The Drowning Pool

Chapter 1

If you didn’t look at her face she was less than thirty, quick-bodied and slim as a girl. Her clothing drew attention to the fact: a tailored sharkskin suit and high heels that tensed her nylon-shadowed calves. But there was a pull of worry around her eyes and drawing at her mouth. The eyes were deep blue, with a sort of double vision. They saw you clearly, took you in completely, and at the same time looked beyond you. They had years to look back on, and more things to see in the years than a girl’s eyes had. About thirty-five, I thought, and still in the running.

She stood in the doorway without speaking long enough for me to think those things. Her teeth were nibbling the inside of her upper lip, and both of her hands were clutching her black suede bag at the level of her waist. I let the silence stretch out. She had knocked and I had opened the door. Undecided or not, she couldn’t expect me to lift her over the threshold. She was a big girl now, and she had come for a reason. Her stance was awkward with urgency.

“Mr. Archer?” she said at last.

“Yes. Will you come in.”

“Thank you. Forgive me for hanging back. It must make you feel like a dentist.”

“Everybody hates detectives and dentists. We hate them back.”

“Not really? Actually, I’ve never been to a dentist.” She smiled as if to illustrate the point, and gave me her hand in a free gesture. It was hard and brown. “Or a detective.”

I placed her in the soft chair by the window. She didn’t mind the light. Her hair was its natural brown, without a fleck of gray that I could see. Her face was clear and brown. I wondered if she was clear and brown all over.

“What tooth is bothering you, Mrs.—?”

“Excuse me. My name is Maude Slocum. I always forget my manners when I’m upset.”

She was much too apologetic for a woman with that figure, in those clothes. “Look,” I said “I am rhinoceros-skinned and iron-hearted. I’ve been doing divorce work in L.A. for ten years. If you can tell me anything I haven’t heard, I’ll donate a week’s winnings at Santa Anita to any worthy charity.”

“And can you whip your weight in wildcats, Mr. Archer?”

“Wildcats terrify me, but people are worse.”

“I know what you mean.” The fine white teeth were tugging again at the warm mouth. “I used to think, when I was younger, that people were willing to live and let live—you know? Now I’m not so sure.”

“You didn’t come here this morning, though, to discuss morals in the abstract. Did you have a specific example in mind?”

She answered after a pause: “Yes. I had a shock yesterday.” She looked close into my face, and then beyond. Her eyes were as deep as the sea beyond Catalina. “Someone is trying to destroy me.”

“Kill you, you mean?”

“Destroy the things I care about. My husband, my family, my home.” The rhythm of her voice faltered and ceased. “It’s dreadfully hard to tell you, the thing is so underhanded.”

Here we go again, I said to myself. True confession morning, featuring Archer the unfrocked priest. “I should have gone to City College and been a dentist and gone in for something easy and painless like pulling teeth. If you rally need my help, you’ll have to tell me what with. Did someone send you here?”

“You were recommended. I know a—man who does police work. He said you were honest, and discreet.”

“Unusual thing for a cop to say about me. Would you care to mention his name?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” The very suggestion seemed to alarm her. Her fingers tightened on the black suede bag. “He doesn’t know about this.”

“Neither do I. I don’t expect I ever will.” I let a smile go with it, and offered her a cigarette. She puffed on it without relish, but it seemed to relax her a little.

“Damn it.” She coughed once over the smoke. “Here I’ve been up all night, trying to make up my mind, and I still haven’t made it up. On one knows, you see. It’s hard to bring myself to tell anyone else. One acquires the habit of silence, after sixteen years.”

“Sixteen years? I thought it happened yesterday.”

She colored. “Oh, it did. I was simply thinking of how long I’d been married. This has a good deal to do with my marriage.”

“So I gather. I’m good at guessing-games.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend you or insult you.” Her contriteness was unexpected in a woman of her class. It didn’t go with hundred-dollar suits. “It isn’t that I think you’ll spread it around, or try to blackmail me—”

“Is somebody else trying to blackmail you?”

The question startled her so that she jumped. She recrossed her legs and leaned forward in the chair. “I don’t know. I haven’t any idea.”

“Then we’re even.” I took an envelope out of the top drawer of my desk, opened it, and began to read the mimeographed enclosure. It informed me that the chances were one in three that I’d enter a hospital within the year, that I couldn’t afford to be unprotected by health insurance, and that he who hesitates is lost. “He who hesitates is lost,” I said aloud.

“You’re making fun of me, Mr. Archer. But just what is the arrangement? If you take the case, you’ll naturally be governed by my interests. But if you don’t, and I’ve told you about this thing, can I trust you to forget it?”

I let my irritation show in my voice, and this time I didn’t smile, or even grimace. “Let’s both forget it. You’re wasting my time, Mrs. Slocum.”

“I know I am.” There was self-disgust in her tone, more than there should have been. “This thing has been a physical blow to me, a blow from behind.” Then she spoke with sudden decision, and opened her bag with taut white fingers: “I suppose I must let you see it. I can’t just go home now and sit and wait for another one.”

I looked at the letter she handed me. It was short and to the point, without heading or signature:

The message was typed on a sheet of cheap white typing paper that had been folded to the size of a small envelope. “Is there an envelope to go with this?”

“Yes.” She rummaged in her purse, and handed me a crumpled white envelope, which was addressed to James Slocum, Esq., Trail Road, Nopal Valley, California. The postmark was clear: Quinto, Calif., July 18.

“This is Wednesday,” I said. “It was mailed Monday. Do you know people in Quinto?”

“Everybody.” She managed a strained smile. “It’s only a few miles from Nopal Valley, where we live. But I haven’t the faintest notion who could have sent it.”

“Or why?”

“I have enemies, I suppose. Most people have.”

“I take it your husband hasn’t seen it. James Slocum is your husband?”

“Yes. He hasn’t seen it. He was busy in Quinto when it came. I usually bicycle down to the mailbox, anyway.”

“Is he in business in Quinto?”

“Not in business. He’s very active in the Quinto Players—it’s a semi-professional theatrical group. They’re rehearsing every afternoon this week—”

I cut her short: “Do you usually read your husband’s mail?”

“Yes, I do. We read each other’s—I hardly expected to be cross-questioned, Mr. Archer.”

“One more question. Is the allegation true?”

The blood coursed under the clear skin of her face, and her eyes brightened. “I can’t be expected to answer that.”

“All right. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t true.”

“On the contrary,” she said.

“And you want me to find out who sent the letter, and prosecute him or her?”

“Oh, no.” She wasn’t clever. “I simply want it stopped. I can’t stand guard over the mailbox to intercept his mail, and I can’t stand the strain of waiting and wondering—”

“Besides, the next note might be handed to him personally. Would it matter so much if he read it?”

“It would matter terribly.”

“Why? Is he violently jealous?”

“Not at all, he’s a very quiet man.”

“And you’re in love with him?”

“I married him,” she said. “I haven’t regretted it.”

“If your marriage is a good one, you don’t have to worry about a poison-pen or two.” I tossed the letter on the desk-top between us, and looked into her face.

Her mouth and eyes were tormented. “It would be the last straw. I have a daughter who is still in school. I simply won’t permit this thing to happen.”

“What thing?”

“A breakup and divorce,” she answered harshly.

“Is that what it means if your husband gets one of those?” I pointed my cigarette at the scrap of white paper.

“I’m afraid it does, Mr. Archer. I could cope with James, perhaps, but he’d take it to his mother, and she’d hire detectives.”

“Could they find grounds for divorce? Is there evidence against you?”

“There must be,” she said bitterly. “Someone knows.” Her entire body moved slightly, twitched like a worm on a hook. For the moment she loathed her sex. “This is very painful for me.”

“I know,” I said. “My wife divorced me last year. Extreme mental cruelty.”

“I think you might be capable of it.” There was gentle malice in her voice; then her mood changed again: “Please don’t imagine I take divorce lightly. It’s the last thing I want.”

“On account of your daughter, you say?”

She considered that. “Ultimately, yes. I was the child of a divorced couple myself, and I suffered for it. There are other reasons, too. My mother-in-law would like it much too well.”

“What sort of woman is she? Could she have sent the letter?”

The question caught her off guard, and she had to think again. “No. I’m sure she didn’t. She’d act much more directly. She’s a very strong-minded woman. As I told you, I haven’t the slightest idea who sent it.”

“Anybody in Quinto then. Population about twenty-five thousand, isn’t it? Or anybody who passed through Quinto on Monday. It’s a pretty tough setup.”

“But you will try to help me?” She wasn’t too much of a lady to arrange herself appealingly in the chair, and dramatize the plea. There was a chance that she wasn’t a lady at all.

“It will take time, and I can’t promise any results. Are you fairly well-heeled, Mrs. Slocum?”

“Surely you don’t reserve your services exclusively for the wealthy.” She looked around at the plain small, square office.

“I don’t spend money on front, but I charge fifty dollars a day, and expenses. It will cost you four or five hundred a week, and with what I’ve got to go on it may take all summer.”

She swallowed her dismay. “Frankly, I’m not well off. There’s money in the family, but James and I don’t have it. All we have is the income from a hundred thousand.”

“Thirty-five hundred.”

“Less. James’s mother controls the money. We live with her, you see. I do have a little money that I’ve saved, though, for Cathy’s education. I can pay you five hundred dollars.”

“I can’t guarantee anything in a week, or a month for that matter.”

“I have to do something.”

“I have an idea why. The person who wrote that letter probably knows something more definite, and you’re afraid of the next letter.”

She didn’t answer.

“It would help if you’d let me know what there is to be known.”

Her eyes met mine levelly and coldly. “I don’t see the necessity for me to confess adultery, or for you to assume that there is anything to confess.”

“Oh hell,” I said. “If I have to work in a vacuum, I’ll waste my time.”

“You’ll be paid for it.”

“You’ll waste your money, then.”

“I don’t care.” She opened her purse again and counted ten twenties onto the desk-top. “There. I want you to do what you can. Do you know Nopal Valley?”

“I’ve been through it, and I know Quinto slightly. What does your husband do with the Quinto Players?”

“He’s an actor, or thinks he is. You mustn’t try to talk to him.”

“You’ll have to let me do it my own way, or I might as well sit in my office and read a book. How can I get in touch with you?”

“You can phone me at home. Nopal Valley is in the Quinto book. Under Mrs. Olivia Slocum.”

She stood up and I followed her to the door. I noticed for the first time that the back of her handsome suit was sun-faded. There was a faint line around the bottom of the skirt where the hem had been changed. I felt sorry for the woman, and I liked her pretty well.

“I’ll drive up this morning,” I said. “Better watch the mailbox.”

When she had gone, I sat down behind the desk and looked at the unpolished top. The letter and the twenties were side by side upon it. Sex and money: the forked root of evil. Mrs. Slocum’s neglected cigarette was smouldering in the ash-tray, marked with lipstick like a faint rim of blood. It stank, and I crushed it out. The letter went into my breastpocket, the twenties into my billfold.

In the street when I went down the heat was mounting toward ninety. In the sky the sun was mounting toward noon.