The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 1

Coming over the pass you can see the whole valley spread out below. On a clear morning, when it lies broad and colored under a white sky, with the mountains standing far back on either side, you can imagine it’s the promised land.

Maybe it is for a few. But for every air-conditioned ranchhouse with its swimming pool and private landing strip, there are dozens of tin-sided shacks and broken-down trailers where the lost tribes of the migrant workers live. And when you leave the irrigated areas you find yourself in gray desert where nobody lives at all. Only the oil derricks grow there, an abstract forest casting no shade. The steady pumps at their bases nod their heads like clockwork animals.

Meadow Farms lay on the edge of this rich and ugly desert. From a distance it was a typical lost valley city thrown down helter-skelter at the foot of barren-looking mountains and garnished with a little alkali dust. When I drove into it past the euphoric sign at the city limits, Fastest-Growing City in the Valley, I could see some differences. The main street was clean and freshly paved; the buildings along it included substantial new ones, and others going up; the people on the street had a hustling, prosperous look.

I stopped at a downtown corner for gas and information. When the leather-faced attendant had filled the tank of my car, I asked him the way to Homer Wycherly’s house. He pointed along the main street to the outskirts where oil tanks gleamed like stacks of minted silver in the sun:

“Straight on through town, you can’t miss it. It’s the big stone house on the side of the hill. I heard Mr. Wycherly just got back last night.”

“Back from where?”

“He took one of them luxury cruises to Australia and the South Seas. Been gone over two months. Myself, I got enough South Seas when I was in the Marines. You a friend of his?”

“I never met him.”

“I know him well, knew his old man before him.” He gave me and my car a quick once-over. It wasn’t a recent model, and neither was I. “If you’re selling, don’t waste your time on Mr. Wycherly. He’s a hard man to sell to.”

“Maybe I’ll buy something from him.” The man grinned. “You just did. I’m one of the outlets for Wycherly gas. That will be four-forty.”

I paid him and drove out of town past the silver tanks and a cracking station whose Disney towers smelled faintly of rotten eggs. The house stood high above the road at the top of a winding private drive. Its stone face was forbidding, like a castle built to dominate a countryside. From the old-fashioned verandah I could look down into the town and out across the valley.

A big man with wavy brown hair and a stomach answered the door. His hair was too uniformly brown for a man of his age: he probably had it dyed. He had a strong nose and a weak chin and a sort of in-between mouth. He wore imported-looking tweeds buttoned over his stomach. On his face he wore a home-grown expression of dismay.

“I’m Homer Wycherly. You must be Mr. Archer.”

I acknowledged that I was. His expression didn’t change much; it crinkled a bit around the mouth and eyes. It was the smile of a man who wanted to be liked and hadn’t always been.

“You made good time from Los Angeles. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

“I started out before dawn. You said on the phone the matter was urgent.”

“Very urgent indeed. But do come in.” He led me along a dim hallway under old deer heads into a sitting room, keeping up a stream of half-apologetic chatter: “I’m afraid I can’t offer anything much in the way of hospitality. I’ve just reopened the house, there isn’t a servant in the place. The fact is, I didn’t intend to come back here at all. I only did so on the off-chance that Phoebe might have come home.” He sniffed. “But Phoebe hasn’t.”

The sitting room had the closed musty atmosphere of a Victorian parlor. Some of the furniture was sheeted; the heavy drapes were closed against the morning. Wycherly turned on an overhead light, looked around at the effect with disapproval, and went to the windows. I was struck by the violent way he jerked at the draw-cord of the drapes. Like a man hanging a cat.

Sunlight poured in, migrating across the room to a small picture on the wall above the marble fireplace. Composed of blobs and splashes of raw color, it was one of those paintings which are either very advanced or very backward, I never can tell which. Wycherly looked at the painting as if it was a Rorschach test, and he had failed it.

“Some of my wife’s work.” He added to himself, “I’m going to have it taken down.”

“Is your wife the one who’s missing?”

“Heavens, no. It’s Phoebe. My only daughter. Sit down, Mr. Archer, let me explain the situation, if I can.” He subsided into a chair and waved me into another. “I found out yesterday when I returned to this country – I’ve been on a cruise – I found out that Phoebe had dropped out of school away back in November. No one seems to have seen her since that time. Naturally I’m worried sick.”

“What school?”

“Boulder Beach College. You’ve got to get her back for me, Mr. Archer. A girl of her tender years, with her protected upbringing–”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-one, but she’s a complete innocent.”

“Has she ever done this before – gone away without telling you where she was going?”

“She has not. Phoebe’s always been a well-conducted girl. She’s had her problems, of course, but there have been no problems between her and me. She’s always confided in me. We get along beautifully.”

“Who did she have problems with?”

“Her mother.” He glanced at the Rorschach painting over the mantel. His face became heavier and, duller. “But we won’t go into the subject of that.”

“I’d like to talk to Phoebe’s mother, if she’s available.”

“She isn’t,” he said flatly. “I don’t know where Catherine is and I’ll be frank to tell you I don’t care. She and I decided to go our separate ways last spring. There’s no point in rehashing the gory details. Our divorce had nothing to do with Phoebe’s disappearance.”

“There’s no chance that she’s with her mother?”

“No. After the spectacle Catherine made of herself–”

He compressed his mouth over the rest of the sentence. I waited, but he didn’t finish it.

“Exactly how long has Phoebe been gone? This is January the eighth. You say she left college in November. What time in November?”

“Early November. I haven’t been able to pin it down precisely. That’s your job. I did get Phoebe’s roommate on the phone last night – her ex-roommate. But she’s a rattlebrain.”

“Two months is a long time,” I said. “Is this your first attempt to have your daughter traced?”

“It’s not my fault. I’m not responsible.”

He rose in an angry pouncing movement, came up against magnetic lines of force which seemed to web the room and hem him in invisibly. He began to pace back and forth like a caged animal remembering jungle:

“You’ve got to understand, I’ve been out of the country. I didn’t even know about it till yesterday. I’ve been cruising around the Pacific while God knows what has been going on behind my back.”

“When did you see her last?”

“The day I sailed. She came up to San Francisco to bid me bon voyage. If I can trust what her roommate says, she never went back to Boulder Beach.” He stopped in his tracks, and turned to me with murky eyes. “I’m desperately afraid that something has happened to her. And I blame myself,” he added. “It really is my fault. I was thinking exclusively of myself when I embarked on that cruise. I was trying to put the whole wretched family trouble behind me. I deserted Phoebe in her hour of need.”

Whenever he mentioned her name, it came out soggy with emotion. I tried to dehydrate it a little:

“You’re melodramatizing a little bit, I think. When girls disappear, it’s generally for some good reason of their own. Every year thousands of young women leave their families, or their schools, or whatever they happen to be doing–”

“Without telling anyone of their plans?”

“That’s right. You’ve been out of the country, anyway. You wouldn’t know if she had tried to contact you.”

“I could always be reached in an emergency.”

“But maybe it wasn’t an emergency, to your daughter.”

“Let’s hope that’s the case.” He sat down heavily, as if his bout of emotion had exhausted him. “But what good reason could she possibly have for going away? A girl with her opportunities?”

“Opportunity is where you find it.” I looked around the mortuary room, and out the window to the little city and the wide empty valley. “Was Phoebe happy at home?”

He said defensively: “She spent very little time here in recent years. We always went to Tahoe for the summer, and of course she’s been going to school the rest of the year.”

“How was she doing at school?”

“Adequately, so far as I know. She had a little academic trouble last year, but that was resolved.”

“Tell me about it.”

“She had to leave Stanford. She didn’t flunk out, exactly, but it was suggested to us that she’d be more comfortable in a less competitive atmosphere. Which is why she transferred last fall to Boulder Beach. I wasn’t too happy about the transfer, since Stanford’s my alma mater.”

“How did your daughter feel about it?”

“Phoebe seemed to be keen on the change. I gathered that she’d found herself a boy friend at the new place.”

“What’s the boy friend’s name?”

“She called him Bobby, I think. Feminine psychology is not my forte, but she seemed to have quite a crush on this boy.”

“A fellow-student?”

“Yes. I know nothing about him, but I wasn’t displeased at the idea. She’d never taken much to boys in the past.”

Girls fall hard, I thought, when they fall for the first time at twenty-one. “Is she attractive?”

“I’d say so. Of course I’m a fond father.”

He produced an alligator wallet and flipped it open. Phoebe looked up at me through transparent plastic. She was attractive, but not in any ordinary fashion. Careless light-brown hair swirled around her head. She had great blue lamps of eyes. Her mouth was wide and straight, passionate in a kind of ingrown way. She looked like one of those sensitive girls who could grow up into beauty or into hard-faced spinsterhood. If she grew up at all.

“May I have this picture?”

“No,” her father said flatly. “It’s the best I have of her. I can let you have some others if you like.”

“I’ll probably need them.”

“I might as well look them up now, while we think of it.”

He left the room abruptly. I heard him going up the stairs two at a time, then banging around on the second floor. Something crashed and shook the ceiling.

Wycherly bothered me. He was a gentleman of the old school, as such things went in the sixties, but there was a violence in him that kept breaking out. He pounded down the stairs and flung the door open so that it rebounded against the wall. His face was an uneven crimson:

“Damn the woman, she’s taken all my pictures. She hasn’t left me a single one of Phoebe.”

“Who?”

“My wife. My ex-wife.”

“She must be quite fond of the girl after all.”

“Don’t you believe it. Catherine was never what you’d call a devoted mother. She took the pictures because she knew I valued them.”

“When did she take them?”

“I presume when she went to Reno. That was last April. I haven’t seen her but once since then. She shook the dust of Meadow Farms from her feet–”

“Is she still in Reno?”

“No. She simply went there for her precious divorce. I believe she’s living somewhere in the Bay area, I have no idea where.”

“You must have some idea. Aren’t you supporting her?”

“That’s handled by the lawyers.”

“Okay, give me the name of a lawyer who knows her address.”

“I will not.” He breathed at me like a bull, or at least a good fat steer. “I don’t want you making any attempt to contact Mrs. Wycherly. She’d simply confuse the issue, give you a completely false impression of Phoebe. Of both of us, for that matter. Catherine has a vile tongue.” His elastic lips bulged over a mouthful of words. To judge by his expression, they tasted bitter. “She said the most dreadful things.”

“When was this?”

“She came aboard the ship the day I sailed – forced her way into my cabin and attacked me. I had to have her removed.”

“Attacked you?”

“Verbally, she attacked me. And most unfairly. She accused me of leaving her penniless. Actually I was most generous with her – a hundred-thousand-dollar settlement, and ample alimony.”

“You say the divorce was in April?”

“It became final at the end of May.”

“Has Phoebe been seeing her mother since the divorce?”

“Absolutely not. Phoebe considered that Catherine had done us both a great wrong.”

“The divorce was Catherine’s idea, then?”

“Entirely. She hated me. She hated Meadow Farms. She had no regard for her own daughter, even. I know for a fact that after Catherine left here the two of them never met, except for that ugly moment in my cabin.”

“Phoebe was on the ship at the same time as her mother?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“Why ‘unfortunately’?”

“Phoebe was naturally shocked and horrified by the things my wife said. She did her best to calm her down, of course. She was really very good to her, I thought. Better than she deserved,” he added prissily.

“Did they leave the ship together?”

“Certainly not. I didn’t see them leave – frankly I was feeling under the weather after Catherine’s attack, and I didn’t venture out of the cabin again. But it’s unthinkable that Phoebe should have gone off with her mother. Quite unthinkable.”

“Did Phoebe have funds of her own? Could she have taken a plane or a train?”

“She could have, yes. As a matter of fact, I gave her quite a large amount that very day.” He went on in a self-justifying tone: “Her expenses at school had been running higher than she’d expected. She’d had to buy a car, and that put quite a dent in her allowance. I gave her an extra thousand to tide her over.”

“In cash, or by check?”

“Cash. I happened to be carrying a good deal of cash.”

“Where was she planning to go when she left the ship?”

“Back to the hotel. I had a suite at the St. Francis. I left it paid up a night in advance for her.”

“Was she driving her own car?”

“No. Her car was in the Union Square garage. She wanted to drive me to the dock herself, but I was afraid of getting caught in a traffic jam. I insisted we take a taxi.”

“Did she take the same taxi back to the hotel?”

“I presume so. She asked the driver to wait. Whether he did or not I can’t say.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He was a darkish fellow. That’s all I can remember. A small darkish fellow.”

“Negro?”

“No. More Mediterranean in type.”

“What kind of a taxi was it?”

Wycherly uncrossed and recrossed his thick tweeded thighs. “I’m afraid I don’t remember. I’m not a noticer.”

“Can you describe Phoebe’s car, or give me the license number?”

“I never actually saw her car. It’s some sort of a small imported model, I believe. She bought it secondhand in Boulder Beach.”

“I’ll find out there. Now what was Phoebe wearing?”

His gaze went up over my head, focusing on the plaster cornice just below the high ceiling. “A skirt and a sweater, both brown. A tan coat, kind of a polo coat. High-heeled brown shoes. Brown leather bag. Phoebe always dresses simply. No hat.”

I took out my pen and a little black leather notebook, turned to the first clean page, wrote ‘Phoebe Wycherly’ at the top of it, and under the name, ‘mother-Catherine,’ and ‘boy friend-Bobby,’ with a question mark. I listed her clothes.

“What are you writing?” Wycherly leaned towards me suspiciously. “Why have you written down Catherine’s name?”

“I’m practicing penmanship.”

The words slipped out. He was getting on my nerves.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“How dare you speak to me like that?”

“Sorry, but you’ve been crowding me, Mr. Wycherly. I can’t very well take on a case where whole lines of investigation are blocked off by the whim of my principal. I have to be free to follow the facts where they lead me.”

“But you’re working for me.”

“I haven’t taken your money yet.”

“Here.” He reached inside his coat, grinning at me fiercely, as if he felt a twinge of angina there. He slapped his hand with the alligator wallet. “How much?”

“It depends on how much of an effort you want. I usually work alone, but there are other people I can call in – men and organizations all over the country.”

“No. We’ll wait and see if that is indicated.”

“It’s your money. And your daughter. Have you considered using the police?”

“I talked it over last night with our local Sheriff. Hooper’s an old personal friend, he used to work for Father. It’s his opinion that we wouldn’t get much co-operation by simply filing a missing report. You have to have a crime, it appears, before you can stir up the animals.” His voice was bleak, and it didn’t change perceptibly when he added: “Sheriff Hooper recommended you.”

“That was nice of him.”

“He said you had a reputation for discretion. I hope it’s justified. I don’t want any publicity in this thing, and I’ve had a bad experience with private detectives so-called.”

“What happened?”

“We won’t go into it. It has nothing to do with the present matter.” He was holding his wallet like a poultice against his stomach. “How much do you want for a start?”

“Five hundred,” I said, doubling the usual amount.

Without any argument, he dealt ten fifties into my hand.

“This doesn’t buy me, you know. I consider myself free to follow the facts.”

He managed to smile in a lopsided way. “Within the bounds of discretion, certainly. I simply don’t want Catherine spreading poisonous lies about – well, about me, and Phoebe.”

“What sort of lies does she tell?”

“Please.” He raised his hand. “Catherine has taken up enough of our time. It’s Phoebe we’re interested in, after all.”

“All right, you say she came to the boat to see you off, and that’s the last you know of her whereabouts. What was the date?”

“The President Jackson sailed November the second. It brought me back to San Francisco yesterday. I tried to telephone Phoebe as soon as we docked. I’d been concerned at having no mail from her, though not so deeply concerned as I should have been. She’s always been a poor correspondent. You can imagine the shock I experienced when her roommate told me on the phone that she hadn’t been there for two months.”

“Wasn’t the roommate alarmed?”

“I believe she was. But she’d managed to convince herself, or been convinced, that Phoebe was with me. She thought, or said she thought, that Phoebe had decided at the last minute to go along on the cruise.”

“Had you discussed that possibility with Phoebe?”

“Yes, I had. I wanted her to come along. But she was just beginning her senior year at a new school, and she was eager to stay with it. Phoebe is a very serious girl.”

“And there was the boy friend.”

“Yes. I’m sure he entered into the picture.”

“What did Phoebe have to say about him?”

“Not very much. Presumably she’d known him less than two months. She only started at Boulder Beach in September.”

“I should be able to find out who he is from the roommate. Can you give me her name?”

“It’s Dolly Lang. I talked on the phone to both her and the landlady. They’re a pair of typical addlepated females who couldn’t seem to grasp the realities–”

“Landlady’s name?”

“I never did get it. No doubt you’ll find her on the premises. The address in Boulder Beach is 221 Oceano Avenue. I understand it’s near the campus. And while you’re out that way, you’ll probably want to talk to some of the people on campus who knew Phoebe – her teachers and advisers. I presume you’ll be going over to Boulder Beach today, there’s a good road through the mountains...”

He went on talking in a slightly frantic rhythm. I waited for him to run down. He was one of the managing sort who are better at telling other people what to do than doing anything for themselves.

I said when he had finished: “Why don’t you talk to the college people yourself? You’d probably get further with them than I could.”

“But I wasn’t planning to go over there today.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t drive. I detest driving. I simply don’t trust myself to do all the right things.”

“I don’t trust anybody else to do them.”

There was a silence between us, with a kind of stuffy intimacy involved in it. I realized dimly that we might just have exchanged our outlooks on life.

“Ride along with me if you like,” I said.