The Ivory Grin

by Ross Macdonald

  He gave me a bitter, wrinkled look. I thought he was going to cry. Instead he let out another of his high inhuman laughs, which echoed like the cry of a lost gull down the canyon. “I do believe you’re right, Mr. Sagittarius. If you’ll take me home, I’ll see what I can do.”

  He came out of his house a half hour later, waving a piece of drawing paper:

  “Here you are, as representational as I can make her. It’s pastel chalk sprayed with fixative, so don’t try to fold it.”

  I took the drawing from his hand. It was a colored sketch of a young woman. Her pale blonde braids were coroneted on her head. Her eyes had the dull gleaming suavity of tile. Wilding had caught her beauty, but she was older in time than in the picture.

  He seemed to sense what I was thinking: “I had to sketch her as I first saw her. That was my image of her. She’ll be seven or eight years older.”

  “She’s changed the color of her hair, too.”

  “You know her, then.”

  “Not well. I’ll get to know her better.”

  CHAPTER 17: I climbed the front steps of Dr. Benning’s house and rang the doorbell. The hole I had punched in the corner of the pane had been mended with cardboard and scotch tape. Dr. Benning came to the door in shirtsleeves, with suspenders dragging. His uncombed hair was a fringe of withering grass around the pink desert of his scalp. He had the air of a beaten old man, until he spoke. His voice was crisp and impatient:

  “What can I do for you? Weren’t you in my waiting-room yesterday afternoon?”

  “This isn’t a professional call, doctor.”

  “What kind of call is it? I’m just getting up.”

  “Haven’t the police contacted you?”

  “They have not. Are you a policeman?”

  “A private detective, working with the police.” I showed him my photostat. “Were investigating the murder of a colored girl named Lucy Champion. She visited your office yesterday afternoon.”

  “You followed her here?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you care to tell me why?” In the harsh morning light his eyes were pale and strained.

  “I was hired to.”

  “And now she’s dead?”

  “She got away from me. When I found her again, late yesterday afternoon, her throat had been cut.”

  “It’s curious you didn’t get in touch with me before. Since she was my patient, and I was apparently one of the last persons to see her alive.”

  “I tried to last night. Didn’t your wife tell you?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to speak with her this morning. She isn’t well. Come in, though, won’t you? If you’ll just give me a chance to finish dressing, I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”

  He ushered me into the waiting-room. I heard his slippered feet diminuendo up the stairs to the second floor. Ten minutes later he came down, dressed in a creased blue store suit, and freshly shaved. Leaning on the receptionist’s desk in the corner, he lit a cigarette and offered me the package.

  “Not before breakfast, thanks.”

  “I’m foolish to do it myself. I warn my patients about smoking on an empty stomach. But that’s the way of us doctors. Preventive medicine is our watchword nowadays, and half of us are still dying prematurely of overwork. Physician, heal thyself.” Benning had put on a professional manner along with his clothes.

  “Speaking of premature death,” I said.

  “I shouldn’t be chattering.” His quick smile held remnants of boyish charm. “It’s a bad habit I’ve fallen into, from trying to establish rapport with my patients. Now about this patient, Miss Champion. You say her throat was cut, Mr.—is it Archer?”

  “Her throat was cut, and it’s Archer.”

  “Exactly what sort of information do you want from me?”

  “Your observations, personal and professional. Was yesterday the first time she came here to your office?”

  “I believe it was the third time. I have to apologize for the condition of my records. I haven’t had trained help recently. And then so many of my patients are one-time cash patients. It’s in the nature of a general practice among, well, poor people. I don’t always keep full records, except in the cash-book. I do recall that she was in twice before: once in the middle of last week I think, and once the week before that.”

  “Who referred her?”

  “Her landlady, Mrs. Norris.”

  “You know Mrs. Norris?”

  “Certainly. She’s often done practical nursing for me. Anna Norris is the finest type of Negro woman, in my opinion. Or dark-complected woman, as she would say.”

  “Her son is suspected of this murder.”

  “Alex is?” He swung one nervous leg, and his heel rapped the side of the desk. “Why on earth should he be under suspicion?”

  “He was on the scene. When they arrested him, he panicked and ran. If he hasn’t been caught, he’s probably still going.”

  “Even so, isn’t Alex an unlikely suspect?”

  “I think so. Lieutenant Brake doesn’t. Alex was intimate with the girl, you know. He was going to marry her.”

  “Wasn’t she much older?”

  “How old was she?”

  “I’d say in her middle twenties. She was a registered nurse, with several years of experience.”

  “What was the matter with her?”

  A length of ash fell from his untended cigarette. Absently, he ground it into the carpet with the toe of his worn black shoe. “The matter with her?”

  “What were you treating her for?”

  “It amounted to nothing really,” he answered after a pause. “She had an intestinal complaint which I think was caused by a slight colonic spasm. Unfortunately she knew too much about illness, and too little. She magnified her trouble into a malignant disease. Of course she had nothing of the sort, nothing more than a mild psychosomatic ailment. Do you follow me?”

  “Partly. Her symptoms were caused by nerves.”

  “I wouldn’t say nerves.” Benning was expanding in the glow of his superior knowledge. “The total personality is the cause of psychosomatic ills. In our society a Negro, and especially a highly trained Negro woman like Miss Champion, is often subjected to frustrations that could lead to neurosis. A strong personality will sometimes convert incipient neurosis into physical symptoms. I’m stating it crudely, but that’s what Miss Champion did. She felt cramped by her life, so to speak, and her frustration expressed itself in stomach cramp.” He paused for breath.

  “What was she doing here in Bella City?”

  “I’d like to know myself. She claimed to be looking for a job, but I don’t think she was registered in California. I’d give a good deal for a social history on her.”

  “She was from Detroit. Her family is poor and pretty ignorant. Does that help?”

  “It doesn’t tell me much about her psychic life, does it?”

  “Why is her psychic life important?”

  “I could see that fear of illness wasn’t her only phobia. She had a deeper and more general fear which expressed itself in various ways. I tried to explain that to her, to give her some insight, but she wasn’t equal to it. She broke down and cried on my shoulder. Then it came out about her other fears.”

  “What was she afraid of?”

  He spread his hands like a lecturer. “It’s hard to say. I’m not a psychiatrist, though I do try to keep up with the literature.” He looked around his shabby waiting-room, and an obscure impulse made him add: “Which is more than you can say for my colleagues in this desolate town.”

  “Was her fear real or imaginary?”

  “Precisely the question I can’t answer, without knowing more about her.” His eyes clouded with thought. “Fear is always real subjectively. The true question about fear is whether it’s relevant, justified by the situation. In this case it seems to have been. Miss Champion believed that she was being hunted, that she was marked for death.”

  “Did she give you any details?” />
  “No. I didn’t have time to gain her confidence. She failed to mention these persecution fears at all until her last visit, yesterday. You’ve been investigating her life and death, Mr. Archer. Was she really being hunted down by someone? Someone who finally caught her?”

  “I don’t know. I was trailing her myself, and I did a poor job of it and she caught on. If she was full of fear, that might have been enough to set her off.” I asked a question I didn’t want to ask: “You don’t think she could have killed herself out of pure funk?”

  Dr. Benning began to pace back and forth along a worn path that cut across the carpet from one door to the other. When he stopped and faced me, he looked ill at ease: “I’ll be frank with you. I was concerned about her in that sense, which is why I did my best to allay her fears.”

  “You thought she had suicidal tendencies?”

  “I took it into account as a possibility. That’s all I can say. I’m no psychiatrist.” He spread his hands palms upward in a gesture of awkward helplessness. “Was the wound consistent with suicide?”

  “It was pretty deep to be self-inflicted. Brake or the deputy coroner can answer that question better than I can. And Brake will want your statement.”

  “I’m ready now, if you’re going to the station.”

  I said I was. Benning went into the hall and got his hat. With his bald head covered he looked a good deal younger, but neither handsome nor well-heeled enough to be married to the woman he was married to.

  He called up the stairs before we left: “I’m going out, Bess. Do you want anything?”

  There was no answer.

  CHAPTER 18: The dirty-white brick city hall was distinguished from the surrounding store- and office-buildings by a flagless flagpole standing in its patch of scorched grass. At the rear a concrete ramp sloped down from a paved parking lot to the scuffed green door of the police department. Benning turned at the door, smiling a sour private smile.

  “The descent into Avernus,” he said.

  Inside, in a green-walled corridor, a few wire-netted ceiling-bulbs maintained a bilious twilight. Under the brisk odors of floor oil and metal polish, the smells of fear and germicide, poverty and old sweat, kept up a complicated human murmur. In the furthest, dimmest corner, opposite a door marked DESK SERGEANT, a monumental shape sat on a wooden bench against the wall.

  It belonged to a large Negro woman in a black cloth coat. The hair that showed under the side of her black felt hat was the color and texture of steel wool. I recognized her when she turned to look at us.

  Benning spoke first—“Mrs. Norris!”—and went to her with his hands out.

  She took them, raising her heavy, dark face to his. “I’m glad to see you, doctor.” Cross-hatched by shadow, her nose and mouth and chin looked like black stone rounded by years of weather. Only her eyes gleamed sorrowfully with life. “They’ve arrested Alex. They’re accusing him of murder.”

  “It must be a mistake,” he said in a low bedside voice. “I know he’s a good boy.”

  “He is a good boy.” She looked questioningly at me.

  “This is Mr. Archer, Mrs. Norris. He’s working on the case. Mr. Archer has just been telling me that he thinks Alex is innocent.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Archer, and pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “When was he arrested?”

  “Early this morning, in the desert. He was trying to get out of the state. The car broke down. He was a young fool to run away in the first place. It’s twice as bad for him, now that they’ve brought him back.”

  “Did you get him a lawyer?” Benning said.

  “Yes, I’m having Mr. Santana. He’s up in the Sierra for the weekend, but his housekeeper got in touch with him.”

  “He’s a good man, Santana.” Patting her shoulder, he moved towards the desk sergeant’s door. “I’ll talk to Brake, and see what I can do for Alex.”

  “I know Alex has a good friend in you, doctor.”

  Her words were hopeful, but her back and shoulders sloped in resignation. When she saw my intention of sitting down, she gathered her coat and shifted her body to one side, an involuntary sigh escaping from its concertina folds. I sat on a scrambled alphabet of initials carved in the soft wood of the bench.

  “Do you know my son, Mr. Archer?”

  “I talked to him a little last night.”

  “And you don’t believe he’s guilty?”

  “No. He seemed very fond of Lucy.”

  She pursed up her heavy lips suspiciously, and said in a smaller voice: “Why do you say that?”

  “He said it himself. Also, it showed in his actions.”

  That silenced her for a while. Her diffident black hand touched my arm very softly and retreated to her bosom. A thin gold wedding-band was sunk almost out of sight in the flesh of its third finger. “You are on our side, Mr. Archer?”

  “The side of justice when I can find it. When I can’t find it, I’m for the underdog.”

  “My son is no underdog,” she said with a flash of pride.

  “I’m afraid he’ll be treated like one. There’s a chance that Alex may be railroaded for this murder. The only sure way to prevent that is to pin it on the murderer. And you may be able to help me do that” I took a deep breath.

  “I believe that you are a righteous man, Mr. Archer.”

  I let her believe it.

  “You’re welcome to anything I can say, or do,” she continued. “It is true, what you said before. My boy was crazy for that woman. He wanted to marry her. I did my best to prevent it, every way I could. Alex is only nineteen, much too young to think about getting married. I planned an education for him. I tried to tell him that a dark-complected man is nothing in this country without an education to stand on. And Lucy wasn’t the wife for him. She was older than Alex, five or six years older, and she was fast in her habits. I sent her away from my house yesterday, and then she got herself killed. I confess I made a mistake. I rose up in anger against her. She had no safe place to go. If I’d known what was going to come to her, she could have stayed on with us.”

  “You don’t have to blame yourself. I think what happened to her was bound to happen.”

  “Do you think that?”

  “She was carrying something too heavy for her.”

  “I had that feeling. Yes. She was afraid.” Mrs. Norris leaned towards me with heavy confiding charm: “I had the feeling from the beginning that Lucy Champion was bad luck to me and my house. She was from Detroit, and I lived there myself when Alex was an infant. Last night when they came to me and said that she was killed, it was like all the things I’d dreaded for myself and Alex, when we were moving from city to city trying to find a living in the depression. Like those things had suddenly come true for us at last, here in this valley. After all those years I worked and planned, keeping my name respectable.”

  Looking into her eyes, deep black springs tapping the deep black past, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I misstated myself,” she said with renewed energy. “It is not my name I care for. It’s my son. I believed if we could get out of those big cities in the North and live in a decent place of our own, I could bring him up straight as his father wished for him. Now he has been arrested.”

  “Where is his father? It would be a good thing if he stood by.”

  “Yes, it would be a good thing. Alex’s father died in the war. Mr. Norris was a chief petty officer in the United States Navy.” She blew her nose with the force and effect of an exclamation mark, and dabbed at her eyes.

  I waited a while, and said: “When did Lucy Champion come to your house?”

  “She drove up in a taxi on a Sunday morning before church. It must have been two weeks ago today. I never like to do business on the Sabbath, but then I had no right to turn her away just for my private indulgence. The decent hotels were closed to her in this city, and most of the houses where our people can rent are not fit for dogs to inhabit. She was well spoken and well dressed. S
he told me she was on a vacation from her work, and she wanted to stay in a private house. I had the side room empty since the spring, and with Alex commencing college I needed the money.

  “She seemed a peaceable little soul, though she was nervous and shy. She scarcely ever went out at all except to get herself lunch. She made her own breakfast, and ate her dinners with us. We had a boarding arrangement.”

  “Did she eat well?”

  “Now that you mention it, she didn’t. Picked at her food like a bird. I asked her once or twice if my food was not agreeing with her, but she was vague in her answers.”

  “Did she mention any illness to you?”

  “She never did, Mr. Archer. Excuse me, now, she did. There was some trouble with her stomach. Nervous stomach.”

  “And you sent her to Dr. Benning?”

  “I didn’t send her. I said if she needed a doctor, he was a good man to go to. Whether she went to him or not, that I can’t say.”

  “She went to him all right. But she never spoke of Dr. Benning to you?”

  “Not that I recollect, except for that one time I recommended him.”

  “Did she mention Mrs. Benning?”

  “Mrs. Benning? Dr. Benning has no wife that I know of.”

  “I met her last night, in his house. At least I met a woman who calls herself Mrs. Benning.”

  “You must refer to Florida Gutierrez. She works for the doctor. He wouldn’t marry her. Dr. Benning wouldn’t marry any woman, not after the bad trouble he had with his first wife.”

  “Was he a widower?”

  “Divorced,” she said flatly, unable to conceal her disapproval. She added quickly: “Not that I blame the doctor, except for his foolishness marrying a woman so much younger than him—than he. She was a Jezebel to him, a blonde Jezebel mistreating him without shame. It ended as I expected, with her running off and divorcing him. At least that was the story I heard.” She pulled herself up sharp. “I ought to wash out my mouth, repeating gossip and scandal on the Lord’s Day.”