Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

4

Malgradi’s Funeral Parlor was in the east end, a new white stucco building with rows of fluted columns like a Greek temple and a flashing neon sign like a theatre. This incongruity was carried on inside. Malgradi was a showman, but he also possessed a deeply religious feeling about death, and the biggest collection of organ records in town. All of Malgradi’s clients got a fine send-off, and always (since Malgradi was a confirmed optimist) in the right direction. He felt that when he had made each of them as pleasing to the eye as possible and bade them farewell with the finest organ music available, he had done his duty. His conscience was clear, he was devoted to his family and they to him, and he was, in spite of his rather lugubrious profession, a happy man with excellent digestion.

Malgradi had a working agreement with the police. He was not qualified to do autopsies himself, but his back room was used by the pathologist of the local hospital to perform autopsies on all people who died suddenly without apparent cause or under suspicious circumstances. Rose was no longer in the back room.

“I’ve been getting quite a few calls,” Malgradi told Greer. “Seems like a lot of people are curious; they want to know about the funeral.”

“Is that right?”

“So, as a matter of fact, do I. Think it’ll be county?”

“It’ll be county if nobody shows up who wants to foot the bill. Where’s Dalloway?”

“In my office.”

“By the way, this is Frank Clyde, a friend of mine.”

Malgradi and Frank shook hands heartily and Malgradi said, as the three men went down the corridor, that any friend of Greer’s was a friend of his.

Malgradi’s office at first glance seemed like a somber room dedicated to sorrow. A more careful study revealed a camouflaged television set, a portable bar discreetly draped in grey velvet, and a large bowl of potato chips on Malgradi’s desk.

The room smelled of cigar smoke. The man who was smoking the cigar rose and looked around nervously for an ashtray. Finding none, he transferred the cigar to his gloved left hand. He was tall and erect, a man in his sixties, with clipped white hair and wide-spaced brown eyes that looked naïve and trusting as a boy’s. He had trusted, perhaps, too often and too well. The rest of his face bore the marks of bitterness and pain.

The hand holding the cigar remained motionless and Frank realized that it was artificial.

Dalloway took a hesitating step forward. “You’re the police?”

Greer nodded.

“I’m Haley Dalloway. This is terrible, a terrible thing. Rose was always so full of life and energy. I can’t believe that she... that she—” He turned away for a moment, fighting for control.

When he recovered his composure, Greer introduced Frank and himself. There was more handshaking and murmurs of condolence, and then Malgradi pressed a button behind his desk and organ music poured into the room, soft and thick as syrup.

“For God’s sake, turn that thing off,” Greer said.

Malgradi glanced at him reproachfully. “Well, I only thought it would be appropriate, under the circumstances.”

“Under the circumstances I’d rather listen to coyotes howling.”

“Can I help it if some people are tone deaf?” But he turned the record off. He had a good deal of respect for Greer. Greer had gone to Princeton for two years and his opinion on what was appropriate was not to be taken lightly.

“Thank you,” Dalloway said. No one could tell from his expression whether he was thanking Malgradi for the snatch of music or Greer for the silence.

Greer was studying Dalloway, not subtly, the way Frank had to observe his cases, but openly and directly the way Miriam sized people up. “You live here, Mr. Dalloway?”

“No. No, I don’t. I live in Belmont, that’s a suburb of Boston. I came out here for... for a vacation.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Rancho del Mar. It’s a motel down near the beach, East Beach, I believe they call it. If there’s anything you want to discuss with me you can reach me there. Right now I... I’d like to see Rose.”

“Certainly,” Greer said politely. “Do you mind if Mr. Clyde here goes along?”

“Well, I... no.”

“Mr. Clyde was a friend of Rose’s. He’s been trying to help her this past year.”

“Help her?” Dalloway’s eyes focused on Frank. “In what way? Are you a doctor?”

“I work for the mental hygiene clinic,” Frank said, wishing there was some simple way of describing his functions. “Rose was brought to my attention a year or so ago.”

“You mean Rose was insane?”

“No, indeed I don’t. The clinic does preventive work, not as much as we could do if we had enough money and trained help. But we do some. I gave Rose an appointment whenever I felt that she was getting too depressed or too high.”

“Rose was always like that,” Dalloway said quite brusquely. “It’s nothing new or serious. One day she’d be so low she hated everyone and the next day she was the life of the party.” He raised his chin in a gesture of pride. “I’m glad, I’m glad she didn’t change.”

But she had changed, she’d changed so much that Dalloway, when he saw her, backed away from the satin-lined casket and covered his eyes.

Frank gazed stonily down at the dead woman. He was appalled. She didn’t look like Rose at all. In life Rose had been rather careless. No matter how often she combed her hair it always looked a little wild, her makeup was never quite straight, and her clothes gave the impression that she had just come in after a fuss with a high wind.

Now Rose lay in her borrowed casket, meticulous, not a hair out of place. Her cotton-stuffed cheeks were symmetrically rosy, her mouth rigid and straight as if she didn’t dare to move it for fear of disturbing the lipstick. There were no more high winds for Rose.

“It is,” Dalloway said finally, “it is Rose?”

“Yes,” Frank said.

“I’d never have known her, she’s aged so much.” He spoke as if the years that had aged Rose had passed him without a glance. “She’s still wearing my ring.”

“I’ve never seen her without it.”

“That’s funny, isn’t it, after all that’s happened to her. So much, so much happened to Rose. I used to read about her in the papers from time to time, after she left me.” Except for his breathing which was labored and irregular, Dalloway seemed under control. “Did she ever tell you how she left me?”

“Once. She ran away with a circus.”

“That’s right. The circus was in town — we were living in Boulder Junction then — and when it moved out Rose moved with it. After the divorce I married again. I had to give Lora a home.”

“Lora?”

“Rose’s child and mine.”

“She never mentioned a child.”

Dalloway was not surprised. “How like Rose, to forget the inconvenient things. I... well, there’s no point in staying here, is there?”

“No.”

“I’d like to hear more about Rose, how she’s been living the last while. I hate to impose on anyone, but perhaps you might consider coming down to my motel for a drink or two? Would you?”

“I might.”

“The fact is, I’m alone in town. It’s rather depressing.”

“Your family didn’t come with you?”

“I no longer have a family. My wife died several years ago. And Lora—” Dalloway’s face tightened like a fist, and for the first time Frank saw, behind the innocent trusting eyes, a shrewd, hard, obstinate man. “My daughter, Lora, disappeared two months ago.”

The Rancho del Mar was one of a dozen luxurious motels that edged the beach. Thirty-foot palms rustled frantically in the offshore wind while the ivy clung motionless to their bone-grey trunks. The patio was strung with colored lights and crammed with garden furniture, chaises and gliders and canvas chairs. None of them was occupied. The nights were too cold, even now, toward the end of May. When the sun vanished so did the people, and the sea fog took over the patio and hung in wisps under the big umbrellas and the redwood tables.

Dalloway had a corner room that overlooked the sea. He had left the windows open and the air in the room was damp and cold.

He turned on the panel heater and stood in front of it, warming his right hand until the bellboy appeared with a pitcher of ice and a bottle of Scotch. The bellboy acted with the extreme deference of someone who has been well-tipped in the past, and Frank wondered how much money Dalloway had and how he’d made it. Rose had always claimed that she had supported him.

Dalloway mixed the drinks. It was obvious, from the deft way he managed with one hand, that the loss of his other was not recent.

“You’re a restful young man,” Dalloway said suddenly. “You don’t talk much.”

“My job is to listen.”

“And observe.”

“And observe, of course.”

“What are you observing about me?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Naturally.”

“I was wondering how you lost your hand.”

“Oh, that.” Dalloway laughed. “I lost it in the most un-heroic way possible. Caught it in a buzz saw, very careless of me. Is your drink too weak, too strong?”

“Just right.”

“I’m not a drinking man, but there are times.” He paused. “I suppose Rose died penniless?”

“Yes.”

“She was a fool about money.”

“She didn’t think or care much about it,” Frank said. “There’s a difference.”

“The results are the same.”

“Rose wasn’t bitter about lack of money. The only thing she wanted was something like a job to get interested in.”

“She had a job once, looking after her own child. But that wasn’t quite good enough. She preferred the circus.” Dalloway stared grimly into his glass. “Like mother, like daughter. It’s a peculiar thing: though they were separated all these years, the resemblances were strong, right down to the final one. They both ran away from me without any reason at all.”

Frank wasn’t so sure about the lack of reason. “You’ve heard nothing from Lora?”

“Not a word, in two months. There’s not much I can do about it. Lora’s a grown woman of thirty. At least she’s grown in years. Actually she’s quite immature like most of her friends, though they call it being ‘creative.’ She fooled around with painting and sculpture and little theatres, things like that. She talked a lot about expressing herself, but as far as I could see the only thing she really expressed was an antipathy to good honest work.”

It was a familiar cry to Frank — the too-strict and unimaginative parent and the child who escapes into dreams or illness. “She wanted to be an actress like her mother?”

“Yes. She had the lead in a few experimental plays that were put on back home and it went to her head. Possibly she has talent — I wouldn’t know, the plays seemed extremely silly to me — but she’s over thirty. She’s too old to begin a career like that. I tried to explain this to her last March, the twenty-fifth I believe it was. When I returned home for dinner that night she was gone. I telephoned some of her sorry crew of friends, but they professed to know nothing about it. After two days I reported her as a missing person. The police were unconcerned, even a little amused, I thought. Their assumption was that Lora had eloped with a man, and they advised me to go home and wait for a letter. I did. I’m not a waiting man, but I waited a whole month. Then one day in the subway station at Cambridge I happened to pick up a New York paper. There was an article in it about a proposed television program that was to feature some old-time movie stars. Rose’s name was among the ones mentioned as possible. The article said she was retired and living on a big estate here in La Mesa.”

Frank thought of Rose’s room in the boarding house and wondered whether Rose herself had given out this misinformation.

“I came here,” Dalloway said, “to see her. Not for old time’s sake, but to find out if she knew anything about Lora.”

“Why should she?”

“For a long time I’ve had the idea that Lora intended some day to try and find her mother. During the past year she talked about Rose a great deal, and once she even mentioned the possibility of a reunion with her. I told her it was ridiculous, and the subject was dropped. I’m afraid Lora picked it up again.”

“You have no proof of that?”

“None. Yet the more I think of it, the more obvious it seems. Lora believed — and, as a matter of fact, so did I — that Rose was well provided for after her career and her series of husbands. We had no idea she was on her uppers.”

“So you came here to see Rose.”

“Yes.”

“And did you?”

“I tried to. She wasn’t listed in the phone book or city directory or credit bureau, and she wasn’t at either of the hospitals here in town. I intended to make further inquiries, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to.” He set his empty glass on top of the radio. It came down with a decisive thud and a sharp impatient clink of ice. “How did she die?”

“Apparently of a heart attack.”

“She was strong as an ox.”

“People change with time,” Frank said. “Rose lived pretty high, I guess.”

“These people, the Goodfields, in whose garden Rose was found. Who are they? What do you know about them?”

“Just what Greer told me while we were driving down to Malgradi’s place. Goodfield and his wife and mother are from San Francisco. The mother is in bad health, and they’ve spent the last few months or so traveling around the country to find a climate that would agree with her. They finally decided on La Mesa, rented a place, hired a maid, etcetera. They’ve only been here for two weeks, but according to the maid and the next-door neighbor, Goodfield is a devoted son and his wife Ethel is a devoted daughter-in-law, and that’s about all there is to the Goodfields.”

“I wonder.”

So did Frank, though he didn’t say so. Instead, “It seems to be just an unfortunate accident that Rose was found on the Goodfields’ premises. It could have happened anywhere.”

“Perhaps it could. I merely wanted to check. Life has taught me to be suspicious.”

It had taught him well, Frank thought.