The Chill (30 page)

“In Indian Springs, in Aunt Alice’s house.”

“And Mommy was living there, too?”

“Mommy was living there, too. She lived there, too.”

She was flushed, and talking like a drunken child. The doctor turned to Jerry Marks with a handing-over gesture. Jerry’s dark eyes were mournful.

“Do you remember a certain night,” he said, “when your Mommy was killed?”

“I remember. Who are you?”

“I’m Jerry Marks, your lawyer. It’s all right to talk to me.”

“It’s all right,” Alex said.

The girl looked up at Jerry sleepily. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Just the truth. It doesn’t matter what I want, or anybody else. Just tell me what you remember.” “I’ll try.”

“Did you hear the gun go off?”

“I heard it.” She screwed up her face as if she was hearing it now. “I am—it frightened me.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“I didn’t go downstairs right away. I was scared.”

“Did you see anyone out the window?”

“No. I heard a car drive away. Before that I heard her running.”

“You heard
who
running?” Jerry said.

“I thought it was Aunt Alice at first, when she was talking to Mommy at the door. But it couldn’t have been Aunt Alice. She wouldn’t shoot Mommy. Besides, her gun was missing.”

“How do you know?”

“She said I took it from her room. She spanked me with a hairbrush for stealing it.”

“When did she spank you?”

“Sunday night, when she came home from church. Mommy said she had no right to spank me. Aunt Alice asked Mommy if
she
took the gun.”

“Did she?”

“She didn’t say-not while I was there. They sent me to bed.”

“
Did
you take the gun?”

“No. I never touched it. I was afraid of it.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid of Aunt Alice.”

She was rosy and sweating. She tried to struggle up onto her elbows. The doctor eased her back into her supine position, and made an adjustment to the needle. The girl relaxed again, and Jerry said:

“Was it Aunt Alice talking to your Mommy at the door?”

“I thought it was at first. It sounded like her. She had a big scary voice. But it couldn’t have been Aunt Alice.”

“Why couldn’t it?”

“It just couldn’t.”

She turned her head in a listening attitude. A lock of hair fell over her half-closed eyes. Alex pushed it back with a gentle hand. She said:

“The lady at the door said it had to be true, about Mommy and Mr. Bradshaw. She said she got it from Daddy’s own lips, and Daddy got it from me. And then she shot my Mommy and ran away.”

There was silence in the room, except for the girl’s heavy breathing. A tear as slow as honey was exuded from the corner of one eye. It fell down her temple. Alex wiped the blue-veined hollow with his handkerchief. Jerry leaned across her from the other side of the table:

“Why did you say your Daddy shot your Mommy?”

“Aunt Alice wanted me to. She didn’t say so, but I could tell. And I was afraid she’d think that I did it. She spanked me for taking the gun, and I
didn’t
take it. I said it was Daddy. She made me say it over and over and over.”

There were more tears than one now. Tears for the child she had been, frightened and lying, and tears for the woman
she was painfully becoming. Alex wiped her eyes. He looked close to tears himself.

“Why,” I said, “did you try to tell us that you killed your mother?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Alex’s friend Lew Archer.”

“That’s right,” Alex said.

She lifted her head and let it fall back. “I forget what you asked me.”

“Why did you say you killed your mother?”

“Because it was all my fault. I told my Daddy about her and Mr. Bradshaw, and that’s what started everything.”

“How do you know?”

“The lady at the door said so. She came to shoot Mommy because of what Daddy told her.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“No.”

“Was it your Aunt Alice?”

“No.”

“Was it anyone you knew?”

“No.”

“Did your mother know her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she did.”

“Did she talk as if she knew her?”

“She called her by name.”

“What name?”

“Tish. She called her Tish. I could tell Mommy didn’t like her, though. She was afraid of her, too.”

“Why haven’t you ever told anyone this before?”

“Because it was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” Alex said. “You were only a child. You weren’t responsible for what the adults did.”

Godwin shushed him with his finger to his lips. Dolly rolled her head from side to side:

“It was all my fault.”

“This has gone on long enough,” Godwin whispered to Jerry. “She’s made some gains, I want to have a chance to consolidate them.”

“But we haven’t even got to the Haggerty case.”

“Make it short then.” Godwin said to the girl: “Dolly, are you willing to talk about last Friday night?”

“Not about finding her.” She screwed up her face until her eyes were hidden.

“You needn’t go into the details of finding the body,” Jerry said. “But what were you doing there?”

“I wanted to talk to Helen. I often walked up the hill to talk to her. We were friends.”

“How did that happen to be?”

“I ingratiated myself with Helen,” she said with queer blank candor. “I thought at first she might be the lady—the woman who shot my mother. The rumor was going around the campus that she was close to Dean Bradshaw.”

“And you were on the campus to find that woman?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t Helen. I found out she was new in town, and she told me herself there was nothing between her and Bradshaw. I had no right to drag her into this.”

“How did you drag her in?”

“I told her everything, about my mother and Bradshaw and the murder and the woman at the door. Helen was killed because she knew too much.”

“That may be,” I said, “but she didn’t learn it from you.”

“She did! I told her everything.”

Godwin pulled at my sleeve. “Don’t argue with her. She’s coming out of it fast, but her mind is still operating below the conscious level.”

“Did Helen ask you questions?” I said to the girl.

“Yes. She asked me questions.”

“Then you didn’t force the information on her.”

“No. She wanted to know.”

“What did she want to know?”

“All about Dean Bradshaw and my mother.”

“Did she say why?”

“She wanted to help me in my crusade. I went on a sort of crusade after I talked to Daddy in the hotel. A children’s crusade.” Her giggle turned into a sob before it left her throat. “The only thing it accomplished was the death of my good friend Helen. And when I found her body—”

Her eyes opened wide. Then her mouth opened wide. Her body went rigid, as if it was imitating the rigor of the dead. She stayed like that for fifteen or twenty seconds.

“It was like finding Mommy again,” she said in a small voice, and came fully awake. “Is it all right?”

“It’s all right,” Alex said.

He helped her up to a sitting position. She leaned on him, her hair mantling his shoulder. A few minutes later, still leaning on him, she walked across the hallway to her room. They walked like husband and wife.

Godwin closed the door of the examination room. “I hope you gentlemen got what you wanted,” he said with some distaste.

“She talked very freely,” Jerry said. The experience had left him drained.

“It was no accident. I’ve been preparing her for the last three days. Pentothal, as I’ve told you before, is no guarantee of truth. If a patient is determined to lie, the drug can’t stop him.”

“Are you implying she wasn’t telling the truth?”

“No. I believe she was, so far as she knows the truth. My problem now is to enlarge her awareness and make it fully conscious. If you gentlemen will excuse me?”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can spare me a minute, doctor. I’ve spent three days and a lot of Kincaid’s money developing facts that you already had in your possession.”

“Have you indeed?” he said coldly.

“I have indeed. You could have saved me a good deal of
work by filling me in on Bradshaw’s affair with Constance McGee.”

“I’m afraid I don’t exist for the purpose of saving detectives work. There’s a question of ethics involved here which you probably wouldn’t understand. Mr. Marks probably would.”

“I don’t understand the issue,” Jerry said, but he edged between us as if he expected trouble. He touched my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, Lew, and let the doctor get about his business. He’s cooperated beautifully and you know it.”

“Who with? Bradshaw?”

Godwin’s face turned pale. “My first duty is to my patients.”

“Even when they murder people?”

“Even then. But I know Roy Bradshaw intimately and I can assure you he’s incapable of killing anyone. Certainly he didn’t kill Constance McGee. He was passionately in love with her.”

“Passion can cut two ways.”

“He didn’t kill her.”

“A couple of days ago you were telling me McGee did. You can be mistaken, doctor.”

“I know that, but not about Roy Bradshaw. The man has lived a tragic life.”

“Tell me about it.”

“He’ll have to tell you himself. I’m not a junior G-man, Mr. Archer. I’m a doctor.”

“What about the woman he recently divorced, Tish or Letitia? Do you know her?”

He looked at me without speaking. There was sad knowledge in his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Roy about her,” he said finally.

O
N HIS WAY
to the courthouse to question McGee, Jerry dropped me at the harbor, where my car had been left sitting. The moon was higher now, and had regained its proper shape and color. Its light converted the yachts in the slips into a ghostly fleet of Flying Dutchmen.

I went back to my motel to talk to Madge Gerhardi. She had evaporated, along with the rest of the whisky in my pint bottle. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried her number and got no answer.

I called the Bradshaw house. Old Mrs. Bradshaw seemed to have taken up a permanent position beside the telephone. She picked up the receiver on the first ring and quavered into it:

“Who is that, please?”

“It’s only Archer. Roy hasn’t come home, has he?”

“No, and I’m worried about him, deeply worried. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since early Saturday morning. I’ve been calling his friends—”

“I wouldn’t do that, Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“I have to do something.”

“There are times when it’s better to do nothing. Keep still and wait.”

“I can’t. You’re telling me there’s something terribly wrong, aren’t you?”

“I think you know it.”

“Does it have to do with that dreadful woman—that Macready woman?”

“Yes. We have to find out where she is. I’m pretty sure your son could tell me, but he’s made himself unavailable. Are you sure you haven’t seen the woman since Boston?”

“I’m quite certain. I saw her only once, when she came to me for money.”

“Can you describe her for me?”

“I thought I had.”

“In more detail, please. It’s very important.”

She paused to think. I could hear her breathing over the line, a faint rhythmic huskiness. “Well, she was quite a large woman, taller than I, red-haired. She wore her hair bobbed. She had quite a good figure, rather lush, and quite good features, too—a kind of brassy good looks. And she had green eyes, murky green eyes which I didn’t like at all. She wore very heavy makeup, more appropriate for the stage than the street, and she was hideously overdressed.”

“What was she wearing?”

“It hardly seems relevant, after twenty years. But she had on a leopardskin—an imitation leopardskin coat, as I recall, and under it something striped. Sheer hose, with runs in them. Ridiculously high heels. A good deal of costume jewelry.”

“How did she talk?”

“Like a woman of the streets. A greedy, pushing, lustful woman.” The moral indignation in her voice hardly surprised me. She had almost lost Roy to the woman, and might yet.

“Would you know her if you saw her again, in different clothes, with her hair perhaps a different color?”

“I think so, if I had a chance to study her.”

“You’ll have that chance when we find her.”

I was thinking that the color of a woman’s eyes was harder to change than her hair. The only green-eyed woman connected with the case was Laura Sutherland. She had a conspicuously good figure and good features, but nothing else that seemed to jibe with the description of the Macready woman. Still, she might have changed. I’d seen other women change unrecognizably in half the time.

“You know Laura Sutherland, Mrs. Bradshaw?”

“I know her slightly.”

“Does she resemble the Macready woman?”

“Why do you ask that?” she said on a rising note. “Do you suspect Laura?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“She couldn’t possibly be the same woman. She’s a wholly different type.”

“What about her basic physical characteristics?”

“I suppose there is some resemblance,” she said dubiously. “Roy has always been attracted to women who are obviously mammals.”

And obviously mother figures, I thought. “I have to ask you one other question, a more personal question.”

“Yes?” She seemed to be bracing herself for a blow.

“I suppose you’re aware that Roy was Dr. Godwin’s patient.”

“Dr. Godwin’s patient? I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t go behind my back.” For all her half-cynical insight into his nature, she seemed to know very little about him.

“Dr. Godwin says he did, apparently for some years.”

“There must be a mistake. Roy has nothing the matter with his mind.” There was a vibrating silence. “Has he?”

“I was going to ask you, but I’m sorry I brought it up. Take it easy, Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“How can I, with my boy in jeopardy?”

She wanted to hold me on the line, siphoning comfort into her frightened old ears, but I said good night and hung up. One suspect had been eliminated: Madge Gerhardi: the description didn’t fit her and never could have. Laura was still in the running.