The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 5

The ship rose like a chalk cliff over the dock. Gulls circled above it, flashing in the late afternoon sunlight. I climbed the forward gangway unchallenged. The main deck was practically deserted.

A man in white coveralls was cleaning the bottom of an empty swimming pool with a long-handled vacuum brush. Most of the officers were ashore, he told me above the whine of his machine. Maybe the purser was still aboard. He directed me to his office.

It was an artificially lighted cubicle below decks, occupied by a moon-faced bald man wearing a white shirt and blue uniform trousers. He remembered Mr. Wycherly very well. Mr. Wycherly had occupied one of their best staterooms on the voyage just completed. I told him that I represented Mr. Wycherly.

“In what capacity?”

“I’m a private detective.”

He gave me a heavily insured look. “I’m sure Mr. Wycherly was satisfied with his accommodations. He shook my hand and thanked me before he left us yesterday.”

“There’s no beef about the ship,” I said. “It has to do with Mr. Wycherly’s daughter Phoebe. She came aboard to say goodbye the day you sailed. She hasn’t been seen since.”

He put his hand on top of his naked scalp as if I’d blown cold on him. “You’re not suggesting she stowed away or anything like that? Or that we’re in any way responsible?”

“It hardly seems likely. I’m trying to trace her, and this is the obvious place to start. I need your help.”

“We’ll be glad to help in any way we can, of course.” He stood up and gave me his hand, adding in a more personal tone: “I have a daughter. My name is Clement.”

“Archer.” I took out my notebook. “Now what was the date you sailed?”

“November second. That is to say, November second was the scheduled sailing date. We had a little mechanical trouble and didn’t actually get under way until early the following morning. But Mr. Wycherly came aboard on the afternoon of November second. His daughter was with him, as you say.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I remember the occasion very well,” Clement said. “I have reason to.”

“How so?”

“Well, there was quite a hullabaloo in Mr. Wycherly’s stateroom. This woman – apparently she was Mr. Wycherly’s divorced wife – was stirring up a dreadful fuss in front of some of the other passengers. The steward couldn’t quiet her, so he sent down for me. I’m afraid I couldn’t quite handle her, either. She was one of those big blonde furies, if you know what I mean. Bleached blonde,” he added snidely. “And very much in her cups. Eventually I had to get our master-at-arms to persuade her to leave the ship. The way that woman talked!” He threw up his hands.

“What was she saying?”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember her exact words. They wouldn’t be repeatable, anyway. You can imagine how I felt. We like our sailings to be gay affairs, and there she was in the middle of the festivities howling out obscenities. She’d taken off her shoe, and was hammering with the heel at Mr. Wycherly’s door. It left welts in the paint.”

“You must have some idea of what she said.”

“Well, she wanted in, of course. They wouldn’t let her in. She claimed that they were betraying her, turning their backs and leaving her in the lurch. She threatened to get back at them.”

“Just who was she threatening?”

“The people in the stateroom – Mr. Wycherly and his daughter, and I believe a couple of other relatives who’d come to see him off. She said she’d ruin them all if they didn’t let her in and talk to her.”

“Who were the other relatives?”

“I really couldn’t say. Quite a crowd had begun to gather round. When I remonstrated with the woman, she actually menaced me with the heel of her shoe. She looked at me like a basilisk, I mean it. Much as I hated to do it, I had no choice but to call in the master-at-arms. He managed to get her off the ship, with some help from the daughter.”

“Did Phoebe leave the ship with her mother?”

“I believe so. Once things were under control, more or less, the girl came out of the stateroom and talked to the woman. Apparently she said the right things. They walked down the gangway with their arms around each other.”

“Did the girl come back aboard?”

“I really didn’t notice. I always have so many things on my mind, sailing day. Mr. McEachern may be able to tell you. He’s our master-at-arms, and he kept a closer eye on the party than I did.”

“Is McEachern on the ship now?”

“He should be. He’s on duty.” Clement picked up an intramural telephone.

I talked to McEachern on the upper deck. He leaned on the rail, a rawboned slab of man in a petty-officer’s uniform. There was something nautical in his bearing, and something of the hotel dick.

“Sure I remember her,” he said. “The lady was looped, if you want my opinion. I don’t mean falling-down looped. She could probably walk a chalk-line and handle herself physically. But she had that varnished look they get when they’ve been drinking hard, maybe stayed up a couple of nights drinking. Some people it gives the fantods to.”

“Did it her?”

He spat into the oily water forty feet below. “She wasn’t making much sense there for a while. She called me every name in the book. The lady has a sensational vocabulary.”

“Did she threaten anybody with bodily harm?”

“You mean Mr. Wycherly?”

“The husband or the daughter. Anybody.”

“Not in my hearing. The purser said she made some threats before I got there. She was going to castrate all the males in sight. You never can tell whether to take that stuff seriously – I see a lot of hysterical drunks in my work, male and female. She calmed down all right when the girl came out and talked to her.”

“What did the girl say?”

“She said that she was sorry. They both said they were sorry.” McEachern grinned, and the wrinkles fanned out from his eyes. “They didn’t say what they were sorry about.”

“But they had some kind of reconciliation?”

“That’s right. They went ashore together. I followed along, just to make sure that everything was all right. The girl had a taxi waiting on the dock. I helped them into it–”

“Both of them?”

“Yeah, and they tooled away as though nothing had happened. So maybe,” he added hopefully, “it wasn’t such a bad split in the family after all. I wouldn’t want to be judged myself by what I say and do when I’m plastered. By the way, would you like a short snort? I have some very fine Scotch which I picked up in Hong Kong.”

“Thanks, I don’t have time. I’m wondering where the two of them tooled away to.”

“Let’s see.” He tipped back his peaked cap and tapped his forehead, listening to the repeated clunks with a certain amount of approval. “I think the girl said to take her back to the St. Francis.”

“What kind of a cab was it?”

“Yellow.”

“Can you describe the driver?”

“I can try. Heavy set, late thirties or so, black hair and dark eyes, large nose, heavy black beard – the kind you have to shave twice a day if you want to have a clean appearance.” His hand rasped on his chin. “He looked like an Italian or maybe an Armenian – I didn’t hear him say anything. Oh yeah, he had a triangular white scar on the side of his jaw, like a little arrowhead.”

“Which side of his jaw?” I asked him with a smile.

He touched the side of his face with his right hand, then used it to point at my face. “My right, his left. The left side of his jaw, just below the corner of his mouth. And he had bad teeth.”

“What was his mother’s maiden name? You have a talent for faces.”

“Faces are my bread and butter, chum. My main job is keeping the passengers in their own classes. Which means I learn two or three hundred faces every couple of months.”

“Speaking of passengers, how did you size up Homer Wycherly?”

“I scarcely ever saw him. He stayed in his cabin most of the voyage – even had most of his meals there. I don’t think he likes people. What gives with him and his family, anyway?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Incidentally, the purser tells me the ship didn’t sail on schedule last November.”

“No, one of the engines broke down. We were supposed to sail at four in the afternoon, but we didn’t clear the harbor until the next morning.”

“Did all the passengers stay aboard during the delay?”

“We asked them to. We didn’t know how long the repairs were going to take. A few of them went out to the dockside bars.”

“Did Wycherly?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Who could?”

“Maybe his steward. Let’s see, Sammy Green had that stateroom last trip. Sammy isn’t aboard, though.”

“Where is he?”

“Probably at home. I’ll see if I can find his address for you.”

McEachern disappeared into the bowels of the ship. I walked around the deck and imagined that I was taking a long sea voyage for my health. The presence of the city interfered with my fantasy. I could hear the traffic on the Embarcadero. Beyond it rose the peopled hills. Coit Tower was bright in the sunset. I turned my back on it and looked across the water, but Alcatraz floated there like a shabby piece of the city cut adrift.

McEachern came back with a slip of paper in his hand. “Sammy Green lives in East Palo Alto if you want to follow through on him.” He handed me the slip. “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“The girl,” I said.

“She’s long gone, isn’t she?”

“Too long.”

“You could try the cab-rank at the St. Francis. Some of those drivers follow the same routine month in and month out.”

His suggestion was a good one. The dispatcher in front of the St. Francis, an old man in an overcoat and a yellow cap marked “Agent,” recognized my driver from the description.

“I don’t know his name,” he said. “All the boys they call him Garibaldi, but that ain’t his name.”

“Where’s Garibaldi now?”

“I dunno. He isn’t one of my regulars, I see him maybe every two-three days. Any cab in the city, ’cepting the radio cabs, can line up here any time–”

I interrupted his flow of information: “Do you know where he lives?”

“I believe he told me once.” He tilted back his cap and scratched at his hairline. “Someplace down the Peninsula, South San Francisco maybe, or Daly City. Likely he’s gone home for supper. You can try and catch him here tomorrow.”

I said that I would do that, and left him my name and a dollar.

I took my car down the ramp into the underground garage. While I was there, I asked the cashier if they had any record of Phoebe’s car. So far as he knew, no green Volkswagen had been abandoned there in the month of November.

I crossed the street, dodging a cable car, and went into the St. Francis. The lobby was full of conventioneers with name-cards pinned to their lapels. A man named Dr. Herman Grupp with Martinis on his breath offered me his hand, then saw that I had no name-card and withdrew the offer. From snatches of conversation I heard, all about spines and supersonic therapy, I gathered that it was a chiropractors’ convention.

I had to stand in line at the black marble desk. One of four harassed clerks told me they were full up. It was hopeless to try to question him about Phoebe Wycherly.

I had to stand in line again at the telephone booths. Willie Mackey’s office didn’t answer. His answering service told me under compulsion that Willie was up in Marin on a case. He hadn’t left any number to call and his home number was unlisted, even if I was a dear old friend of Willie’s. I wasn’t exactly, but we had worked together two or three times.

I stepped out of the booth sweating and frustrated. A chiropractor elbowed in past me. His name was Dr. Ambrose Sylvan.

Just for fun, I did the obvious thing and looked up Mrs. Wycherly in the local telephone directories. Her name was in the second book I opened: Mrs. Catherine Wycherly, 507 Whiteoaks Drive, Atherton; with a Davenport number.

When Dr. Ambrose Sylvan had muscled his way out of the booth, I called the Davenport number. A zombie voice told me with recorded politeness that it had been disconnected.