Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

15

By nine-thirty Greer himself was on the job, tired, irritable, and inclined to dismiss the whole episode. He would have dismissed it, at least for the night, if it hadn’t been for Ortega’s insistence.

The fluorescent lights in Greer’s office seemed to have dissolved Ortega’s tan and made his face look chalky.

“She never came,” he said. “Last night when I took her home, she told me to meet her at one-thirty this afternoon in the garden. We were going to go down to the harbor and rent a boat. She’s crazy about boats, always wanted to walk along the wharf or out to the end of the breakwater.”

The words struck a chord in Greer’s mind, and it took him only a moment to put the chord in its place. Rose French had walked along the breakwater several days before her death, according to Mrs. Cushman’s report. Many other people walked there, too, but in Rose’s case it was unusual because she professed to hate the sea, and she certainly hated exercise. Mrs. Cushman’s assumption was logical and Greer agreed with her: that Rose had gone to the breakwater not to admire the wonders of nature or walk off a pound or two, but to meet someone.

Greer looked at Ortega with renewed interest. It was quite possible that Dalloway and Frank had been on the wrong track, and that the connection Rose had with the Goodfield family was not with the Goodfields themselves but with Murphy. He said, “Did you ever accompany Murphy to the breakwater?”

“Yes sir, three times.”

“Did she meet anyone down there?”

“No sir. Ada’s a stranger in town. She didn’t know anyone except the Goodfields and me.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Los Angeles. She had very good references. She showed them to me one day.”

“Do you remember any of the names of her employers?”

“No sir. I just looked at the references to please Ada.”

“You and Murphy were going around together — that right?”

“We’re going to be married when... when she comes back.”

“You’re just a boy, aren’t you?”

“I’m nineteen,” Ortega said stubbornly. “Ada is — she’s a little bit older.”

Ada, Greer knew, was a hell of a lot older. Aloud he said, “Look, young fellow, I’m no specialist in these affairs but I know Ada Murphy. She’s no ordinary servant. She’s pretty sharp, she’s been to college and probably quite a few other places where they don’t give degrees. You’re fighting out of your class.”

“I’ve been hearing talk like that all my life. It never changed my mind.”

“Has it occurred to you that Murphy couldn’t face giving you the brushoff in person, so she just lit out to avoid trouble?”

“Ada would never do that.”

“You can’t tell. She might have got fed up suddenly with her job or you or life in general and decided to take a bus down to L.A.”

“She didn’t take a bus,” Ortega said with quiet intensity. “All her clothes are still in her room.”

It was true. The small closet in Murphy’s bedroom — which was at the rear of the house behind the kitchen — was crammed with dresses and uniforms and odds and ends of underwear. In contrast to Murphy’s neat appearance, her private habits were slovenly. She seemed to have used the closet as a catchall; anything she’d wanted out of sight, she’d tossed into the closet. Once the door was opened, it couldn’t be closed again.

The room was furnished, not with leftovers from other rooms like many domestics’ quarters, but with matched maple furniture and chintz drapes that duplicated the design on the bedspread, and a small cherry-red loveseat.

On the loveseat, looking very pale against the brilliant red, sat Ethel. There was no doubt that she was extremely disturbed. She’d discarded her graceful floating movements and vague airs as a snake discards its old skin. Peeled down to her essentials, Ethel presented a different picture to Greer. She wasn’t either feeble-minded, as he’d thought at first, or sluggish.

She addressed Greer in a voice sharpened by anxiety. “Well? What do you make of it?”

“I don’t know.” He indicated the bulging closet with a jab of his thumb. “I don’t see how you can be sure nothing is missing, with that mess.”

“Because Willett’s mother saw her leave. She’d gotten up to go to the bathroom and happened to glance out the window. Murphy was just going down the front walk. She had no suitcase or anything, not even a coat. She just... just walked away.”

“What was she wearing?”

“One of her ordinary cotton dresses, a turquoise-colored chambray.”

“Had there been any disagreement between Murphy and you, or Murphy and Mr. Goodfield?”

“No, not really. Murphy had mentioned something to me about having a garbage disposal unit installed, and I told her I didn’t think Willett would agree to it since it isn’t our house, after all. She certainly wasn’t angry, if that’s what you mean. Ortega says she has a temper, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it. Even when Willett’s mother spoke roughly to her, she just smiled in that superior way of hers, as if nothing that anybody else said or did made the slightest impression on her.”

“Murphy’s the kind of woman who can look after herself,” Greer said. “Isn’t she?”

“She seems to be. She acts that way. But now — I’m not sure. No one can be sure. You’re not,” she added, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

Greer made no attempt to deny it. He was not at all sure what kind of woman Murphy was, and even less sure that he’d ever find out. Which was Murphy, the crisp and controlled young woman in the immaculate black and white uniform, or the undisciplined child who tossed her belongings helter-skelter into a closet and closed the door; the ingenuous and romantic lover who planned trysts in the garden, or the hard-headed realist who had explained to Greer at their first meeting that she’d become a domestic because the job gave her an opportunity to marry the boss?

And now there was still another Murphy, a young woman in a turquoise cotton dress who had walked away and not come back.

Greer’s gaze fell on Ethel, who was folded up on the loveseat taking quick, nervous bites at her right thumbnail.

“Everything possible is being done,” he assured her. “I have men checking the depots, hospitals, cab stands and so on. My own feeling is that Murphy will turn up some time tonight, wondering what all the fuss is about.”

“That’s what Willett thinks, too. I don’t. I think,” she added slowly, “that instead of checking bus depots and cab stands, you’d better check Mr. Dalloway.”

“Why?”

“Whenever he’s around things seem to happen, don’t they? Dalloway comes to town and his first wife is mur — dies. Dalloway comes creeping around our yard and my maid disappears.” Ethel’s voice was rising like a siren. “Maybe she’s dead, too. Maybe while you’re standing there thinking what a charming fellow Dalloway is, he’s out somewhere slitting her throat! And you, you just stand there!”

“Calm down, Mrs. Goodfield. I don’t believe Murphy’s having her throat slit, certainly not by Dalloway. I happen to know where Dalloway is, right at the moment.”

Ethel glared at him, mute and obstinate, as if nothing in the world would convince her that Dalloway was not in some dark alley or grove of trees finishing Murphy off.

“He’s over at Frank Clyde’s house,” Greer continued. “He phoned me before he left.”

“Really? Does every Tom, Dick and Harry in town keep you informed where he’s going and why and when?”

“Dalloway didn’t have to tell me why. I already knew. He hired Clyde to go to San Francisco and check up on the Goodfield family.”

“Why, that old goat. The nerve of that old—”

“I told you just so you’d know that Dalloway is as suspicious of you as you are of him.”

“We didn’t hire anybody to check up on him.”

“You don’t have to. I’m doing it.”

“You? Why?”

“Oh, let’s just say that suspicion is contagious and I’ve been exposed.” Ethel looked a little mollified, and Greer thought it was a good time to change the subject before she asked any more questions. “Tell me, how did you happen to hire Ada Murphy?”

“Through a want ad in the local paper.”

“Her ad?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to her hotel, or wherever she was staying, to interview her?”

“No, she came here. She’d given a phone number in the ad. I called her and she wasn’t in. But later she called back and I was... well, impressed by her voice, and her references.”

“When she came to see you, did she bring the references along?”

“Yes.”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“Did you keep them or give them back to her?”

Ethel frowned. “Now let me think. We were talking in the dining room — oh yes, I remember. I laid them on the table, and later when I was straightening up a bit, I put them away in the desk drawer, intending to give them back to her when she returned with her luggage. I’m afraid I forgot to, so I guess they’re still in the drawer.”

“I’d like to take a look at them.”

“Why?”

“Oh, curiosity,” Greer said lightly.

The references were in three envelopes, two of them large, white, business envelopes, unsealed, and the third a small, square, blue one with a darker blue monogram on the back. The third envelope bore a canceled three-cent stamp and an address: Miss Ada Murphy, c/o The Pines Motel, 343 Lasalle Street, Los Angeles.

The words on the matching blue notepaper inside were written in purple ink in a script so tiny and delicate it was almost illegible:

The other two notes were typewritten:

It was signed, in a heavy masculine hand, Richard Robertson, III.

The final note was even more glowing:

Mr. Macomber’s signature bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Robertson’s. So did his literary style, his inexpert typing, his choice of notepaper, and his unqualified approval of Murphy.

Greer returned Mrs. di Santi’s letter to its envelope. It was as obviously genuine as the other two were phony.

He looked at Ethel, who was watching him uncertainly, still biting at her thumbnail. “Did you check these two references, Mrs. Goodfield?”

“Why... why, no. I mean, they were so good I didn’t bother.”

“They should be good. She wrote them herself.”

“Oh dear,” Ethel said, and again, “Oh dear. I hope Willett doesn’t find out.”

“What’s more, I believe they were written especially for you. Notice that both the letters praise her skill and patience with elderly invalids, like your mother-in-law. Tell me, in the advertisement she put in the paper, did she mention this so-called skill of hers?”

“Yes, but how could Murphy be sure that I was going to answer that ad?”

“If I knew how,” Greer said, “I might know where she is now, why she went away and if she’s coming back.”

One of Ethel’s hands worked nervously at the arm of the loveseat, plucking out bits of nap from the rough red wool. For a moment she had an almost uncontrollable impulse to tell Greer everything, about herself and Willett and the old lady and the silly doll factory that she wished she’d never heard of.

Then she raised her head and met Greer’s eyes. They weren’t friendly at all. They were small, accusing eyes without sympathy or tolerance. He wouldn’t understand, she thought; he considers me a fool.

The impulse to reveal herself passed like a storm cloud in summer, bringing no rain or relief from the heat. She wished she had enough courage to walk out of the front door, like Murphy, and never come back.

She said, quietly, “Do you think Murphy is alive?”

“I have no reason for presuming that she’s dead,” Greer replied.

But when he departed a few minutes later, a cold, wet wind swept around the corner of the house and struck him like an unacknowledged fear. Shivering, he pulled up the collar of his coat and wondered where Murphy was, clad for a summer afternoon in her thin cotton dress.

It was ten o’clock.

In Mrs. Goodfield’s bedroom the night light was on, its green glow making the whole room look as if it was underwater — the pillows on the bed were stones, and the old lady half-hidden among them, a sea creature at rest.

But her rest was uneasy. Hearing the opening and closing of the front door, she got out of bed and moved noiselessly across the room in her bare feet.

I feel weak, she thought. They’ve kept me in bed too long. I must get out and walk around more. My legs are like matchsticks; they used to be quite pretty.

She lifted one of the slats of the Venetian blind and saw Greer crossing the driveway toward his car. The window was open and she wanted to call out to him, invite him up for a chat, to alleviate her loneliness and anxiety. But his car had already rolled down the driveway before the words formed in her throat.

Murphy was gone, and now Greer was gone. She was quite alone.

She put her hand on her heart to stop its wild pounding. “I’ve got to go away for awhile,” Murphy had said. “You behave yourself like a good girl and I’ll be back.”

That was the way Murphy talked to her when they were alone together, in a half-derisive, half-affectionate way which the old lady enjoyed. In front of Willett and Ethel, Murphy was always very respectful, though she frequently winked behind Willett’s back, or made a face, or rolled her eyes heavenward.

“I’ve got to go away for awhile.”

That had been at half-past one. Five minutes later she had walked down the driveway, looking very trim and brisk and impatient.

Breathing heavily, the old lady closed the window and locked it. Then, after a minute’s hesitation, she went to the door and locked that, too.

“Lock your door and windows,” Murphy had said.

The locks were flimsy, but they worked. She returned to bed and lay for a long time on her right side watching the second hand of the clock on the bureau. Its movement seemed to hypnotize her and she fell into a half-doze.

She wasn’t sure what awakened her — a troubled dream, the cry of a mockingbird, the flapping of awnings in the wind — but quite suddenly she was fully awake again.

Someone was outside her door. The knob turned, twice, three times.

“Are you there?” Willett said. “Are you sleeping?” A pause. “She’s got her door locked, Ethel.”

“Then we’ll just have to wait. She’s not going to run away.”

“I don’t trust her when she’s in one of her moods.”

“This is a fine time to think of that.”

“You don’t suppose—?”

“I’m too tired to suppose anything. I’m going to bed.”

Behind the door the old woman stared grimly at the clock wishing that morning and Murphy would arrive.

Morning came, but not Murphy.