Deadfall

Chapter Seventeen

There is an old superstition among San Franciscans that Sutro Heights is either haunted or cursed (nobody seems able to decide which). Not the park itself, which stretches for a couple of blocks south and west from Point Lobos Avenue, above Cliff House. Just the part along the rim of the promontory that contains the ruins of Adolph Sutro’s once-palatial estate.

Sutro was a German tobacco merchant and mining engineer who made his fortune in the Comstock Lode silver mines, and who became mayor of San Francisco in the 1890s. He bought the Heights ten years before that, after returning from Nevada; renovated and built additions on the cottage that already stood on the property, forested the land with cypress and pine and eucalyptus to act as windbreaks, and constructed elaborate gardens full of fountains, gazebos, and a hundred plaster statues of wood nymphs and Greek gods and goddesses cleverly painted to look like marble. But Sutro hadn’t much enjoyed his life on the Heights; things had begun to go wrong for him soon after he moved there-“as if something was exerting calamitous influences,” according to the legend. The cottage was badly damaged when a schooner carrying a cargo of gunpowder went aground on Seal Rocks and exploded. Sutro’s wife died unexpectedly. Cliff House, which he had bought for his own amusement, burned to the ground. His term as mayor was marred by infighting and corruption beyond his control. He contracted diabetes and his mind went on him. His daughter, the last member of the Sutro family to live on the Heights, also went insane before she died in the late thirties. And as if all that wasn’t enough to foment the superstition, a well-known local ballerina had plunged to her death off the crumbling parapet above the Great Highway in 1940, under circumstances that were still shrouded in mystery.

I didn’t buy the “haunted or cursed” business myself; the only ghosts I believe in are those that haunt the human mind, and the only curses I give much credence to are the profane ones people hurl at me during the course of my work. Still, there is something vaguely eerie about the Sutro ruins-a sense of loneliness and despair that seems to pervade the place. Not too many people go out there on days when the fog comes roiling in off the Pacific, when the wind blows in gusts and moans among the trees and rocks. I had been out there once on a day like that. It hadn’t bothered me at the time, except to stir my imagination and my sense of history, as places like that always do; but then, I hadn’t been back since. Not until today-and I surprised myself by thinking, as I curbed the car on Forty-eighth Avenue, that I was glad it was a nice sunny day without too much wind.

I walked into the park, thinking about the superstition and about the fact that there were not a lot of expensive homes in this neighborhood. Back a ways on Clement, across from the Lincoln Park Golf Course, there were some; maybe that was where the Summerhayeses lived. Either there, or all the way over on the other side of Lincoln Park, in Sea Cliff, and she’d taken a bus to get here. Not that it mattered. If I needed to know their address I could find it without too much trouble.

The look of Sutro Heights did little to belie its legendary status. It was weedy and generally unkempt, with a lot of gopher holes and earth mounds pocking the grassy areas and a few pieces of disreputable statuary and urns here and there that may or may not have dated back to Adolph’s time. It was neither crowded nor deserted today: a few careless dog owners and their squatting, leg-lifting pets, some kids playing frisbee, a young couple sitting cross-legged on a blanket toasting each other with red wine in plastic glasses. I followed the old carriage road past the last remaining gazebo-it was decorated with graffiti, these being creative and enlightened times-and toward the high ground at the outer end.

When I got there I turned onto a sandy path that took me up to a flight of crumbling stone stairs. At the top of the stairs was what had once been a grand terrace, roughly circular and enclosed by low stone walls; now it contained a few wind-sculpted cypress trees and a profusion of weeds, high grass, and litter. Near the westward parapet, where the ground was bare and gravelly, were some low backless benches. Elisabeth Summerhayes was sitting on the middle one, looking out to sea. There wasn’t anybody else around.

She sensed my presence as I approached, glanced my way, and then looked back toward the ocean. She was wearing a knee-length leather coat with a fur collar and her blond hair was tied down with a scarf. She looked small and huddled at a distance, and oddly, considering her stature, the impression didn’t change much even when I reached her side.

She still wouldn’t look at me, so I sat down on the other end of the bench and took in the view myself. From up here you could see a good portion of the south rim of the city, the full two-mile sweep of Ocean Beach in that direction. The other way and down below, the area in front of the new Cliff House was clogged with tour buses, sidewalk vendors, tourists. Seaward, lying just offshore beyond Cliff House, gulls and pelicans swarmed over Seal Rocks; and much farther out-thirty-two miles-the Farallone Islands were like an irregular blot of shadow on the horizon. Impressive, all in all, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Directly below the parapet, the cliff wall fell away to an extension of the carriage road and then, steeply, to the Great Highway; looking down there made me think of the promontory at Moss Beach-it made me think of death.

It was quiet here, almost too quiet; the noisy activity around Cliff House and the stream of Saturday afternoon afternoon traffic on the Great Highway seemed muted. I could feel the odd pervasiveness of the place, even on a day like this, and I would have broken the silence myself if Mrs. Summerhayes hadn’t done it first.

She said without preamble, and still without looking at me, “My husband has been having an affair with Alicia Purcell. For at least a year now.”

I couldn’t think of a response.

“He came home one night with scratches on his neck, after he’d been to see her. He said he was seeing Kenneth but I knew Kenneth was away that night. He was very clever about not letting me see the scratches; I saw them anyway.” She paused to watch a gull that came winging up over the cypress beyond me. Then she said, with a kind of dull bitter loathing, “I hate women who mark men, the ones with claws like cats.”

“Have you confronted her?”

“I wanted to, several times. But I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“You haven’t confronted your husband either?”

“No. Eldon is not a man you can confront. He blusters, he denies, he lies, he makes you feel as if you are the one who has done wrong. He would never admit the truth.”

“How serious is it between them?”

“Not serious. Very, very casual. Lust is what binds them together, nothing more.”

“Did Kenneth also know about the affair?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Possibly.”

“Would it have bothered him if he had? Would he have had words with your husband about it?”

She shook her head. “He knew the kind of woman Alicia is. He condoned her lust because he understood it. He was filled with lust himself.”

“Forgive me for asking this, Mrs. Summerhayes, but did he ever make a pass at you?”

“Yes. Once. I slapped his face.”

“When was that?”

“A long time ago. Three years.”

“How did you get along with him after that?”

“I had as little to do with him as possible. My husband handled all our business dealings.”

“How did he and Kenneth get along?”

“They had no trouble. They are two of a kind, after all.” Another pause. “If you’re thinking Eldon might have murdered Kenneth, you’re mistaken. He had no reason. He doesn’t want Alicia; he only wants her body.”

“There’s Kenneth’s money,” I said mildly.

“Yes. But I have more than Alicia inherited, you see-much more. My father was a very rich man in Oslo.”

Again I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Eldon told you the truth that we were together when Kenneth died,” she said. “Not alone together; with some of the other guests. If someone pushed him, it wasn’t Eldon. Nor I. I had contempt for Kenneth but I didn’t hate him. I couldn’t have killed him if I had. I couldn’t kill anyone.” She seemed to think about something for a time. “Not even Alicia,” she said.

I had nothing to say to that, either. Silence rebuilt between us; she still wasn’t looking at me-hadn’t looked at me the entire time we’d been talking. It was an eerie sort of conversation, as if there were a great distance between us and we were each talking to ourselves. It matched the surroundings, made me even more aware of them.

She had more to say; I sensed it, and I sensed, too, that prodding was not the way to get it out of her. When she was ready to talk she would, not before.

A good three minutes passed, with her looking out to sea and me looking here and there, everywhere but at her. Birds made a racket in the cypress nearby. A dog came bounding up onto the terrace, took a look at us, sniffed around, peed on one of the empty benches, and went away again.

“I examined the gallery records last night, after you left,” she said. The words came so abruptly that her voice startled me a little, even though I had been waiting for her to speak. “My husband paid Alicia fifty thousand dollars four months ago, from his private checking account.”

“A down payment on Kenneth’s collection?”

“I don’t know. It was for an unspecified reason. But on the same day he also deposited seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“Where did he get it?”

“From one of our better customers.”

“For something he’d sold, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Who was the customer?”

“Margaret Prine.”

“Uh-huh, I see. Do you have any idea what it was he sold her?”

“It was nothing from our inventory at the time,” she said. “I made a careful examination of those records, too.”

“Would Mrs. Prine pay that much money for something in Kenneth’s collection?”

“She was not impressed with his collection. His best pieces are ones she already owns or was not interested in. All except one.”

“The Hainelin snuff box?”

“Yes.”

“Would Mrs. Prine have paid seventy-five thousand for that?”

“I think so. Yes, she would have.”

The implications were obvious. If the Hainelin box was what Mrs. Prine had bought from Summerhayes, then it followed that the fifty thousand he’d paid Alicia Purcell on the same day was for purchase of the box. But why would she lie about having had it all along? Why the deception? It was legally hers anyway, as part of her husband’s collection.

There was only one reason I could think of: Everyone knew Kenneth had been carrying the box on his person that night. If she admitted having it after his death, suspicion might fall on her-suspicion that she’d got it from him out on the cliffs, before she pushed him off-

No, hell, that didn’t wash. She was alibied for the time of Kenneth’s fall; she couldn’t have pushed him. So why worry about being suspected, when everybody including the authorities was perfectly willing to call her husband’s death an accident? All she’d have to do in any case was to say he’d given her the Hainelin before he stalked out of the house.

And that brought me right back to the original question: Why hadn’t she admitted she had the box?

I put the question to Mrs. Summerhayes. She said, “I don’t know. I don’t understand women like Alicia, why they do things.”

“Your husband might know.”

“Yes, but he won’t tell you if he does. He won’t tell me.”

“Why do you suppose he kept the two transactions secret? Because of his affair with Mrs. Purcell?”

“Yes. And because of the money. He likes to gamble in the stock market and he knows I won’t give him money for that any more. He has lost too much in the past.”

I wanted to ask her why she put up with a bastard like him, why she stayed married to him. But I already knew the answer. She loved him, and it didn’t really matter to her what he was or what he did: she loved him.

She was still sitting in rigid profile, and this time I sensed that she had said all she’d come to say. It had not been easy for her to talk to me as she had; it had been an act of small vengeance, born of bitterness and pain, and I thought that she might regret it later on. But it wouldn’t be because of anything I did.

I said, “What you’ve told me here is in confidence, Mrs. Summerhayes. I won’t repeat it to anyone under any circumstances, especially not your husband. You have my word on that.”

She nodded as if she didn’t care one way or the other; but when I stood up she looked at me full-face for the first time, as if she had not expected a kindness from someone like me. Then she averted her gaze again, without speaking. And I left her there, a big woman sitting small and huddled and alone among the ruins.

I drove back downtown to O’Farrell, parked on the street-the downstreet garage was closed on Saturdays-and went up to the office. The books on snuff bottles and boxes that I’d checked out of the library were still there, on a corner of my desk; I opened the one I’d skimmed through previously, refamiliarized myself with some terms and types, and then got Margaret Prine’s telephone number out of the Chronicle file and dialed it.

An elderly female voice answered and admitted to being Mrs. Prine. I said I was Charles Eberhardt, from New York; that I was a dealer in antique miniatures; that I understood she was a prominent local collector of rare snuff boxes; and that I had for sale an exceptionally fine and unusual eighteenth-century ivory box bearing a portrait by the famed English miniaturist, Richard Cosway. Was she interested? She was interested, all right. But she was a wily old vixen: she wasn’t about to show enthusiasm to a voice on the telephone, to react to such a proposition with anything but coolness and caution.

She said, “May I ask how you obtained my name and telephone number, Mr. Eberhardt?”

“Certainly. They were given to me by Alejandro Ozimas,”

Pause. “I see. And why did you choose to call me about the Cosway piece?”

“Mr. Ozimas said you were a collector of discerning taste. He also said you were both discreet and quite able to pay my price.”

“And that price is?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“I see,” she said again. “Describe the box, please.”

“It is made of ivory, as I said; oval-shaped, with delicate gold ornamentation. The Cosway portrait is of the Prince of Wales-an associate of Cosway’s, as I’m sure you know. Or at least he was before the scandal that linked him romantically with Cosway’s wife.”

“You’re certain it’s authentic?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“How did it come into your possession?”

“I purchased it from a collector in Hawaii.”

“His name?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge it.”

Another pause. Then she said flatly, “I do not buy stolen or tainted property, Mr. Eberhardt.”

I’ll just bet you don’t, I thought. But I said, feigning indignance, “Nor do I sell stolen or tainted property, Mrs. Prine. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in calling you. I’m sure Mr. Ozimas can recommend another local collector…”

“Just a moment. If you’re from New York, why don’t you take the Cosway there and sell it to one of your customers? You do have customers in New York?”

“Of course. But I hope to make another purchase while I’m in San Francisco, a very lucrative purchase, and it happens I’m short of cash at the moment. That’s why I’m willing to let the Cosway box go for twenty thousand.” It sounded phony even to me, but if I was reading her correctly it wouldn’t make any difference. “May I show it to you? I could bring it to your home within the hour-”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I am expecting guests shortly.”

“This evening, then?”

“Also out of the question.”

“Tomorrow? It’s important that I complete a sale on the Cosway as soon as possible-no later than Monday. I’m sure you understand.”

“I’m sure I do,” she said. “Very well, Mr. Eberhardt. Shall we say tomorrow afternoon at three?”

“Good. At your home?”

“I’d prefer not. Do you have objections to meeting publicly?”

I didn’t, although I would have preferred the chance to look at her collection-at the Hainelin box, if she did have it. I hadn’t expected an invitation anyway. She didn’t know me from a hole in the wall; she would have had to be a damned fool-and she was hardly that-to let a stranger who knew she had a valuable art collection set foot inside her door.

I said, “None at all. Where do you suggest?”

“The main lobby of the Fairmont Hotel.”

“How will I know you?”

“I carry a gold-headed cane,” she said. “You’ll know me by that. I. look forward to seeing the Cosway, Mr. Eberhardt.”

“You won’t be disappointed when you do.”

“I sincerely hope not,” she said, and the line clicked, and that was that.

I thought as I cradled the receiver: Even money she’s trying Ozimas’s number right now, to check up on Charles Eberhardt. But Ozimas had indicated that he and his houseboy were going to Big Sur this weekend; otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the calculated risk of using his name. The odds were pretty good that Mrs. Prine would show up at the Fairmont tomorrow afternoon, on schedule.

I hung around the office for a while, making inroads on a written report to Tom Washburn. Nobody telephoned, and I was fresh out of productive ideas. Hunger made me call it quits around two-thirty. I drove home, treated myself to a beer and the last of the leftover chicken, and spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around the flat, making a few minor repairs-damn toilet kept running, even when you jiggled the handle-and listening to the rest of the Cal game. The Bears were down twenty points late in the fourth quarter when I finally shut off the radio. Some game. It was a good thing I hadn’t gone with Eberhardt, I thought; I’d have been bored sitting there in the sun guzzling beer. Bored to tears.

I almost believed it, too.

At five I called Kerry. She was in a good mood; she said, “Come on over. I rented us a movie.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“You’ll see when you get here.”

“Not another of those X-rated jobs?”

“No, but it’ll do things for your body temperature.”

“I’m too old for that kind of stuff. Think about my heart.”

“I’ve got a different organ in mind,” she said.

I said, “That’s me you hear knocking on the door.”

I took a quick shower, changed clothes, got the car, and drove up to Diamond Heights. Parking on Kerry’s street is sometimes as bad as it is on mine; somebody must have been having a party this afternoon because there wasn’t a space anywhere closer to her building than a block and a half. I hoofed it uphill, taking it slow so I wouldn’t use up all my energy just getting to her.

Even so, I was puffing when I reached the building vestibule. Which is why I had my head down, which is why I didn’t see the guy coming out of the door. He didn’t see me either; we collided, caromed off each other-and I found myself standing there eye to lunatic eye with the Reverend Raymond P. Dunston.

I said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

He said, and I’ll swear to it, “God sent me.”

“Dunston, if you don’t leave Kerry alone-”

“She is my wife.”

“She is not your wife!”

“ ‘Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother-’ ”

“You quoted that one before. Try a new one.”

“Heathen,” he said.

“Crackpot,” I said.

We glared at each other for about five seconds. Then he turned on his heel and stalked off, and I turned on mine and went inside and upstairs and whacked on Kerry’s door so hard I jammed my wrist doing it.

She opened up, took one look at me, and said, “Oh God, you ran into him.”

“Literally.” I pushed past her, massaging my wrist.

“You didn’t do anything to him?”

“No, I didn’t do anything to him. But I might have if I’d had a straitjacket handy.”

“I didn’t let him in,” she said.

“Good for you. Did he tell you God sent him?”

“Yes. Among other things.”

“Me too. He’s driving me as crazy as he is, you know that?”

“You think he’s not driving me crazy?”

“This is the last straw,” I said darkly. “Tomorrow we quit pussyfooting around. Tomorrow we put an end to this one way or another.”

“How?”

“By paying a visit to the Church of the Holy Mission,” I said. “By having a talk with the Right Reverend Clyde T. Daybreak, with or without God’s permission.”