kill a spider.”

  “It is possible, Alex, and that was all I said. I wanted Godwin to be aware of the possibility from the start. He’s in a position to do a lot for your wife.”

  Alex said, “My wife,” with a kind of wonder.

  “She is your wife, legally. But nobody would consider that you owe her much. You have an out, if you want to use it.”

  The whisky slopped in his glass. I think he barely restrained himself from throwing it in my face.

  “I’m not going to ditch her,” he said. “If you think I ought to, you can go to hell.”

  I hadn’t liked him thoroughly until now. “Somebody had to mention the fact that you have an out. A lot of people would take it.”

  “I’m not a lot of people.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Dad would probably call me a fool, but I don’t care if she’s guilty of murder. I’m staying.”

  “It’s going to cost money.”

  “You want more money, is that it?”

  “I can wait. So can Godwin. I was thinking about the future. Also there’s the strong possibility that you’ll need a lawyer tomorrow.”

  “What for?” He was a good boy, but a little slow on the uptake.

  “Judging by tonight, your main problem is going to be to prevent Dolly from talking herself into deep trouble. That means keeping her out of the hands of the authorities, in a place where she can be properly looked after. A good lawyer can be a help in that. Lawyers generally don’t wait for their money in criminal cases.”

  “Do you really think she’s in such danger—such legal jeopardy? Or are you just trying to put the iron in my soul?”

  “I talked to the local sheriff tonight, and I didn’t like the gleam in his eye when we got on the subject of Dolly. Sheriff Crane isn’t stupid. He knew that I was holding back on him. He’s going to bear down on her when he catches on to the family connection.”r />
  “The family connection?”

  “The fact that her father murdered her mother.” It was cruel to hit him with it again, on top of everything else. Still it was better for him to hear it from me than from the dreary voice that talks from under the twisted pillow at three o’clock in the morning. “Apparently he was tried and convicted in the local courts. Sheriff Crane probably gathered the evidence for the prosecution.”

  “It’s almost as though history is repeating itself.” There was something approaching awe in Alex’s voice. “Did I hear you say that this Chuck Begley character, the man with the beard, is actually her father?”

  “He seems to be.”

  “He was the one who started the whole thing off,” he said, as much to himself as to me. “It was after he visited her that Sunday that she walked out on me. What do you think happened between them, to make her do that?”

  “I don’t know, Alex. Maybe he bawled her out for testifying against him. In any case he brought back the past. She couldn’t handle the old mess and her new marriage together, so she left you.”

  “I still don’t get it,” he said. “How could Dolly have a father like that?”

  “I’m not a geneticist. But I do know most non-professional killers aren’t criminal types. I intend to find out more about Begley-McGee and his murder. I suppose it’s no use asking if Dolly ever talked about it to you?”

  “She never said a word about either of her parents, except that they were dead. Now I can understand why. I don’t blame her for lying—” He cut the sentence short, and amended it: “I mean, for not telling me certain things.”

  “She made up for it tonight.”

  “Yeah. It’s been quite a night.” He nodded several times, as though he was still absorbing its repercussions. “Tell me the honest truth, Mr. Archer. Do you believe the things she said about being responsible for this woman’s death? And her mother?”

  “I can’t even remember half of them.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Maybe we’ll get some better answers tomorrow. It’s a complex world. The human mind is the most complex thing in it.”

  “You don’t give me much comfort.”