The Watcher

by Dolores Hitchens

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE HAD been kept from medical help? Is that it?”

  “You’ve thought of it, too,” Martin said. Martin’s hands lay on his knees and their pale shape made Archer think of the torn halves of a dead butterfly. “From what was brought out at the hearing—the inquest, as it was called—it seemed that no one could have been with Barbara and not know she was dying.”

  “You say that you don’t know to whom she would have turned. What have you decided?”

  “To whom she did not.”

  Martin’s tone was firm, as if he had put in many an hour thinking about this affair, had arrived at careful and logical conclusions.

  “I went first to the boy and his family. They were in the midst of moving back to Beverly Hills. Lots of confusion, packing, and so on. The boy and the father were curt—the father, yes, even a little contemptuous. But the mother was kind; she followed me outside and spent a little while talking to me. She said that Barbara had not contacted them during the time she’d been missing. The husband had been at home, she had made it a point to check on all phone calls, and she had kept an eye on her son.”

  “That’s interesting,” Archer pointed out. “Did she say why? What I’m getting at, it would imply a knowledge of the abortion.”

  “She said that she had known some serious trouble was in the wind. The boy had talked to her and her husband. He’d told them a girl was trying to shake him down, blame him for her pregnancy . . . for money. Blackmail.” Martin’s broken-butterfly hands suddenly gripped each other. “The dirtiest lie, the filthiest lie of all. I almost went back inside and tackled the two of them.”

  “I can see why.” The whisky was a hot sour taste in the back of Archer’s throat, calling for more. I’d like to get drunk, he thought. I’ll bet I could make it, real quickie, too.

  “I didn’t argue with her. I could see, they thought me a poor befuddled fool, trying to shore up the reputation of a delinquent girl. I thought this much must be true, that Barbara hadn’t been near them, and I was glad she hadn’t. Even to save her life. . . .” He was gripping the shape of his bony knees, knuckles white. “I went around to Barbara’s friends. And then . . . I guess the parents were afraid of scandal. They were wishing their girls hadn’t known mine. They were watchful, as if I might carry a contagion.”

  “Why didn’t you come to us?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t even consider it. I had nothing but an idea.”

  “We’ll listen to ideas.”

  “Well, then, there was this. I kept thinking, perhaps someone like Barbara herself, young and scared, had given her shelter while she could recover from the abortion. Someone too inexperienced to know what to do.”

  “I see.”

  “I didn’t want to bring such a person into it. I spent a month talking and visiting. I decided at last, though, that if one of her young friends had helped her, I’d have heard something. And there was nothing.”

  His eyes held defeated memories. Archer decided that the time had taken much out of the man, that it was then, plodding from door to door and looking into one young face after another, that he had gradually crumbled inside into what he was now.

  “It was during that month that my wife left me,” Martin went on. “She took the other children with her. She said that she loved Barbara just as much as I, but that we must forget our daughter. We must wipe the memory from our lives. We owed it to the younger ones. We had to make a new life for them.”

  Well, the mother had something in a way, Archer thought, somewhat revising his opinion of her.

  “I . . . I can’t forget Barbara, though. She was a frail sort of girl while she was alive. Lovely, but easy to destroy. A wraith of a child. It’s in death that for me she’s taken on such formidable staying powers. I have the feeling that she’s with me much of the time. For instance, that she’s with us now.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now. To go on with what I decided.” He paused as if to collect and phrase what he had to say. “An adult. One that Barbara trusted. More, one that she loved. What the psychologists would call a parent image.”

  Lottie Tomlinson’s words flared in Archer’s memory: In all cases he chose children. To me it smacks of something occupational.

  “A minister? Sunday-school worker? Teacher?”

  “I’ll tell you about this woman,” Martin said. “She’d been a Girl Scout leader, Barbara had been in a troop with other girls and this woman took them on hikes, camp-outs, that kind of thing. Then Barbara got too big for the thing, or sort of lost interest; I guess the older ones do somewhere along the line. But she kept contact with Mrs. Kitzmiller.”

  Archer knew the woman. He remembered her, large-framed and not fat, gray hair pulled back along a bulging line of temple. Homely in the face and big in the feet. You sensed kindness and compassion in her, an unbounded mercy sweeter than Chanel No. 5.

  “You think she hid the girl and allowed her to drift into death?”

  “I think she knew something that she kept to herself.” Martin drew a long breath, as if relieving some tightness within. “Mrs. Kitzmiller is a widow. She has a child of her own, a girl who was crippled years ago, in her babyhood, by polio. I think that for this crippled girl she has made the world into a never-never land of sweetness and joy. The Girl Scout work provided happy companionship for her daughter, trips, outdoor activities and hobbies. It might have been that she kept quiet, not for herself but for the sake of her daughter. She might have felt that becoming involved with what had happened to Barbara might threaten what she had done and could do for her child.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “More than once. If you know her”—he looked at Archer; Archer nodded—“then you know that she is an innately kind and decent woman. She would not conceal knowledge of a crime. What she knew must have seemed to her a fairly innocent thing.”

  “She just didn’t want to be associated, in the public prints and the public mind, with a girl who had died after an abortion.”

  “I think that was it.”

  “Give me her address and I’ll talk to her.”

  Martin hesitated at the edge of his chair. “She isn’t a woman you can bully or frighten.”

  “Mr. Martin, have I bullied or frightened you?”

  “Really, I wouldn’t know if you tried. My approach to everyone is the same—I am humbly seeking the truth. And their attitude to me has been alike also—they have withheld it.”

  For the first time a feeling of impatient anger towards Martin flared in Archer’s mind. “I haven’t hidden anything from you, Mr. Martin.”

  “Haven’t you?” The weak eyes searched him. “Then what’s the secret about the medicine bottle you’re looking for?”

  Archer told him, explaining what the nurse had said and then adding, “It would be a miracle, after all this time, to find a clue like that intact.”

  “It would. And I must say, there is no medicine bottle in either of the two boxes on the kitchen table.”

  Archer rose, making a mental note to talk to Mrs. Kitzmiller about the girl. “Well, let’s have a look.”

  The kitchen was small and close and smelled of coffee and something Archer couldn’t identify but which made him think of liniment. Then at the table, Martin lifted the paper covers on the cartons and the air suddenly swam with roses. Old roses, petals falling to dust. Sachet, Archer thought. “Did she pack these?”

  “Barbara? No, I packed them long after her death, when I moved here. The fragrance you notice . . . it was sachet, a little packet I tucked into her stocking the last Christmas we all had together. She was big for that nonsense but she still loved it. I sprinkled it in here among her things to keep out for a little while the odor of death. Do you know what I mean? Not physical dissolution. Nothing to do with the body. But there is a sort of old forgotten mildew, or emanation”—he paused as if perplexed—“impossible to describe. I guess you sort of feel it, really.”

  “I think I
know what you mean.” Archer had his eye on a black patent purse.

  Martin saw what he was staring at. He lifted the purse out and handed it over, almost formally as if presenting a gift. “This is the one she had with her, those missing days.”

  Archer turned it over between his hands. It looked new, he thought. Not much inside. There was a gilt B on a little flap attached to the snap. He put a thumb on the B, lifted the catch with his other thumb, and the purse yawned. He hooked a chair with his foot, pulled it out and sat down. Gently he slid the contents of the purse out upon the table.

  A plastic compact. A lipstick, the case knobbed with little jewels and painted sea shells. A souvenir of something or other, Archer bet to himself.

  Martin put a finger on it. “That boy bought it for her.”

  A souvenir of love, then. Color for a warm young mouth, eager for kisses. Color for a girl who’d been like a flower—easy to blow away.

  Some bobby pins in a plastic bottle. A wallet. Archer opened the wallet eagerly: it held a driver’s license, a student-body card, some snapshots of girls in swim suits on a beach with picnic truck scattered around them.

  “School friends,” Martin said above Archer’s shoulder.

  Nothing else. No pictures of boys, or men. He put the wallet back upon the table.

  Some scraps of paper caught his eye, but they turned out to be shopping notes. He glanced at the rest, a handkerchief, some keys on a string, all little keys and nothing to do with strange doors, and a pack of gum, a small comb in a transparent plastic case. He put a hand inside the purse and felt all around, carefully, inside. The rayon lining felt new and slick.

  He sat for a moment in thought, and then he reached for the handkerchief and caught it by one corner and lifted it, shaking it a little so that it loosened and unfolded as his hand rose.

  “What about this?”

  Martin was shaking his head and peering blankly above his shoulder. “Why, I don’t . . . Isn’t it yours?”

  “You saw me take it out of the purse.”

  “Yes. I guess it’s always been in there, with the rest. I just hadn’t noticed. What’s that red mark?”

  Archer slipped the case off the lipstick with his free hand and snapped up the cylinder of red salve. “Seems to match. She wiped her mouth on it. Maybe she’d just taken a pill. One of the aspirin she thought was something else. Then she used this, forgot, and stuck it in her handbag.” He waited, but Martin seemed wrapped in perplexity. “Was she in the habit of carrying a man’s handkerchief?”

  “Oh no. She had her own, little things with lace and initials. But mostly, I remember, she used cleansing tissues. At least, always for something like lipstick. I don’t understand this.”

  “It could be pretty damned significant.”

  “I guess you’re thinking of laundry marks,” Martin offered.

  “I don’t see any at first glance. But some of our modern outfits use tricky inks. The marks show up under ultraviolet light. We’ll turn this in to the lab.” Martin was putting everything back into the purse, including the handkerchief. “I’ll take the whole lot. Let them work it over.”

  He returned to the boxes. Martin laid out their contents. Some sweaters in plastic cases, some frilly underthings. “Most of the clothes I gave away, though. While there was still some use in them.” He removed some school yearbooks, and Archer leafed through them. Then there were phonograph records, last year’s hit tunes. The ghosts of forgotten melodies ran through Archer’s head as he muttered the titles to himself.

  Archer spent more time on the snapshot album. Martin showed him what to look for, identifying Barbara in the snaps, the boat she had shared with Robbie, the younger kids in the family. The album covered some span of years, and Archer got the feeling that he’d seen Barbara Martin grow up and fill out into womanhood before his eyes. There was a picture of the mother, too, and Archer studied it measuringly; she was a compact, slender brunette with a direct stance and a no-nonsense air about her. A sort of domestic top sergeant, Archer decided. She would keep the kids in line. She would inspect toenails and backsides of ears, and the state of the bathroom when they were done with it.

  But in the end, Archer laid the album aside.

  In the bottom of the second carton was a small collection of baby things, yellowed with time. Booties and tiny socks, and frail embroidered cotton frocks, and a bib. Martin took the bib up and inspected it closely. “Look, there’s a spot of something . . . baby cereal.” He pried it off with his thumbnail and Archer saw how his hands shook. “For a while we thought she’d be the only one we’d ever have. Those days . . . she was our world. She was simply our whole wonderful world.”

  Archer took the purse back into the front room. He let Martin spend about five minutes in there getting control again.

  When I leave here, Archer thought, I’d better hit straight for the Kitzmiller woman.

  Hell, no. First I’m going to a bar. They say whisky never cured anything. But I’m going to give it a chance to take off the edges.

  When Martin returned he didn’t look too bad except for the reddened flesh around his eyes. He took a position just inside the doorway. “Mr. Archer, in spite of the deductions you’ve drawn from that handkerchief—Barbara simply would not have spent those last three days hidden out with a man.”

  “She must have been pretty desperate, Mr. Martin.”

  Martin’s chin rose stiffly. “No matter what that boy had done to her, and no matter what she must have felt for him, she was fundamentally sweet and decent. And innocent still . . . in the purest meaning of that word.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Archer replied. “Don’t you understand that it would take someone quite innocent and trusting? That an alert, knowing, suspicious girl would have spotted this freak for what he was? Even sick, even desperate for shelter, she’d have smelled something of his rotten motives?”

  Martin walked to a chair and sat down in it.

  “Your daughter turned to someone she thought she could depend upon utterly. A pillar, let us say, of righteousness. Not Mrs. Kitzmiller. A man. Now you’d better start thinking seriously along those lines.”

  Suddenly Martin broke down and crouched in the chair, holding his shuddering head in his hands. Great sobs tore from his throat. “Why didn’t she come home? Why didn’t she come to us? Why? Why?”

  Archer thought of the snapshot of Barbara’s mother. “Somebody failed her. She was afraid.”

  He went out and shut the door. The last glimpse he had, the old dog in the corner who hadn’t moved during his visit, had padded over to the shaking man and was trying to get a tongue in to lick his face.

  He went to the car, got in, clicked on the speaker. The girl asked him to hold on. Matthews wanted him.

  Matthews came on. “We’ve found the carrier who picked up the letter, and he remembers the box. Remembers because the letter’d been torn open, wasn’t sealed.”

  “You mean he didn’t have curiosity enough to read it?” Archer was astounded.

  “He says he was in a hurry. Could be. Or maybe he’s just polite. Anyway, he’s here and I’m sending him down to meet you on the corner.” Matthews supplied the address.

  “Any rush about it?” Through the windshield was a sign: BAR. Archer looked at it, knowing he was willing to break regulations and risk a batch of demerits. End up pounding a beat on the beach, he threatened himself wryly.

  “I want you to inspect all mail in that box, and then take a good look around the district. You might even ring a few doorbells,” Matthews offered on a rising note of sarcasm.

  “I’ve got Barbara Martin’s purse, the one she had with her while she was missing. Don’t you want me to bring it in?”

  “Send it back with the squad car that brings you this postman.”

  “Roger.”

  Roger, smodger. Who in the hell did Matthews think he was?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LOTTIE LIFTED her head from the pillow. There had been a sound fr
om the other apartment, a door-slam. A loud one. Not from the front entry, the courtyard, but from the direction of the alleyway. She sat up and put her feet on the floor. She could see through into the big front room where the studio window let in the light, and there were long streaks of shadow in there, the look of dusk.

  Almost at once she heard other noises. They seemed boisterous, abrupt. Hurried and clattering. She stood up and wiggled her feet into her shoes and went out into the studio room and glanced at the courtyard. Somebody’s cat had strolled in, stood there on the walk twitching its tail at the birds. It was a big black cat with watchful green eyes. Some sound from the other flat must have reached it because it turned its head suddenly to look in the direction of the windows. To Lottie the green eyes took on an opalescent sheen, like quicksilver.

  She listened. Heavy steps began to pound to and fro next door, much louder than any she had noted before. She got an impression of haste and carelessness. There had been no pause to indicate that he’d seen and picked up and read her note.

  A sudden feeling of confusion rushed through her. Had she been foolish, reckless, writing that note, accusing him on so little? On nothing, really. What would he think of her when he read it? She put up her palms to touch her cheeks; her face all at once felt hot with shame. And her heart was pounding.

  Then she heard something being dragged across the floor. It seemed to sound big and hollow, and she thought of a trunk or of a big wooden case. He must be quite busy in there, engrossed in something which took his whole attention. Remembering the layout of the other flat from looking through it when it was empty, she decided that he had not gone near the front door at all. He was working in the other part of the place.

  What had made her do such a thing?

  She had been upset by Archer’s visit. In a reaction from the vile images roused by Archer’s previous talk, she had created an image of her own. She had fleshed out the ghostly impression of the letter writer. A hateful, secretive, egotistical monster. And then, because he hadn’t come to the door when she had pounded on it earlier, she had jumped to the conclusion that her neighbor answered the description.