The Wycherly Woman

by Ross Macdonald

  “God damn it,” she said in a very young voice. “I gave up praying when I was a kid. For Lent. I took it up again last November. I prayed every night for two months. And Phoebe is dead anyway. There is no God.”

  I said she could be right, she could be wrong. If there was a God, He worked in mysterious ways. Like people. She turned away from me and my platitudes and leaned on the door, her forehead against the wood. Her hand was on the doorknob. She seemed to lack the will or strength to turn it.

  “I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you,” I said. “Still it’s better than reading it in the newspapers.”

  “Yes. Thank you. How did she die?”

  “We don’t know yet. But she’s been dead for two months.” I touched her shoulder. “Will you do one other thing for me?”

  “If I can. I don’t feel well.”

  “Just let me use your phone.”

  “But my roommate’s sleeping. She hates when I wake her up.”

  “I’ll keep my voice down.”

  “All right.”

  She let me in. A girl with pull-taffy hair lay huddled under a blanket on the studio bed. The telephone stood on the desk beside the big old typewriter. The same half-filled sheet of typescript was in the machine. I sat in front of it and reread Dolly’s unfinished sentence:

  “Many authorities say that socio-economic factors are predominate in the origins of antisocial behavior, but others are of the opinion that lack of love” …

  The e’s were out of alignment. The e’s were out of alignment, and it was an old Royal typewriter. I took out the letters that Willie Mackey had given me and made a quick comparison. They checked. Homer Wycherly’s original letter to Mackey, the threatening letters, and Dolly’s essay, had all been written on the same typewriter. This one.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered at my ear.

  “I just discovered something. Where did you get this typewriter?”

  “Phoebe lent it to me. When she didn’t come back, I went on using it. Is that all right?”

  “It was until now. I’m going to have to take it with me now.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s a clue,” I said. “Do you know where Phoebe got hold of it?”

  “No. It’s an old one, though, it must be twenty years old. She must have bought it secondhand. But that isn’t like Phoebe. She bought things new.”

  The girl on the studio bed turned over and called in a sleep-filled voice: “What are you doing, Dolly? Go to bed.”

  “You go back to sleep.”

  The girl turned her face to the wall and complied.

  “What does the clue mean?” Dolly said.

  “I couldn’t begin to guess.” I glanced up at her tense small face: she looked like a bunny after a hard Easter. “Why don’t you settle down now and take your friend’s advice. Warm yourself some milk and drink it down like a good girl and by that time I’ll be out of here. You can get some sleep.”

  “I guess it’s worth trying,” she said in a doubtful voice. She went into the kitchen and rattled pans.

  I dialled the long-distance operator and told her: “This is Robert Doncaster. I had a person call from Palo Alto last evening shortly before six. Can you tell me what number in Palo Alto the call was placed from?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have a record of that. On incoming calls, we only keep a record of the numbers called at this end.”

  “Is there any way I can find out who called me?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ll put you in touch with my supervisor.”

  There was a click and a wait. An older, brisker, female voice said: “This is the long-distance supervisor. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so. This is Robert Doncaster speaking. I received a person call from Palo Alto at this number around six o’clock last evening. I’m trying to find out what number called me.”

  “Was it a direct-dial call? If so, we have no way of knowing.”

  “It was handled by an operator,” I said.

  “In that case, Palo Alto will have a record of it.”

  “Can you get the number from them?”

  “We don’t do that except in case of emergency.”

  “This is a very serious emergency.”

  She took my word for it. “Very well, I can try. What was your name again, sir?”

  “Robert Doncaster.”

  “And the number?” I read it to her off the dial.

  “Do you wish me to call you back, or will you hold?”

  “I’ll hold on, thanks.”

  I sat and listened to faint fragments of conversation dangling at the verge of intelligibility; names of places, Portland, Salt Lake City; wisps of thought in the great empty mind of the night. The brisk voice drowned them out:

  “I have your number, Mr. Doncaster. It’s Davenport 93489 in Palo Alto.”

  “Whose number is it?”

  “We don’t give out that information even in an emergency.

  The Palo Alto office might tell you if you contacted them in person. That would be up to them.” She added: “Or you could call the number.”

  “Of course. Do that, will you?”

  The early-morning circuits were open, and the call went through right away. The telephone at the other end of the line rang in its unknown place. It rang sixteen times.

  “I’m sorry, sir, your party does not answer. Do you wish me to call again later?”

  “I’ll call again later. Thank you.”

  I made a note of the number and got up to go. Dolly appeared in the kitchen doorway. She had a steaming cup in her hand, and a white milk moustache on her upper lip.

  “Good night,” I said. “No dreams. But don’t stop praying.”

  She slumped into beat position, and made herself look like a maltreated idiot child. “What’s the use of praying?”

  “It keeps the circuits open. Just in case there’s ever anybody on the other end of the line.”

  chapter 23

  I LUGGED THE OLD ROYAL out to my car and drove across town to the Boulder Beach Inn. At ten minutes to five in the morning the place was like a catacomb. The night clerk looked at me the way night clerks were always looking at me, with dubiety tinged by the suspicion that the customer might be right and I might be a customer:

  “What can I do for you. Sir.”

  “Is Homer Wycherly still here?”

  He didn’t answer me directly. “Mr. Wycherly wouldn’t wish to be disturbed at this hour. If you’d like to leave a message—”

  “I work for Wycherly. What time did he ask to be called?”

  He consulted his schedule. “Eight o’clock.”

  “Call me at the same time, please. I’m checking in. How much for a room?”

  He told me.

  “I’m renting, not buying.”

  He simpered delicately and handed me a pen. I registered. A Negro bellhop emerged from the shadows and led me to a room at the rear of the building where I stripped to my underwear, crawled dirty between clean sheets, and went out like a light.

  I caught three hours of sleep at five dollars an hour. But the old movie projector I was using for a brain wouldn’t shut down. It kept on grinding out aquatic scenes in which I became immersed, sinking like a spent swimmer in coiling cold water, through deepening zones of chill where the dead thronged like memories, their lank hair drifting in the underwater currents. I saw her plainly, frayed flesh worn dowdily on her skeleton, little fish swimming in and out of the sockets of her eyes.

  I woke up with Phoebe’s name in my dry mouth and a bell ringing inside my head or just outside my head. I opened my eyes to the full white horror of morning. The bedside telephone rang at me again. I picked up the heavy iron dumbbell which the management had substituted for the receiver.

  “You asked to be called at eight, sir,” a girl’s voice said.

  “I must have been insane.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Wait a minute. Have you called Mr. Homer Wycherl
y yet?”

  “Yessir, just this minute.”

  “Get him on the line for me, will you please?”

  “Yessir.”

  I propped myself up on the pillow. Something peculiar happened: I lost my sense of orientation in space. The facing wall slanted over me, the bed leaned backwards under me. I was stuck with my legs up in a corner of space, and space tipped over like a chair.

  “Who is it?” the iron dumbbell said in a voice like Wycherly’s.

  I answered doubtfully, upside down in the angular white horror: “This is Archer.”

  Space jiggled a little. It started to right itself. I tried to lean forward and help it but I was stuck in its corner, immobilized by a stronger pull than gravity. I didn’t want Phoebe to be dead. I didn’t want to have to tell her father that she was.

  “Archer? Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m here in the hotel. I have news for you.”

  “What news? Have you found her?”

  “No. You haven’t heard then.”

  “Heard what?”

  “I’d rather tell you in person. May I come around to your bungalow in fifteen minutes?”

  “Please do.”

  I hung up. The walls of the room were vertical. Space was back where it belonged, up and down and across and from side to side. I took advantage of this circumstance by getting out of bed and having a quick shower and a shave. My eyes in the bathroom mirror looked scared as hell, or of it.

  On the way to Wycherly’s bungalow I got the typewriter out of the trunk of my car.

  “What on earth is that?” he said when he opened the door.

  “A Royal typewriter, vintage about 1937. Do you recognize it?”

  “Bring it in and let me see it properly.”

  I followed him into the living room and set down the heavy machine on a coffee table near the windows. He looked it over with eyes like boiled blue onions.

  “It could be Catherine’s old typewriter. At least she had one very like it. Where did you dredge it up?”

  “Your daughter’s roommate had it. Phoebe lent it to her before she left.”

  Wycherly nodded. “I remember now. Catherine left it behind in the house, and Phoebe took it off to college last fall.”

  “Where was it last Easter?”

  “In my house in Meadow Farms. Catherine used to keep it in her sitting room. She liked to have an office model handy.”

  “Is she an expert typist?”

  “She was at one time. She used to be a secretary before I married her. This machine dates from that period.”

  “Did she ever do any typing for you in more recent times? Last spring, for instance?”

  “She helped me out occasionally, yes.” An edge of old malice entered his voice: “When she was in a conciliatory mood, and available.”

  “You wrote a letter to Willie Mackey last spring, about the threatening letters you received. Did Mrs. Wycherly type it for you?”

  “I believe she did. On second thought, I remember that she did. I preferred to keep it in the family—the fact that I was hiring a detective.”

  “Can’t you type yourself?”

  “I never learned, no.”

  “Not even with one finger?”

  “No. I’ve never manipulated one of these things in my life.” He stroked his hair with a nervous hand. “What is the relevance of all this, if any?”

  “I had a talk with Mackey yesterday. At my request, since I’m employed by you, he filled me in on those ‘Friend of the Family’ letters. It’s my opinion they were typed on this typewriter.”

  “For God’s sake!” He slumped on the mohair sofa and pressed his hand to the side of his face as if it needed holding together. “You’re not suggesting that Catherine wrote them herself.”

  “The facts suggest it.”

  “But you don’t know what was said in them. It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible in this case. Who else had access to the typewriter?”

  “Anyone in the house, anyone who came to the house. Servants, guests, anyone. Catherine’s rooms were in a wing by themselves, and she was seldom in them. There’s no lock on the sitting room, either. Understand me, I hold no brief for my ex-wife, but she simply couldn’t have written those letters. They slandered her.”

  “People have been known to slander themselves.”

  “But what purpose could she have had?”

  “To make trouble, break up the marriage. She wouldn’t have needed to have a rational motive.”

  “Are you implying that Catherine was irrational?”

  “Is. I saw her the night before last, Mr. Wycherly. I don’t know what her emotional state was nine months ago. She’s in a bad way now.”

  He lifted his hands and thrust them out away from him, fingers stiff. He might have been trying to fend off furies.

  “Is this your great news? I thought you were going to tell me something—something hopeful about Phoebe.” His arms dropped to his sides, and his fingers plucked at the buttons on the sofa. “What good are these excursions into the wretched past? I know that Catherine is capable of anything. I even suspected that she wrote those letters.”

  “Is that why you took Mackey off the case?”

  He nodded. His head stayed low, as if it was too heavy for his neck.

  “Were the allegations in the letters true? Specifically, was she having an affair with another man last spring?”

  “I suspected that she was. I had no proof, I had no real desire to look for proof. I loved my wife, you see.”

  I didn’t see, but I heard him saying it.

  “From the first of last year,” he went on, “she spent a great deal of time away from home. She never would tell me where she went, where she stayed. She claimed to have a studio somewhere, that she went away to paint.”

  “She had an apartment in San Mateo,” I said. “The chances are she was sharing it with a man or men. Assuming that, do you have any idea who he or they might have been?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever question her on the point?”

  “Not directly. Frankly, I hesitated to. She sometimes had such violent reactions.”

  “Did she ever offer to kill anyone?”

  “Many times.”

  “Who did she threaten?”

  “Me,” he said dismally.

  “I’m going to ask you a question you won’t like. Did you prepare those ‘Friend of the Family’ letters yourself, to satisfy your doubts about your wife?”

  Mrs. Wycherly wasn’t the only one who had violent reactions. He got up blotched and roaring, shaking both fists at me like a child in a tantrum: “How dare you, you garbage-raker!” He called me other names. I waited for him to subside. It didn’t take long. He fizzled out like a damp firecracker, sputtering: “That’s insane. You must be crazy.”

  “Then humor me. Answer the question.”

  “I had nothing to do with those ugly letters. They came as a fearful blow to me.”

  “How did they affect Phoebe?”

  “She was upset, in her quiet way. She takes things quietly, but deep and hard.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Catherine was very cool about the whole thing. It’s one reason I asked her to type the letter to Mackey. I wanted to see how she’d react.”

  “How did she?”

  “She was perfectly cool and calm—which wasn’t usual for her. She stayed that way throughout the entire business. Then the week after Easter she went to Reno, and her lawyers wrote me asking for a settlement.”

  “Were you surprised by that development?”

  “I’d reached the point,” he said, “where nothing had the power to surprise me. Nothing in this world.”

  “How did Phoebe feel about the divorce?”

  “She was deeply hurt and shocked.”

  “Children take sides when their parents divorce. Which side did your daughter take?”

  “Mine, naturally. I thought I’d mad
e that clear the other day. We seem to be going back and forth over the same old ground.”

  I was putting off breaking new ground, for fear the shock of Phoebe’s death would make him unavailable for questioning. I still had questions to ask him:

  “You recall the day you sailed, and Mrs. Wycherly came aboard?”

  “To wish me bon voyage,” he said wryly. “I’m not likely to forget it.”

  “Were you aware that Phoebe left the ship with her mother?”

  “They left my stateroom together, at least Phoebe followed her out. I had no idea that they left the ship in each other’s company.”

  “They rode away together in a taxi. They seemed to be good friends for the moment. At least Phoebe agreed to visit her mother in Atherton that evening.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “It’s my business to find out such things. It’s also my business to ask you if you left the ship that evening.”

  “For heaven’s sake, are you suspicious of me?”

  “Suspicion is my occupational hazard, Mr. Wycherly. You didn’t tell me the sailing was delayed till the morning of the third. You let me assume it went off on schedule.”

  “I’d forgotten about the delay. It slipped my mind.”

  “That could happen, I suppose. Surely you remember, though, if you left the ship that evening.”

  “I did not. I resent the question. I resent your whole line of questioning. It’s insulting and contemptible and I won’t put up with it.” He glared at me with warmed-over rage in his eyes. He couldn’t hold it. In a voice that was almost querulous, he said: “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m trying to get at a situation that led to a death. Three deaths, as a matter of fact, and one near miss. How’s your cardiovascular system, Mr. Wycherly?”

  “All right. At least it was all right when I had my last checkup, shortly before I sailed. Why?”

  “Carl Trevor had a heart attack last night.”

  “Carl did? I’m sorry to hear it,” he said in a light queer voice. A strange expression entered his eyes, a foxy curiosity. “How is he?”

  “I don’t know. It’s his second attack, and it hit him hard. I left him in the hospital in Terranova.”

  “What on earth is he doing in that primitive hole?”