“I like to start with the worst and work up.”
“I have no reason to suspect kidnapping, or any kind of foul play. I told you Frankie’s done this before. It’s himself I’m worried about, not other people.” Her voice was cold with pain. “I’m afraid he’s in a bad way, mentally. He’s at the age when schizophrenia strikes so many young people.”
“Maybe he needs a psychiatrist. I’m not one.”
“I know what you are, Mr. Archer. A private detective, with the accent on the private. I have to trust someone, and that’s why you’re here. You can find out where he is and what he’s doing. When I know what I have to deal with, then perhaps it will be time for the psychiatrists. Not that they ever did me any good.”
I thought and didn’t say that she seemed moderately sane for a woman of her age and class. One thing besides her money made me a little nervous, though. Her thought revolved in obsessive circles around herself, returning to the beloved subject like a hawk to a wrist.
“Of course you’ve been in touch with his friends,” I said with some impatience.
“He has no friends, no really close friends, at least not that I know of. It’s one of the things that concern me. There are the boys at school, naturally, but Frankie never fitted into any group too well. I was his only confidante, until this last year or so. He used to tell me everything. Not any more. When he does come home, he keeps himself to himself. He looks at me as if I didn’t exist, literally. When I try to speak to him – to question him – he gets violently angry and rushes out of the house. Or he locks himself in his room and plays music for hours on end. All night, sometimes.”
“Bach or bop?”
“Anything. He plays the same record over and over. Ravel’s Bolero is one. He sits in his room and won’t come down for meals. No wonder he’s losing weight. I’ve gone to his room to try to persuade him – he won’t let me past the door. It’s as if he’s trying to cut himself off entirely. I don’t believe he’s addressed me once in the last two weeks, except to ask for money.”
“He’s spending money?”
“Quite a great deal. I made him an allowance of fifty dollars a week, which is supposed to include the upkeep of his car. But it hasn’t been nearly enough lately. I must have given him an extra three or four hundred in the last month. And he keeps asking for more.”
“Maybe he’s got himself a girl.”
“Maybe he has, but I doubt it. He’s never shown much interest in girls. I almost wish he had. That I could cope with.” Her body stretched and expanded, more or less on its own. “But this isn’t the way a boy behaves when he’s fallen in love. I know what I’m talking about.”
I didn’t doubt it. “Has Mr. Casswell talked to him?”
“Cass has tried. He can’t get through to him, any better than I can. I’m afraid talking is useless. We have to find out where he goes and what he’s doing – do you have any notions, from what I’ve told you?”
I had. I said I hadn’t. I didn’t even want to think about it. “Can I have a look at his room?”
“He keeps it locked when he isn’t there.”
“You must have a master key.”
“Yes, but he changed the lock, six months ago. I know how that sounds,” she said, bowing her head. “As if he’s running completely out of control. And that’s true. I’m afraid, not of Frankie. Just afraid.”
“Is Casswell?”
She pondered her answer. Before it came, there were quick light footsteps on the flagstones behind us. It was a man in morning clothes, carrying a menu. He was small and neat-looking, with crisply waved gray hair. He looked at me with surprise and recognition, but waited for me to speak.
“Ferdy Jerome,” I said.
Mrs. Casswell looked at me suspiciously. “Do you know Ferdy?”
He nodded blandly, to her and then to me. He was a Swiss with a heart of German silver and a politician’s brain. He spoke six languages, including Romantsch, and also understood the uses of silence. I got up to shake hands with him.
“Nice to see you, Ferdy.”
“Thank you, Mr. Archer.” He owned several apartment houses in Los Angeles, and could have bought me out without noticing it. “I haven’t seen you since 1950. March, the first week in March.”
“Correct. Did you get tired of Las Vegas?”
“I wouldn’t say so. But I always have this yearning for the ocean. I’ve been working here for nearly two years.”
“You still are, Ferdy,” Mrs. Casswell drawled. “Give me the menu, please.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Casswell. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.” He bent over her solicitously. “And how is Mr. Casswell? And how is Francis?”
She didn’t answer him.
After a lunch which Mrs. Casswell hardly touched, I followed her Lincoln home. Her estate lay along the sea between the club and the city. We entered through iron gates and drove for several hundred yards along a gravel drive. There were polo grounds on one side, which looked disused; on the other a landing strip for light planes, and a bright new metal hangar.
The house belonged to the hashish school of Spanish architecture. Probably early nineteen-twenties and imitation Mizner, which made it the imitation of an imitation which wasn’t worth imitating. It was a ponderous monstrosity with thick walls, meager windows, insane turrets. Somebody with a hidalgo complex had tried to jail a dream of happiness. The prisoner had probably died, or lost its mind.
I watched Mrs. Casswell leave her car and mount the low front steps. Her movements seemed unwilling. She waited for me under the Moorish arch which hung over the front door. She opened the door like a mourner making a duty call at a mausoleum.
The air in the living room was chilly and stale. There was dust on the heavy dark furniture, dirty glasses on the closed top of the grand piano, tarnish on the gilt scrollwork of the picture frames, cobwebs in the angles of the beams. She looked around the giant room as if she was seeing it through my eyes.
“I lost my housekeeping couple. They had some trouble with Frankie. I’ll have to do something about that, too.”
“What did Frankie do?”
“Nothing, really. There was some disagreement. Dohi claimed he threatened him with a knife. He didn’t, of course. It’s perfectly preposterous. These Japs are awful liars.”
“So are these Caucasians. Why did he threaten Dohi with a knife? If he did.”
“He didn’t, I tell you. Frankie’s incapable of anything like that.”
“All right. May I look at his room?”
“I don’t like this,” she said uncertainly. “It’s like breaking faith with him. What do you expect to find there?”
“Some clues to his habits. So far I haven’t much to go on.”
Lady Killer
Published in The Archer Files (Crippen & Landru, 2007).
It was nearly half a mile from the gates to the house. The grove of untended oaks which flanked the road gave way to formal gardens. Hedges clipped in old-fashioned topiary shapes divided terraced lawns, brown from lack of water. The house was a stucco monstrosity which looked more like a state institution than a home.
The woman who answered my knock wore a white nylon nurse’s uniform. Its cut was more erotic than professional, plunging low at the neck, nipped in at the waist, flaring out over the hips. She had cool blue eyes, hair like whipped cream, and a figure that justified the formfitting uniform. I told her who I was.
“Come in, Mr. Archer. Mr. Coulson is expecting you.”