The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  “You’ve made a mistake. I bought no tickets, and if I had it’s no concern of yours. Look here.” He showed me the return half of a round-trip ticket between Los Angeles and Chicago. “You see, I’m flying home to Chicago tomorrow, by myself.”

  “Mission accomplished?”

  “Deuce take you!” They were the strongest words I’d heard him use. He rose and came towards me. “Get out of my room now. I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  “I’m staying.”

  “I’ll call the house detective.”

  “Hell, call the police.”

  He went to the room telephone and lifted the receiver. I stood and watched his bluff fade into nothing. He put the receiver down. I sat in the armchair he had vacated, and he went into the bathroom. I heard him retching. He had meant it literally when he said I made him sick.

  The phone rang after a while, and I answered it. A woman’s voice said: “Reggie? I’m calling from a drugstore. May we come to your room? Leonard thinks it would be safer.”

  “Naturally,” I said in a higher voice than my own.

  “Did you get the tickets?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The bathroom door had opened. Harlan flung himself on my back. I hung up carefully before I turned on him. He fought with his nails and his teeth. I had to quiet him the hard way, with my left fist. I dragged him into the bathroom and shut the door on him.

  Then I sat on the bed and looked at the telephone. Lister had a woman with him, and she knew Harlan. She knew Harlan well enough to call him Reggie, and Reggie had bought plane tickets for her and Lister. With a wrench that shook me down to my heels, the entire case turned over in my head and lodged at a crazy angle. Over its tilted edge, I saw Dolphine’s moon-dead face, and the faceless face of the woman who had left him.

  I found his name again in the directory. His telephone rang six times, and then his voice came dimly over the wires:

  “Jack Dolphine speaking.”

  I said bluntly, to keep him from hanging up: “Mrs. Dolphine has left you, I understand.”

  “What’s that? Who is this?”

  “The private cop you talked to this morning, about the Lister case. It’s turned into a murder case.”

  “Murder? How does Stella come into it?”

  “That’s the question, Mr. Dolphine. Is she there?”

  There was a long silence, ending in a “No,” that was almost as soft as silence.

  “When did she leave?”

  “I told you. Last night. Anyway she was gone when I got up this morning.” Self-pity or some other emotion rose audibly in his throat. “This murder, you don’t mean Stella?” The emotion choked him.

  “Pull yourself together. Did your wife really leave with Lister?”

  “Far as I know. Did he kill her? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I’m not trying to tell you anything. I have a corpse on my hands. You should be able to identify it.”

  “You put the arm on Lister?” He sounded very eager.

  “Not yet. I’m going to shortly.”

  “Don’t let him go, whatever you do. He’s a dangerous man. He killed her, I know he killed her.”

  He was choking up again. I said sharply:

  “How do you know?”

  “He threatened to. I heard them talking before he went east, a couple of weeks ago. They were quarreling back and forth in his studio, yelling at each other like wild animals. She wanted to marry him, divorce me and go off with him. He said he was going to marry another woman, a woman he really loved. She said she wouldn’t let him. And he told her if she interfered, he’d strangle her with his hands.”

  “Will you swear to that?”

  “I’ll swear to it. It’s the truth.” His voice dropped. “Did he strangle her?”

  “A woman’s dead. I don’t know who she is, until I get her identified. I’m in Santa Monica, at the Oceano Hotel. Can you come here now?”

  “I guess so. I know where it is. Is Stella there?”

  There was a flurry of footsteps in the hall.

  “Maybe she soon will be. Make it as quick as you can, and come right up. I’m in room three-fourteen.”

  Somebody knocked on the hall door. I hung up, took my revolver out, and carried it to the door, which I swung wide. Lister was surprised to see me. His eyes bulged in their white rings. His right hand started a movement, which the woman beside him interrupted. She wrapped both arms around his arm, and hung her weight on him:

  “Please, Leonard, no more violence. I couldn’t bear any more violence.”

  But there had been violence, and she had borne it. Its marks were on her face. One of her eyes had been blackened, one cheek was ridged diagonally with deep scratches. Otherwise she was a handsome woman of thirty or so, tall and slender-hipped in a tailored suit. A new-looking hat sat smartly on her dark head. But her single usable eye was glaring in desperation:

  “Are you a policeman?”

  Lister’s free hand covered her mouth. “Be quiet now. Don’t say a word. I’ll do the talking.”

  They stumbled into the room in a kind of lockstep. I shut the door with my heel. The woman sat on the bed. The marks on her face were vivid against her pallor. Lister stood in front of her.

  “Where’s Harlan?”

  “I’ll ask the questions. You’ll answer them.”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  He took a threatening step. I leveled my revolver at his stomach.

  “The one with the gun. It’s loaded. I’ll use it if I have to.”

  The woman spoke behind him. “Listen to me, Leonard. It isn’t any use. Violence only breeds further violence. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  “Don’t worry, there won’t be any trouble. I know how to deal with these Hollywood dollar-chasers.” He turned to me, a white sneer flashing in his beard. “It is money you’re after, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what Harlan thought. He paid me a thousand dollars to bury a dead woman and forget her. I’m turning his checks over to the police.”

  “I hear you telling me.”

  “You’ll see me do it, Lister. I’m turning you over to them at the same time.”

  “Unless I pay you, eh? How much?”

  The woman sighed. “Dearest. These shifts and strategems—can’t you see how squalid, how squalid and miserable they are? We’ve tried your way and it’s failed, wretchedly. It’s time to try my way.”

  “We can’t, Maude. And we haven’t failed.” He sat on the bed and put one arm around her narrow shoulders. “Just let me talk to him, I’ve dealt with his kind before. He’s only a private detective. Your brother hired him yesterday.”

  “Where is my brother now?” she asked me. “Is he all right?”

  “In there. He’s a little battered.”

  I indicated the bathroom door with my gun. For some reason it was embarrassing to hold a naked weapon in front of her. I pushed it down into my waistband, leaving my jacket open in case I needed it quickly.

  “You’re Maude Harlan.”

  “I was. I am Mrs. Leonard Lister. This is my husband.” She looked up into my face. I caught a glimpse of the thing between them. It flared like sudden lightning in blue darkness.

  “The dead one is Stella Dolphine.”

  “Is that her first name? It’s strange to have killed a woman without even knowing her name.”

  “No.” The word was torn painfully from Lister’s throat. “My wife doesn’t know what she’s saying, she’s had a bad time.”

  “It’s over now, Leonard. I’m afraid I’m not very adequate in the role of a criminal.” She gave him a bright smile, distorted by her wounds, and me the sad vestige of it. “Leonard wasn’t there. He was taking a shower when the woman—when Mrs. Dolphine came to our door. I killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “It was my fault,” Lister said, “all of it, from the beginning. I had no right to marry Maude, to drag her down into the life I live. I was crazy to br
ing her back to that apartment.”

  “Why did you?”

  His white-ringed eyes rolled around, straining for a look at himself. “I don’t know, really. Stella thought she owned me. I had to prove that she didn’t.” His eyes steadied. “I’m a disastrous fool.”

  “Be still.” Her fingers touched his hairy mouth. The back of her hand was scratched. “It was an ill fate. I scarcely know how it happened. It simply happened. She asked me who I was, and I told her I was Leonard’s wife. She said that she was his wife in the eyes of heaven. She tried to force her way into the apartment. I asked her to leave. She told me that I was the one who ought to leave, that I should go home with my brother. When I refused, she attacked me. She pulled me by the hair onto the outside landing. I must have pushed her away somehow. She fell backwards down the steps, all the way to the bottom. I heard her skull strike the concrete.” Her small hand went to her own mouth, as if to hold it still. “I think I fainted then.”

  “Yes,” Lister said. “Maude was unconscious on the landing when I came out of the shower. I carried her inside. It took me some time to bring her to and find out what had happened. I put her to bed and went down to see to Stella. She was dead, at the foot of the steps. Dead.” His voice cracked.

  “You were in love with her, Leonard,” his wife said.

  “Not after I met you.”

  “She was beautiful.” There was a questioning sadness in her voice.

  “She isn’t any more,” I said. “She’s dead, and you’ve been carrying her body around the countryside. What sense was there in that?”

  “No sense.” Behind his hairy mask, Lister had the shamefaced look of a delinquent boy. “I panicked. Maude wanted to call the police right away. But I’ve had one or two little scrapes with them, in the past. And I knew what Dolphine would do if he found Stella dead at my door. He hates me.” The naive blue eyes were bewildered by the beginnings of insight. “I don’t blame him.”

  “What would he do?”

  “Cry murder, and pin it on me.”

  “I don’t see how. The way your wife described it, it’s a clear case of manslaughter, probably justifiable.”

  “Is it? I wouldn’t know. I felt so guilty about Stella, I wasn’t thinking too well. I simply wanted to hide her and get Maude out of the country, away from the mess I’d made.”

  “That’s what the five thousand was for?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were going by way of Chicago?”

  “The plan was changed. Maude’s brother advised me to take her back to Chicago instead. After you tracked us down, I came here to him and made a clean breast of everything. He said leaving the country was an admission of guilt, in case the matter ever came to trial.”

  “It will.”

  “Does it really need to?” He leaned towards me, the bed squealing under his shifting weight. “If you have any humanity, you’ll let us go to Chicago. My wife is a gentlewoman. I don’t know if that means anything to you.”

  “Does it to you?”

  He dropped his eyes. “Yes. She can’t go through a Los Angeles trial, with the dirt they’ll dig up about me and throw in her face.”

  I said: “I have some humanity, not enough to go round. Right now Stella Dolphine is using most of it.”

  “You said yourself it was justifiable manslaughter.”

  “The way your wife tells it, it is.”

  “Don’t you believe me?” She sounded astonished.

  “As far as your story goes, I believe you. But you don’t know all the facts. There are thumbprints on Stella Dolphine’s throat. I’ve seen prints like them on the throats of other women who were strangled.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I swear it. I only pushed her.”

  I looked at the delicate hands that were twisting in her lap. “You couldn’t have made those marks. You pushed her down the stairs and knocked her out and set her up for somebody else. Somebody else found her unconscious and throttled her. Lister?”

  His head sank like an exhausted bull’s. He didn’t look at his wife.

  “Stella Dolphine made trouble for you, and she was in a position to make more trouble. You decided to put an end to it by finishing her off. Is that the way it happened?”

  “The sinister habit,” he said. “The sinister habit of asking questions, as Cocteau calls it. You’ve got a bad case of it, Archer.”

  “Liars bring it out in me.”

  “All right,” he said to the floor. “If I admit it, and take the blame, will you let Maude go free, back to Chicago with her brother?”

  She pressed her face against his bowed shoulder and said: “No. You didn’t do it, Leonard. You’re only trying to protect me.”

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head slowly against his body. He turned and held her. I looked past them out the window to the darkening sea. They were fairly decent people, as people go, harried by the future and the past but holding together on the sharp ridge of the instant. And I was tormenting them. The case turned over behind my eyes again, a many-headed monster struggling to be born out of my mind.

  Harlan opened the bathroom door and came out shakily. His nose was bleeding. He looked at me with hatred, at the lovers with desolation. Unnoticed by them, he stood like a wallflower against the doorframe.

  “I should never have come here,” he said bitterly.

  I turned to them. “This has gone far enough.”

  They were blind and deaf, alone together on the sharp ridge, held flesh to flesh. A door creaked. I thought it was Harlan closing the bathroom door, and I looked in the wrong direction. Dolphine was in the room before I saw him. A heavy service revolver wavered in his hand. He advanced on Lister and his wife.

  “You killed her, you devils.”

  Lister tried to get up from the bed. The woman held him. Her back was to the gun.

  The gun spoke once, very loudly, its echoes rumbling like delayed thunder. Harlan had crossed to the center of the room, perhaps with some idea of defending his sister. He took the slug in the body. It stopped him like a wall. He fell. I fired across him.

  Dolphine dropped his revolver. He spread his hands across his stomach and backed against the wall, where he sat down. He was wheezing. Water ran from his eyes and nose. His face worked, trying to realize his grief and failing. Blood began to run between his fingers. I stood over him.

  “How do you know they killed her?”

  “I saw them. I saw it all.”

  “You were in bed.”

  “No, I was in the garage. They threw her down the steps, and came down after and choked her. Lister did. I saw him.”

  “You didn’t call the police.”

  “No. I—” His mouth groped for words. “I’m a sick man. I was too sick to call them. Upset. I couldn’t talk.”

  “You’re sicker now, but you’re going to have to talk. It wasn’t Lister, was it? It was you.”

  He choked, and began to cough blood. Great pumping sobs forced red words out of his mouth.

  “She got what she deserved. I thought when I told her he’d married the other one, that she would come back to my bed. But she wouldn’t look at me. All she could think about was getting him back. When I was the one that loved her.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I did. I loved her.”

  He lifted his red-laced hands in front of his eyes and began to scream. He rolled sideways with his face to the wall, screaming. He died that night.

  Harlan was dead already. He should never have come there.

  THE SUICIDE

  I picked her up on the Daylight. Or maybe she picked me up. With some of the nicest girls, you never know.

  She seemed to be very nice, and very young. She had a flippant nose and wide blue eyes, the kind that men like to call innocent. Her hair bubbled like boiling gold around her small blue hat. When she turned from the window to hear my deathless comments on the landscape and the weather, she wafted spring odors towards me.

  Sh
e laughed in the right places, a little hectically. But in between, when the conversation lagged, I could see a certain somberness in her eyes, a pinched look around her mouth like the effects of an early frost. When I asked her to join me in the buffet car for a drink, she said:

  “Oh, no. Thank you. I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not quite twenty-one, for one thing. You wouldn’t want to contribute to the delinquency of a minor?”

  “It sounds like a pleasant enterprise.”

  She veiled her eyes and turned away. The green hills plunged backward past the train window like giant dolphins against the flat blue background of the sea. The afternoon sun was bright on her hair. I hoped I hadn’t offended her.

  I hadn’t. After a while she leaned towards me and touched my arm with hesitant fingertips.

  “Since you’re so kind, I’ll tell you what I would like.” She wrinkled her nose in an anxious way. “A sandwich? Would it cost so very much more than a drink?”

  “A sandwich it is.”

  On the way to the diner, she caught the eye of every man on the train who wasn’t asleep. Even some of the sleeping ones stirred, as if her passing had induced a dream. I censored my personal dream. She was too young for me, too innocent. I told myself that my interest was strictly paternal.

  She asked me to order her a turkey sandwich, all white meat, and drummed on the tablecloth until it arrived. It disappeared in no time. She was ravenous.

  “Have another,” I said.

  She gave me a look which wasn’t exactly calculating, just questioning. “Do you really think I should?”

  “Why not? You’re pretty hungry.”

  “Yes, I am. But—” She blushed. “I hate to ask a stranger—you know?”

  “No personal obligation. I like to see hungry people eat.”

  “You’re awfully generous. And I am awfully hungry. Are you sure you can afford it?”

  “Money is no object. I just collected a thousand-dollar fee in San Francisco. If you can use a full-course dinner, say so.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t accept that. But I will confess that I could eat another sandwich.”

  I signaled to the waiter. The second sandwich went the way of the first while I drank coffee. She ate the olives and slices of pickle, too.