The Galton Case

by Ross Macdonald

  Her eyes were soft and black, lit tremulously from within. Their expression followed all the movements of my story. She said when I’d finished:

  “It sounds like one of Grimm’s fairy tales. The goatherd turns out to be the prince in disguise. Or like Œdipus. John had an Œdipus theory of his own, that Œdipus killed his father because he banished him from the kingdom. I thought it was very clever.” Her voice was brittle. She was marking time.

  “John’s a clever boy,” I said. “And you’re a clever girl, and you knew him well. Do you believe he’s who he claims to be?”

  “Do you?” When I failed to answer, she said: “So he has a girl in California, already.” Her hands lay open on her slender thighs. She hugged them between her thighs.

  “The girl’s father hired me. He thinks John is a fraud.”

  “And you do, too?”

  “I don’t like to think it, but I’m afraid I do. There are some indications that his whole story was invented to fit the occasion.”

  “To inherit money?”

  “That’s the general idea. I’ve been talking to his landlady in Ann Arbor, Mrs. Haskell.”

  “I know her,” the girl said shortly.

  “Do you know anything about this offer John had from a producer?”

  “Yes, he mentioned it to me. It was one of these personal contracts that movie producers give to promising young actors. This man saw him in Hobson’s Choice.”

  “When?”

  “Last February.”

  “Did you meet the man?”

  “I never did. John said he flew back to the coast. He didn’t want to discuss it after that.”

  “Did he mention any names before he dried up?”

  “Not that I recall. Do you think John was lying about him, that it wasn’t an acting job he was offered?”

  “That could be. Or it could be John was sucked in. The conspirators made their approach as movie producers or agents, and later told him what was required of him.”

  “Why would John fall in with their plans? He’s not a criminal.”

  “The Galton estate is worth millions. He stands to inherit all of it, any day. Even a small percentage of it would make him a rich man.”

  “But he never cared about money, at least not the kind you inherit. He could have married me: Barkis was willing. My father’s money was one of the reasons he didn’t. At least that’s what he said. The real reason, I guess, was that he didn’t love me. Does he love her?”

  “My client’s daughter? I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe he doesn’t love anybody.”

  “You’re very honest, Mr. Archer. I gave you an opening, but you didn’t try to use her on me as a wedge. You could have said that he was crazy about her, thus fanning the fires of jealousy.” She winced at her own self-mockery.

  “I try to be honest with honest people.”

  She gave me a flashing look. “That’s intended to put me on the spot.”

  “Yes.”

  She turned her head and looked out over the lake as if she could see all the way to California. The last sails were converging toward shore, away from the darkness falling like soot along the horizon. As light drained from the sky, it seemed to gather more intensely on the water.

  “What will they do to him if they find out he’s an impostor?”

  “Put him in jail.”

  “For how long?”

  “It’s hard to say. It’ll be easier on him if we get it over with soon. He hasn’t made any big claims yet, or taken any big money.”

  “You really mean, really and truly, that I’d be doing him a favor by puncturing his story?”

  “That’s my honest opinion. If it’s all a pack of lies, we’ll find out sooner or later. The sooner the better.”

  She hesitated. Her profile was stark. One cord in her neck stood out under the skin. “You say that he claims that he was brought up in an orphanage in Ohio.”

  “Crystal Springs, Ohio. Did he ever mention the place to you?”

  She shook her head in a quick short arc. I said:

  “There are some indications that he was raised here in Canada.”

  “What indications?”

  “Speech. Spelling.”

  She rose suddenly, walked to the end of the garden, stooped to pick a snapdragon, threw it away with a spurning gesture. She came back toward me and stood with her face half-averted. She said in a rough dry voice:

  “Just don’t tell him I was the one that told you. I couldn’t bear to have him hate me, even if I never see him again. The poor damn silly fool was born and raised right here in Ontario. His real name is Theodore Fredericks, and his mother runs a boardinghouse in Pitt, not more than sixty miles from here.”

  I stood up, forcing her to look at me. “How do you know, Miss Reichler?”

  “I talked to Mrs. Fredericks. It wasn’t a very fortunate meeting. It didn’t do anything for either of us. I should never have gone there.”

  “Did he take you to meet his mother?”

  “Hardly. I went to see her myself a couple of weeks ago, after John left Ann Arbor. When I didn’t hear from him I got it into my head that perhaps he’d gone home to Pitt.”

  “How did you learn about his home in Pitt? Did he tell you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t believe he intended to. It happened on the spur of the moment, when he was spending a week-end here with us. It was the only time he ever came to visit us here in Kingsville, and it was a bad time for me—the worst. I hate to think of it.”

  “Why?”

  “If you have to know, he turned me down. We went for a drive on Sunday morning. I did the driving, of course. He’d never touch the wheel of my car. That’s the way he was with me, so proud, and I had no pride at all with him. I got carried away by the flowers and the bees, or something, and I asked him to marry me. He gave me a flat refusal.

  “He must have seen how hurt I was, because he asked me to drive him to Pitt. We weren’t too far from there, and he wanted to show me something. When we got there he made me drive down a street that runs along by the river on the edge of the Negro section. It was a dreadful neighborhood, filthy children of all colors playing in the mud, and slatternly women screaming at them. We stopped across from an old red brick house where some men in their undershirts were sitting on the front steps passing around a wine jug.

  “John asked me to take a good look, because he said he belonged there. He said he’d grown up in that neighborhood, in that red house. A woman came out on the porch to call the men in for dinner. She had a voice like a kazoo, and she was a hideous fat pig of a woman. John said that she was his mother.

  “I didn’t believe him. I thought he was hoaxing me, putting me to some kind of silly test. It was a test, in a way, but not in the way I imagined. He wanted to be known, I think. He wanted me to accept him as he actually was. But by the time I understood that, it was too late. He’d gone into one of his deep freezes.” She touched her mournful mouth with the tips of her long fingers.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last spring. It must have been early in March, there was still some snow on the ground.”

  “Did you see John after that?”

  “A few times, but it wasn’t any good. I think he regretted telling me about himself. In fact I know he did. That Sunday in Pitt was the end of any real communication between us. There were so many things we couldn’t talk about, finally we couldn’t talk at all. The last time I saw him was humiliating, for him, and for me, too. He asked me not to mention what he’d said about his origins, if anyone ever brought it up.”

  “Who did he expect to bring it up? The police?”

  “The immigration authorities. Apparently there was something irregular about his entry into the United States. That fitted in with what his mother told me afterwards. He’d run away with one of her boarders when he was sixteen, and apparently crossed over into the States.”

  “Did she give you the boarder’s name?”

  “No. I’m surp
rised Mrs. Fredericks told me as much as she did. You know how the lower classes are, suspicious. But I gave her a little money, and that loosened her up.” Her tone was contemptuous, and she must have overheard herself: “I know, I’m just what John said I was, a dollar snob. Well, I had my comeuppance. There I was prowling around the Pitt slums on a hot summer day like a lady dog in season. And I might as well have stayed at home. His mother hadn’t laid eyes on him for over five years, and she never expected to see him again, she said. I realized that I’d lost him, for good.”

  “He was easy to lose,” I said, “and no great loss.”

  She looked at me like an enemy. “You don’t know him. John’s a fine person at heart, fine and deep. I was the one who failed in our relationship. If I’d been able to understand him that Sunday, say the right thing and hold him, he mightn’t have gone into this fraudulent life. I’m the one who wasn’t good for anything.”

  She screwed up her face like a monkey and tugged at her hair, making herself look ugly.

  “I’m just a hag.”

  “Be quiet.”

  She looked at me incredulously, one hand flat against her temple. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “Ada Reichler. You’re worth five of him.”

  “I’m not. I’m no good. I betrayed him. Nobody could love me. Nobody could.”

  “I told you to be quiet.” I’d never been angrier in my life.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. Don’t you dare!”

  Her eyes were as bright and heavy as mercury. She ran blind to the end of the garden, knelt at the edge of the grass, and buried her face in flowers.

  Her back was long and beautiful. I waited until she was still, and lifted her to her feet. She turned toward me.

  The last light faded from the flowers and from the lake. Night came on warm and moist. The grass was wet.

  chapter 25

  THE town of Pitt was dark except for occasional street lights and the fainter lights that fell from the heavily starred sky. Driving along the street Ada Reichler had named, I could see the moving river down between the houses. When I got out of the car, I could smell the river. A chanting chorus of frogs made the summer night pulsate at its edges.

  On the second floor of the old red house, a bleary light outlined a window. The boards of the veranda groaned under my weight. I knocked on the alligatored door. A card offering “Rooms for Rent” was stuck inside the window beside the door.

  A light went on over my head. Moths swirled up around it like unseasonable snow. An old man peered out, cocking his narrow gray head at me out of a permanent stoop.

  “Something you want?” His voice was a husky whisper.

  “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Fredericks, the landlady.”

  I’m Mr. Fredericks. If it’s a room you want, I can rent you a room just as good as she can.”

  “Do you rent by the night?”

  “Sure, I got a nice front room you can have. It’ll cost you—let’s see.” He stroked the bristles along the edge of his jaw, making a rasping noise. His dull eyes looked me over with stupid cunning. “Two dollars?”

  “I’d like to see the room first.”

  “If you say so. Try not to make too much noise, eh? The old woman—Mrs. Fredericks is in bed.”

  He must have been just about to go himself. His shirt was open so that I could have counted his ribs, and his broad striped suspenders were hanging down. I followed him up the stairs. He moved with elaborate secrecy, and turned at the top to set a hushing finger to his lips. The light from the hall below cast his hunched condor shadow on the wall.

  A woman’s voice rose from the back of the house: “What are you creeping around for?”

  “Didn’t want to disturb the boarders,” he said in his carrying whisper.

  “The boarders aren’t in yet, and you know it. Is somebody with you?”

  “Nope. Just me and my shadow.”

  He smiled a yellow-toothed smile at me, as if he expected me to share the joke.

  “Come to bed then,” she called.

  “In a minute.”

  He tiptoed to the front of the hallway, beckoned me through an open door, and closed the door quietly behind me. For a moment we were alone in the dark, like conspirators. I could hear his emotional breathing.

  Then he reached up to pull on a light. It swung on its cord, throwing lariats of shadow up to the high ceiling, and shifting gleam and gloom on the room’s contents. These included a bureau, a washstand with pitcher and bowl, and a bed which had taken the impress of many bodies. The furnishings reminded me of the room John Brown had had in Luna Bay.

  John Brown? John Nobody.

  I looked at the old man’s face. It was hard to imagine what quirk of his genes had produced the boy. If Fredericks had ever possessed good looks, time had washed them out. His face was patchily furred leather, stretched on gaunt bones, held in place by black nailhead eyes.

  “The room all right?” he said uneasily.

  I glanced at the flowered paper on the walls. Faded morning-glories climbed brown lattices to the watermarked ceiling. I didn’t think I could sleep in a room with morning-glories crawling up the walls all night.

  “If it’s bugs you’re worried about,” he said, “we had the place fumigated last spring.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “I’ll let in some fresh air.” He opened the window and sidled back to me. “Pay me cash in advance, and I can let you have it for a dollar and a half.”

  I had no intention of staying the night, but I decided to let him have the money. I took out my wallet and gave him two ones. His hand trembled as he took them:

  “I got no change.”

  “Keep it. Mr. Fredericks, you have a son.”

  He gave me a long slow cautious look. “What if I have?”

  “A boy named Theodore.”

  “He’s no boy. He’ll be grown up now.”

  “How long is it since you’ve seen him?”

  “I dunno. Four-five years, maybe longer. He ran away when he was sixteen. It’s a tough thing to have to say about your own boy, but it was good riddance of bad rubbish.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s the truth. You acquainted with Theo?”

  “Slightly.”

  “Is he in trouble again? Is that why you’re here?”

  Before I could answer, the door of the room flew open. A short stout woman in a flannelette nightgown brushed past me and advanced on Fredericks: “What you think you’re doing, renting a room behind my back?”

  “I didn’t.”

  But the money was still in his hand. He tried to crumple it in his fist and hide it. She grabbed for it:

  “Give me my money.”

  He hugged his valuable fist against his washboard chest. “It’s just as much my money as it is yours.”

  “Aw no it isn’t. I work myself to the bone keeping our heads above water. And what do you do? Drink it up as fast as I can make it.”

  “I ain’t had a drink for a week.”

  “You’re a liar.” She stamped her bare foot. Her body shook under the nightgown, and her gray braids swung like cables down her back. “You were drinking wine last night with the boys in the downstairs bedroom.”

  “That was free,” he said virtuously. “And you got no call to talk to me like this in front of a stranger.”

  She turned to me for the first time. “Excuse us, mister. It’s no fault of yours, but he can’t handle money,” She added unnecessarily: “He drinks.”

  While her eyes were off him, Fredericks made for the door. She intercepted him. He struggled feebly in her embrace. Her upper arms were as thick as hams. She pried open his bony fist and pushed the crumpled bills down between her breasts. He watched the money go as though it represented his hope of heaven:

  “Just give me fifty cents. Fifty cents won’t break you.”

  “Not one red cent,” she said. “If you think I’m going to help you get the
d.t.’s again, you got another think coming.”

  “All I want is one drink.”

  “Sure, and then another and another. Until you feel the rats crawling up under your clothes, and I got to nurse you out of it again.”

  “There’s all different kinds of rats. A woman that won’t give her lawful husband four bits to settle his stomach is the worst kind of rat there is.”

  “Take that back.”

  She moved on him, arms akimbo. He backed into the hallway:

  “All right, I take it back. But I’ll get a drink, don’t worry. I got good friends in this town, they know my worth.”

  “Sure they do. They feed you stinking rotgut across the river, and then they come to me asking for money. Don’t you set foot outside this house tonight.”

  “You’re not going to order me around, treat me like a has-been. It ain’t my fault I can’t work, with a hole in my belly. It ain’t my fault I can’t sleep without a drink to ease the pain.”

  “Scat,” she said. “Go to bed, old man.”

  He shambled away, trailing his slack suspenders. The fat woman turned to me.

  “I apologize for my husband. He’s never been the same since his accident.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got hurt bad.” Her answer seemed deliberately vague. Under folds of fat, her face showed traces of her son’s stubborn intelligence. She changed the subject: “I notice you paid with American money. You from the States?”

  “I just drove over from Detroit.”

  “You live in Detroit? I never been over there, but I hear it’s an interesting place.”

  “It probably is. I was just passing through on my way from California.”

  “What brings you all the way from California?”

  “A man named Peter Culligan was murdered there several weeks ago. Culligan was stabbed to death.”

  “Stabbed to death?”

  I nodded. Her head moved slightly in unison with mine. Without shifting her eyes from my face, she moved around me and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You know him, don’t you, Mrs. Fredericks?”

  “He boarded with me for a while, years ago. He had this very room.”

  “What was he doing in Canada?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t ask my boarders where their money comes from. Mostly he sat in this room and studied his racing sheets.” She looked up shrewdly from under frowning brows. “Would you be a policeman?”