“Tomorrow morning at eight.”
He turned to Bradshaw. “Roy, if I were you I’d go and see how Mrs. Bradshaw is feeling. I gave her a sedative, but she’s alarmed. She thinks, or pretends to think, that she’s surrounded by maniacal assassins. You can talk her out of it better than I could.”
Godwin seemed to be a wise and careful man. At any rate, his authority imposed itself. All three of us did as he said.
So did Dolly. Propped between him and Alex, she came out to his car. She didn’t struggle or make a sound, but she walked as though she was on her way to the execution chamber.
Chapter 10
An hour later I was sitting on one of the twin beds in my motel room. There was nothing more I could do right now, except possibly stir up trouble if I went for information to the local authorities. But my mind kept projecting on the plaster wall rapid movies of actions I could be performing. Run down Begley-McGee. Capture the man from Nevada.
I shut off the violent images with an effort of will and forced myself to think about Zeno, who said that Achilles could never traverse the space between him and the tortoise. It was a soothing thought, if you were a tortoise, or maybe even if you were Achilles.
I had a pint of whisky in my bag. I was getting it out of its sock when I thought of Arnie Walters, a Reno colleague of mine who had split more than one pint with me. I put in a long-distance call to his office, which happened to be the front room of his house. Arnie was at home.
“Walters Detective Agency,” he said in a reluctant midnight voice.
“This is Lew Archer.”
“Oh. Good. I didn’t really want to go to bed. I was only modeling my pajamas.”
“Irony isn’t your forte, so drop it. All I’m asking for is a small service which I will repay in kind at the earliest opportunity. Are you recording?”
I heard the click of the machine, and told it and Arnie about Helen’s death. “A couple of hours after the shooting, the man I’m interested in came out of the murder house and drove away in a black or dark blue convertible, I think a late-model Ford, with a Nevada license. I think I got the first four figures–”
“You think?”
“It’s foggy here, and it was dark. First four figures are probably FT37. The subject is young and athletic, height about five-eleven, wearing a dark topcoat and dark snap-brim fedora. I couldn’t make out his face.”
“Have you seen your oculist lately?”
“You can do better than that, Arnie. Try.”
“I hear senior citizens can get free glaucoma tests nowadays.”
Arnie was older than I was, but he didn’t like to have this pointed out. “What’s bugging you? Trouble with the wife?”
“No trouble,” he said cheerfully. “She’s waiting for me in bed.”
“Give Phyllis my love.”
“I’ll give her my own. In case I come up with anything, which seems unlikely in view of the fragmentary information, where do I contact you?”
“I’m staying at the Mariner’s Rest Motel in Pacific Point. But you better call my answering service in Hollywood.”
He said he would. As I hung up, I heard a gentle tapping on my door. It turned out to be Alex. He had pulled on his trousers over his pajamas.
“I heard you talking in here.”
“I was on the phone.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I’m through phoning. Come in and have a drink.”
He entered the room cautiously, as if it might be booby trapped. In the last few hours his movements had become very tentative. His bare feet made no sound on the carpet.
The bathroom cupboard contained two glasses wrapped in wax paper. I unwrapped and filled them. We sat on the twin beds, drinking to nothing in particular. We faced each other like mirror images separated by an invisible wall of glass.
I was conscious of the differences between us, particularly of Alex’s youth and lack of experience. He was at the age when everything hurts.
“I was thinking of calling Dad,” he said. “Now I don’t know whether I should or not.”
There was another silence.
“He won’t say ‘I told you so,’ in so many words. But that will be the general idea. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread and all that jazz.”
“I think it makes just as much sense if you reverse it. Angels rush in where fools are afraid to tread. Not that I know any angels.”
He got the message. “You don’t think I’m a fool?”
“You’ve handled yourself very well.”
“Thank you,” he said formally. “Even if it isn’t actually true.”
“It is, though. It must have taken some doing.”
Whisky and the beginnings of human warmth had dissolved the glass wall between us. “The worst of it,” he said, “was when I put her in the nursing home just now. I felt as if I was – you know, consigning her to oblivion. The place is like something out of Dante, with people crying and groaning. Dolly’s a sensitive girl. I don’t see how she’ll be able to take it.”
“She can take it better than some other things, such as wandering around loose in her condition.”
“You think she’s insane, don’t you?”
“What I think doesn’t matter. We’ll get an expert opinion tomorrow. There’s no doubt she’s temporarily off base. I’ve seen people further off, and I’ve seen them come back.”
“You think she’ll be all right then?”
He’d grabbed at what I said like a flying trapeze and swung up into hopefulness. Which I didn’t think ought to be encouraged:
“I’m more concerned about the legal situation than the psychiatric one.”
“You can’t really believe she killed this friend of hers – Helen? I know she said so, but it isn’t possible. You see, I know Dolly. She isn’t aggressive at all. She’s one of the really pro-life people. She doesn’t even like to kill a spider.”
“It is possible, Alex, and that was all I said. I wanted Godwin to be aware of the possibility from the start. He’s in a position to do a lot for your wife.”
Alex said, “My wife,” with a kind of wonder.
“She is your wife, legally. But nobody would consider that you owe her much. You have an out, if you want to use it.”
The whisky slopped in his glass. I think he barely restrained himself from throwing it in my face.
“I’m not going to ditch her,” he said. “If you think I ought to, you can go to hell.”
I hadn’t liked him thoroughly until now. “Somebody had to mention the fact that you have an out. A lot of people would take it.”
“I’m not a lot of people.”
“So I gather.”
“Dad would probably call me a fool, but I don’t care if she’s guilty of murder. I’m staying.”
“It’s going to cost money.”
“You want more money, is that it?”
“I can wait. So can Godwin. I was thinking about the future. Also there’s the strong possibility that you’ll need a lawyer tomorrow.”
“What for?” He was a good boy, but a little slow on the uptake.
“Judging by tonight, your main problem is going to be to prevent Dolly from talking herself into deep trouble. That means keeping her out of the hands of the authorities, in a place where she can be properly looked after. A good lawyer can be a help in that. Lawyers generally don’t wait for their money in criminal cases.”