The Galton Case

Chapter 13

IT WAS past five when I got to Redwood City. The commuting trains were running south every few minutes. The commuters in their uniforms, hat on head, briefcase in hand, newspaper under arm, marched wearily toward their waiting cars. The cop on traffic duty at the station corner told me how to get to Sherwood Drive.

It was in a junior-executive residential section, several cuts above the Marvista tract. The houses were set further apart, and differed from each other in architectural detail. Flowers bloomed competitively in the yards.

A bicycle lay on the grass in front of the Matheson house. A small boy answered my knock. He had black eyes like his mother’s, and short brown hair which stuck up all over his head like visible excitement.

“I was doing pushups,” he said, breathing hard. “You want my daddy? He ain’t, I mean, he isn’t home from the city yet.”

“Is your mother home?”

“She went to the station to get him. They ought to be back in about eleven minutes. That’s how old I am.”

“Eleven minutes?”

“Eleven years. I had my birthday last week. You want to see me do some pushups?”

“All right.”

“Come in, I’ll show you.”

I followed him into a living-room which was dominated by a large brick fireplace with a raised hearth. Everything in the room was so new and clean, the furniture so carefully placed around it, that it seemed forbidding. The boy flung himself down in the middle of the green broadloom carpet:

“Watch me.”

He did a series of pushups, until his arms collapsed under him. He got up panting like a dog on a hot day:

“Now that I got the knack, I can do pushups all night if I want to.”

“You wouldn’t want to wear yourself out.”

“Shucks, I’m strong. Mr. Steele says I’m very strong for my age, it’s just my co-ordination. Here, feel my muscle.”

He pulled up the sleeve of his jersey, flexed his biceps, and produced an egg-sized lump. I palpated this:

“It’s hard.”

“That’s from doing pushups. You think I’m big for my age, or just average?”

“A pretty fair size, I’d say.”

“As big as you when you were eleven?”

“Just about.”

“How big are you now?”

“Six feet or so.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“About one-ninety.”

“Did you ever play football?”

“Some, in high school.”

“Do you think, will I ever get to be a football player?” he said wistfully.

“I don’t see why not.”

“That’s my ambition, to be a football player.”

He darted out of the room and was back in no time with a football which he threw at me from the doorway.

“Y. A. Tittle,” he said.

I caught the ball and said: “Hugh McElhenny.”

This struck him as very funny. He laughed until he fell down. Being in position, he did a few pushups.

“Stop it. You’re making me tired.”

“I never get tired,” he bragged exhaustedly. “When I get through doing pushups, I’m going to take a run around the block.”

“Don’t tell me. It wears me out.”

A car turned into the driveway. The boy struggled to his feet:

“That’s Mummy and Daddy now. I’ll tell them you’re here, Mr. Steele.”

“My name is Archer. Who’s Mr. Steele?”

“My coach in the Little League. I got you mixed up with him, I guess.”

It didn’t bother him, but it bothered me. It was a declaration of trust, and I didn’t know what I was going to have to do to his mother.

She came in alone. Her face hardened and thinned when she saw me:

“What do you want? What are you doing with my son’s football?”

“Holding it. He threw it to me. I’m holding it.”

“We were making like Forty-niners,” the boy said. But the laughter had gone out of him.

“Leave my son alone, you hear me?” She turned on the boy: “James, your father is in the garage. You can help him bring in the groceries. And take that football with you.”

“Here.” I tossed him the ball. He carried it out as if it was made of iron. The door closed behind him. “He’s a likely boy.”

“A lot you care, coming here to badger me. I talked to the police this morning. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“I think you want to, though.”

“I can’t. My husband – he doesn’t know.”

“What doesn’t he know?”

“Please.” She moved toward me rapidly, heavily, almost as though she was falling, and grasped my arm. “Ron will be coming in any minute. You won’t force me to talk in front of him?”

“Send him away.”

“How can I? He wants his dinner.”

“You need something from the store.”

“But we just came from the store.”

“Think of something else.”

Her eyes narrowed to two black glittering slits. “Damn you. You come in here disrupting my life. What did I do to bring this down on me?”

“That’s the question that needs answering, Mrs. Matheson.”

“Won’t you go away and come back later?”

“I have other things to do later. Let’s get this over with.”

“I only wish I could.”

The back door opened. She pulled away from me. Her face smoothed out and became inert, like the face of someone dying.

“Sit down,” she said. “You might as well sit down.”

I sat on the edge of an overstuffed chesterfield covered with hard shiny green brocade. Footsteps crossed the kitchen, and paper rustled. A man raised his voice:

“Marian, where are you?”

“I’m in here,” she said tightly.

Her husband appeared in the doorway. Matheson was a thin small man in a gray suit who looked about five years younger than his wife. He stared at me through his glasses with the belligerence of his size. It was his wife he spoke to:

“I didn’t know you had a visitor.”

“Mr. Archer is Sally Archer’s husband. You’ve heard me speak of Sally Archer, Ron.” In spite of his uncomprehending look, she rushed on: “I promised to send her a cake for the church supper, and I forgot to bake it. What am I going to do?”

“You’ll have to skip it.”

“I can’t. She’s depending on me. Ron, would you go downtown and bring me a cake for Mr. Archer to take to Sally? Please?”

“Now?” he said with disgust.

“It’s for tonight. Sally’s waiting for it.”

“Let her wait.”

“But I can’t. You wouldn’t want it to get around that I didn’t do my share.”

He turned out his hands in resignation. “How big a cake does it have to be?”

“The two-dollar size will do. Chocolate. You know the bakery at the shopping center.”

“But that’s way over on the other side of town.”

“It’s got to be good, Ron. You don’t want to shame me in front of my friends.”

Some of her real feeling was caught in the words. His eyes jabbed at me and returned to her face, searching it:

“Listen, Marian, what’s the trouble? Are you okay?”

“Certainly I’m okay.” She produced a smile. “Now run along like a good boy and bring me that cake. You can take Jimmy with you, and I’ll have supper ready when you get back.”

Matheson went out, slamming the door behind him in protest. I heard his car engine start, and sat down again:

“You’ve got him well trained.”

“Please leave my husband out of this. He doesn’t deserve trouble.”

“Does he know the police were here?”

“No, but the neighbors will tell him. And then I’ll have to do some more lying. I hate this lying.”

“Stop lying.”

“And let him know I’m mixed up in a murder? That would be just great.”

“Which murder are you talking about?”

She opened her mouth. Her hand flew up to cover it. She forced her hand down to her side and stood very still, like a sentinel guarding her hearth.

“Culligan’s?” I said. “Or the murder of John Brown?”

The name struck her like a blow in the mouth. She was too shaken to speak for a minute. Then she gathered her forces and straightened up and said:

“I don’t know any John Brown.”

“You said you hated lying, but you’re doing it. You worked for him in the winter of 1936, looking after his wife and baby.”

She was silent. I brought out one of my pictures of Anthony Galton and thrust it up to her face:

“Don’t you recognize him?”

She nodded resignedly. “I recognize him. It’s Mr. Brown.”

“And you worked for him, didn’t you?”

“So what? Working for a person is no crime.”

“Murder is the crime we’re talking about. Who killed him, Marian? Was it Culligan?”

“Who says anybody killed him? He pulled up stakes and went away. The whole family did.”

“Brown didn’t go very far, just a foot or two underground. They dug him up last spring, all but his head. His head was missing. Who cut it off, Marian?”

The ugliness rose like smoke in the room, spreading to its far corners, fouling the light at the window. The ugliness entered the woman and stained her eyes. Her lips moved, trying to find the words that would exorcise it. I said:

“I’ll make a bargain with you, and keep it if I can. I don’t want to hurt your boy. I’ve got nothing against you or your husband. I suspect you’re material witness to a murder. Maybe the law would call it accessory–”

“No.” She shook her head jerkily. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe not. I’m not interested in pinning anything on you. If you’ll tell me the whole truth as you know it, I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. But it has to be the whole truth, and I have to have it now. A lot depends on it.”

“How could a lot depend, after all these years?”

“Why did Culligan die, after all these years? I think that the two deaths are connected. I also think that you can tell me how.”

Her deeper, cruder personality rose to the surface. “What do you think I am, a crystal ball?”

“Stop fooling around,” I said sharply. “We only have a few minutes. If you won’t talk to me alone, you can talk in front of your husband.”

“What if I refuse to talk at all?”

“You’ll be having another visit from the. cops. It’ll start here and end up at the courthouse. And everybody west of the Rockies will have a chance to read all about it in the papers. Now talk.”

“I need a minute to think.”

“You’ve had it. Who murdered Brown?”

“I didn’t know he was murdered, not for sure. Culligan wouldn’t let me go back to the house after that night. He said the Browns moved on, bag and baggage. He even tried to give me money he said they left for me.”

“Where did he get it?”

After a silence, she blurted: “He stole it from them.”

“Did he murder Brown?”

“Not Culligan. He wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“Who did?”

“There was another man. It must have been him.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

“I hardly remember. I only saw him the once, and it was at night.”

Her story was turning vague, and it made me suspicious. “Are you sure the other man existed?”

“Of course he did.”

“Prove it.”

“He was a jailbird,” she said. “He escaped from San Quentin. He used to belong to the same gang Culligan did.”

“What gang is that?”

“I wouldn’t know. It broke up long before I married Culligan. He never talked about his gang days. I wasn’t interested.”

“Let’s get back to this man who broke out of ‘Q.’ He must have had a name. Culligan must have called him something.”

“I don’t remember what.”

“Try harder.”

She looked toward the window. Her face was drawn in the tarnished light.

“Shoulders. I think it was Shoulders.”

“No last name?”

“Not that I remember. I don’t think Culligan ever told me his last name.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big man, dark-haired. I never really saw him, not in the light.”

“What makes you think he murdered Brown?”

She answered in a low voice, to keep her house from hearing: “I heard them arguing that night, in the middle of the night. They were sitting out in my car arguing about money. The other man – Shoulders – said that he’d knock off Pete, too, if he didn’t get his way. I heard him say it. The walls of the shack we lived in were paper thin. This Shoulders had a kind of shrill voice, and it cut through the walls like a knife. He wanted all the money for himself, and most of the jewels.

“Pete said it wasn’t fair, that he was the finger man and should have an equal split. He needed money, too, and God knows that he did. He always needed money. He said that a couple of hot rubies were no good to him. That was how I guessed what happened. Little Mrs. Brown had these big red jewels, I always thought they were glass. But they were rubies.”

“What happened to the rubies?”

“The other man took them, he must of. Culligan settled for part of the money, I guess. At least he was flush for a while.”

“Did you ever ask him why?”

“No. I was afraid.”

“Afraid of Culligan?”

“Not him so much.” She tried to go on, but the words stuck in her throat. She plucked at the skin of .her throat as if to dislodge them. “I was afraid of the truth, afraid he’d tell me. I didn’t want to believe what happened, I guess. That argument I heard outside our house – I tried to pretend to myself it was all a dream. I was in love with Culligan in those days. I couldn’t face my own part in it.”

“You mean the fact that you didn’t take your suspicions to the police?”

“That would have been bad enough, but I did worse. I was the one responsible for the whole thing. I’ve lived with it on my conscience for over twenty years. It was all my fault for not keeping my loud mouth shut.” She gave me an up-from-under look, her eyes burning with pain: “Maybe I ought to be keeping it shut now.”

“How were you responsible?”

She hung her head still lower. Her eyes sank out of sight under her black brows. “I told Culligan about the money,” she said. “Mr. Brown kept it in a steel box in his room. I saw it when he paid me. There must have been thousands of dollars. And I had to go and mention it to my hus– to Culligan. I would have done better to go and cut my tongue out instead.” She raised her head, slowly, as if she was balancing a weight. “So there you have it.”

“Did Brown ever tell you where he got the money?”

“Not really. He made a joke about it – said he stole it. But he wasn’t the type.”

“What type was he?”

“Mr. Brown was a gentleman, at least he started out to be a gentleman. Until he married that wife of his. I don’t know what he saw in her outside of a pretty face. She didn’t know from nothing, if you ask me. But he knew plenty, he could talk your head off.”

She gasped. The enormity of the image struck her. “God! They cut his head off?” She wasn’t asking me. She was asking the dark memories flooding up from the basement of her life.

“Before death or after, we don’t know which. You say you never went back to the house?”

“I never did. We went back to San Francisco.”

“Do you know what happened to the rest of the family, the wife and son?”

She shook her head. “I tried not to think about them. What did happen to them?”

“I’m not sure, but I think they went east. The indications are they got away safe, at any rate.”

“Thank God for that.” She tried to smile, and failed. Her eyes were still intent on the guilty memory. She looked at the walls of her living-room as if they were transparent. “I guess you wonder what kind of a woman I am, that I could run out on a patient like that. Don’t think it didn’t bother me. I almost went out of my mind for a while that winter. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and listen to Culligan’s breathing and wish it would stop. But I stuck to him for five more years after that. Then I divorced him.”

“And now he’s stopped breathing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You could have hired a gun to knock him off. He was threatening to make trouble for you. You have a lot to lose.” I didn’t believe it, but I wanted to see what she would make of it.

Her two hands went to her breasts and grasped them cruelly. “Me? You think I’d do that?”

“To keep your husband and son, you would. Did you?”

“No. For God’s sake, no.”

“That’s good.”

“Why do you say that?” Her eyes were dull with the sickness of the past.

“Because I want you to keep what you have.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“I’m going to, though. I’m going to keep you out of the Culligan case. As for the information you’ve given, me, I’m going to use it for private reference only. It would be easier for me if I didn’t–”

“So you want to be paid for your trouble, is that it?”

“Yes, but not in money. I want your confidence, and any other information you can give me.”

“But there isn’t any more. That’s all there is.”

“What happened to Shoulders?”

“I don’t know. He must of got away. I never heard of him again.”

“Culligan never mentioned him?”

“No. Honest.”

“And you never brought the subject up?”

“No. I was too much of a coward.”

A car entered the driveway. She started, and went to the window. The light outside was turning dusky gray. In the yard across the street, red roses burned like coals. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, as if she wanted to wipe out all her past experiences, live innocent in an innocent world.

The little boy burst through the door. Matheson came at his heels, balancing a cake box in his hands.

“Well, I got the darn thing.” He thrust it into my hands.

“That takes care of the church supper.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said brusquely, and turned to his wife: “Is supper ready? I’m starved.”

She stood on the far side of the room, cut off from him by the ugliness. “I didn’t make supper.”

“You didn’t make it? What is this? You said you’d have it ready when I got home.”

Hidden forces dragged at her face, widening her mouth, drawing deep lines between her eyes. Suddenly her eyes were blind with tears. The tears ran in the furrows of her face. Sobbing, she sat on the edge of the hearth like an urchin on a curb.

“Marian? What’s the mater? What’s the trouble, kiddie?”

“I’m not a good wife to you.”

Matheson went across the room to her. He sat on the hearth beside her and took her in his arms. She buried her face in his neck.

The boy started toward them, and then turned back to me. “Why is Mother crying?”

“People cry.”

“I don’t,” he said.