The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 4

I drove back to the college and picked up Homer Wycherly. He was angry and frustrated. Most of the college people were out to lunch; the only person he’d been able to contact who even knew Phoebe by name was an assistant counsellor in the Dean of Women’s office. She knew of no particular reason why Phoebe had dropped out of school, and showed no particular excitement about it. Students were leaving without notice all the time.

Wycherly had an appointment with the Dean for later in the day. He asked me to drive him to the Boulder Beach Inn and when we got there invited me to have lunch with him. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 3 A.M. and I was glad to.

It was a big old-fashioned resort hotel, Spanish Mission in style, which stood in extensive gardens on the sea at the edge of town. The furnishings in Wycherly’s bungalow were like his life, heavy, expensive, and uncomfortable. The waiter who took our orders had a Swiss-German accent; the menu was in restaurant French.

“You haven’t told me what you found out,” Wycherly said when the waiter had left the room. “I presume you found out something.”

I told him in general what my three witnesses had said, suppressing the doubts I had about Bobby Doncaster. There was no point in turning an angry father loose on him. I wanted Bobby to stay in one place.

“The indications are,” I concluded, “that your daughter intended to come back here after a weekend in San Francisco. Something happened to change her mind.”

We were sitting in a window embrasure facing each other. Wycherly leaned forward and grasped my knee, letting me feel his weight. His hand was thick, with sun-bleached hairs sprouting like straw on the back of it. His leaning body gave an impression of heavy blind force which went strangely with the anxiety in his face:

“You suspect foul play, don’t you? Be honest with me now.”

“I can’t rule it out. Phoebe was last seen in a section of San Francisco where people have been killed for carfare. She was carrying a large amount of cash. I think you should get in touch directly with the San Francisco police.”

“I can’t. I simply can’t endure any more publicity. You don’t know what the papers did to us last spring when Catherine divorced me. Besides, I can’t believe that she’s been killed.” He removed his hand from my knee and applied it to his chest. “I feel, here, that my daughter is alive. I don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing, but I’m certain she’s alive.”

“The chances are she is. Still, it’s better to think and act as if she isn’t.”

“You expect me to abandon all hope?”

“I didn’t say that, Mr. Wycherly. I’ve barely started on the case. If you want me to carry on by myself, I’m willing.”

“That’s what I want. Definitely.”

The waiter knocked gently at the door. He brought in a loaded cart and set a table for us. Wycherly went to work on the food as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. He sweated as he ate.

I looked out the window, munching my steak. The grounds of the hotel, green as any oasis, sloped down to a sea wall against which the water seemed to brim. A pair of black-suited skin divers were braving the January sea, kicking up their fins like mating seals. Farther out, a few sails slanted in the wind.

I tried to imagine Wycherly’s voyage to the islands and countries that hung below the curve of the horizon. The South Pacific I remembered smelled of cordite and flame throwers; and Wycherly was a hard man to imagine anything about. He blabbed out his feelings freely but kept his essential self hidden – as hidden as his daughter was below the curve of time.

“Something else came up,” I said, “when I was talking to the roommate, Dolly Lang. Your daughter told her about some letters that were delivered to your house last spring. She was very disturbed about them, according to Dolly.”

He gave me a guarded look across the table. “What did the girl say?”

“I can’t reproduce it exactly. She was talking a blue streak and I didn’t take notes. I gather that these letters slandered your wife.”

“Yes. They made some unpleasant allegations.”

“Were they threatening letters?”

“I’d say so, in an indirect way.”

“Did they threaten Mrs. Wycherly?”

“They were a threat to all of us. They were addressed to the whole family – which is how Phoebe happened to see the first one.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Just the two. They came a day apart.”

“Why didn’t you bring them up before?”

“I didn’t think they were relevant, to the present situation.” But the thought of them pressed more sweat out on his forehead. He wiped it off with his napkin. “I didn’t know that Phoebe was especially upset about them.”

“She was. Her roommate said she blamed herself for them in some way.”

“How could that be?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I have no idea what she meant. Of course she was rather shocked when the first one came. She was home for the Easter break, and she happened to bring the mail up to the house that morning. The letter was addressed to The Wycherly Family, and naturally she opened it herself. Then she showed it to me. I tried to keep it from Catherine, but my sister Helen saw it and mentioned it at the breakfast table–”

I cut in on his anxious explanations: “Exactly what was in the letters?”

“They both said very much the same thing. I won’t smell up the air with it.”

“Did they accuse your wife of having an affair with another man?”

Wycherly picked up his knife and fork and brandished them over his clean plate. “Yes.”

“Did you take the accusation seriously?”

“I didn’t know what to think. The letters had a wild note to them. I suspected they were the work of a psychopathic mind. But I had to take them seriously.”

“Why?”

“They were just about the last straw in my marriage. Catherine blamed me for doing nothing about them. She was always blaming me for sins of omission. When actually I did everything possible to find out who was sending them and put a stop to it. I even hired a–” He compressed his lips.

“A detective?”

“Yes,” he admitted unwillingly. “A man named William Mackey, from San Francisco.”

“I know him slightly. What were his conclusions?”

“He didn’t come to any. Sheriff Hooper thought it was probably a disgruntled employee, or ex-employee. That didn’t shed much light. We have employees all over the valley, all over the state, and the employee turnover in our business is high.”

“Was there any extortion involved?”

“No. Money was never mentioned. As far as I could see, the object was sheer malice.”

“Was Phoebe singled out in them?”

“I don’t believe she was. No, she wasn’t. She wouldn’t even have known about them if she hadn’t happened to go to the mailbox that morning. I’m sure they had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“I’m not so sure. Were the letters locally mailed?”

“Yes, they were postmarked in Meadow Farms. That was one of the – well, alarming things about them. They were written by someone we knew – perhaps someone we saw every day. There was this vein of personal malice in them, which is why the Sheriff thought they came from an ex-employee.”

“Do you have any thoughts on his identity?”

“Not a one.”

“Who are your enemies?”

“I don’t believe I have any.”

He offered me his dismayed smile, which tried hard to be likable and wasn’t. I gave up hoping for much realism from him. He was a weak sad man in a bind, ready to bandage his ego with any rag of vanity he could muster.

“Who was the man referred to in the letters?”

His hand flexed slowly on the tablecloth, like a beached starfish. “I have no idea. He wasn’t named. He was probably sheer invention, anyway. Catherine and I had our differences, but–” He let the sentence expire, as if his heart wasn’t in it.

“How were the letters signed?”

“ ‘A Friend of the Family,’ with an interrogation mark ahead of it.”

“That’s Spanish punctuation.”

“So my sister Helen pointed out.”

“Were they handwritten?”

“No, all typewritten, including the signature. This Mackey fellow said he could probably trace the typewriter if I wanted to spend a lot of time and money. His time, my money. But the letters stopped coming, and I hated to have him poking around in our private affairs, so I took him off the case.”

“I’d like very much to see those letters. Where are they?”

“I got them back from Mackey and destroyed them. You can understand my feelings.”

He was ready to explain them to me, but I didn’t want to understand his feelings. I could end up baby-sitting with Wycherly instead of doing the job he’d hired me for. I stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“San Francisco, naturally.”

“What are you going to do in San Francisco?”

“I’ll find out when I arrive.” I looked at my watch: it was nearly two. “I should be able to get there before dark. One other thing, Mr. Wycherly. In the light of what you’ve told me about those letters, do you want to reconsider about giving me your ex-wife’s address?”

“I don’t have it,” he snapped. “In any case, I don’t want you talking to her under any circumstances. Give me your word on that.”

I gave him my word, with a mental reservation.

In the doorway I passed the waiter carrying a tray of French pastries. Wycherly looked at the tray with greedy, grief-stricken eyes.

I stopped in town at Imported Motors and got the license number of Phoebe’s car before I headed north. GL3741.