The Galton Case

Chapter 9

IN THE MORNING I picked up Bolling at his Telegraph Hill apartment. It was one of those sparkling days that make up for all the fog in San Francisco. An onshore wind had swept the air clear and tessellated the blue surface of the Bay. A white ship cutting a white furrow was headed out toward the Golden Gate. White gulls hung above her on the air.

Bolling looked at all this with a fishy eye. He was frowsy and gray and shivering with hangover. He crawled into the back seat and snored all the way to our destination. It was a dingy, formless town sprawling along the coast highway. Its low buildings were dwarfed by the hills rising behind it, the broad sea spreading out in front.

I stopped beside a filling-station where the inland road met Highway 1, and told Bolling to wake up.

“Wha’ for?” he mumbled from the depths of sleep. “Wha’ happen?”

“Nothing yet. Where do we go from here?”

He groaned and sat up and looked around. The glare from the ocean made his eyes water. He shaded them with his hand. “Where are we?”

“Luna Bay.”

“It doesn’t look the same,” he complained. “I’m not sure whether I can find the place or not. Anyway, we turn north here. Just drive along slowly, and I’ll try to spot the road.”

Almost two miles north of Luna Bay, the highway cut inland across the base of a promontory. On the far side of the promontory, a new-looking asphalt road turned off toward the sea. A billboard stood at the intersection: “Marvista Manor. Three bedrooms and rumpus room. Tile bathrooms. Built-in kitchens. All utilities in. See our model home.”

Bolling tapped my shoulder. “This is the place, I think.”

I backed up and made a left turn. The road ran straight for several hundred yards up a gentle slope. We passed a rectangle of bare adobe as big as a football field, where earth-movers were working. A wooden sign at the roadside explained their activity: “Site of the Marvista Shopping Center.”

From the crest of the slope we looked down over the roof-tops of a hundred or more houses. They stood along the hillside on raw earth terraces which were only just beginning to sprout grass. Driving along the winding street between them, I could see that most of the houses were occupied. There were curtains at the windows, children playing in the yards, clothes drying on the lines. The houses were painted different colors, which only seemed to emphasize their sameness.

The street unwound itself at the foot of the slope, paralleling the edge of the bluffs. I stopped the car and turned to look at Bolling.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s changed so much, I can’t be certain this is the place. There were some clapboard bungalows, five or six of them, scattered along the bluff. The Browns lived in one of them, if memory serves me.”

We got out and walked toward the edge of the bluff. A couple of hundred feet below, the sea wrinkled like blue metal against its base, and burst in periodic white explosions. A mile to the south, under the shelter of the promontory, a cove of quiet water lay in a brown rind of beach.

Bolling pointed toward the cove. “This has to be the place. I remember Brown telling me that inlet was used as a harbor by rum-runners in the old Prohibition days. There used to be an old hotel on the bluff above it. You could see it from the Browns’ front porch. Their bungalow must have stood quite near here.”

“They probably tore it down when they put in the road. It wouldn’t have done me much good to see it, anyway. I was hoping I’d run across a neighbor who remembered the Browns.”

“I suppose you could canvass the tradesmen in Luna Bay.”

“I could.”

“Oh well, it’s nice to get out in the country.”

Bolling wandered off along the edge of the bluff. Suddenly he said: “Wheel” in a high voice like a gull’s screak. He began to flap his arms.

I ran toward him. “What’s the matter?”

“Wheel” he said again, and let out a childish laugh. “I was just imagining that I was a bird.”

“How did you like it?”

“Very much.” He flapped his arms some more. “I can fly! I breast the windy currents of the sky. I soar like Icarus toward the sun. The wax melts. I fall from a great height into the sea. Mother Thalassa.”

“Mother who?”

“Thalassa, the sea, the Homeric sea. We could build another Athens. I used to think we could do it in San Francisco, build a new city of man on the great hills. A city measured with forgiveness. Oh, well.”

His mood sank again. I pulled him away from the edge.

He was so unpredictable I thought he might take a flying leap into space, and I was beginning to like him.

“Speaking of mothers,” I said, “if John Brown’s wife had just had a baby, she must have been going to a doctor. Did they happen to mention where the baby was born?”

“Yes. Right in their house. The nearest hospital is in Redwood City, and Brown didn’t want to take his wife there. The chances are she had a local doctor.”

“Let’s hope he’s still around.”

I drove back through the housing-tract until I saw a young woman walking a pram. She shied like a filly when I pulled up beside her. In the daytime the tract was reserved for women and children; unknown men in cars were probably kidnappers. I got out and approached her, smiling as innocuously as I could.

“I’m looking for a doctor.”

“Oh. Is somebody sick?”

“My friend’s wife is going to have a baby. They’re thinking of moving into Marvista Manor, and they thought they’d better check on the medical situation.”

“Dr. Meyers is very good,” she said. “I go to him myself.”

“In Luna Bay?”

“That’s right.”

“How long has he practiced there?”

“I wouldn’t know. We just moved out from Richmond month before last.”

“How old is Dr. Meyers?”

“Thirty, thirty-five, I dunno.”

“Too young,” I said.

“If your friend will feel safer with an older man, I think there is one in town. I don’t remember his name, though. Personally I like a young doctor, they know all the latest wonder drugs and all.”

Wonder drugs. I thanked her, and drove back to Luna Bay in search of a drugstore. The proprietor gave me a rundown on the three local doctors. A Dr. George Dineen was the only one who had practiced there in the thirties. He was an elderly man on the verge of retirement. I’d probably find him in his office if he wasn’t out on a call. It was only a couple of blocks from the drugstore.

I left Bolling drinking coffee at the fountain, and walked to the doctor’s office. It occupied the front rooms of a rambling house with green shingle walls which stood on a dusty side street. A woman of about sixty answered the door. She had blue-white hair and a look on her face you don’t see too often any more, the look of a woman who hasn’t been disappointed:

“Yes, young man?”

“I’d like to see the doctor.”

“His office hours are in the afternoon. They don’t start till one-thirty.”

“I don’t want to see him as a patient.”

“If you’re a pharmaceutical salesman, you’d better wait till after lunch. Dr. Dineen doesn’t like his mornings to be disturbed.”

“I’m only in town for the morning. I’m investigating a disappearance. He may be able to help me to find a missing man.”

She had a very responsive face, in spite of its slack lines of age. Her eyes imagined what it would be like to lose a loved one. “Well, that’s different. Come in, Mr.–”

“Archer. I’m a private detective.”

“My husband is in the garden. I’ll bring him in.”

She left me in the doctor’s office. Several diplomas hung on the wall above the old oak desk. The earliest stated that Dr. Dineen had graduated from the University of Ohio Medical School in 1914. The room itself was like a preserve of prewar time. The cracked leather furniture had been molded by use into comfortable human shapes. A set of old chessmen laid out on a board stood like miniature armies stalled in the sunlight that fell slanting from the window.

The doctor came in and shook hands with me. He was a tall high-shouldered old man. His eyes were noncommittal under shaggy gray brows which hung like bird’s-nests on the cliff of his face. He lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. His head was partly bald; a few strands of hair lay lankly across the top of his scalp.

“You mentioned a missing person to my wife. One of my patients, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. His name was John Brown. In 1936 he and his wife lived a few miles up the coast where the Marvista tract is now.”

“I remember them very well,” the doctor said. “Their son was in this office not so very long ago, sitting where you’re sitting.”

“Their son?”

“John, Junior. You may know him. He’s looking for his father, too.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t know him. But I’d certainly like to.”

“I daresay that could be arranged.” Dr. Dineen’s deep voice rumbled to a stop. He looked at me intently, as if he was getting ready to make a diagnosis. “First, I’d want to know the reasons for your interest in the family.”

“I was hired to make a search for the father, the senior John Brown.”

“Has your search had any results?”

“Not until now. You say this boy who came to see you is looking for his father?”

“That is correct.”

“What brought him to you?”

“He has the ordinary filial emotions. If his father is alive, he wants to be with him. If his father is dead, he wants to know.”

“I mean what brought him here to your office specifically? Had you known him before?”

“I brought him into the world. In my profession, that constitutes the best possible introduction.”

“Are you sure it’s the same boy?”

“I have no reason to doubt it.” The doctor looked at me with some distaste, as if I’d criticized some work he’d done with his hands. “Before we go any further, Mr. Archer, you can oblige me with a fuller response to my question. You haven’t told me who hired you.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that. I’ve been asked to keep my client’s identity confidential.”

“No doubt you have. I’ve been keeping such matters confidential for the past forty years.”

“And you won’t talk unless I do, is that it?”

The doctor raised his hand and brushed the thought away from his face, like an annoying insect. “I suggested no bargain. I simply want to know who I’m dealing with. There may be grave matters involved.”

“There are.”

“I think you ought to elucidate that remark.”

“I can’t.”

We faced each other in a stretching silence. His eyes were steady, and bright with the hostility of a proud old man. I was afraid of losing him entirely, just as the case seemed to be breaking open. While I didn’t doubt his integrity, I had my own integrity to think of, too. I’d promised Gordon Sable and Mrs. Galton to name no names.

Dr. Dineen produced a pipe, and began to pack its charred bowl with tobacco from an oilskin pouch. “We seem to have reached a stalemate. Do you play chess, Mr. Archer?”

“Not as well as you do, probably. I’ve never studied the book.”

“I would have thought you had.” He finished packing his pipe, and lit it with a kitchen match. The blue smoke swirled in the hollow shafts of sunlight from the window. “We’re wasting both our times. I suggest you make a move.”

“I thought this was a stalemate.”

“New game.” A flicker of interest showed in his eyes for the first time. “Tell me about yourself. Why would a man of your sort spend his life doing the kind of work you do? Do you make much money?”

“Enough to live on. I don’t do it for the money, though. I do it because I want to.”

“Isn’t it dirty work, Mr. Archer?”

“It depends on who’s doing it, like doctoring or anything else. I try to keep it clean.”

“Do you succeed?”

“Not entirely. I’ve made some bad mistakes about people. Some of them assume that a private detective is automatically crooked, and they act accordingly, as you’re doing now.”

The old man emitted a grunt which sounded like a seal’s bark. “I can’t act blindly in a matter of this importance.”

“Neither can I. I don’t know what makes it important to you–”

“I’ll tell you,” he said shortly. “Human lives are involved. A boy’s love for his parents is involved. I try to handle these things with the care they deserve.”

“I appreciate that. You seem to have a special interest in John Brown, Junior.”

“I do have. The young fellow’s had a rough time of it. I don’t want him hurt unnecessarily.”

“It’s not my intention to hurt him. If the boy is actually John Brown’s son, you’d be doing him a favor by leading me to him.”

“You’re going to have to prove that to me. I’ll be frank to say I’ve had one or two experiences with private detectives in my time. One of them had to do with the blackmailing of a patient of mine – a young girl who had a child out of wedlock. I don’t mean that reflects on you, but it makes a man leery.”

“All right. I’ll put my position hypothetically. Let’s say I’d been hired to find the heir to several million dollars.”

“I’ve heard that one before. You’ll have to invent a better gambit than that.”

“I didn’t invent it. It happens to be the truth.”

“Prove it.”

“That will be easy to do when the time comes. Right now, I’d say the burden of proof is on this boy. Can he prove his identity?”

“The question never came up. As a matter of fact, the proof of his identity is on his face. I knew whose son he was as soon as he stepped in here. His resemblance to his father is striking.”

“How long ago did he turn up?”

“About a month. I’ve seen him since.”

“As a patient?”

“As a friend,” Dineen said.

“Why did he come to you in the first place?”

“My name is on his birth certificate. Now hold your horses, young man. Give me a chance to think.” The doctor smoked in silence for a while. “Do you seriously tell me that this boy is heir to a fortune?”

“He will be, if his father is dead. His grandmother is still living. She has the money.”

“But you won’t divulge her name?”

“Not without her permission. I suppose I could call her long distance. But I’d rather have a chance to talk to the boy first.”

The doctor hesitated. He held his right hand poised in the air, then struck the desk-top with the flat of it. “I’ll take a chance on you, though I may regret it later.”

“You won’t if I can help it. Where can I find him?”

“We’ll come to that.”

“What did he have to say about his origins?”

“It would be more appropriate if you got that from him. I’m willing to tell you what I know about his father and mother from my own direct observation. And this has more relevance than you may think.” He paused. “What precisely did this anonymous client of yours hire you to do?”

“Find John Brown, Senior,” I said.

“I take it that isn’t his real name.”

“That’s right, it isn’t.”

“I’m not surprised,” Dineen said. “At the time I knew him, I did some speculating about him. It occurred to me he might be a remittance man – one of those ne’er-do-wells whose families paid them to stay away from home. I remember when his wife was delivered, Brown paid me with a hundred-dollar-bill. It didn’t seem to suit with their scale of living. And there were other things, his wife’s jewels, for example – diamonds and rubies in ornate gold settings. One day she came in here like a walking jewelry store.

“I warned her not to wear them. They were living out in the country, near the old Inn, and it was fairly raw territory in those days. Also, people were poor. A lot of them used to pay me for my services in fish. I had so much fish during the Depression I’ve never eaten it since. No matter. A public display of jewels was an incitement to robbery. I told the young lady so, and she left off wearing them, at least when I saw her.”

“Did you see her often?”

“Four or five times, I’d say. Once or twice before the boy was born, and several times afterwards. She was a healthy enough wench, no complications. The main thing I did for her was to instruct her in the care of an infant. Nothing in her background had prepared her for motherhood.”

“Did she talk about her background?”

“She didn’t have to. It had left marks on her body, for one thing. She’d been beaten half to death with a belt buckle.”

“Not by her husband?”

“Hardly. There had been other men in her life, as the phrase goes. I gathered that she’d been on her own from an early age. She was one of the wandering children of the thirties – quite a different sort from her husband.”

“How old was she?”

“I think nineteen or twenty, perhaps older. She looked older. Her experiences hadn’t hardened her, but as I said they left her unprepared for motherhood. Even after she was back on her feet, she needed a nurse to help her care for the child. Actually, she was a child herself in emotional development.”

“Do you remember the nurse’s name?”

“Let me see. I believe she was a Mrs. Kerrigan.”

“Or Culligan?”

“Culligan, that was it. She was a good young woman, fairly well trained. I believe she took off at the same time the Brown family did.”

“The Brown family took off?”

“They skipped, without a good-by or a thank-you to anybody. Or so it appeared at the time.”

“When was this?”

“A very few weeks after the child was born. It was close to Christmas Day of 1936, I think a day or two after. I remember it so distinctly because I’ve gone into it since with the sheriff’s men.”

“Recently?”

“Within the last five months. To make a long story short, when they were clearing the land for the Marvista tract, a set of bones were unearthed. The local deputy asked me to look them over to see what I could learn from them. I did so. They were human bones, which had probably belonged to a man of medium height, in his early twenties. It’s not unlikely, in my opinion, that they are John Brown’s bones. They were found buried under the house he lived in. The house was torn down to make way for the new road. Unfortunately, we had no means of making a positive identification. The skull was missing, which ruled out the possibility of dental evidence.”

“It rules in the possibility of murder.”

Dineen nodded gravely. “There’s rather more than a possibility of murder. One of the cervical vertebrae had been cut through by a heavy instrument. I’d say John Brown, if that is who he is, was decapitated with an ax.”