The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  His answer was sharp. “Certainly not. He’s simply wrapped up in his work, and he lives by impulse. He’s never on time for appointments.” He looked at his watch. “He promised last night to meet me here this morning at nine, and it’s almost nine-thirty.”

  “When did you see him last night?”

  “I left the key of the gallery with him when I went home for dinner. He wanted to rehang some of these paintings. About eight or a little after he walked over to my house to return the key. We have only the one key, since we can’t afford a watchman.”

  “Did he say where he was going after that?”

  “He had an appointment, he didn’t say with whom. It seemed to be urgent, since he wouldn’t stop for a drink. Well.” He glanced at his watch again. “I suppose I’d better be getting down to work, Western or no Western.”

  Alice was waiting for us at the foot of the stairs. Both of her hands gripped the wrought-iron bannister. Her voice was no more than a whisper, but it seemed to fill the great room with leaden echoes:

  “Dr. Silliman, the Chardin’s gone.”

  He stopped so suddenly I nearly ran into him. “That’s impossible.”

  “I know. But it’s gone, frame and all.”

  He bounded down the remaining steps and disappeared into one of the smaller rooms under the mezzanine. Alice followed him more slowly. I caught up with her:

  “There’s a picture missing?”

  “Father’s best picture, one of the best Chardins in the country. He loaned it to the gallery for a month.”

  “Is it worth a lot of money?”

  “Yes, it’s very valuable. But it means a lot more to Father than the money—” She turned in the doorway and gave me a closed look, as if she’d realized she was telling her family secrets to a stranger.

  Silliman was standing with his back to us, staring at a blank space on the opposite wall. He looked badly shaken when he turned around.

  “I told the board that we should install a burglar alarm—the insurance people recommended it. But Admiral Turner was the only one who supported me. Now of course they’ll be blaming me.” His nervous eyes roved around and paused on Alice. “And what is your father going to say?”

  “He’ll be sick.” She looked sick herself.

  They were getting nowhere, and I cut in: “When did you see it last?”

  Silliman answered me. “Yesterday afternoon, about five-thirty. I showed it to a visitor just before we closed. We check the visitors very closely from the office, since we have no guards.”

  “Who was the visitor?”

  “A lady—an elderly lady from Pasadena. She’s above suspicion, of course. I escorted her out myself, and she was the last one in, I know for a fact.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Hugh?”

  “By George, I was. He was here until eight last night. But you surely don’t suggest that Western took it? He’s our resident painter, he’s devoted to the gallery.”

  “He might have been careless. If he was working on the mezzanine and left the door unlocked—”

  “He always kept it locked,” Alice said coldly. “Hugh isn’t careless about the things that matter.”

  “Is there another entrance?”

  “No,” Silliman said. “The building was planned for security. There’s only one window in my office, and it’s heavily barred. We do have an air-conditioning system, but the inlets are much too small for anyone to get through.”

  “Let’s have a look at the window.”

  The old man was too upset to question my authority. He led me through a storeroom stacked with old gilt-framed pictures whose painters deserved to be hung, if the pictures didn’t. The single casement in the office was shut and bolted behind a Venetian blind. I pulled the cord and peered out through the dusty glass. The vertical bars outside the window were no more than three inches apart. None of them looked as if it had been tampered with. Across the alley, I could see a few tourists obliviously eating breakfast behind the restaurant hedge.

  Silliman was leaning on the desk, one hand on the cradle phone. Indecision was twisting his face out of shape. “I do hate to call the police in a matter like this. I suppose I must, though, mustn’t I?”

  Alice covered his hand with hers, the line of her back a taut curve across the desk. “Hadn’t you better talk to Father first? He was here with Hugh last night—I should have remembered before. It’s barely possible he took the Chardin home with him.”

  “Really? You really think so?” Silliman let go of the telephone and clasped his hands hopefully under his chin.

  “It wouldn’t be like Father to do that without letting you know. But the month is nearly up, isn’t it?”

  “Three more days.” His hand returned to the phone. “Is the Admiral at home?”

  “He’ll be down at the club by now. Do you have your car?”

  “Not this morning.”

  I made one of my famous quick decisions, the kind you wake up in the middle of the night reconsidering five years later. San Francisco could wait. My curiosity was touched, and something deeper than curiosity. Something of the responsibility I’d felt for Hugh in the Philippines, when I was the practical one and he was the evergreen adolescent who thought the jungle was as safe as a scene by Le Douanier Rousseau. Though we were nearly the same age, I’d felt like his elder brother. I still did.

  “My car’s around the corner,” I said. “I’ll be glad to drive you.”

  The San Marcos Beach Club was a long low building painted an unobtrusive green and standing well back from the road. Everything about it was unobtrusive, including the private policeman who stood inside the plate-glass doors and watched us come up the walk.

  “Looking for the Admiral, Miss Turner? I think he’s up on the north deck.”

  We crossed a tiled lanai shaded with potted palms, and climbed a flight of stairs to a sun deck lined with cabanas. I could see the mountains that walled the city off from the desert in the northeast, and the sea below with its waves glinting like blue fish scales. The swimming pool on the lee side of the deck was still and clear.

  Admiral Turner was taking the sun in a canvas chair. He stood up when he saw us, a big old man in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Sun and wind had reddened his face and crinkled the flesh around his eyes. Age had slackened his body, but there was nothing aged or infirm about his voice. It still held the brazen echo of command.

  “What’s this, Alice? I thought you were at work.”

  “We came to ask you a question, Admiral.” Silliman hesitated, coughing behind his hand. He looked at Alice.

  “Speak out, man. Why is everybody looking so green around the gills?”

  Silliman forced the words out: “Did you take the Chardin home with you last night?”

  “I did not. Is it gone?”

  “It’s missing from the gallery,” Alice said. She held herself uncertainly, as though the old man frightened her a little. “We thought you might have taken it.”

  “Me take it? That’s absurd! Absolutely absurd and preposterous!” The short white hair bristled on his head. “When was it taken?”

  “We don’t know. It was gone when we opened the gallery. We discovered it just now.”

  “God damn it, what goes on?” He glared at her and then he glared at me, from eyes like round blue gun muzzles. “And who the hell are you?”

  He was only a retired admiral, and I’d been out of uniform for years, but he gave me a qualm. Alice put in:

  “A friend of Hugh’s, Father. Mr. Archer.”

  He didn’t offer his hand. I looked away. A woman in a white bathing suit was poised on the ten-foot board at the end of the pool. She took three quick steps and a bounce. Her body hung jack-knifed in the air, straightened and dropped, cut the water with hardly a splash.

  “Where is Hugh?” the Admiral said petulantly. “If this is some of his carelessness, I’ll ream the bastard.”

  “Father!”

  “Don’t father me. Where is he, Allie?
You ought to know if anyone does.”

  “But I don’t.” She added in a small voice: “He’s been gone all night.”

  “He has?” The old man sat down suddenly, as if his legs were too weak to bear the weight of his feelings. “He didn’t say anything to me about going away.”

  The woman in the white bathing suit came up the steps behind him. “Who’s gone away?” she said.

  The Admiral craned his wattled neck to look at her. She was worth the effort from anyone, though she wouldn’t see thirty again. Her dripping body was tanned and disciplined, full in the right places and narrow in others. I didn’t remember her face, but her shape seemed familiar. Silliman introduced her as Admiral Turner’s wife. When she pulled off her rubber cap, her red hair flared like a minor conflagration.

  “You won’t believe what they’ve been telling me, Sarah. My Chardin’s been stolen.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’ve only the one. The ‘Apple on a Table.’ ”

  She turned on Silliman like a pouncing cat. “Is it insured?”

  “For twenty-five thousand dollars. But I’m afraid it’s irreplaceable.”

  “And who’s gone away?”

  “Hugh has,” Alice said. “Of course it’s nothing to do with the picture.”

  “You’re sure?” She turned to her husband with an intensity that made her almost ungainly. “Hugh was at the gallery when you dropped in there last night. You told me so yourself. And hasn’t he been trying to buy the Chardin?”

  “I don’t believe it,” Alice said flatly. “He didn’t have the money.”

  “I know that perfectly well. He was acting as agent for someone. Wasn’t he, Johnston?”

  “Yes,” the old man admitted. “He wouldn’t tell me who his principal was, which is one of the reasons I wouldn’t listen to the offer. Still, it’s foolish to jump to conclusions about Hugh. I was with him when he left the gallery, and I know for a fact he didn’t have the Chardin. It was the last thing I looked at.”

  “What time did he leave you?”

  “Some time around eight—I don’t remember exactly.” He seemed to be growing older and smaller under her questioning. “He walked with me as far as my car.”

  “There was nothing to prevent him from walking right back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” Alice said.

  The older woman smiled poisonously. “I’m simply trying to bring out the facts, so we’ll know what to do. I notice that no one has suggested calling in the police.” She looked at each of the others in turn. “Well? Do we call them? Or do we assume as a working hypothesis that dear Hugh took the picture?”

  Nobody answered her for a while. The Admiral finally broke the ugly silence. “We can’t bring in the authorities if Hugh’s involved. He’s virtually a member of the family.”

  Alice put a grateful hand on his shoulder, but Silliman said uneasily, “We’ll have to take some steps. If we don’t make an effort to recover it, we may not be able to collect the insurance.”

  “I realize that,” the Admiral said. “We’ll have to take that chance.”

  Sarah Turner smiled with tight-lipped complacency. She’d won her point, though I still wasn’t sure what her point was. During the family argument I’d moved a few feet away, leaning on the railing at the head of the stairs and pretending not to listen.

  She moved towards me now, her narrow eyes appraising me as if maleness was a commodity she prized.

  “And who are you?” she said, her sharp smile widening.

  I identified myself. I didn’t smile back. But she came up very close to me. I could smell the chlorine on her, and under it the not so very subtle odor of sex.

  “You look uncomfortable,” she said. “Why don’t you come swimming with me?”

  “My hydrophobia won’t let me. Sorry.”

  “What a pity. I hate to do things alone.”

  Silliman nudged me gently. He said in an undertone: “I really must be getting back to the gallery. I can call a cab if you prefer.”

  “No, I’ll drive you.” I wanted a chance to talk to him in private.

  There were quick footsteps in the patio below. I looked down and saw the naked crown of Hilary Todd’s head. At almost the same instant he glanced up at us. He turned abruptly and started to walk away, then changed his mind when Silliman called down.

  “Hello there. Are you looking for the Turners?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed Sarah Turner’s reaction to the sound of his voice. She stiffened, and her hand went up to her flaming hair.

  “They’re up here,” Silliman said.

  Todd climbed the stairs with obvious reluctance. We passed him going down. In a pastel shirt and a matching tie under a bright tweed jacket he looked very elegant, and very self-conscious and tense. Sarah Turner met him at the head of the stairs. I wanted to linger a bit, for eavesdropping purposes, but Silliman hustled me out.

  “Mrs. Turner seems very much aware of Todd,” I said to him in the car. “Do they have things in common?”

  He answered tartly: “I’ve never considered the question. They’re no more than casual acquaintances, so far as I know.”

  “What about Hugh? Is he just a casual acquaintance of hers, too?”

  He studied me for a minute as the convertible picked up speed. “You notice things, don’t you?”

  “Noticing things is my business.”

  “Just what is your business? You’re not an artist?”

  “Hardly. I’m a private detective.”

  “A detective?” He jumped in the seat, as if I had offered to bite him. “You’re not a friend of Western’s then? Are you from the insurance company?”

  “Not me. I’m a friend of Hugh’s, and that’s my only interest in this case. I more or less stumbled into it.”

  “I see.” But he sounded a little dubious.

  “Getting back to Mrs. Turner—she didn’t make that scene with her husband for fun. She must have had some reason. Love or hate.”

  Silliman held his tongue for a minute, but he couldn’t resist a chance to gossip. “I expect that it’s a mixture of love and hate. She’s been interested in Hugh ever since the Admiral brought her here. She’s not a San Marcos girl, you know.” He seemed to take comfort from that. “She was a Wave officer in Washington during the war. The Admiral noticed her—Sarah knows how to make herself conspicuous—and added her to his personal staff. When he retired he married her and came here to live in his family home. Alice’s mother has been dead for many years. Well, Sarah hadn’t been here two months before she was making eyes at Hugh.” He pressed his lips together in spinsterly disapproval. “The rest is local history.”

  “They had an affair?”

  “A rather one-sided affair, so far as I could judge. She was quite insane about him. I don’t believe he responded, except in the physical sense. Your friend is quite a demon with the ladies.” There was a whisper of envy in Silliman’s disapproval.

  “But I understood he was going to marry Alice.”

  “Oh, he is, he is. At least he certainly was until this dreadful business came up. His—ah—involvement with Sarah occurred before he knew Alice. She was away at art school until a few months ago.”

  “Does Alice know about his affair with her stepmother?”

  “I daresay she does. I hear the two women don’t get along at all well, though there may be other reasons for that. Alice refuses to live in the same house; she’s moved into the gardener’s cottage behind the Turner house. I think her trouble with Sarah is one reason why she came to work for me. Of course, there’s the money consideration, too. The family isn’t well off.”

  “I thought they were rolling in it,” I said, “from the way he brushed off the matter of the insurance. Twenty-five thousand dollars, did you say?”

  “Yes. He’s quite fond of Hugh.”

  “If he’s not well heeled, how does he happen to have
such a valuable painting?”

  “It was a gift, when he married his first wife. Her father was in the French Embassy in Washington, and he gave them the Chardin as a wedding present. You can understand the Admiral’s attachment to it.”

  “Better than I can his decision not to call in the police. How do you feel about that, doctor?”

  He didn’t answer for a while. We were nearing the center of the city and I had to watch the traffic. I couldn’t keep track of what went on in his face.

  “After all it is his picture,” he said carefully. “And his prospective son-in-law.”

  “You don’t think Hugh’s responsible, though?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’m thoroughly rattled. And I won’t know what to think until I have a chance to talk to Western.” He gave me a sharp look. “Are you going to make a search for him?”

  “Somebody has to. I seem to be elected.”

  When I let him out in front of the gallery, I asked him where Mary Western worked.

  “The City Hospital.” He told me how to find it. “But you will be discreet, Mr. Archer? You won’t do or say anything rash? I’m in a very delicate position.”

  “I’ll be very suave and bland.” But I slammed the door hard in his face.

  —

  There were several patients in the X-ray waiting room, in various stages of dilapidation and disrepair. The plump blonde at the reception desk told me that Miss Western was in the darkroom. Would I wait? I sat down and admired the way her sunburned shoulders glowed through her nylon uniform. In a few minutes Mary came into the room, starched and controlled and efficient-looking. She blinked in the strong light from the window. I got a quick impression that there was a lost child hidden behind her facade.

  “Have you seen Hugh?”

  “No. Come out for a minute.” I took her elbow and drew her into the corridor.

  “What is it?” Her voice was quiet, but it had risen in pitch. “Has something happened to him?”

  “Not to him. Admiral Turner’s picture’s been stolen from the gallery. The Chardin.”

  “But how does Hugh come into this?”

  “Somebody seems to think he took it.”