The Galton Case

by Ross Macdonald

  “I know nothing of his life after he left the university. He cut himself off from all decent society. He was perversely bound to sink in the social scale, to declass himself. I’m afraid my son had a nostalgie de la boue—a nostalgia for the gutter. He tried to cover it over with fancy talk about re-establishing contact with the earth, becoming a poet of the people, and such nonsense. His real interest was dirt for dirt’s own sake. I brought him up to be pure in thought and desire, but somehow—somehow he became fascinated with the pitch that defileth. And the pitch defiled him.”

  Her breathing was noisy. She had begun to shake, and scratch with waxy fingers at the robe that covered her knees.

  Sable leaned toward her solicitously. “You mustn’t excite yourself, Mrs. Galton. It was all over long ago.”

  “It’s not all over. I want Anthony back. I have nobody. I have nothing. He was stolen away from me.”

  “We’ll get him back if it’s humanly possible.”

  “Yes, I know you will, Gordon.” Her mood had changed like a fitful wind. Her head inclined toward Sable’s shoulder as though to rest against it. She spoke like a little girl betrayed by time and loss, by fading hair and wrinkles and the fear of death: “I’m a foolish angry old woman. You’re always so good to me. Anthony will be good to me, too, won’t he, when he comes? In spite of all I’ve said against him, he was a darling boy. He was always good to his poor mother, and he will be again.”

  She was chanting in a ritual of hope. If she said it often enough, it would have to come true.

  “I’m sure he will, Mrs. Galton.”

  Sable rose and pressed her hand. I was always a little suspicious of men who put themselves out too much for rich old ladies, or even poor ones. But then it was part of his job.

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “I want my lunch. What’s going on downstairs?”

  She lunged half out of her long chair and got hold of a wired bellpush on the table beside it. She kept her finger pressed on the button until her lunch arrived. That was a tense five minutes.

  chapter 4

  IT CAME on a covered platter carried by the woman I’d seen on the badminton court. She had changed her shorts for a plain linen dress which managed to conceal her figure, if not her fine brown legs. Her blue eyes were watchful.

  “You kept me waiting, Cassie,” the old woman said. “What on earth were you doing?”

  “Preparing your food. Before that I played some badminton with Sheila Howell.”

  “I might have known you two would be enjoying yourselves while I sit up here starving.”

  “Oh come, it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “It’s not for you to say. You’re not my doctor. Ask August Howell, and he’ll tell you how important it is that I have my nourishment.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Maria. I thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed while you were in conference.”

  She stood just inside the doorway, still holding the tray like a shield in front of her. She wasn’t young: close up, I could see the fortyish lines in her face and the knowledge in her blue eyes. But she held herself with adolescent awkwardness, immobilized by feelings she couldn’t express.

  “Well, you needn’t stand there like a dummy.”

  Cassie moved suddenly. She set the tray on the table and uncovered the food. There was a good deal of food. Mrs. Galton began to fork salad into her mouth. The movements of her hands and jaws were rapid and mechanical. She was oblivious to the three of us watching her.

  Sable and I retreated into the hallway and along it to the head of the stairs which curved in a baronial sweep down to the entrance hall. He leaned on the iron balustrade and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, Lew, what do you think?”

  I lit a cigarette of my own before I replied. “I think it’s a waste of time and money.”

  “I told you that.”

  “But you want me to go ahead with it anyway?”

  “I can’t see any other way to handle it, or handle her. Mrs. Galton takes a good deal of handling.”

  “Can you trust her memory? She seems to be reliving the past. Sometimes old people get mixed up about what actually happened. That story about the money he stole, for example. Do you believe it?”

  “I’ve never known her to lie. And I really doubt that she’s as confused as she sounds. She likes to dramatize herself. It’s the only excitement she has left.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Seventy-three, I believe.”

  “That isn’t so old. What about her son?”

  “He’ll be about forty-four, if he’s still extant.”

  “She doesn’t seem to realize that. She talks about him as if he was still a boy. How long has she been sitting in that room?”

  “Ever since I’ve known her, anyway. Ten years. Occasionally, when she has a good day, she lets Miss Hildreth take her for a drive. It doesn’t do much to bring her up to date, though. It’s usually just a quick trip to the cemetery where her husband is buried. He died soon after Anthony took off. According to Mrs. Galton, that was what killed him. Miss Hildreth says he died of a coronary.”

  “Is Miss Hildreth a relative?”

  “A distant one, second or third cousin. Cassie’s known the family all her life, and lived with Mrs. Galton since before the war. I’m hoping she can give you something more definite to go on.”

  “I can use it.”

  A telephone shrilled somewhere, like a cricket in the wall. Cassie Hildreth came out of Mrs. Galton’s room and moved briskly toward us:

  “You’re wanted on the telephone. It’s Mrs. Sable.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She didn’t say, but she seems upset about something.”

  “She always is.”

  “You can take it downstairs if you like. There’s an extension under the stairs.”

  “I know. I’ll do that.” Sable treated her brusquely, like a servant. “This is Mr. Archer, by the way. He wants to ask you some questions.”

  “Right now?”

  “If you can spare the time,” I said. “Mrs. Galton thought you could give me some pictures, perhaps some information.”

  “Pictures of Tony?”

  “If you have them.”

  “I keep them for Mrs. Galton. She likes to look at them when the mood is on her.”

  “You work for her, do you?”

  “If you can call it work. I’m a paid companion.”

  “I call it work.”

  Our eyes met. Hers were dark ocean blue. Discontent flicked a fin in their depths, but she said dutifully: “She isn’t so bad. She’s not at her best today. It’s hard on her to rake up the past like this.”

  “Why is she doing it?”

  “She had a serious scare not long ago. Her heart almost failed. They had to put her in an oxygen tent. She wants to make amends to Tony before she dies. She treated him badly, you know.”

  “Badly in what way?”

  “She didn’t want him to live his own life, as they say. She tried to keep him all to herself, like a—a belonging. But you’d better not get me started on that.”

  Cassie Hildreth bit her lip. I recalled what the doctor had said about her feeling for Tony. The whole household seemed to revolve around the missing man, as if he’d left only the day before.

  Quick footsteps crossed the hallway below the stairs. I leaned over the balustrade and saw Sable wrench the front door open. It slammed behind him.

  “Where’s he off to?”

  “Probably home. That wife of his—” She hesitated, editing the end of the sentence: “She lives on emergencies. If you’d like to see those pictures, they’re in my room.”

  Her door was next to Mrs. Galton’s sitting-room. She unlocked it with a Yale key. Apart from its size and shape, its lofty ceiling, the room bore no relation to the rest of the house. The furniture was modern. There were Paul Klee reproductions on the walls, new novels on the bookshelves. The ugly windows were masked with monks-cloth drapes. A nar
row bed stood behind a woven wood screen in one corner.

  Cassie Hildreth went into the closet and emerged with a sheaf of photographs in her hand.

  “Show me the best likeness first.”

  She shuffled through them, her face intent and peaked, and handed me a posed studio portrait. Anthony Galton had been a handsome boy. I stood and let his features sink into my mind: light eyes set wide apart and arched over by intelligent brows, short straight nose, small mouth with rather full lips, a round girlish chin. The missing feature was character or personality, the meaning that should have held the features together. The only trace of this was in the one-sided smile. It seemed to say: to hell with you. Or maybe, to hell with me.

  “This was his graduation picture,” Cassie Hildreth said softly.

  “I thought he never graduated from college.”

  “He didn’t. This was made before he dropped out.”

  “Why didn’t he graduate?”

  “He wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction. Or his mother. They forced him to study mechanical engineering, which was the last thing Tony was interested in. He stuck it out for four years, but he finally refused to take his degree in it.”

  “Did he flunk out?”

  “Heavens, no. Tony was very bright. Some of his professors thought he was brilliant.”

  “But not in engineering?”

  “There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, if he wanted to. His real interests were literary. He wanted to be a writer.”

  “I take it you knew him well.”

  “Of course. I wasn’t living with the Galtons then, but I used to visit here, often, when Tony was on vacation. He used to talk to me. He was a wonderful conversationalist.”

  “Describe him, will you?”

  “But you’ve just seen his picture. And here are others.”

  “I’ll look at them in a minute. Right now I want you to tell me about him.”

  “If you insist, I’ll try.” She closed her eyes. Her face smoothed out, as if years were being erased: “He was a lovely man. His body was finely proportioned, lean and strong. His head was beautifully balanced on his neck, and he had close fair curls.” She opened her eyes. “Did you ever see the Praxiteles Hermes?”

  I felt a little embarrassed, not only because I hadn’t. Her description of Tony had the force of a passionate avowal. I hadn’t expected anything like it. Cassie’s emotion was like spontaneous combustion in an old hope chest.

  “No,” I said. “What color were his eyes?”

  “Gray. A lovely soft gray. He had the eyes of a poet.”

  “I see. Were you in love with him?”

  She gave me a startled look. “Surely you don’t expect me to answer that.”

  “You just did. You say he used to talk to you. Did he ever discuss his plans for the future?”

  “Just in general terms. He wanted to go away and write.”

  “Go away where?”

  “Somewhere quiet and peaceful, I suppose.”

  “Out of the country?”

  “I doubt it. Tony disapproved of expatriates. He always said he wanted to get closer to America. This was in the depression, remember. He was very strong for the rights of the working class.”

  “Radical?”

  “I guess you’d call him that. But he wasn’t a Communist, if that’s what you mean. He did feel that having money cut him off from life. Tony hated social snobbery—which was one reason he was so unhappy at college. He often said he wanted to live like ordinary people, lose himself in the mass.”

  “It looks as if he succeeded in doing just that. Did he ever talk to you about his wife?”

  “Never. I didn’t even know he was married, or intended to get married.” She was very self-conscious. Not knowing what to do with her face, she tried to smile. The teeth between her parted lips were like white bone showing in a wound.

  As if to divert my attention from her, she thrust the other pictures into my hands. Most of them were candid shots of Tony Galton doing various things: riding a horse, sitting on a rock in swimming trunks, holding a tennis racket with a winner’s fixed grin on his face. From the pictures, and from what the people said, I got the impression of a boy going through the motions. He made the gestures of enjoyment; but kept himself hidden, even from the camera. I began to have some glimmering of the psychology that made him want to lose himself.

  “What did he like doing?”

  “Writing. Reading and writing.”

  “Besides that. Tennis? Swimming?”

  “Not really. Tony despised sports. He used to jeer at me for going in for them.”

  “What about wine and women? Dr. Howell said he was quite a playboy.”

  “Dr. Howell never understood him,” she said. “Tony did have relations with women, and I suppose he drank, but he did it on principle.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes, and it’s true. He was practicing Rimbaud’s theory of the violation of the senses. He thought that having all sorts of remarkable experiences would make him a good poet, like Rimbaud.” She saw my uncomprehending look, and added: “Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. He and Charles Baudelaire were Tony’s great idols.”

  “I see.” We were getting off the track into territory where I felt lost. “Did you ever meet any of his women?”

  “Oh, no.” She seemed shocked at the idea. “He never brought any of them here.”

  “He brought his wife home.”

  “Yes, I know. I was away at school when it happened.”

  “When what happened?”

  “The big explosion,” she said. “Mr. Galton told him never to darken his door again. It was all very Victorian and heavy-father. And Tony never did darken his door again.”

  “Let’s see, that was in October 1936. Did you ever see Tony after that?”

  “Never. I was at school in the east.”

  “Ever hear from him?”

  Her mouth started to shape the word “no,” then tightened. “I had a little note from him, some time in the course of the winter. It must have been before Christmas, because I got it at school, and I didn’t go back after Christmas. I think it was in the early part of December that it came.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Nothing very definite. Simply that he was doing well, and had broken into print. He’d had a poem accepted by a little magazine in San Francisco. He sent it to me under separate cover. I’ve kept it, if you’d like to look at it.”

  She kept it in a manila envelope on the top shelf of her bookcase. The magazine was a thin little publication smudgily printed on pulp paper; its name was Chisel. She opened it to a middle page, and handed it to me. I read:

  “LUNA, by John Brown

  “White her breast

  As the white foam

  Where the gulls rest

  Yet find no home.

  “Green her eyes

  As the green deep

  Where the tides rise

  And the storms sleep.

  “And fearful am I

  As a mariner

  When the sea and the sky

  Begin to stir.

  “For wild is her heart

  As the sea’s leaping:

  She will rise and depart

  While I lie sleeping.”

  “Did Tony Galton write this? It’s signed ‘John Brown.’ ”

  “It was the name he used. Tony wouldn’t use the family name. ‘John Brown’ had a special meaning for him, besides. He had a theory that the country was going through another civil war—a war between the rich people and the poor people. He thought of the poor people as white Negroes, and he wanted to do for them what John Brown did for the slaves. Lead them out of bondage—in the spiritual sense, of course. Tony didn’t believe in violence.”

  “I see,” I said, though it all sounded strange to me. “Where did he send this from?”

  “The magazine was published in San Francisco, and Tony sent it from there.”

  �
�This was the only time you ever heard from him?”

  “The only time.”

  “May I keep these pictures, and the magazine? I’ll try to bring them back.”

  “If they’ll help you to find Tony.”

  “I understand he went to live in San Francisco. Do you have his last address?”

  “I had it, but there’s no use going there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I did, the year after he went away. It was a wretched old tenement, and it had been condemned. They were tearing it down.”

  “Did you make any further attempt to find him?”

  “I wanted to, but I was afraid. I was only seventeen.”

  “Why didn’t you go back to school, Cassie?”

  “I didn’t especially want to. Mr. Galton wasn’t well, and Aunt Maria asked me to stay with her. She was the one sending me to school, so that I couldn’t very well refuse.”

  “And you’ve been here ever since?”

  “Yes.” The word came out with pressure behind it.

  As if on cue, Mrs. Galton raised her voice on the other side of the wall: “Cassie! Cassie? Are you in there? What are you doing in there?”

  “I’d better go,” Cassie said.

  She locked the door of her sanctuary, and went, with her head down.

  After twenty-odd years of that, I’d have been crawling.

  chapter 5

  I MET the doctor’s daughter on the stairs. She gave me a tentative smile. “Are you the detective?”

  “I’m the detective. My name is Archer.”

  “Mine’s Sheila Howell. Do you think you can find him for her?”

  “I can try, Miss Howell.”

  “That doesn’t sound too hopeful.”

  “It wasn’t meant to.”

  “But you will do your best, won’t you?”

  “Is it important to you? You’re too young to have known Anthony Galton.”

  “It’s important to Aunt Maria.” She added in a rush of feeling: “She needs somebody to love her. I try, honestly, but I just can’t do it.”

  “Is she a relative of yours?”

  “Not exactly. She’s my godmother. I call her aunt because she likes me to. But I’ve never succeeded in feeling like a niece to her.”