The Galton Case

by Ross Macdonald

  “Just my wife and I. And you, of course. I can’t think offhand of anyone else.”

  “Have you had visitors from out of town?”

  “Not in the last few months. Alice has been having her ups and downs. It’s one reason I took Peter on out here. We’d lost our housekeeper, and I didn’t like to leave Alice by herself all day.”

  “How is Mrs. Sable now?”

  “Not so good, I’m afraid.”

  “Did she see it happen?”

  “I don’t believe so. But she heard the sounds of the struggle, and saw the car drive away. That was when she phoned me. When I got here, she was sitting on the doorstep in a half daze. I don’t know what it will do to her emotional state.”

  “Any chance of my talking to her?”

  “Not now, please. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Howell, and he told me to give her sedation. The Sheriff has agreed not to question her for the present. There’s a limit to what the human mind can endure.”

  Sable might have been talking about himself. His shoulders drooped as he turned from the window. In the harsh sunlight his face was a grainy white, and puffy like boiled rice. In murder cases, there are usually more victims than one.

  Sable must have read the look on my face. “This is an unsettling thing to me, too. It can’t conceivably relate to Alice and me. And yet it does, very deeply. Peter was a member of the household. I believe he was quite devoted to us, and he died in our front yard. That really brings it home.”

  “What?”

  “Timor mortis,” he said. “The fear of death.”

  “You say Culligan was a member of your household. I take it he slept in.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’d like to have a look at his room.”

  He took me across the court and through a utility room to a back bedroom. The room was furnished with a single bed, a chest of drawers, a chair, and a reading-lamp.

  “I’ll just look in on Alice,” Sable said, and left me.

  I went through Peter Culligan’s meager effects. The closet contained a pair of Levis, a couple of workshirts, boots, and a cheap blue suit which had been bought at a San Francisco department store. There was a Tanforan pari-mutuel stub in the outside breast pocket of the suit coat. A dirty comb and a safety razor lay on top of the chest of drawers. The drawers were practically empty: a couple of white shirts, a greasy blue tie, a T-shirt and a pair of floral shorts, socks and handkerchiefs, and a cardboard box containing a hundred shells for a .38-caliber automatic. Not quite a hundred: the box wasn’t full. No gun.

  Culligan’s suitcase was under the bed. It was a limp old canvas affair, held together with straps, which looked as if it had been kicked around every bus station between Seattle and San Diego. I unstrapped it. The lock was broken, and it fell open. Its contents emitted a whiff of tobacco, sea water, sweat, and the subtler indescribable odor of masculine loneliness.

  It contained a gray flannel shirt, a rough blue turtle-neck sweater, and other heavier work clothes. A broad-bladed fisherman’s knife had fish scales still clinging like faded sequins to the cork handle. A crumpled greenish tuxedo jacket was preserved as a memento from some more sophisticated past.

  A union card issued in San Francisco in 1941 indicated that Culligan had been a paid-up active member of the defunct Marine Cooks’ Union. And there was a letter, addressed to Mr. Peter Culligan, General Delivery, Reno, Nevada. Culligan hadn’t been a loner all his life. The letter was written on pink notepaper in an unformed hand. It said:

  Dear Pete,

  Dear is not the word after all I suffered from you, which is all over now and I’m going to keep it that way. I hope you realize. Just so you do I’ll spell it out, you never realized a fact in your life until you got hit over the head with it. So here goes, no I don’t love you anymore. Looking back now I don’t see how I ever did love you, I was “infatuated.” When I think of all you made me suffer, the jobs you lost and the fights and the drinking and all. You certainly didn’t love me, so don’t try to “kid” me. No I’m not crying over “spilt milk.” I had only myself to blame for staying with you. You gave me fair warning plenty of times. What kind of person you were. I must say you have your “guts” writing to me. I don’t know how you got hold of my address. Probably from one of your crooked cop friends, but they don’t scare me.

  I am happily married to a wonderful man. He knows that I was married before. But he does not know about “us.” If you have any decency, stay away from me and don’t write any more letters. I’m warning you, don’t make trouble for me. I could make trouble for you, double trouble. Remember L. Bay.

  Wishing you all success in your new life (I hope youre making as much money as you claim),

  Marian

  Mrs. Ronald S. Matheson (and bear it in mind). Me come back to you? Don’t ever give it another thought. Ronald is a very successful business exec! I wouldn’t rub it in, only you really put me through the “wringer” and you know it. No hard feelings on my part, just leave me alone, please.

  The letter had no return address, but it was postmarked San Mateo, Calif. The date was indecipherable.

  I put everything back and closed the suitcase and kicked it under the bed.

  I went out into the court. In a room on the other side of it, a woman or an animal was moaning. Sable must have been watching for me. The sound became louder as he opened a sliding glass door, and was shut off as he closed it. He came toward me, his face tinged green by the reflected light from the foliage:

  “Find anything significant?”

  “He kept shells for an automatic in his drawer. I didn’t come across the automatic.”

  “I didn’t know Peter had a gun.”

  “Maybe he had, and sold it. Or it’s possible the killer took it away from him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I have a tentative lead to his ex-wife, if you want me to explore his background.”

  “Why not leave it to the police? Trask is very competent, and an old friend of mine into the bargain. I wouldn’t feel justified in taking you off the Galton case.”

  “The Galton case doesn’t seem so very urgent.”

  “Possibly not. Still, I think you should stay with it for the present. Was Cassie Hildreth any help?”

  “Some. I can’t think of much more to be done around here. I was planning to drive to San Francisco.”

  “You can take a plane. I wrote you a check for two hundred dollars, and I’ll give you a hundred in cash.” He handed me the check and the money. “If you need any more, don’t hesitate to call on me.”

  “I won’t, but I’m afraid it’s money down the drain.”

  Sable shrugged. He had worse problems. The moaning behind the glass door was louder, rising in peaks of sound which pierced my eardrums.

  chapter 7

  I HATE coincidences. Aboard the plane, I spent a fruitless hour trying to work out possible connections between Maria Galton’s loss of her son and Peter Culligan’s loss of life. I had a delayed gestalt after I’d given up on the subject.

  I was flipping through the smudged pages of Chisel, the little magazine that Cassie Hildreth had given me. Somebody named Chad Bolling was listed on the masthead as editor and publisher. He also had a poem in the magazine, “Elegy on the Death of Bix Beiderbecke.” It said that the inconsolable cornet would pipe Eurydice out of Boss Pluto’s smoke-filled basement. I liked it better than the poem about Luna.

  I reread Anthony Galton’s poem, wondering if Luna was his wife. Then the gestalt clicked. There was a town named Luna Bay on the coast south of San Francisco. From where I sat, a few thousand feet above the Peninsula, I could practically spit on it. And Culligan’s ex-wife had referred to an “L. Bay” in her letter to him.

  When the plane let down at International Airport, I headed for a telephone booth. The woman had signed herself Mrs. Ronald S. Matheson; the envelope had been postmarked in San Mateo.

  I hardly expected a hit on such a random shot, after an inde
finite lapse of time. But the name was in the directory: Ronald S. Matheson, 780 Sherwood Drive, Redwood City. I dialed the Emerson number.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy who answered. It was a child, pre-pubic: “Hello?”

  “Is Mrs. Matheson there?”

  “Just a minute, please. Mummy, you’re wanted on the phone.”

  The child’s voice trailed off, and a woman’s took its place. It was cool and smooth and careful:

  “Marion Matheson speaking. Who is calling, please?”

  “My name is Archer. You’ve never heard of me.”

  “That’s right, I haven’t.”

  “Ever hear of a man named Culligan?”

  There was a long pause. “Come again? I didn’t catch the name.”

  “Culligan,” I said. “Peter Culligan.”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you ever know him?”

  “Maybe I did, a long time ago. So what? Maybe I didn’t.”

  “Let’s not play games, Mrs. Matheson. I have some information, if you’re interested.”

  “I’m not. Not if you’re talking for Pete Culligan.” Her voice had become harsher and deeper. “I don’t care anything about him, as long as he leaves me alone. You can tell him that for me.”

  “I can’t, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Her voice was a leaden echo.

  “I’m investigating his murder.” I’d just decided I was. “I’d like to talk to you about the circumstances.”

  “I don’t see why. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even know it happened.”

  “I’m aware of that. It’s one reason I called.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Who says you’re seeing me?”

  I waited.

  “Where are you now?” she said.

  “At the San Francisco Airport.”

  “I guess I can come there, if it has to be. I don’t want you coming to the house. My husband—”

  “I understand that. It’s good of you to come at all. I’ll be in the coffee shop.”

  “Are you in uniform?”

  “Not at the moment.” Or for the last ten years, but let her go on thinking I was law. “I’m wearing a gray suit. You won’t miss me. I’ll be sitting beside the windows close to the entrance.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Did you say Archer?”

  “Yes. Archer.”

  It took her twenty-five. I passed the time watching the big planes circling in, dragging their late-afternoon shadows along the runways.

  A woman in a dark cloth coat came in, paused at the doorway, and looked around the huge room. Her eye lighted on me. She came toward my table, clutching her shiny leather purse as if it was a token of respectability. I got up to meet her:

  “Mrs. Matheson?”

  She nodded, and sat down hurriedly, as if she was afraid of being conspicuous. She was an ordinary-looking woman, decently dressed, who would never see forty again. There were flecks of gray in her carefully waved black hair, like little shards of iron.

  She had once been handsome in a strong-boned way. Maybe she still was, under favorable lighting and circumstances. Her black eyes were her best feature, but they were hard with tension:

  “I didn’t want to come. But here I am.”

  “Will you have some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Let’s have the bad news. I’ll take it straight.”

  I gave it to her straight, leaving out nothing important. She began to twist the wedding ring on her finger, round and round.

  “Poor guy,” she said when I finished. “Why did they do it to him, do you know?”

  “I was hoping you could help me answer that.”

  “You say you’re not a policeman?”

  “No. I’m a private investigator.”

  “I don’t see why you come to me. We haven’t been married for fifteen years. I haven’t even seen him for ten. He wanted to come back to me, I guess he finally got tired of bucketing around. But I wasn’t having any. I’m happily married to a good man—”

  “When was the last time you heard from Culligan?”

  “About a year ago. He wrote me a letter from Reno, claimed he’d struck it rich, that he could give me anything I wanted if I’d come back. Pete was always a dreamer. The first while after we were married, I used to believe in his dreams. But they all went blooey, one after another. I caught onto him so many years ago it isn’t funny. I’m not laughing, notice.”

  “What kind of dreams did he dream?”

  “Great big ones, the kind that never come off. Like he was going to open a chain of restaurants where food of all nations would be served. He’d hire the best chefs in the country, French, Chinese, Armenian, and so on. At which time he was a short-order cook on lower Market. Then there was the time he worked out a new system to beat the ponies. He took every cent we possessed to try it out. He even hocked my furniture. It took me all that winter to work it off.” Her voice had the driving energy of old anger that had found an outlet. “That was Pete’s idea of a honeymoon, me working and him playing the ponies.”

  “How did you get hooked up with him?”

  “I was a dreamer, too, I guess you’d say. I thought I could straighten him out, make a man of him. That all he needed was the love of a good woman. I wasn’t a good woman, and I don’t pretend to be. But I was better than he was.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “In the San Francisco Hospital where I was working. I was a nurse’s aide, and Pete was in the ward with a broken nose and a couple of broken ribs. He got beaten up in a gang fight.”

  “A gang fight?”

  “That’s all I know. Pete just said it was some rumble on the docks. I should have taken warning, but after he got out of the hospital I went on seeing him. He was young and good-looking, and like I said I thought he had the makings of a man. So I married him—the big mistake of my life, and I’ve made some doozies.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Nineteen-thirty-six. That dates me, doesn’t it? But I was only twenty-one at the time.” She paused, and raised her eyes to my face. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve never told a living soul in my life. Why don’t you stop me?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll tell me something that will help. Did your husband go in for gambling?”

  “Please don’t call him that. I married Pete Culligan, but he was no husband to me.” She lifted her head. “I have a real husband now. Incidentally, he’ll be expecting me back to make his dinner.” She leaned forward in her chair and started to get up.

  “Can’t you give me a few minutes more, Mrs. Matheson? I’ve told you all I know about Peter—”

  She laughed shortly. “If I told you all I know, it would take all night. Okay, a few more minutes, if you promise me there won’t be any publicity. My husband and me have a position to keep up. I’m a member of the PTA, the League of Women Voters.”

  “There won’t be any publicity. Was he a gambler?”

  “As much as he could afford to be. But he was always small-time.”

  “This money he said he made in Reno—did he tell you how he made it?”

  “Not a word. But I don’t think it was gambling. He was never that lucky.”

  “Do you still have his letter?”

  “Certainly not. I burned it, the same day I got it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want it around the house. I felt like it was dirt tracked into the house.”

  “Was Culligan a crook, or a hustler?”

  “Depends what you mean by that.” Her eyes were wary.

  “Did he break the law?”

  “I guess everybody does from time to time.”

  “Was he ever arrested?”

  “Yeah. Mostly for drunk and disorderly, nothing serious.”

  “Did he c
arry a gun?”

  “Not when I was with him. I wouldn’t let him.”

  “But the issue came up?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She was becoming evasive. “I meant I wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to.”

  “Did he own a gun?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  I’d almost lost her. She wasn’t talking frankly or willingly any more. So I threw her the question I didn’t expect her to answer, hoping to gather something from her reaction to it:

  “You mentioned an L. Bay in your letter to Culligan. What happened there?”

  Her lips were pushed out stiff and pale, as if they were made of bone. The dark eyes seemed to shrink in her head:

  “I don’t know what makes you ask that.” The tip of her tongue moved along her upper lip, and she tried again: “What was that about a bay in my letter? I don’t remember any bay in my letter.”

  “I do, Mrs. Matheson.” I quoted: “ ‘I could make trouble for you, double trouble. Remember L. Bay.’ ”

  “If I said that, I don’t know what I meant.”

  “There’s a place called Luna Bay about twenty-five or thirty miles from here.”

  “Is there?” she said stupidly.

  “You know it. What did Pete Culligan do there?”

  “I don’t remember. It must have been some dirty trick he played on me.” She was a poor liar, as most honest people are. “Does it matter?”

  “It seems to matter to you. Did you and Pete live in Luna Bay?”

  “I guess you could call it living. I had a job there, doing practical nursing.”

  “When?”

  “Way back when. I don’t remember what year.”

  “Who were you working for?”

  “Some people. I don’t remember their name.” She leaned toward me urgently, her eyes pointed like flints. “You have that letter with you?”

  “I left it where I found it, in Culligan’s suitcase in the house where he worked. Why?”

  “I want it back. I wrote it, and it belongs to me.”

  “You may have to take that up with the police. It’s probably in their hands by now.”

  “Will they be coming here?” She looked behind her, and all around the crowded restaurant, as if she expected to find a policeman bearing down on her.