The Chill

Chapter 14

Alex and his father vacated their room and drove away. I didn’t go out to see them off but I could hear the sound of their engines, quickly muffled by the fog. I sat and let my stomach unknot, telling myself I should have handled them better. Kincaid was a frightened man who valued his status the way some previous generations valued their souls.

I drove up Foothill to the Bradshaw house. The Dean was probably another breakable reed, but he had money, and he had shown some sympathy for Dolly, over and above his official interest in the case. I had no desire to continue it on my own. I needed a principal, preferably one who swung some weight locally. Alice Jenks met this requirement, more or less, but I didn’t want her for a client.

A deputy was standing guard at the gatehouse. He wouldn’t let me in to look around but he didn’t object to my going up to the main house. The Spanish woman Maria answered the door.

“Is Dr. Bradshaw home?”

“No sir.”

“Where can I find him?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I think Mrs. Bradshaw said he’s gone for the weekend.”

“That’s queer. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“I’ll see if she’s busy.”

I stepped inside uninvited and sat on a gilt chair in the entrance hail while Maria went upstairs. She came down and told me that Mrs. Bradshaw would be with me shortly.

It was at least half-an-hour before she came limping down. She had primped her gray head and rouged her cheeks and put on a dress with lace at her slack throat held in place by a diamond brooch. I wondered, as she made me the dubious gift of her hand, if all this had been done for my benefit.

The old lady seemed glad to see me. “How are you, Mr.– it’s Mr. Archer, isn’t it? I’ve been so hoping somebody would call. This fog makes one feel so isolated, and with my driver gone–” She seemed to hear the note of complaint rising in her voice, and cut it off. “How is the girl?” she said briskly.

“She’s being taken care of. Dr. Godwin thinks she’s better than she was last night.”

“Good. You’ll be glad to know,” she said with a bright ironic stare, “that I’m somewhat better myself than I was last night. My son informed me this morning that I staged one of my exhibitions, as he calls them. Frankly, I was upset. Nights aren’t my best season.”

“It was a rough night for everybody.”

“And I’m a selfish old woman. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“People don’t seem to change much as they get older.”

“That has all the earmarks of an insult.” But she was smiling, almost flirtatiously. “You imply that I’ve always been this way.”

“You’d know better than I would.”

She laughed outright. It wasn’t a joyous sound, but there was humor in it. “You’re a bold young man, and a bright one. I like bright young men. Come into the study and I’ll see that you get a drink.”

“Thank you, but I can’t stay–”

“Then I’ll sit here.” She lowered herself carefully onto the gilt chair. “My moral qualities may not have altered for the worse. My physical capabilities certainly have. This fog is very bad for my arthritis.” She added, with a gingerly shake of her head: “But I mustn’t complain. I promised my son, in penance for last night, that I would go through an entire day without uttering a word of complaint.”

“How are you doing?”

“Not so well,” she said with her wry and wrinkled smile. “It’s like solitaire, you always cheat a little. Or don’t you?”

“I don’t play the game.”

“You’re not missing a great deal, but it helps to pass the days for me. Well, I won’t keep you if you have business.”

“I have business with Dr. Bradshaw. Do you know where I can contact him?”

“Roy flew to Reno this morning.”

“Reno?”

“Not to gamble, I assure you. He hasn’t an iota of gambling instinct. In fact I sometimes think he’s excessively cautious. Roy is a bit of a mother’s boy, wouldn’t you say?” She looked up at me with complex irony, unembarrassed by his condition or her complicity in it.

“I’m a little surprised that he’d go away in the middle of this murder case.”

“So was I, but there was no stopping him. He isn’t exactly running away from it. They’re holding a conference of small-college deans at the University of Nevada. It’s been planned for months, and Roy is slated as one of the principal speakers. He felt it was his duty to be there. But I could see very well that he was eager to go. He loves the public eye, you know – he’s always been a bit of an actor – but he isn’t so terribly fond of the responsibilities that go with it.”

I was amused and intrigued and a little appalled by her realism. She seemed to be enjoying it herself. Conversation was better than solitaire.

Mrs. Bradshaw rose creakingly and leaned on my arm. “You might as well come into the study. It’s drafty here. I’ve taken a fancy to you, young man.”

I didn’t know if this was a blessing or a curse. She grinned up into my face as if she could read my doubts there. “Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.” She placed the emphasis on the final word, as though she had already eaten her son for breakfast.

We went into the study together and sat in facing highbacked leather chairs. She rang for Maria and ordered me a highball. Then she leaned back and scanned the bookshelves. The phalanxes of books seemed to remind her of Bradshaw’s importance.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I love my son profoundly and I’m proud of him. I’m proud of his good looks and I’m proud of his brains. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and went on to take a most distinguished doctorate. One of these days he’s going to be the president of a major university or a great foundation.”

“Is he ambitious, or are you?”

“I used to be, for him. As Roy became more ambitious, I became less so. There are better things in life than climbing an endless ladder. I haven’t entirely given up hope that he’ll marry.” She cocked a bright old eye at me. “He likes women, you know.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“In fact I was beginning to persuade myself that he was interested in Miss Haggerty. I’ve never known him to pay so much attention to any other woman.” She dropped the statement so that it became a question.

“He mentioned to me that he took her out several times. But he also said that they were never close in any way. His reaction to her death confirmed that.”

“What was his reaction to her death?”

I’d done a lot of pumping in my time, and I knew when it was being done to me. “I mean his general reaction. He wouldn’t have flown to Reno this morning, deans’ conference or no deans’ conference, if he had been really fond of Helen Haggerty. He’d be here in Pacific Point trying to find out who did her in.”

“You seem quite let down about it.”

“I was looking for his help. He seemed genuinely concerned about Dolly Kincaid.”

“He is. We both are. In fact Roy asked me at breakfast to do what I could for the girl. But what can I do?” She displayed her crumpled hands, making a show of her helplessness.

Maria came in with my clinking highball, handed it to me unceremoniously, and asked her employer if there was anything else. There wasn’t. I sipped my drink, wondering if Mrs. Bradshaw was a client I could possibly handle, if she became my client. She had the money, all right. The diamonds winking at her throat would have bought my services for several years.

“You can hire me,” I said.

“Hire you?”

“If you really want to do something for Dolly, and not just sit there paying lip-service to the idea. Do you think we could get along?”

“I was getting along with men when you were in the cradle, Mr. Archer. Are you implying I can’t get along with people?”

“I seem to be the one who can’t. Alex Kincaid just fired me, with a strong assist from his father. They want no part of Dolly and her problems, now that the chips are down.”

Her black eyes flashed. “I saw through that boy immediately. He’s a mollycoddle.”

“I don’t have the resources to go on by myself. It isn’t good practice, anyway. I need somebody to back me, preferably somebody with local standing and – I’ll be frank – a substantial bank balance.”

“How much would it cost me?”

“It depends on how long the case goes on and how many ramifications develop. I get a hundred a day and expenses. Also I have a team of detectives in Reno working on a lead that may be a hot one.”

“A lead in Reno?”

“It originated here, last night.”

I told her about the man in the convertible which belonged to Mrs. Sally Burke, a woman with many boy friends. She leaned forward in her chair in mounting interest:

“Why aren’t the police working on that lead?”

“They may be. If they are, I don’t know about it. They seem to have settled for the idea that Dolly’s guilty and everything else is irrelevant. It’s simpler that way.”

“You don’t accept that idea?”

“No.”

“In spite of the gun they found in her bed?”

“You know about that, then.”

“Sheriff Crane showed it to me this morning. He wanted to know if I recognized it. Of course I didn’t. I abhor the very sight of guns myself. I’ve never permitted Roy to own a gun.”

“And you have no idea who owned that one?”

“No, but the Sheriff appeared to take it for granted that it was Dolly’s, and that it tied her to the murder.”

“We have no reason to think it was hers. If it was, the last place she’d put it would be under her own mattress. Her husband denies she did, and he was with her continuously once she got back to the gatehouse. There’s the further point that there’s no definite proof it’s the murder weapon.”

“Really?”

“Really. It will take ballistics tests, and they’re not scheduled until Monday. If my luck holds, I think I can throw more light on the situation by then.”

“Do you have a definite theory of your own, Mr. Archer?”

“I have an idea that the ramifications of this thing go far back beyond Dolly. It wasn’t Dolly who threatened Miss Haggerty’s life. She would have recognized her voice, they were close friends. I think Dolly walked up to her house simply to ask her advice about whether to go back to her husband. She stumbled over the body and panicked. She’s still in panic.”

“Why?”

“I’m not prepared to explain it. I want to go into her background further. I also want to go into Miss Haggerty’s background.”

“That might be interesting,” she said, as if she was considering attending a double-feature movie. “How much is all this going to cost me?”

“I’ll keep it as low as I can. But it could mount up in the thousands, two or three or even four.”

“That’s rather an expensive penance.”

“Penance?”

“For all my selfishness, past and present and future. I’ll think about it, Mr. Archer.”

“How long do you need to think about it?”

“Call me tonight. Roy will be telephoning me around dinnertime – he telephones me every night when he’s away – and I couldn’t possibly give you an answer before I discuss it with him. We live on a tighter budget than you might think,” she said earnestly, fingering the diamonds at her throat.