The Underground Man

chapter 8

The residential district called Canyon Estates had been almost depopulated. A few men were up on their roofs with running hoses and defiant expressions.

Two roads crossed at the mouth of the canyon, and Mrs. Broadhurst took the right-hand turn. The neighborhood changed abruptly. Black and Chicano children stood beside the road and watched us go by as if we were a procession of foreign dignitaries.

Mrs. Snow lived in an old stucco cottage on a street of old stucco cottages made almost beautiful by flowering jacaranda trees. Kelsey and I and Mrs. Broadhurst went to the door. Jean stayed in the Mercedes.

“I don’t trust myself,” she said.

Mrs. Snow was a quick-moving gray-haired woman wearing a fussy black outfit which looked as if she had dressed for the occasion. The eyes behind her rimless spectacles were dark, and hardened by anxiety.

“Mrs. Broadhurst! What brings you here?” Her voice hurried on as if she didn’t really want to know: “It’s very nice to see you. Won’t you come in?”

The door opened directly into the meager front room, and we went in. Mrs. Broadhurst introduced Kelsey and me. But Mrs. Snow’s scared eyes refused to look at us, resisting the notion that we were there at all. Which left her only Mrs. Broadhurst to deal with.

“Can I get you something, Mrs. Broadhurst? A nice cup of tea?”

“No thanks. Where’s Fritz?”

“I believe he’s in his room. The poor boy isn’t feeling too well.”

“He isn’t a boy,” Mrs. Broadhurst said.

His mother corrected her. “He is, emotionally. The doctor said he’s emotionally immature.”

She glanced quickly at Kelsey and me to see if we were picking this up. I sensed the beginning of a psychiatric copout.

“Get him out here,” Mrs. Broadhurst said.

“But he isn’t up to facing people now. He’s terribly upset.”

“What about?”

“The fire. He’s always been afraid of fire.” She gave Kelsey and me another seeking look. “Are you gentlemen from the police?”

“More or less,” I said. “I’m a detective. Mr. Kelsey is investigating the fire for the Forest Service.”

“I see.” Her small body seemed to grow smaller and at the same time denser and heavier. “I don’t know what kind of trouble Frederick is in, but I can assure you he isn’t responsible.”

“What kind of trouble is he in?” Kelsey said.

“I’m sure you know, or you wouldn’t be here. I don’t.”

“Then how do you know that he’s in trouble?”

“I’ve been looking after him for thirty-five years.” Her look turned inward, as if she was registering each of the thirty-five years and each of her son’s troubles.

Mrs. Broadhurst stood up. “We’re wasting time. If you won’t bring him out of his room, we’ll go in and talk to him there. I want to know where my grandson is.”

“Your grandson?” The little woman was appalled. “Has something happened to Ronald?”

“He’s missing. And Stanley is dead. He was buried with my spade.”

Mrs. Snow put her fingers to her mouth. A gold wedding band was sunk in the flesh of one finger like a scar.

“Buried in the garden?”

“No. At the top of the canyon.”

“And you think Frederick did this?”

“I don’t know.”

I said: “We were hoping your son could help us.”

“I see.” Her face brightened surprisingly, like the lights just before a power failure. “Why don’t I ask him? He isn’t afraid of me – I can get more out of him.”

Mrs. Broadhurst shook her head and started for the door that opened into the back of the house. Mrs. Snow danced out of her chair and intercepted her, backing into the doorway and talking quickly.

“Don’t go into his room, please. It hasn’t been cleaned, and Frederick isn’t himself. He’s in a bad state.”

Mrs. Broadhurst spoke in a guttural voice: “So is Stanley. So are we all.”

For the second or third time, she lost her balance and staggered a little. Her mouth was pulled to one side in a half-grin which seemed to call attention to some secret joke. Mrs. Snow, who moved and changed like mercury, was at her side in a moment, taking her arm and helping her into an old platform rocker.

“You’re feeling faint,” she said. “And I don’t wonder, if all these things are true. I’ll get you a glass of water. Or would you like a cup of tea after all?”

She sounded genuinely concerned. But I suspected she was also a master of delaying tactics. She’d hold us off for a week if we played along with her.

I pushed through the door into the kitchen and called her son by name. A muffled answer came through a further door which opened off the kitchen. I knocked on it and looked in. The air in the room smelled sweet and rotten.

All I could see at first were the narrow shafts of sunlight that came through the holes in the blind drawn over the window. They were thrust across the room like the swords of a magician probing a basket to demonstrate that his partner had disappeared. As if he would like to disappear indeed, the gardener crouched in the corner of the iron bed with his feet pulled up under him.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Fritz.”

“That’s all right.” His voice was hopeless.

I sat down on the foot of the bed facing him. “Did you take the spade and the pickax up the canyon?”

“Up the canyon?” he asked.

“To the Mountain House. Did you take them up there, Fritz?”

He considered his answer and finally said: “No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.” But his eyes shifted away from mine. He was a poor liar.

Moving as softly as a shadow, Kelsey appeared in the doorway. His large face was empty and waiting.

“The spade and pickax,” I said to Fritz, “were used to bury Stanley Broadhurst this morning. If you know who took the spade and pickax, you probably know who killed Stanley.”

He shook his head so hard that his face blurred. “He took them himself, when he came to get the key. He put them in the back of his convertible.”

“Is that true, Fritz?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” He crossed his breast with his finger.

“Why didn’t you tell us before about the spade and the pickax?”

“He told me not to.”

“Stanley Broadhurst told you not to?”

“Yessir.” He nodded profoundly. “He gave me a dollar and made me promise not to.”

“Did he say why?”

“He didn’t have to. He’s afraid of his mother. She doesn’t like people messing with her garden tools.”

“Did he tell you what he wanted the tools for?”

“He said that he was going to dig for arrowheads.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yessir.”

“And then he drove up the mountain in his car?”

“Yessir.”

“With the blond girl and the little boy?”

“Yessir.”

“Did the girl say anything to you?”

“No sir. Not then.”

“What do you mean, ‘not then’? Did she talk to you some other time?”

“No sir. She never did.”

But his eyes shifted away again. He peered at the swords of light thrust through the chinks in the blind as if they were in fact the probes of a rational universe finding him out.

“When did you see her again, Fritz?”

He was perfectly silent for a while. His eyes were the only living things in the room. His mother appeared in the doorway behind Kelsey.

“You have no right in there,” she said to me. “You’re violating his legal rights and nothing that he says can be used against him. In addition to which he’s non compos, and I can prove it over and over with medical facts.”

“You’re assuming he’s done something wrong, Mrs. Snow,” I said.

“You mean he hasn’t?”

“Not that I know of. Please go away and let me talk to him. He’s a very important witness.”