The Chill (15 page)

I knocked on his door.

“Let me handle them,” the other man said, as if he was expecting the police.

He stepped outside, a man of about my age, good-looking in a grayish way, with a thin face, narrow light eyes, a pugnacious chin. The mark of organization was on him, like an invisible harness worn under his conservative gray suit.

There was some kind of desperation in him, too. He didn’t even ask who I was before he said: “I’m Frederick Kincaid and you have no right to chivvy my son around. He has nothing to do with that girl and her crimes. She married him under false pretenses. The marriage didn’t last twenty-four hours. My son is a respectable boy—”

Alex stepped out and pulled at the older man’s arm. His face
was miserable with embarrassment. “You’d better come inside, Dad. This is Mr. Archer.”

“Archer, eh? I understand you’ve involved my son in this thing—”

“On the contrary, he hired me.”

“I’m firing you.” His voice sounded as if it had often performed this function.

“We’ll talk it over,” I said.

The three of us jostled each other in the doorway. Kincaid senior didn’t want me to come in. It was very close to turning into a brawl. Each of us was ready to hit at least one of the others.

I bulled my way into the room and sat down in a chair with my back to the wall. “What’s happened, Alex?”

“Dad heard about me on the radio. He phoned the Sheriff and found out where I was. The Sheriff called us over there just now. They found the murder gun.”

“Where?”

Alex was slow in answering, as though the words in his mouth would make the whole thing realer when he let them out. His father answered for him:

“Where she hid it, under the mattress of the bed in that little hut she’s been living in—”

“It isn’t a hut,” Alex said. “It’s a gatehouse.”

“Don’t contradict me, Alex.”

“Did you see the gun?” I said.

“We did. The Sheriff wanted Alex to identify it, which naturally he couldn’t do. He didn’t even know she had a gun.”

“What kind of a gun is it?”

“It’s a Smith and Wesson revolver, .38 caliber, with walnut grips. Old, but in pretty fair condition. She probably bought it at a pawn shop.”

“Is this the police theory?”

“The Sheriff mentioned the possibility.”

“How does he know it’s hers?”

“They found it under her mattress, didn’t they?” Kincaid talked like a prosecutor making a case, using it to bring his son into line. “Who else could have hidden it there?”

“Practically anybody else. The gatehouse was standing open last night, wasn’t it, Alex?”

“It was when I got there.”

“Let me do the talking,” his father said. “I’ve had more experience in these matters.”

“It hasn’t done you a hell of a lot of good. Your son is a witness, and I’m trying to get at the facts.”

He stood over me with his hands on his hips, vibrating. “My son has nothing whatever to do with this case.”

“Don’t kid yourself. He’s married to the girl.”

“The marriage is meaningless—a boyish impulse that didn’t last one full day. I’m having it annulled. It wasn’t even consummated, he tells me.”

“You can’t annul it.”

“Don’t tell me what I can do.”

“I think I will, though. All you can do is annul yourself and your son. There’s more to a marriage than sexual consummation or legal technicalities. The marriage is real because it’s real for Alex.”

“He wants out of it now.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true, isn’t it, Alex, you want to come home with me and Mother? She’s terribly worried about you. Her heart is kicking up again.” Kincaid was throwing everything but the kitchen sink.

Alex looked from him to me. “I don’t know. I just want to do what’s right.”

Kincaid started to say something, probably having to do with the kitchen sink, but I talked over him:

“Then answer another question or two, Alex. Was Dolly carrying a gun when she came running back to the gatehouse last night?”

“I didn’t see one.”

Kincaid said: “She probably had it concealed under her clothes.”

“Shut up, Kincaid,” I said calmly from my sitting position. “I don’t object to the fact that you’re a bloodless bastard. You obviously can’t help it. I do object to your trying to make Alex into one. Leave him a choice, at least.”

Kincaid sputtered a couple of times, and walked away from me. Alex said without looking at either of us: “Don’t talk to my father that way, Mr. Archer.”

“All right. She was wearing a cardigan and a blouse and skirt. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Carrying a bag?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Think.”

“She wasn’t.”

“Then she couldn’t have been carrying a concealed .38 revolver. You didn’t see her hide it under the mattress?”

“No.”

“And were you with her all the time, between the time she got back and the time she left for the nursing home?”

“Yes. I was with her all the time.”

“Then it’s pretty clear it isn’t Dolly’s gun, or at least it wasn’t Dolly who hid it under the mattress. Do you have any idea who it could have been?”

“No.”

“You said it was the murder gun. How did they establish that? They haven’t had time for ballistics tests.”

Kincaid spoke up from the far corner where he had been sulking: “It’s the right caliber to fit the wound, and one shell had been fired, recently. It stands to reason it’s the gun she used.”

“Do you believe that, Alex?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have they questioned her?”

“They intend to. The Sheriff said something about waiting until they nailed it down with ballistic evidence, Monday.”

That gave me a little time, if I could believe Alex. The pressures of the night and morning, on top of the uncertainties of the last three weeks, had left him punchy. He looked almost out on his feet.

“I think we all should wait,” I said, “before we make up our minds about your wife. Even if she’s guilty, which I very strongly doubt, you owe her all the help and support you can give her.”

“He owes her nothing,” Kincaid said. “Not a thing. She married him fraudulently. She lied to him again and again.”

I kept my voice and temper down, for contrast. “She still needs medical care, and she needs a lawyer. I have a good local lawyer waiting to step in, but I can’t retain him myself.”

“You’re taking quite a lot into your hands, aren’t you?”

“Somebody has to assume responsibility. There’s a lot of it floating around loose at the moment. You can’t avoid it by crawling into a hole and pulling the hole in after you. The girl’s in trouble, and whether you like it or not she’s a member of your family.”

Alex appeared to be listening. I didn’t know if he was hearing me. His father shook his narrow gray head:

“She’s no member of my family, and I’ll tell you one thing for certain. She’s not going to drag my son down into the underworld. And neither are you.” He turned to Alex. “How much have you already paid this man?”

“A couple of hundred.”

Kincaid said to me: “You’ve been amply paid, exorbitantly paid. You heard me fire you. This is a private room and if you persist in intruding I’ll call the management. If they can’t handle you I’ll call the police.”

Alex looked at me and lifted his hands, not very far, in a
helpless movement. His father put an arm around his shoulders:

“I’m only doing what’s best for you, son. You don’t belong with these people. Well go home and cheer up Mother. After all you don’t want to drive her into her grave.”

It came out smooth and pat, and it was the clincher. Alex didn’t look at me again. I went back to my own room and phoned Jerry Marks and told him I had lost a client and so had he. Jerry seemed disappointed.

A
LEX AND HIS FATHER
vacated their room and drove away. I didn’t go out to see them off but I could hear the sound of their engines, quickly muffled by the fog. I sat and let my stomach unknot, telling myself I should have handled them better. Kincaid was a frightened man who valued his status the way some previous generations valued their souls.

I drove up Foothill to the Bradshaw house. The Dean was probably another breakable reed, but he had money, and he had shown some sympathy for Dolly, over and above his official interest in the case. I had no desire to continue it on my own. I needed a principal, preferably one who swung some weight locally. Alice Jenks met this requirement, more or less, but I didn’t want her for a client.

A deputy was standing guard at the gatehouse. He wouldn’t let me in to look around but he didn’t object to my going up to the main house. The Spanish woman Maria answered the door.

“Is Dr. Bradshaw home?”

“No sir.”

“Where can I find him?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I think Mrs. Bradshaw said he’s gone for the weekend.”

“That’s queer. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“I’ll see if she’s busy.”

I stepped inside uninvited and sat on a gilt chair in the entrance hall while Maria went upstairs. She came down and told me that Mrs. Bradshaw would be with me shortly.

It was at least half-an-hour before she came limping down. She had primped her gray head and rouged her cheeks and put on a dress with lace at her slack throat held in place by a diamond brooch. I wondered, as she made me the dubious gift of her hand, if all this had been done for my benefit.

The old lady seemed glad to see me. “How are you, Mr. —it’s Mr. Archer, isn’t it? I’ve been so hoping somebody would call. This fog makes one feel so isolated, and with my driver gone—” She seemed to hear the note of complaint rising in her voice, and cut it off. “How is the girl?” she said briskly.

“She’s being taken care of. Dr. Godwin thinks she’s better than she was last night.”

“Good. You’ll be glad to know,” she said with a bright ironic stare, “that I’m somewhat better myself than I was last night. My son informed me this morning that I staged one of my exhibitions, as he calls them. Frankly, I was upset. Nights aren’t my best season.”

“It was a rough night for everybody.”

“And I’m a selfish old woman. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“People don’t seem to change much as they get older.”

“That has all the earmarks of an insult.” But she was smiling, almost flirtatiously. “You imply that I’ve always been this way”

“You’d know better than I would.”

She laughed outright. It wasn’t a joyous sound, but there was humor in it. “You’re a bold young man, and a bright one. I like
bright young men. Come into the study and I’ll see that you get a drink.”

“Thank you, but I can’t stay—”

“Then I’ll sit here.” She lowered herself carefully onto the gilt chair. “My moral qualities may not have altered for the worse. My physical capabilities certainly have. This fog is very bad for my arthritis.” She added, with a gingerly shake of her head: “But I mustn’t complain. I promised my son, in penance for last night, that I would go through an entire day without uttering a word of complaint.”

“How are you doing?”

“Not so well,” she said with her wry and wrinkled smile. “It’s like solitaire, you always cheat a little. Or don’t you?”

“I don’t play the game.”

“You’re not missing a great deal, but it helps to pass the days for me. Well, I won’t keep you if you have business.”

“I have business with Dr. Bradshaw. Do you know where I can contact him?”

“Roy flew to Reno this morning.”

“Reno?”

“Not to gamble, I assure you. He hasn’t an iota of gambling instinct. In fact I sometimes think he’s excessively cautious. Roy is a bit of a mother’s boy, wouldn’t you say?” She looked up at me with complex irony, unembarrassed by his condition or her complicity in it.

“I’m a little surprised that he’d go away in the middle of this murder case.”

“So was I, but there was no stopping him. He isn’t exactly running away from it. They’re holding a conference of small-college deans at the University of Nevada. It’s been planned for months, and Roy is slated as one of the principal speakers. He felt it was his duty to be there. But I could see very well that he was eager to go. He loves the public eye, you know—he’s always been a bit of an actor—but he isn’t so terribly fond of the responsibilities that go with it.”

I was amused and intrigued and a little appalled by her realism. She seemed to be enjoying it herself. Conversation was better than solitaire.

Mrs. Bradshaw rose creakingly and leaned on my arm. “You might as well come into the study. It’s drafty here. I’ve taken a fancy to you, young man.”

I didn’t know if this was a blessing or a curse. She grinned up into my face as if she could read my doubts there. “Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.” She placed the emphasis on the final word, as though she had already eaten her son for breakfast.

We went into the study together and sat in facing high-backed leather chairs. She rang for Maria and ordered me a highball. Then she leaned back and scanned the bookshelves. The phalanxes of books seemed to remind her of Bradshaw’s importance.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I love my son profoundly and I’m proud of him. I’m proud of his good looks and I’m proud of his brains. He graduated
summa cum laude
from Harvard and went on to take a most distinguished doctorate. One of these days he’s going to be the president of a major university or a great foundation.”

“Is he ambitious, or are you?”

“I used to be, for him. As Roy became more ambitious, I became less so. There are better things in life than climbing an endless ladder. I haven’t entirely given up hope that he’ll marry.” She cocked a bright old eye at me. “He
likes
women, you know.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“In fact I was beginning to persuade myself that he was interested in Miss Haggerty. I’ve never known him to pay so much attention to any other woman.” She dropped the statement so that it became a question.

“He mentioned to me that he took her out several times. But he also said that they were never close in any way. His reaction to her death confirmed that.”

“What was his reaction to her death?”