“Why did you come to me at all, if you wanted to protect Jack? It seems that you knew what happened.”
“I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what had happened to her, and until I found out I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re still not sure,” I said. “But I’m beginning to be. For one thing, it’s certain that Una never got her cable, at least not as it was sent. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been doing what she was doing on the afternoon that her husband was going to fly over and say hello. You changed the date on it, perhaps? So that Una expected Jack a day later? Then you arranged to be in Hollywood on the seventh, so that Una could spend a final afternoon with Terry Neville.”
“Perhaps.” Her face was completely alive, controlled but full of dangerous energy, like a cobra listening to music.
“Perhaps you wanted Jack for yourself,” I said. “Perhaps you had another reason, I don’t know. I think even a psychoanalyst would have a hard time working through your motivations, Mrs. Dreen, and I’m not one. All I know is that you precipitated a murder. Your plan worked even better than you expected.”
“It was accidental death,” she said hoarsely. “If you go to the police you’ll only make a fool of yourself, and cause trouble for Jack.”
“You care about Jack, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “He was mine before he ever saw Una. She took him away from me.”
“And now you think you’ve got him back.” I got up to go. “I hope for your sake he doesn’t figure out for himself what I’ve just figured out.”
“Do you think he will?” Sudden terror had jerked her face apart. I didn’t answer her.
Death by Water
Published in Strangers in Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries (Crippen & Landru, 2001) [“Joe Rogers” changed to “Lew Archer” (but no other revisions) for The Archer Files (Crippen & Landru, 2007)].
During and after his service in World War II, and before beginning his association with Lew Archer, Kenneth Millar (who’d yet to transform himself into Ross Macdonald) wrote two stories involving a Southern California private detective named Joe Rogers; and another story about newspaperman Sam Drake.
The two Rogers tales were written on the same day in late 1945, and both were entered in a magazine contest. One (“Find the Woman”) won a prize and was printed in magazine and book form as a Joe Rogers story. The other (“Death by Water”) remained unpublished until 2001, when it was included in the book Strangers in Town.
“Find the Woman” found its way into The Name Is Archer, Ross Macdonald’s premier 1955 collection of short stories, with Joe Rogers changed to (or revealed as) Lew Archer. Similarly, The Name Is Archer also included a revised version of the 1948 novelette “The Bearded Lady,” with Sam Drake becoming Lew Archer.
In the spirit of those earlier author-approved revisions, and with the permission of Kenneth Millar’s trustee, “Death by Water” is published here as a Lew Archer case.
– Tom Nolan
He was old, but he didn’t look as if he were about to die. For a man of his age, which couldn’t have been less than seventy, he was doing very well for himself. He was sitting at the bar buying drinks for three young sailors, and he was the life of the party in more than the financial sense. In the hour or so that I had been watching him, he must have had at least five martinis, and it was long past dinner time.
“The old man can carry his liquor,” I said to Al.
“Mr. Ralston, you mean? He’s in here every night from eight to midnight, and it never seems to get him down. Of course some nights he gets too much, and I have to take him home and put him to bed. But next day he’s bright as ever.”
“He lives in the hotel, eh?”
Al Sablacan was the hotel detective of the Valeria Pueblo, which charged ten dollars a day and up and, unlike many Los Angeles hotels, was worth it. Until a couple of years ago, he had been a private detective, like me, but he had finally succumbed to varicose veins and the promise of security in his old age.
“He’s our oldest inhabitant,” Al said. “He’s got a bungalow over near the swimming pool. Been there about ten years, I guess, him and his wife.”
“He doesn’t act married.”
Mr. Ralston had left the bar and was leaning on the grand piano watching a dark Spanish-looking girl who strummed a guitar and sang pseudo-Latin songs in a sweet soprano. She was making eyes at Mr. Ralston in an exaggerated way which was intended to indicate that she was humoring the old man. Mr. Ralston was making faces at her, as if to express passionate delight.
“You show them, Mr. Ralston,” one of the sailors said from the bar. “There’s life in the old boy yet.”
“Most assuredly,” said Mr. Ralston, in rich and gracious tones. He gave a dollar to the singer, and she began to play “The Isle of Capri.” Mr. Ralston danced in a small circle between the bar and the piano, making expansively romantic gestures. “Most assuredly,” he repeated, with a winning smile which made everyone in the bar smile with him. “I am a little old dried up man, but I have a youthful heart.”
“Isn’t he a card?” Al said to me. “His wife’s an invalid, and he must do a lot of worrying about her, but you’d never know it. He’s a card.”
There was a recess in the music, and Mr. Ralston approached our table on light feet and with a glowing face. “And how are you this evening?” he said to Al in tones of cultivated solicitude. “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend. I do hope you’ll overlook the absence of a tie. I neglected to put one on after dinner. I don’t know what I was thinking of.” He gave a little laugh of indulgence at his boyish recklessness.
“Lew Archer, Mr. Ralston,” Al said. “Lew’s a private detective. We used to work together.”
“How utterly fascinating,” Mr. Ralston said. “Do you mind if I join you for a moment? I have some guests at the bar, but I can continue to act as host by remote control, so to speak.” He ordered a round of drinks for us and the sailors at the bar. His martini disappeared like ether in air.
“I’ve often thought,” he said to me, “that the life of a detective would be an intensely interesting one. I rather fancy myself as a student of human nature, but my studies have been somewhat academic, you might say. Isn’t it true that one sees deepest into human nature in moments of strain, moments of crisis, the kind of moments that must be delightfully frequent in your own life, Mr. Archer?”
“You see deep enough into certain aspects of human nature, I guess. Some of the things I’ve seen I’d just as soon forget.”
“Such as?” said Mr. Ralston, his eyes bright with curiosity and alcohol.
“Hatred. Greed. Jealousy. The three emotions that cause most crime. Impersonal love of inflicting pain is a fourth.”
“Your word ‘impersonal’ is interesting,” Mr. Ralston said. “It implies a concept which has occurred to me, that sadism need not have a sexual content. Don’t you think, though, that there may be a fifth possibility? Surely people have stolen, even killed, for love. Or would your definition of love exclude the more criminal passions?”
“This is where I came in,” Al Sablacan said to me. “I’ve got to mosey around a bit, anyway, and see that everything’s O.K.”
“Hate is usually a more compelling motive than love,” I said when Al had excused himself. “I think you may be right about sadism, though. May I ask what your business is, or was, Mr. Ralston?”