“How old?”
“Seventy-three.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Don’t say anything to Mrs. Ralston just yet. Mr. Whittaker has gone to call her doctor.”
“I won’t say anything.”
She went back into the bungalow, moving as quietly as a cat. I found my way to the dining room, where Al was just finishing his breakfast.
“I talked to John Swain,” he said. “He’s coming right over from Pedro in a taxi.”
“How did he take it?”
“He was upset all right. But I guess it didn’t floor him.”
“Could anyone have gotten into the pueblo last night after we left Mr. Ralston?”
“We locked the gates at midnight. After that the only way to get in is through the lobby, and there’s always somebody on duty there. Nobody but a guest or an employee could get in, unless he climbed the wall.”
“Would that be hard?”
“You saw it.” The wall was solid brick, about eight feet high, and topped with iron spikes. “Why? You’re not thinking somebody got in and killed the old man?”
“It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? But a man has to be pretty drunk to go swimming by himself after midnight at the age of seventy-three. Drunker than Mr. Ralston was.”
“I don’t know,” Al said.
After I had eaten a quick breakfast we went to look for Mr. Whittaker. He was in his office sitting on the corner of the desk and swinging a leg in time like a metronome.
“Dr. Wiley will be here in a few minutes,” he said. “He said we’d better wait for him.”
I told him the nurse’s story, that she’d slept through the night and hadn’t heard a thing. Then Dr. Wiley arrived, a large cheerful man dressed for golf but carrying a medical bag.
“I don’t anticipate any serious reaction,” Dr. Wiley said. “But it’s just as well to be prepared. There’s no telling how a woman who is not at all well will react to a shock of this nature.”
“I dread this,” Mr. Whittaker said. “This is going to be an ordeal.”
When we reached the bungalow Mrs. Ralston was sunning herself in front of it in a wheelchair, her legs swathed in a steamer rug. Even under the rug the lower half of her body looked pathetically feeble, but from the waist up she seemed at first glance to be a healthy woman of forty. Her bosom was impressive and her shoulders were handsome in a light linen blouse. Her face was strong and beautiful in a bold and striking way, but there were shadows in it. Until now, it seemed to me, she had held out against her disease, but now she was approaching the point of surrender. There were daubs of gray in her carefully dressed brown hair.
Yet she waved gaily at her doctor and showed her white even teeth in a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you this morning,” she said.
Al and I stood back and pretended to look at the trees while Whittaker and Dr. Wiley walked up to her without speaking. The nurse stood in the background looking worried.
“I have bad news for you,” Dr. Wiley said. “Mr. Ralston—” He hesitated.
“Why, Mr. Ralston is sleeping in his room.” She turned her head to the nurse and I saw the tendons in her neck. “Isn’t Mr. Ralston still asleep, Jane?”
Jane bit her lower lip, which was full and purplish like a plum.
“Mr. Ralston is dead,” the doctor said. “He drowned in the pool last night.”
Mrs. Ralston’s hands closed on the arms of her wheelchair. She sat bolt upright, supported by her straining arms. The bony structure of her face became apparent, and the shadows there deepened.
“Poor Henry,” she said. “How did it happen?”
Before anyone could answer she fell backward and covered her face with her long and graceful hands.
A young man in neat sailor blues appeared at the gate and came running across the grass towards us. He went by us like a blue streak, half kneeled by the wheelchair and took hold of Mrs. Ralston’s shoulders. “Mother,” he said. “How are you feeling, darling?”
“Johnny,” said Mrs. Ralston, removing her hands from her face, where the convulsions of grief gave way to the convulsions of maternal feeling. “My dear boy, I’m so glad you’ve come.”
“Yes, how are you feeling, Mrs. Ralston?” said Dr. Wiley. “I think I should take your pulse.”
He and Mr. Whittaker hovered around her for a few minutes more, attending to her physical comfort and telling her the details of her husband’s death. Then they moved away to rejoin us, leaving her alone with her son and her nurse.
“An amazing woman,” said Dr. Wiley. “She took it better than I could have expected.”
“She has courage,” said Mr. Whittaker.
“Courage is her middle name,” said Dr. Wiley. “You’d never think to look at her that she has no more than three months to live.”
“Three months to live?” I said.
“I’ve consulted with the leading specialists in the country,” Dr. Wiley said. “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive disease, and can never be fully arrested. She can’t live more than three months, and she knows it. But what a stiff upper lip she maintains!”
Before we entered the hotel I looked back at Mrs. Ralston. Johnny Swain was still half-kneeling beside her, supporting her head on his shoulder. The nurse was still standing in the background, looking worried.
The police lieutenant who was handling the case was waiting in the lobby. He wanted to interview Mrs. Ralston and her nurse, and line up the other witnesses for the inquest.
“Is the autopsy completed?” I asked him.
“Dr. Shantz is working on it now.”
“What’s the dope so far?”
“A straight case of drowning. What did you expect?”
“A straight case of drowning,” I said.
I took Al aside and told him, “I’m going down to the police lab and talk to Dr. Shantz. There are a couple of things you can be doing. Check Johnny Swain’s alibi. Find out for sure whether he was aboard his ship last night. And see if you can find anything to shake the nurse’s story that she spent the night in bed. She didn’t look to me as if she did.”
“Right,” said Al, who seemed glad to have something to do.
I took my car out of the parking lot across the street and drove downtown to see Dr. Shantz. He was in his office when I got there, having completed the autopsy, but he still had on his surgical whites. With his domelike belly and three chins, he looked more like the popular idea of a chef than a medico-legal expert.
He said to me when I came in, “I didn’t know you were interested in this cadaver, Lew.”
“I’m always interested. I’m an occupational necrophile.”
“I’ve got a beautiful Lysol burn in the back room. Want to see it?”
“Not just now, thanks. The hotel hired me to check on the Ralston accident. They don’t like people drowning in their swimming pool. No signs of foul play, I suppose?”
“None whatever.”
“Heart failure?”
“Nope, except in the sense that the heart usually stops when you die. The old man drowned. His lungs were full of water.”
“No foreign substance of any kind?”
“You can’t make a murder case out of this one, Lew. Mr. Ralston was killed by pure city water. I applied Gettler’s test to the blood content of the heart, and that’s definite.”
“When did he die?”
“It’s hard to say exactly. His stomach was empty, except for some water, and he ate dinner at seven. His temperature was almost down to the temperature of the water. Between two and three in the morning. I’d say.”
“That was about my guess,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. That Lysol burn will still be here tomorrow if you want to see it.”
“Thanks again,” I said and went out. I was almost certain now that a murder had been committed, since I’d never known Shantz to make a professional mistake. I decided to go and see Mr. Ralston’s brother Alexander. He got ten thousand dollars out of Mr.
Ralston’s death. How badly did he need ten thousand dollars?
I found him in the phone book and drove to his address, a one-story stucco house on a middling street in South Los Angeles. He answered the doorbell, a scrawny man in his sixties with thin gray hair and stooping shoulders. His thick glasses made his eyes seem unnaturally large and solemn.
He spoke solemnly. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Archer is the name. I’m investigating your brother’s death—”
“A sad affair. Johnny Swain phoned me not long ago. I didn’t realize, however, that it was under police investigation.”
“I’m working for the hotel. All they want to do is make sure it was an accident. You may be able to give me some information about your brother’s habits?”
“Won’t you step inside? I haven’t seen much of Henry in recent years, but I’ll tell you what I can. Don’t get the notion that we weren’t on good terms. We were. You may know that he left me ten thousand dollars in his will?”
He led me into the living room and waved me towards a shabby chesterfield. Except for the shelves of books which lined the walls, everything in the room was shabby. In his collarless shirt and drooping trousers, Alexander Ralston suited the room. I wondered if he was a lifelong victim of primogeniture.
He saw me looking around the room and said, “I’m afraid things are in rather a mess. I do my own housekeeping, you know. I won’t attempt to deny that for a retired teacher like myself that ten thousand dollars will come in very handily, very handily indeed.”
“You say you hadn’t seen a great deal of your brother in recent years?”
“That’s quite true. Our interests differed, you see. I like to think of myself as something of an intellectual, and Henry was by way of being a hedonist. I won’t accuse him of having no intellectual interests, but they weren’t sustained. In a word, his money spoilt him for the life of the spirit.”
“Where did he get it?”
“His money? Of course, you must be struck by the contrast between our ways of life. It was really quite a comic situation—I pride myself on being able to laugh at it still, though in a way I was the butt of the joke.” He smiled wanly and stroked his one day’s beard.
I began to suspect that I was dealing with an eccentric. “I don’t quite get the point,” I said.
“Naturally you don’t. I haven’t told you the situation. Henry and I had a very devout aunt who married well and in the course of time became a very wealthy and devout widow. Henry had never been given to religiosity, but Aunt Martha cracked the whip of gold over him, so to speak, and persuaded him to enter the church when he was in his early twenties. I was a freshman in college at the time, and I was a militant atheist. I still am, sir. Anyway, Aunt Martha left all her money to Henry.
“It’s just as well, I suppose,” he said after a pause. “Over-much money would have suited ill with the austerities of moral philosophy and metaphysics. Still, that ten thousand dollars will come in very handily.”
“I understand that Mrs. Ralston will get the bulk of his fortune.”
“Of course she will. And it’s only fitting. She married him for that purpose, I believe.”
“How long had they been married?”
“Ten years. She was about thirty at the time, and a very pretty piece—I use the word in its seventeenth-century sense. Within six months of their marriage she had become a hopeless invalid. I’ve suspected, perhaps without justification, that Mrs. Ralston knew at the time of their marriage that she had the disease, and deliberately inveigled Henry into it. He was really an innocent-hearted man. She was a widow without means, you see, and had a young son to support. Even if that is the case, however, I don’t begrudge her the money. It kept a sick woman in comfort and brought up a fatherless boy, and thus served a useful purpose, don’t you think?”
I said, “Yes.”
“There’s one other thing,” Alexander Ralston said, his exaggerated eyes regarding me blandly through his glasses. “This is an absurd hypothesis, but I think I should introduce it. Assuming that I was intending to kill my brother for his money, I should certainly have waited a few months. His death at the present time has netted me ten thousand dollars. After Mrs. Ralston’s death, which you may or may not know is imminent, Henry’s death would have netted me incomparably more. His entire fortune, in fact.”
I am not easily embarrassed, but I was embarrassed. “I never thought of such a thing,” I said unconvincingly.
“Please don’t be uncomfortable. It’s your duty to think of such things. But now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”
I told him it had been a pleasure to meet him, and went away.
When I got back to the Valeria Pueblo, Al was in his room reading a newspaper. He put it down when I opened the door.
“The accident didn’t make much of a splash,” he said. “Say, that’s a crack, isn’t it? But I notice there’s nobody swimming in the pool today.”
“There will be tomorrow. In a week it’ll be forgotten. What about John Swain’s alibi?”
“He was on the ship all night,” Al said. “He played poker till 4 a.m., and has four buddies to prove it. I talked to one on the phone.”
“That lets him out, then. Did you get anything on Jane Lennon?”
He winked and smiled lasciviously. “You’re damn right. One of the black girls who cleans the bungalows gave me the straight dope on her. I knew that dame had too much to be going to waste.”
“Spill it.”
“She’s got a boy friend in one of the other bungalows. Her racket is to wait until Mrs. Ralston goes to sleep, and then slip out for a few hours. Mrs. Ralston takes sleeping powders, see, so the nurse thought she was safe enough. But she was supposed to be on twenty-four-hour duty, and she was taking a chance.”
“Where was Jane Lennon last night?”
“With her boyfriend. The black girl saw her going back to her own bungalow just before dawn. But I don’t see how you’re going to use that against her. It gives her a better alibi than she had before.”
I said, “Is Mrs. Ralston’s wheelchair self-propelling? I mean can she move it herself?”
“Sure, if she wants to. But the nurse usually pushes her. My God, you’re not suspecting Mrs. Ralston now?”
I said nothing.
“You’re a sap if you are,” Al said. “She had no motive. The dame’s going to be dead in a couple of months.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Let’s go and see Mrs. Ralston.”
“Look here, you take it easy,” Al said. “You’ll make trouble for both of us.”
“The widow should be informed that her husband was murdered,” I said. “I’m going to inform the widow.”
Mrs. Ralston, John Swain, and Jane Lennon were sitting at an outside table in the patio. They had just finished their lunch, and a waiter was removing their debris. When he had glided away with his loaded tray, I stepped up to the table with Al beside me.
“May we join you for a moment?” I said.
“Why certainly.” Mrs. Ralston looked up at me brightly, and with a movement of her right hand turned her wheelchair in a quarter circle.
I sat down facing her and said, “Last night about a quarter to one Mr. Sablacan and I left your husband at the door of your bungalow and he presumably went to bed. Since he had been drinking he probably fell into a deep alcoholic slumber. An hour or so later he was drowned. This morning I found him in the swimming pool.”
“I know those things,” Mrs. Ralston said. “Is there any point in repeating them to me?”
“This is very painful for my mother,” John Swain said. “I’ll have to ask you to put a stop to it.” He dropped his cigarette on the tiles and ground it angrily under his heel.
“I have reason to believe,” I said, “that Mr. Ralston was not drowned in the swimming pool.”
Mrs. Ralston slumped backward and covered her face with her hands. John Swain stood up and leaned across the table towards me lo
oking as if he would like to bite me.
“This is too much!” he said. “I’ll see Mr. Whittaker about this.” He marched away into the hotel.
“O.K.,” I said to Jane Lennon. “Take her away. I’d just as soon be telling it to the police.”
Mrs. Ralston removed her hands. She looked old, and I felt sorry for her. I felt sorrier for Mr. Ralston.
“The police?” she said.
“Somebody drowned him in the bathtub,” I said. “He was very light.”
Mrs. Ralston picked up a glass ashtray from the table, and threw it at my face. It struck my forehead and made a gash there. While I was dabbing at the blood with a handkerchief, Mrs. Ralston called me many unusual names in a loud voice which attracted the attention of everyone in the patio. Jane Lennon wheeled her away. I was glad to see her go, because Mrs. Ralston’s face had become very old and ugly.
Mr. Whittaker came running out of the hotel with John Swain at his heels.
“What’s all this!” he cried.
“Call the police again,” I said. “Mrs. Ralston seems ready to confess.”
An hour later I was sitting with Al in his room sipping my first beer of the day and wishing away a headache.
“You took a hell of a chance,” Al said.
“No, I didn’t. I made no accusations. All I said was that somebody had drowned him in the bathtub. Mrs. Ralston said the rest.”
“I still think it’s lucky for you she broke down and confessed. You didn’t have any evidence.”
“I had one piece of evidence,” I said. “The whole case hung on it. The water in Mr. Ralston’s lungs was pure city water. He couldn’t have inhaled it in the pool, because the pool water has a good deal of chlorine in it. A bathtub was practically the only alternative.”
“I don’t see how she did it,” Al said.
“Morally, it’s hard to see. Murder always is. Physically, it was feasible enough. He weighed scarcely a hundred pounds. There was nothing the matter with her arms and shoulders, and a wheelchair can be a pretty useful vehicle. She simply wheeled him to the bathtub, held his face under water until he stopped breathing, wheeled him out to the pool, and dumped him in. It must have been difficult, and she stood a chance of being caught at it, but she hadn’t much to lose.”
The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator Page 9