The Ferguson Affair

by Ross Macdonald

  She was lying there with her bright hair spread on the pillow. She looked pale and wan and wonderful.

  I kissed her smiling mouth, and she kissed me back. Her arms came around me, with the warmth of reality itself. Then she pushed me back to look at me.

  “I got your note. It was sweet. But you’re a wild man, a positive wild man. Are you all right, Bill?”

  “Fine. It was only a flesh wound,” I lied.

  “Then why is your arm in a sling? And who shot you, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark.”

  “Also,” she said, “you have lipstick on your face, and I’m not wearing lipstick. Have you been kissing the nurses?”

  “No, they’ve been kissing me. Ella Barker came by to thank me.”

  “She better.” Her hand tightened on mine. “Bill, will you promise me something-just one thing? Promise me you won’t take criminal cases and rampage around the countryside and all.”

  “I promise.” But I had mental reservations.

  My wife may have sensed them. “You have a family to think of now, not just me. She’s beautiful, Bill.”

  “Like her mother.”

  “Not this morning I’m not beautiful. I’m all washed out this morning. On the other hand, have you noticed my abdomen? It’s getting quite flat already. I can actually see my toes.”

  She demonstrated this, wiggling her toes under the covers.

  “You’re as flat as a pancake, darling.”

  “Not that flat, I hope. Bill?” She turned toward me, pushing her hair back. Her eyes were deeper and softer than I had ever seen them. “Do you mind awfully the fact that our joint product is not a boy? You like little girls, don’t you?”

  “I like girls of all sizes.”

  “Don’t try to be funny. We have a serious problem.”

  “You’re okay, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, I feel pretty good. Kind of empty, though, like an elevator shaft after the elevator went down. Except when they bring her in. Then I feel full.”

  “Is there something the matter with her? Where is she?”

  “Don’t get panicky now. She’s in the nursery, and she’s physically perfect. Not to mention precociously intelligent and aware. I can tell by the way she nurses. That makes the problem even more urgent. We have to give her a name, for her to start forming her personality around. We can’t simply go on calling her Her, like something out of H. Rider Haggard.”

  “How about Sally?”

  “Negative. One Sally in a family is enough. Do you like Sharon for a name, or is Sharon Gunnarson too cosmopolitan? Rose of Sharon Gunnarson is even more unwieldy, but that is the way I feel about her. Rose of Sharon Gunnarson,” she said dreamily.

  “Negative. Rose Sharon Gunnarson, maybe.”

  “But Rose by itself is such a florid name. Do you like Sarah? Susan? Martha? Anne? Elizabeth? Sandra?”

  “Strangely enough, I like them all. How about Nancy?”

  “I like Nancy. But let me think about it. We’ll both think about it. Now you go back and rest, Bill, you look tired. Maybe I can visit you tomorrow. Dr. Trench says my pelvis was formed for motherhood and I should get my strength back very rapidly.”

  I told Sally that I adored her pelvis. She bumped it at me under the covers feebly.

  I met Dr. Trench outside the door. He was a short man of forty with horn-rimmed glasses and a quick, intelligent smile. A little too intelligent at the moment.

  “Well, well, the prodigal husband himself. The wanderer returns.”

  “Go ahead and have your bit of vaudeville. Everybody does. Then I want to talk to you seriously.”

  “Sally’s in fine shape, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re fortunate to have a secretary who knows what labor pains are.”

  “It isn’t Sally I’m worried about. Can you give me a few minutes in private?”

  “I have patients to look after. Including your wife.”

  “This concerns one of your patients.”

  He consulted his watch. “All right. Five minutes. Where can we talk?”

  “Up in my room.”

  I was shaky and sweating again when I reached my bed. I sat on the edge of it.

  Dr. Trench remained standing. “I suppose the patient you mean is Mrs. Ferguson?”

  “Yes. Have you seen her since the-accident?”

  “I attended her, yes. Her husband requested me not to discuss her condition with anyone.” His eyes were stern.

  “Good. Ferguson has retained me as his attorney. Anything that you tell me will be privileged.”

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  “I’m interested in her mental condition, for one thing.”

  “It’s not too bad, considering what she’s been through. She seems to be blessed with a good strong nervous system. I was afraid she might lose her child, but there seems to be no danger of that now.”

  “Is she at home?”

  “Yes. She doesn’t seem to require hospitalization. I found that her injuries were superficial.”

  “Is she in fit shape to be questioned?”

  “It depends on the questioner, and the nature of the questions. She’s resting quietly, at least she was two hours ago. I’d leave it for a few days, if I were you. You can use the rest yourself.”

  “It won’t wait, Doctor. I have to get a statement from her about the events of last night. Not to mention the night before and the night before.”

  “I don’t see how she can help you much. She was unconscious, as you know, literally dead to the world.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “Yes, and I have no medical reason to doubt it. She was in a state of drugged sleep throughout her period of-ah-detention. It’s lucky for her the kidnappers knew how to handle drugs. They could so easily have killed her.”

  “They gave her drugs?”

  “Who else? I gather from her fragmentary memories, and from the medical indications, that she was forcibly drugged at the actual moment of the kidnapping. It occurred in the parking lot of the Foothill Club. She was lured out there by a telephone call from someone purporting to be a relative. They seized her at the door of her car and gave her an injection of pentothal or some other quick-acting anesthetic.”

  “Do you believe all this?”

  “I know it sounds melodramatic, but the marks of the needle are on her arm. Later, to keep her under, they evidently gave her spaced shots of morphia or demerol. I suppose their idea was to keep her quiet and make it impossible for her to identify them later.”

  “What if I told you that I talked to her last night?”

  “Around what time last night?”

  “It must have been about one o’clock when I got to the mountain house. Your patient was very much alive and kicking.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I’d hate to repeat it.”

  Trench took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Under cover of this business, he was studying my face. “I’d say that one of you was lying, or hallucinating. Mrs. Ferguson was still in a drug-induced coma when she came into my hands early this morning. When she did rouse out of it, she had no memory of the previous forty-eight hours or so. Her physical condition supported her subjective account.”

  “You should have seen her last night. She was moving around like a cat on a hot stove, and spitting like one. It occurred to me at the time that she had been taking drugs. Is it possible she took an overdose and it suddenly caught up with her?”

  “Took an overdose of her own accord?”

  “Yes. There are indications that she is an addict.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. He put on his glasses as though to protect them from seeing too much. “You must be mistaken. She’s been visiting me biweekly for two months. I’ve noticed no-” His voice broke off. He looked up sideways at a corner of the ceiling and stayed with his eyes fixed in that position.

  “Have you remembered something, Doctor?”<
br />
  He answered in a rather flustered way. “I’m sure it’s of no great significance. In one of her visits to me, Mrs. Ferguson did bring up the subject of drug addiction. It was a purely academic discussion-at least it seemed so to me-having to do with the effect of drugs on an unbalanced mind. I told her that most addicts probably have some degree of mental or nervous illness to begin with. That’s what makes them addicts. She seemed very interested in the subject.”

  “Personally interested?”

  Trench looked up at the ceiling again, as if he were balancing pros and cons on his chin.

  “I’d say so, yes. I gathered, from another discussion we had, that some friend or relative of hers is a psychopath-what the psychiatrists call a severely maladjusted personality. She was very much concerned with the question of inherited character defects. I assured her that such things weren’t inherited. That isn’t entirely true, of course, but we know so little about the genes as they affect mind and emotions, there’s no use worrying a pregnant woman about it.”

  “Is she psychopathic herself?”

  “I’ve observed no signs of it.” But a deep cleft of concern had appeared between his eyebrows. “I wish I knew where your questions are leading.”

  “So do I. Consider this possibility. This friend or relative she blames things on-couldn’t it be her way of referring to her own alter ego? A second personality that gets out of control and jumps out at her when she’s disturbed?”

  “If so, I’ve never seen it. I understand-books and movies to the contrary-that a true case of multiple personality is rare. Of course I don’t pretend to be a psychiatrist.” After a pause, he added: “You may be interested to know that I’ve asked Mrs. Ferguson to have a neuropsychiatric examination. Perhaps she’ll agree to share the findings with you, if it really is so important.”

  “Why did you suggest it?”

  “Simply as a precautionary measure. She seems to have come through her ordeal without brain damage. But it’s dangerous to spend such a long period under drugs, even in good hands.” He looked at his watch impatiently.

  “You mentioned her interest in heredity. Was there any thought of her not having her child?”

  “She’s very eager to have it. So is the father, now that he knows about it. It’s true, with an older father, the probability of mutation rises, but not to the point of negative indication.”

  “Ferguson is the father, then?”

  “I have no reason to doubt it.” Trench gave me a queer, cold look. “In any case, I’m sure your client wouldn’t authorize you to ask that question about my patient.”

  “Is that intended to be a negative answer?”

  “Absolutely not. The question doesn’t deserve an answer. You seem to be trying to rake up any dirt you can about Mrs. Ferguson.”

  “I’m sorry it looks that way to you, doctor. It’s true I have to know the worst about her, if I’m going to do anything for her.”

  “What are you trying to do for her?”

  “Give her the legal protection she’s entitled to. She’s likely to be arrested some time today.”

  “On what charge?”

  “I prefer not to name it. If the police or the D.A.’s men try to ask you any questions about her, tell them you’ve already communicated your information to me. Tell them if charges are laid, I expect to use you as a witness for the defense. And don’t tell them a damn thing else.”

  chapter 28

  FERGUSON APPEARED shortly after lunch. He hadn’t shaved. He looked frowzy and harried, a Quixote who had tilted at windmills once too often and found out they were giants after all.

  “You’re late.”

  “I came at all because I owe you a great deal-Holly’s life. But you should not have forced me to leave her. Her life is still in danger. I couldn’t possibly leave the house until Dr. Trench got there.”

  “Trench says she’s in fairly good shape.”

  “Physically she is, thank God. She’s emotionally upset. We had a most disturbing phone call this morning. That Florida jackanapes, Salaman, insists on seeing her.”

  “Don’t let him.”

  “How can I stop him? I have no recourse to law.”

  “Are you going to pay him?”

  “I don’t know. Holly tells me she owes him nothing. She never heard of the man until today.”

  “And you believe her?”

  Ferguson came unconsciously to attention. “I believe my wife implicitly.”

  “How does she explain the alleged abduction?”

  “I resent your use of the phrase.”

  “That’s your privilege. How does she explain it?”

  “She has no knowledge of it. Her mind is a blank from the time that she left the Club.”

  “She’ll have to do better than the old blackout gambit. You saw her in Gaines’s car when he picked up your money.”

  “I was mistaken. It must have been someone else.” He cupped his hand protectively around his bulbous nose.

  “Is that what Mrs. Ferguson says?”

  “We haven’t discussed the incident.”

  “Don’t you think you better? She can fill you in on a lot of interesting facts, about Gaines, and about herself.”

  He stood above me shivering. It wasn’t a cold enough day to make a Canadian shiver.

  “Damn you, I resent this, bitterly. I’m going to have to ask you to retract.”

  “What exactly do you want me to retract?”

  “The whole allegation that she was involved with him in any immoral way.”

  “I got the idea from you.”

  “I was mistaken, tragically mistaken. I misunderstood their relationship-exaggerated it. It was simply an old man’s jealousy.”

  “What about the child she’s carrying?”

  “The child is mine. She had nothing at all to do with Gaines, in that sense. She was simply giving the fellow a helping hand. My wife is a remarkable woman.”

  His eyes had taken on a euphoric glare. I began to feel the dimensions of the dream that held him. It included his passion for his wife, his hope of a second youth, and now the belief that she would give him a child. I knew precisely how he felt about that.

  But the dream had to be destroyed, and I was the one elected to destroy it. “Your wife’s real name is Hilda Dotery. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “It does to some other people. I have witnesses to prove that Hilda Dotery has been mixed up with Gaines for the last seven years, ever since they were high-school delinquents together. His real name, incidentally, is Henry Haines.”

  “Who are these witnesses?”

  “Their parents, Adelaide Haines, James and Kate Dotery. I talked to all three of them last night in Mountain Grove.”

  “They’re lying.”

  “Somebody is. I assure you that I’m not. There’s no doubt at all in my mind that the kidnapping was a phony one, and that your wife was Gaines’s partner in it. That’s not the worst of it. She shot me last night. Assault with intent to commit murder is a very ugly charge, but there’s not much use beating around the bush. You can’t keep her shut up at home and expect this thing to blow over. I want complete co-operation from both of you, starting now.”

  Ferguson shook his fist at me. The light in his eyes was dancing out of control. “You’re like all the rest. You think you have me on the hip, that you can bleed me for money.”

  I sat up and slapped his fist away with my good arm. “You’re pretty fouled up on the money angle, aren’t you? The man with the Midas touch. You may be right at that, Ferguson, in reverse. If you weren’t loaded, nobody in his senses would come within a hundred yards of you. You’re merely trouble that walks like a man. Stupid trouble. Stupid, ignorant trouble. You’re so morally stupid you don’t know where you’re hurt, or what’s hurting you.”

  I was hurting him now. He blinked and shuddered under the impact of the words. They seemed to strike through to his knowledge of himself. H
e walked away from the bed and sat in a chair in the corner behind the door, nursing his hurt.

  He spoke after a time. “You’re right about the money-the idea of money. It’s been a root of evil in my life. My father died poor, and he was a better man than I shall ever be.”

  I asked him about his father, partly because I was interested, but mainly because it was a way in. I’d begun to understand that it wasn’t happenstance that Ferguson had been victimized by a pair of young criminals. He was one of those victims whose natures, whose whole lives, set them up for a particular crime.

  The elder Ferguson had been a sheep rancher who came out from Scotland around the turn of the century and homesteaded near a hamlet named Wild Goose Lake. He went back overseas with the Scots Grenadiers and died at Vimy Ridge.

  “I tried to follow him,” Ferguson said. “Though I was underage, I managed to enlist in 1918. But I never got out of the country, in that war. It was just as well: Mother needed me to help run the ranch. We had hard sledding for nearly ten years, until oil and gas were discovered on our section.

  “You mustn’t imagine that it was a bonanza, not at first. But enough money began to come in so that I was able to go to college, finally. By the time I finished my degree in Edmonton, we had more money than we knew what to do with. Mother decided that I should have some specific training in business.

  “She sent me, more or less against my will, to take a course at Harvard Business School. I didn’t do too well there. For one thing, I was worried about Mother: she hadn’t been strong the last few years; the years of struggle had been too much for her. And then I got involved with the girl I told you about, the one I betrayed.

  “It’s a wretched thing for a man to have to confess. It’s still hard for me to relate it to myself. I’d never been in the States before, you see. Whatever happened below the border seemed unreal to me, like life on Mars. My actual life was back in Alberta, where Mother was slowly dying and dictating long letters to her nurse telling me how to conduct myself.

  “I conducted myself very badly, as it turned out. I was in my late twenties, but I’d never had a girl, in the physical sense. I realized before long that I could have the girl if I wanted her. I had all the money I needed, and she came from a desperately poor family. They lived in a crowded flat somewhere in the wilds of South Boston.”