“My God, Ed,” Terry Neville said, “you’re getting me in a frightful mess. You don’t know what a frightful mess you’re getting me in.” His voice was high, with a ragged edge of hysteria.
“For God’s sake, you’re not afraid of this bum, are you?” Ed said in a terrier yap.
“You get out of here, Ed. This is a terrible thing, and you don’t know how to handle it. I’ve got to talk to this man. Get out of this car.”
He leaned forward to take the speaking tube, but Ed put a hand on his shoulder. “Play it your way, then, Terry. I still think I had the right play, but you spoiled it.”
“Where are we going?” I said. I suspected that we were headed for Beverly Hills, where the police know who pays them their wages.
Neville said into the speaking tube: “Turn down a side street and park. Then take a walk around the block.”
“That’s better,” I said when we had parked. Terry Neville looked frightened. Ed looked sulky and worried. For no good reason, I felt complacent.
“Spill it,” I said to Terry Neville. “Did you kill the girl? Or did she accidentally drown—and you ran away so you wouldn’t get mixed up in it? Or have you thought of a better one than that?”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know she was dead. But I was there yesterday afternoon. We were sunning ourselves on the raft, when a plane came over flying very low. I went away, because I didn’t want to be seen there with her—”
“You mean you weren’t exactly sunning yourselves?”
“Yes. That’s right. This plane came over high at first, then he circled back and came down very low. I thought maybe he recognized me, and might be trying to take pictures or something.”
“What kind of a plane was it?”
“I don’t know. A military plane, I guess. A fighter plane. It was a single-seater painted blue. I don’t know military planes.”
“What did Una Sand do when you went away?”
“I don’t know. I swam to shore, put on some clothes, and drove away. She stayed on the raft, I guess. But she was certainly all right when I left her. It would be a terrible thing for me if I was dragged into this thing. Mr.—”
“Archer.”
“Mr. Archer. I’m terribly sorry if we hurt you. If I could make it right with you—” He pulled out a wallet.
His steady pallid whine bored me. Even his sheaf of bills bored me. The situation bored me.
I said: “I have no interest in messing up your brilliant career, Mr. Neville. I’d like to mess up your brilliant pan sometime, but that can wait. Until I have some reason to believe that you haven’t told me the truth, I’ll keep what you said under my hat. In the meantime, I want to hear what the coroner has to say.”
They took me back to Ronald’s, where my car was, and left me with many protestations of good fellowship. I said good night to them, rubbing the back of my neck with an exaggerated gesture. Certain other gestures occurred to me.
When I got back to Santa Barbara the coroner was working over Una. He said that there were no marks of violence on her body, and very little water in her lungs and stomach, but this condition was characteristic of about one drowning in ten.
I hadn’t known that before, so I asked him to put it into sixty-four-dollar words. He was glad to.
“Sudden inhalation of water may result in a severe reflex spasm of the larynx, followed swiftly by asphyxia. Such a laryngeal spasm is more likely to occur if the victim’s face is upward, allowing water to rush into the nostrils, and would be likely to be facilitated by emotional or nervous shock. It may have happened like that or it may not.”
“Hell,” I said, “she may not even be dead.”
He gave me a sour look. “Thirty-six hours ago she wasn’t.”
I figured it out as I got in my car. Una couldn’t have drowned much later than four o’clock in the afternoon on September the seventh.
It was three in the morning when I checked in at the Barbara Hotel. I got up at seven, had breakfast in a restaurant, and went to the beach house to talk to Jack Rossiter. It was only about eight o’clock when I got there, but Rossiter was sitting on the beach in a canvas chair watching the sea.
“You again?” he said when he saw me.
“I’d think you’d have had enough of the sea for a while. How long were you out?”
“A year.” He seemed unwilling to talk.
“I hate bothering people,” I said, “but my business is always making a nuisance out of me.”
“Evidently. What exactly is your business?”
“I’m currently working for your mother-in-law. I’m still trying to find out what happened to her daughter.”
“Are you trying to needle me?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair as if to get up. For a moment his knuckles were white. Then he relaxed. “You saw what happened, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But do you mind my asking what time your ship got into San Francisco on September the seventh?”
“No. Four o’clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I suppose that could be checked?”
He didn’t answer. There was a newspaper on the sand beside his chair and he leaned over and handed it to me. It was the Late Night Final of a San Francisco newspaper for the seventh.
“Turn to page four,” he said.
I turned to page four and found an article describing the arrival of the USS Guam at the Golden Gate, at four o’clock in the afternoon. A contingent of Waves had greeted the returning heroes, and a band had played “California, Here I Come.”
“If you want to see Mrs. Dreen, she’s in the house,” Jack Rossiter said. “But it looks to me as if your job is finished.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And if I don’t see you again, goodbye.”
“Are you leaving?”
“A friend is coming out from Santa Barbara to pick me up in a few minutes. I’m flying up to Alameda with him to see about getting leave. I just had a forty-eight, and I’ve got to be here for the inquest tomorrow. And the funeral.” His voice was hard. His whole personality had hardened overnight. The evening before his nature had been wide open. Now it was closed and invulnerable.
“Goodbye,” I said, and plodded through the soft sand to the house. On the way I thought of something, and walked faster.
When I knocked, Mrs. Dreen came to the door holding a cup of coffee, not very steadily. She was wearing a heavy wool dressing robe with a silk rope around the waist, and a silk cap on her head. Her eyes were bleary.
“Hello,” she said. “I came back last night after all. I couldn’t work today anyway. And I didn’t think Jack should be by himself.”
“He seems to be doing all right.”
“I’m glad you think so. Will you come in?”
I stepped inside. “You said last night that you wanted to know who killed Una no matter who it was.”
“Well?”
“Does that still go?”
“Yes. Why? Did you find out something?”
“Not exactly. I thought of something, that’s all.”
“The coroner believes it was an accident. I talked to him on the phone this morning.” She sipped her black coffee. Her hand vibrated steadily, like a leaf in the wind.
“He may be right,” I said. “He may be wrong.”
There was the sound of a car outside, and I moved to the window and looked out. A station wagon stopped on the beach, and a Navy officer got out and walked towards Jack Rossiter. Rossiter got up and they shook hands.
“Will you call Jack, Mrs. Dreen, and tell him to come into the house for a minute?”
“If you wish.” She went to the door and called him.
Rossiter came to the door and said a little impatiently: “What is it?”
“Come in,” I said. “And tell me what time you left the ship the day before yesterday.”
“Let’s see. We got in at four—”
“No, you didn’t. The ship did, but not you
. Am I right?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know what I mean. It’s so simple that it couldn’t fool anybody for a minute, not if he knew anything about carriers. You flew your plane off the ship a couple of hours before she got into port. My guess is that you gave that telegram to a buddy to send for you before you left the ship. You flew down here, caught your wife being made love to by another man, landed on the beach—and drowned her.”
“You’re insane!” After a moment he said less violently: “I admit I flew off the ship. You could easily find that out anyway. I flew around for a couple of hours, getting in some flying time—”
“Where did you fly?”
“Along the coast. I didn’t get down this far. I landed at Alameda at five-thirty, and I can prove it.”
“Who’s your friend?” I pointed through the open door to the other officer, who was standing on the beach looking out to sea.
“Lieutenant Harris. I’m going to fly up to Alameda with him. I warn you, don’t make any ridiculous accusations in his presence, or you’ll suffer for it.”
“I want to ask him a question,” I said. “What sort of plane were you flying?”
“FM-3.”
I went out of the house and down the slope to Lieutenant Harris. He turned towards me and I saw the wings on his blouse.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said. “You’ve done a good deal of flying, I suppose?”
“Thirty-two months. Why?”
“I want to settle a bet. Could a plane land on this beach and take off again?”
“I think maybe a Piper Cub could. I’d try it anyway. Does that settle the bet?”
“It was a fighter I had in mind. An FM-3.”
“Not an FM-3,” he said. “Not possibly. It might just conceivably be able to land but it’d never get off again. Not enough room, and very poor surface. Ask Jack, he’ll tell you the same.”
I went back to the house and said to Jack: “I was wrong. I’m sorry. As you said, I guess I’m all washed up with this case.”
“Goodbye, Millicent,” Jack said, and kissed her cheek. “If I’m not back tonight I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Keep a stiff upper lip.”
“You do, too, Jack.”
He went away without looking at me again. So the case was ending as it had begun, with me and Mrs. Dreen alone in a room wondering what had happened to her daughter.
“You shouldn’t have said what you did to him,” she said. “He’s had enough to bear.”
My mind was working very fast. I wondered whether it was producing anything. “I suppose Lieutenant Harris knows what he’s talking about. He says a fighter couldn’t land and take off from this beach. There’s no other place around here he could have landed without being seen. So he didn’t land.
“But I still don’t believe that he wasn’t here. No young husband flying along the coast within range of the house where his wife was—well, he’d fly low and dip his wings to her, wouldn’t he? Terry Neville saw the plane come down.”
“Terry Neville?”
“I talked to him last night. He was with Una before she died. The two of them were out on the raft together when Jack’s plane came down. Jack saw them, and saw what they were doing. They saw him. Terry Neville went away. Then what?”
“You’re making this up,” Mrs. Dreen said, but her green eyes were intent on my face.
“I’m making it up, of course. I wasn’t here. After Terry Neville ran away, there was no one here but Una, and Jack in a plane circling over her head. I’m trying to figure out why Una died. I have to make it up. But I think she died of fright. I think Jack dived at her and forced her into the water. I think he kept on diving at her until she was gone. Then he flew back to Alameda and chalked up his flying time.”
“Fantasy,” she said. “And very ugly. I don’t believe it.”
“You should. You’ve got that cable, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jack sent Una a cable from Pearl, telling her what day he was arriving. Una mentioned it to Hilda Karp. Hilda Karp mentioned it to me. It’s funny you didn’t say anything about it.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Millicent Dreen said. Her eyes were blank.
I went on, paying no attention to her denial: “My guess is that the cable said not only that Jack’s ship was coming in on the seventh, but that he’d fly over the beach house that afternoon. Fortunately, I don’t have to depend on guesswork. The cable will be on file at Western Union, and the police will be able to look at it. I’m going into town now.”
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go to the police about it. You’ll only get Jack in trouble. I destroyed the cable to protect him, but I’ll tell you what was in it. Your guess was right. He said he’d fly over on the seventh.”
“When did you destroy it?”
“Yesterday, before I came to you. I was afraid it would implicate Jack.”
“Why did you come to me at all, if you wanted to protect Jack? It seems that you knew what happened.”
“I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what had happened to her, and until I found out I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re still not sure,” I said. “But I’m beginning to be. For one thing, it’s certain that Una never got her cable, at least not as it was sent. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been doing what she was doing on the afternoon that her husband was going to fly over and say hello. You changed the date on it, perhaps? So that Una expected Jack a day later? Then you arranged to be in Hollywood on the seventh, so that Una could spend a final afternoon with Terry Neville.”
“Perhaps.” Her face was completely alive, controlled but full of dangerous energy, like a cobra listening to music.
“Perhaps you wanted Jack for yourself,” I said. “Perhaps you had another reason, I don’t know. I think even a psychoanalyst would have a hard time working through your motivations, Mrs. Dreen, and I’m not one. All I know is that you precipitated a murder. Your plan worked even better than you expected.”
“It was accidental death,” she said hoarsely. “If you go to the police you’ll only make a fool of yourself, and cause trouble for Jack.”
“You care about Jack, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “He was mine before he ever saw Una. She took him away from me.”
“And now you think you’ve got him back.” I got up to go. “I hope for your sake he doesn’t figure out for himself what I’ve just figured out.”
“Do you think he will?” Sudden terror had jerked her face apart. I didn’t answer her.
DEATH BY WATER
During and after his service in World War II, and before beginning his association with Lew Archer, Kenneth Millar (who’d yet to transform himself into Ross Macdonald) wrote two stories involving a Southern California private detective named Joe Rogers; and another story about newspaperman Sam Drake.
The two Rogers tales were written on the same day in late 1945, and both were entered in a magazine contest. One (“Find the Woman”) won a prize and was printed in magazine and book form as a Joe Rogers story. The other (“Death by Water”) remained unpublished until 2001, when it was included in the book Strangers in Town.
“Find the Woman” found its way into The Name Is Archer, Ross Macdonald’s premier 1955 collection of short stories, with Joe Rogers changed to (or revealed as) Lew Archer. Similarly, The Name Is Archer also included a revised version of the 1948 novelette “The Bearded Lady,” with Sam Drake becoming Lew Archer.
In the spirit of those earlier author-approved revisions, and with the permission of Kenneth Millar’s trustee, “Death by Water” is published here as a Lew Archer case.
—Tom Nolan
He was old, but he didn’t look as if he were about to die. For a man of his age, which couldn’t have been less than seventy, he was doing very well for himself. He was sitting at the bar buying drinks for three young sailors, and he was the life
of the party in more than the financial sense. In the hour or so that I had been watching him, he must have had at least five martinis, and it was long past dinner time.
“The old man can carry his liquor,” I said to Al.
“Mr. Ralston, you mean? He’s in here every night from eight to midnight, and it never seems to get him down. Of course some nights he gets too much, and I have to take him home and put him to bed. But next day he’s bright as ever.”
“He lives in the hotel, eh?”
Al Sablacan was the hotel detective of the Valeria Pueblo, which charged ten dollars a day and up and, unlike many Los Angeles hotels, was worth it. Until a couple of years ago, he had been a private detective, like me, but he had finally succumbed to varicose veins and the promise of security in his old age.
“He’s our oldest inhabitant,” Al said. “He’s got a bungalow over near the swimming pool. Been there about ten years, I guess, him and his wife.”
“He doesn’t act married.”
Mr. Ralston had left the bar and was leaning on the grand piano watching a dark Spanish-looking girl who strummed a guitar and sang pseudo-Latin songs in a sweet soprano. She was making eyes at Mr. Ralston in an exaggerated way which was intended to indicate that she was humoring the old man. Mr. Ralston was making faces at her, as if to express passionate delight.
“You show them, Mr. Ralston,” one of the sailors said from the bar. “There’s life in the old boy yet.”
“Most assuredly,” said Mr. Ralston, in rich and gracious tones. He gave a dollar to the singer, and she began to play “The Isle of Capri.” Mr. Ralston danced in a small circle between the bar and the piano, making expansively romantic gestures. “Most assuredly,” he repeated, with a winning smile which made everyone in the bar smile with him. “I am a little old dried up man, but I have a youthful heart.”
“Isn’t he a card?” Al said to me. “His wife’s an invalid, and he must do a lot of worrying about her, but you’d never know it. He’s a card.”
There was a recess in the music, and Mr. Ralston approached our table on light feet and with a glowing face. “And how are you this evening?” he said to Al in tones of cultivated solicitude. “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend. I do hope you’ll overlook the absence of a tie. I neglected to put one on after dinner. I don’t know what I was thinking of.” He gave a little laugh of indulgence at his boyish recklessness.
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