The Drowning Pool

by Ross Macdonald

  “You don’t have to worry about Cathy. I feel sorry for the girl. I wouldn’t touch her.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot after all. James Slocum must have known she wasn’t his child. They said she was a seven-months’ baby, but Slocum must have known.”

  “Knudson is Cathy’s father then.”

  “Who else? When he found out Maude was pregnant he begged his wife for a divorce. He offered her everything he had. No soap. So Knudson left his wife and his job and cleared out. He was crazy to take Maudie with him, but she wouldn’t go. She was scared, and she was thinking about the baby she was carrying. James Slocum wanted to marry her, and she let him.”

  “How did he come into the picture?”

  “Maude had been typing for him all winter. He was doing graduate work in drama, and he seemed to be well-heeled. That wasn’t really why she married him, though, at least not the only reason. He had a faggot tendency, you know? He claimed he needed her, that she could save him. I don’t know whether she did or not. Chances are she didn’t.”

  “She was still trying,” I said. “You should be doing my work, Miss Fleming.”

  “You mean I notice things? Yes, I do. But where Maudie was concerned I didn’t have to: we were like sisters. We talked the whole thing out before she gave Slocum her answer. I advised her to marry him. I made a mistake. I often make mistakes.” A bitter smile squeezed her mouth and eyes. “I’m not really a Miss, incidentally. My name is Mrs. Mildred Fleming Kraus Peterson Daniels Woodbury. I’ve been married four times.”

  “Congratulations four times.”

  “Yeah,” she answered dryly. “As I was saying, I make mistakes. For most of them I take the rap myself. Maude took the rap for this one. She and Slocum left school before the end of the spring semester and went to live with his mother in Nopal Valley. She was determined to be a good wife to him, and a good mother to the kid, and for twelve years she stuck it out. Twelve years.

  “In 1946 she came across a picture of Knudson in the Los Angeles Times. He was a police lieutenant in Chicago, and he’d run down some ex-con or other. It suddenly hit Maude that she still loved him, and that she was losing her life. She came down here and told me about it and I told her to beat her way to Chicago if she had to hitchhike. She had some money saved, and she went. Knudson was still living by himself. He hasn’t been since.

  “That fall the Chief of Police in Nopal Valley was fired for bribery. Knudson applied for the job and got it. He wanted to be near Maude, and he wanted to see his daughter. So they finally got together, in a way.” She sighed. “I guess Maude couldn’t stand the strain of having a lover. She wasn’t built for intrigue.”

  “No. It didn’t work out well.”

  “Maude had enough maturity to see what had to be done, if she could do it. She’d have gone away with Knudson this time. But it was too late. She had Cathy to think about. The hell of it was that Cathy didn’t like Knudson. And she was crazy about Slocum.”

  “Too crazy,” I said.

  “I know what you mean.” The dark sharp eyes veiled themselves, and unveiled. “Of course, she believes Slocum is her father. I think she’d better go on believing that, don’t you?”

  “It’s not my problem.”

  “Nor mine. I’m glad it isn’t. Whatever happens to Cathy, I’m sorry for her. It’s a shame, she’s a wonderful kid. I think I’ll go up and see her over the weekend.—I almost forgot, the funeral. When is the funeral?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You better call her house.”

  She stood up quickly, and offered me her hand. “I must be going now—some work to finish up. What time is it?”

  I looked at my watch. “Four o’clock.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Archer. Thanks for listening to me.”

  “I should be thanking you.”

  “No. I had to talk to somebody about it. I felt guilty. I still do.”

  “Guilty of what?”

  “Being alive, I guess.” She flashed me a difficult smile, and darted away.

  I sat over a third cup of coffee and thought about Maude Slocum. Hers was one of those stories without villains or heroes. There was no one to admire, no one to blame. Everyone had done wrong for himself and others. Everyone had failed. Everyone had suffered.

  Perhaps Cathy Slocum had suffered most of all. My sympathies were shifting from the dead woman to the living girl. Cathy had been born into it innocent. She had been weaned on hatred and schooled in a quiet hell where nothing was real but her love for her father. Who wasn’t really her father.

  chapter 25

  The ride to Quinto, on an old bus sardined with weekenders, was long and slow and hot. A girl who exhaled beer fumes and mauve-scented perfume regaled me with stories of her bowling triumphs in the twenty-alley Waikiki Bowl on Figueroa Boulevard. At the Quinto junction I bade her a quick farewell and walked out to the pier.

  My car was where I had left it. A parking-ticket was tucked under the windshield wiper. I tore it into eight pieces and tossed them into the ocean one by one. I didn’t intend to come back to Quinto if I could help it.

  Over the pass again to Nopal Valley. The central street was choked with late afternoon traffic, and parked cars lined the curbs. One of them pulled out ahead of me and I backed into its place. I walked a block to Antonio’s and took a seat at the end of the crowded bar. Antonio saw me and nodded in recognition.

  Without a word spoken he went to his safe and opened it. When he came to take my order, the clumsy newspaper package was in his hands. I thanked him. He said I was welcome. I asked for a double bourbon, which he brought. I paid him for it. He lit my cigarette. I drank the bourbon straight and walked out with the money in my pocket.

  Gretchen Keck was standing in front of the butane stove just inside the door of her trailer. She was wearing a halter and slacks. Her yellow hair was pulled up into a topknot, held in place by an elastic band. The egg that she was frying spluttered and popped like a tiny machine gun riddling my guts with hunger.

  She didn’t notice me until I rapped on the open door. Then she saw who it was. She picked up the frying-pan and brandished it clublike. The egg fell onto the floor and lay there drooling yellow. “Get away from me.”

  “In a minute.”

  “You’re a dirty bull, ain’t you, one of the ones that bumped Pat? I got nothing to say.”

  “I have.”

  “Not to me you haven’t. I don’t know nothing. You can amscray.” With the frying-pan upraised, ready to throw, she should have looked ridiculous. There was nothing ridiculous about her.

  I talked fast: “Pat gave me something for you before he died —”

  “Before you killed him, you mean.”

  “Shut up and listen to me, girl. I haven’t got all day.”

  “All right, finish your pitch. I know you’re lying, copper. You’re trying to hook me in, only I don’t know nothing. How could I know he was going to murder somebody?”

  “Put it down and listen to me. I’m coming in.”

  “In a pig’s eye!”

  I stepped across the threshold, wrenched the iron pan from her hand, pushed her down into the solitary chair: “Pat didn’t murder anybody, can you understand that?”

  “It said he did in the paper. Now I know you’re lying.” But her voice had lost its passionate conviction. Her soft mouth drooped uncertainly.

  “You don’t have to believe what you read in the papers. Mrs. Slocum died by accident.”

  “Why did they kill Pat then if he didn’t murder her?”

  “Because he claimed he did. Pat heard a policeman tell me she was dead. He went to the man he was working for and convinced him that he killed her.”

  “Pat wasn’t that crazy.”

  “No. He was crazy like a fox. The big boss gave him ten grand lamster’s money. Pat talked himself into getting paid for a murder he didn’t do.”

  “Jesus!” Her eyes were wide with admiration. “I told you he had a brain on him.”
/>   “He had a heart, too.” That lie left a bile taste on my tongue. “When he saw he wasn’t going to make it, he gave me the ten grand to give to you. He told me you were his heir.”

  “No. He told you that?” The cornflower eyes spilled over. “What else did he say?”

  My tongue wagged on: “He said he wanted you to have it on one condition: that you get out of Nopal Valley and go some place where you can live a decent life. He said it would all be worth it if you did that.”

  “I will!” she cried. “Did you say ten grand? Ten thousand dollars?”

  “Right.” I handed her the package. “Don’t spend it in California or they might try to trace it. Don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you. Go to another state and put it in a bank and buy a house or something. That’s what Pat wanted you to do with it.”

  “Did he say that?” She had torn off the wrappings and crushed the bright bills to her breast.

  “Yes. He said that.” And I told her what she wanted to hear because there was no reason not to: “He also said that he loved you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I loved him, too.”

  “I have to go now, Gretchen.”

  “Wait a minute.” She rose, her mouth working awkwardly, trying to frame a question. “Why did you—I mean I guess you really was his friend, like you said. I’m sorry. I thought you was a copper. And here you just came to bring me the money from Pat.”

  “Put it away,” I said. “Get out of town tonight if you can.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll do just what Pat wanted me to. He really was a swell guy after all.”

  I turned and went out the door, so that she wouldn’t see my face. “Goodbye, Gretchen.”

  The money wouldn’t do her any permanent good. She’d buy a mink coat or a fast car, and find a man to steal one or wreck the other. Another Reavis, probably. Still, it would give her something to remember different from the memories that she had. She had no souvenirs and I had too many. I wanted no mementos of Reavis or Kilbourne.

  Mrs. Strang ushered me into James Slocum’s bedroom. It was a very manly room, equipped with red leather chairs and solid dark furniture. Prints of old sailing vessels, like portholes opening on a motionless sea, adorned the paneled oak walls. Built-in bookcases, crammed with volumes, covered the length and height of one wall. The kind of room a hopeful mother might furnish for her son.

  Olivia Slocum’s son was sitting up at the end of the great four-poster bed. His face was bloodless and thin. In the late gray light from the windows he looked like a silver image of a man. Francis Marvell was sitting on his own feet in a chair beside him. Both of them were intent on a chessboard set with black and white ivory pieces that rested on the edge of the bed between them.

  Slocum’s hand emerged from his scarlet silk sleeve and moved a black knight. “There.”

  “Jolly good,” Marvell said. “Oh, jolly good.”

  Slocum withdrew his dreaming gaze from the board and turned it on me. “Yes?”

  “You said you would see Mr. Archer?” the housekeeper faltered.

  “Mr. Archer? Oh. Yes. Come in, Mr. Archer.” Slocum’s voice was weak and vaguely peevish.

  Mrs. Strang left the room. I stood where I was. Slocum and Marvell projected an atmosphere, a circle of intimacy, which I didn’t care to enter. Nor did they want me to enter it. Their heads were turned toward me at the same impatient angle, willing me to be gone. To leave them to the complex chess-play between them.

  “I hope that you’re recovering, Mr. Slocum.” I had nothing better to say.

  “I don’t know, I have had a perfectly dreadful series of shocks.” Self-pity squeaked behind the words like a rat behind the wall. “I have lost my mother, I have lost my wife, my own daughter has turned against me now.”

  “I’m standing by, dear fellow,” Marvell said. “You can count on me, you know.” Slocum smiled weakly. His hand moved toward Marvell’s, which was resting slack by the chessboard, but paused short of it.

  “If you’ve come about the play,” Marvell said to me, “I’m afraid I have to confess we’ve given it up. After all that’s happened, it may be months or years before I can regain the world of imagination. Poor dear James may never act again.”

  “No great loss to the theatre,” Slocum said with quiet pathos. “But Mr. Archer isn’t interested in the play, Francis. I’d supposed you knew by now that he’s a detective. I imagine that he’s looking for his pay.”

  “I have been paid.”

  “That’s just as well. You’d never have a penny out of me. May I hazard a guess as to who paid you?”

  “You needn’t. It was your wife.”

  “Of course it was! And shall I tell you why?” He leaned forward, clutching the bedclothes. His eyes were bright with fever or passion. The silver face was peaked and hollowed like an old man’s. “Because you helped her to murder my mother, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  Marvell uncoiled his legs and stood up, his face averted in embarrassment.

  “No, Francis, please don’t go. I want you to hear this. I want you to know the sort of woman I’ve had to spend my life with.”

  Marvell slumped back into the chair and began to bite his knuckles.

  “Go on,” I said. “This is interesting.”

  “It came to me the night before last. I lay here thinking the night through, and I saw the whole thing plainly. She’d always hated my mother, she wanted her money, she wanted to leave me. But she didn’t dare to murder her without assistance. You were to lend the professional touch, were you not?”

  “And what was my particular contribution?”

  His voice was soft and sly: “You provided the scapegoat, Mr. Archer. No doubt Maude drowned mother herself; she wouldn’t delegate that task, not she. You were there to make sure that Reavis took the blame. My suspicion was confirmed yesterday when Reavis’s cap was found in the grove by the pool. I knew that Reavis didn’t leave it there. He’d left it on the front seat of the car. I saw it in the car myself. I suggest that you saw it there too, and realized what could be done with it.”

  “I’m not very suggestible, Mr. Slocum. But let’s assume that what you say is true. What are you going to do about it?”

  “There is nothing I can do.” With his eyes turned up toward the ceiling, his hands now gripping each other, he looked like a mad saint. “In order to have you punished, I should have to trumpet my shame, my wife’s shame, to the world. You can rest easy, unless you have a conscience. Last night I did my duty to my dead mother. I told my wife what I have told you. She killed herself. It was fitting.”

  Hard words rose in me. I held them back with clenched teeth. Slocum had retreated from reality. If I told him that he had driven his wife to suicide for no good reason, it would only drive him further into the unreal world.

  Maude Slocum hadn’t killed herself because she murdered her mother-in-law. Her husband’s story of the cap had simply told her that Reavis hadn’t done it. Which meant that someone else had.

  I said to Marvell: “If you care about this man, you’d better get him a damn good doctor.”

  He batted his eyes at me, and stuttered something incoherent against his knuckles. Slocum’s face was still turned to the ceiling, wearing a sad holy smile. I went out. From the hallway I heard him say: “It’s your move, Francis.”

  I went through the house alone, thinking of Maude Slocum and looking for her daughter. The rooms and corridors were empty and still. The tide of violence running in the house had permanently ebbed and drawn the life out with it. The veranda and the loggia and the terraces were empty of life, except for the flowers burning in the fading light. I avoided the pool, which glimmered through the trees like a wicked blade. At the end of the funereal alley of cypresses I came to the old lady’s garden.

  Cathy was sitting on a stone bench islanded among the lake of flowers. Her face was turned to the west, where a while before the sun had died in glory. Her young look traveled up beyond the fieldstone wall of the garden t
o the mountains. She was watching their purple masses as if they formed the walls of a great prison where she had been sentenced to live alone forever.

  I called to her over the gate: “Cathy. May I come in?”

  She turned slowly, the mountains huge and ancient in her eyes. Her voice was flat: “Hello, Mr. Archer. Do come in.”

  I released the redwood latch and stepped into the garden.

  “Don’t close it,” she said. “You can leave it open.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just thinking.” She moved aside on the bench, to make room for me. The concrete surface still held the sun’s heat.

  “What about?”

  “Me. I used to think this was all so beautiful, and now it doesn’t mean a thing. Coleridge was right about nature, I guess. You see the beauty there if you have it in your heart. If your heart is desolate, the world is a wilderness. Did you ever read his ‘Ode to Dejection’?”

  I said I never had.

  “I understand it now. I’d kill myself if I had my mother’s courage. As it is, I suppose I’ll sit around and wait for something to happen to me. Something good or something bad, it doesn’t really matter.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I settled for something meaningless and soothing: “All the bad things have happened, haven’t they?”

  “Except the desolation in the heart.” If she hadn’t been completely earnest, the phrase would have sounded foolish.

  I said: “Talk it out to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She met my gaze. For a long moment we looked at each other. Her body narrowed and shrunk, drawing away from me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You killed your grandmother,” I said. “You might as well tell me about it.”

  She bowed her head and shoulders and sat there, dry-eyed and quiet. “Does everybody know?”

  “Nobody knows, Cathy. Just me and Ralph Knudson.”

  “Yes. He talked to me today. Mr. Knudson is my father. Why didn’t they tell me sooner? I’d never have sent that letter.”

  “Why did you send it?” I said.