“Practically anybody else. The gatehouse was standing open last night, wasn’t it, Alex?”
“It was when I got there.”
“Let me do the talking,” his father said. “I’ve had more experience in these matters.”
“It hasn’t done you a hell of a lot of good. Your son is a witness, and I’m trying to get at the facts.”
He stood over me with his hands on his hips, vibrating. “My son has nothing whatever to do with this case.”
“Don’t kid yourself. He’s married to the girl.”
“The marriage is meaningless – a boyish impulse that didn’t last one full day. I’m having it annulled. It wasn’t even consummated, he tells me.”
“You can’t annul it.”
“Don’t tell me what I can do.”
“I think I will, though. All you can do is annul yourself and your son. There’s more to a marriage than sexual consummation or legal technicalities. The marriage is real because it’s real for Alex.”
“He wants out of it now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true, isn’t it, Alex, you want to come home with me and Mother? She’s terribly worried about you. Her heart is kicking up again.” Kincaid was throwing everything but the kitchen sink.
Alex looked from him to me. “I don’t know. I just want to do what’s right.”
Kincaid started to say something, probably having to do with the kitchen sink, but I talked over him:
“Then answer another question or two, Alex. Was Dolly carrying a gun when she came running back to the gatehouse last night?”
“I didn’t see one.”
Kincaid said: “She probably had it concealed under her clothes.”
“Shut up, Kincaid,” I said calmly from my sitting position. “I don’t object to the fact that you’re a bloodless bastard. You obviously can’t help it. I do object to your trying to make Alex into one. Leave him a choice, at least.”
Kincaid sputtered a couple of times, and walked away from me. Alex said without looking at either of us: “Don’t talk to my father that way, Mr. Archer.”
“All right. She was wearing a cardigan and a blouse and skirt. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Carrying a bag?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Think.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Then she couldn’t have been carrying a concealed .38 revolver. You didn’t see her hide it under the mattress?”
“No.”
“And were you with her all the time, between the time she got back and the time she left for the nursing home?”
“Yes. I was with her all the time.”
“Then it’s pretty clear it isn’t Dolly’s gun, or at least it wasn’t Dolly who hid it under the mattress. Do you have any idea who it could have been?”
“No.”
“You said it was the murder gun. How did they establish that? They haven’t had time for ballistics tests.”
Kincaid spoke up from the far corner where he had been sulking: “It’s the right caliber to fit the wound, and one shell had been fired, recently. It stands to reason it’s the gun she used.”
“Do you believe that, Alex?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have they questioned her?”
“They intend to. The Sheriff said something about waiting until they nailed it down with ballistic evidence, Monday.”
That gave me a little time, if I could believe Alex. The pressures of the night and morning, on top of the uncertainties of the last three weeks, had left him punchy. He looked almost out on his feet.
“I think we all should wait,” I said, “before we make up our minds about your wife. Even if she’s guilty, which I very strongly doubt, you owe her all the help and support you can give her.”
“He owes her nothing,” Kincaid said. “Not a thing. She married him fraudulently. She lied to him again and again.”
I kept my voice and temper down, for contrast. “She still needs medical care, and she needs a lawyer. I have a good local lawyer waiting to step in, but I can’t retain him myself.”
“You’re taking quite a lot into your hands, aren’t you?”
“Somebody has to assume responsibility. There’s a lot of it floating around loose at the moment. You can’t avoid it by crawling into a hole and pulling the hole in after you. The girl’s in trouble, and whether you like it or not she’s a member of your family.”
Alex appeared to be listening. I didn’t know if he was hearing me. His father shook his narrow gray head:
“She’s no member of my family, and I’ll tell you one thing for certain. She’s not going to drag my son down into the underworld. And neither are you.” He turned to Alex. “How much have you already paid this man?”
“A couple of hundred.”
Kincaid said to me: “You’ve been amply paid, exorbitantly paid. You heard me fire you. This is a private room and if you persist in intruding I’ll call the management. If they can’t handle you I’ll call the police.”
Alex looked at me and lifted his hands, not very far, in a helpless movement. His father put an arm around his shoulders:
“I’m only doing what’s best for you, son. You don’t belong with these people. We’ll go home and cheer up Mother. After all you don’t want to drive her into her grave.”
It came out smooth and pat, and it was the clincher. Alex didn’t look at me again. I went back to my own room and phoned Jerry Marks and told him I had lost a client and so had he. Jerry seemed disappointed.
Chapter 14
Alex and his father vacated their room and drove away. I didn’t go out to see them off but I could hear the sound of their engines, quickly muffled by the fog. I sat and let my stomach unknot, telling myself I should have handled them better. Kincaid was a frightened man who valued his status the way some previous generations valued their souls.
I drove up Foothill to the Bradshaw house. The Dean was probably another breakable reed, but he had money, and he had shown some sympathy for Dolly, over and above his official interest in the case. I had no desire to continue it on my own. I needed a principal, preferably one who swung some weight locally. Alice Jenks met this requirement, more or less, but I didn’t want her for a client.
A deputy was standing guard at the gatehouse. He wouldn’t let me in to look around but he didn’t object to my going up to the main house. The Spanish woman Maria answered the door.
“Is Dr. Bradshaw home?”
“No sir.”
“Where can I find him?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I think Mrs. Bradshaw said he’s gone for the weekend.”
“That’s queer. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Bradshaw.”
“I’ll see if she’s busy.”
I stepped inside uninvited and sat on a gilt chair in the entrance hail while Maria went upstairs. She came down and told me that Mrs. Bradshaw would be with me shortly.
It was at least half-an-hour before she came limping down. She had primped her gray head and rouged her cheeks and put on a dress with lace at her slack throat held in place by a diamond brooch. I wondered, as she made me the dubious gift of her hand, if all this had been done for my benefit.
The old lady seemed glad to see me. “How are you, Mr.– it’s Mr. Archer, isn’t it? I’ve been so hoping somebody would call. This fog makes one feel so isolated, and with my driver gone–” She seemed to hear the note of complaint rising in her voice, and cut it off. “How is the girl?” she said briskly.
“She’s being taken care of. Dr. Godwin thinks she’s better than she was last night.”
“Good. You’ll be glad to know,” she said with a bright ironic stare, “that I’m somewhat better myself than I was last night. My son informed me this morning that I staged one of my exhibitions, as he calls them. Frankly, I was upset. Nights aren’t my best season.”