“Could be his divorce,” Arnie said smoothly. “You were interested in what Bradshaw was doing in Reno between the middle of July and the end of August. The answer is on the court record. He was establishing residence for a divorce from a woman named Letitia O. Macready.”
“Letitia who?”
“Macready.” He spelled it out. “I haven’t been able to get any further information on the woman. According to the lawyer who handled the divorce, Bradshaw didn’t know where she lived. Her last known address was in Boston. The official notice of the proceedings came back from there with a ‘Gone – No Order’ stamp.”
“Is Bradshaw still at Tahoe?”
“He and his new wife checked out this morning. They were on their way back to Pacific Point. That makes him your baby.”
“Baby isn’t quite the word for Bradshaw. I wonder if his mother knows about the first marriage.”
“You could always ask her.”
I decided to try and talk to Bradshaw first. I got my car out of the courthouse lot and drove out to the college. The students on the mall and in the corridors, particularly the girls, wore subdued expressions. The threat of death and judgment had invaded the campus. I felt a little like its representative.
The blonde secretary in the Dean’s outer office looked tense, as if only her will was holding her, and the whole institution, together.
“Dean Bradshaw isn’t in.”
“Not back from the weekend yet?”
“Of course he’s back.” She added in a defensive tone: “Dean Bradshaw was here this morning for over an hour.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I guess he went home.”
“You sound kind of worried about him.”
She answered me with a machine-gun burst from her typewriter. I retreated, across the hall to Laura Sutherland’s office. Her secretary told me she hadn’t come in today. She’d phoned in the middle of the morning that she was afraid she was coming down with something. I hoped it wasn’t something serious, like death and judgment.
I drove back to Foothill and along it to the Bradshaw house. Wind rustled in the trees. The fog had been completely dissipated, and the afternoon sky was a brilliant aching blue. The mountains rising into it were distinct in every scarred and wrinkled detail.
I was more aware than usual of these things, but I felt cut off from them. I must have had some empathy for Roy Bradshaw and his new wife and was afraid of being hurt in my empathy. I drove past his gate without seeing it and had to turn in the next driveway and come back to the Bradshaw house. I was somewhat relieved to be told by the Spanish woman, Maria, that Bradshaw wasn’t there and hadn’t been all day.
Mrs. Bradshaw called from the stairs in a cracked penetrating voice: “Is that you, Mr. Archer? I want to talk to you.”
She came down the steps in a quilted dressing robe and cloth slippers. The weekend had aged her. She looked very old and haggard.
“My son hasn’t been home for three days,” she complained, “and he hasn’t telephoned once. What do you suppose has happened to him?”
“I’d like to discuss that question with you, in private.”
Maria, who had been listening with her entire body, went off in a hip-swinging dudgeon. Mrs. Bradshaw took me to a room I hadn’t been in before, a small sitting room opening on a patio at the side of the house. Its furnishings were informal and old-fashioned, and they reminded me slightly of the room where I had interviewed Mrs. Deloney.
This room was dominated by an oil painting over the fireplace. It was a full-length portrait, almost life-size, of a handsome gentleman wearing sweeping white mustaches and a cutaway. His black eyes followed me across the room to the armchair which Mrs. Bradshaw indicated. She sat in an upholstered platform rocker with her slippered feet on a small petit point hassock.
“I’ve been a selfish old woman,” she said unexpectedly. “I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided to pay your expenses after all. I don’t like what they’re doing to that girl.”
“You probably know more about it than I do.”
“Probably. I have some good friends in this city.” She didn’t elaborate.
“I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but my expenses are being taken care of. Dolly’s husband came back.”
“Really? I’m so glad.” She tried to warm herself at the thought, and failed. “I’m deeply concerned about Roy.”
“So am I, Mrs. Bradshaw.” I decided to tell her what I knew, or part of it. She was bound to find out soon about his marriage, his marriages. “You don’t have to worry about his physical safety. I saw him last night in Reno, and he was in good shape. He checked in at the college today.”
“His secretary lied to me then. I don’t know what they’re trying to do to me out there, or what my son is up to. What was he really doing in Reno?”
“Attending a conference, as he said. He also went there to look into a suspect in Helen Haggerty’s murder.”
“He must have been very fond of her, after all, to go to such lengths.”
“He was involved with Miss Haggerty. I don’t think the involvement was romantic.”
“What was it then?”
“Financial. I think he was paying her money, and incidentally he got her a job at the college, through Laura Sutherland. To put it bluntly, the Haggerty woman was blackmailing your son. She may have called it something different herself. But she used a crooked friend in Reno to check on his bank balance before she ever came here. This was the same man Roy went to Reno to talk to.”
Mrs. Bradshaw didn’t throw a fit, as I was afraid she might. She said in a grave tone: “Are these facts, Mr. Archer, or are you exercising your imagination?”
“I wish I were. I’m not.”
“But how could Roy be blackmailed? He’s led a blameless life, a dedicated life. I’m his mother. I ought to know.”
“That may be. But the standard varies for different people. A rising college administrator has to be lily-white. An unfortunate marriage, for instance, would queer his chances for that university presidency you were telling me about.”
“An unfortunate marriage? But Roy has never been married.”
“I’m afraid he has,” I said. “Does the name Letitia Macready mean anything to you?”
“It does not.”
She was lying. The name drew a net of lines across her face, reduced her eyes to bright black points and her mouth to a purse with a drawstring. She knew the name and hated it, I thought; perhaps she was even afraid of Letitia Macready.
“The name ought to mean something to you, Mrs. Bradshaw. The Macready woman was your daughter-in-law.”
“You must be insane. My son has never married.”
She spoke with such force and assurance that I had a moment of doubt. It wasn’t likely that Arnie had made a mistake – he seldom did – but it was possible that there were two Roy Bradshaws. No, Arnie had talked to Bradshaw’s lawyer in Reno, and must have made a positive identification.
“You have to get married,” I said, “before you can get a divorce. Roy got a Reno divorce a few weeks ago. He was in Nevada establishing residence for it from the middle of July till the end of August.”
“Now I know you’re insane. He was in Europe all that time, and I can prove it.” She got up, on creaking reluctant limbs, and went to the eighteenth-century secretary against one wall. She came back toward me with a sheaf of letters and postcards in her shaking hands. “He sent me these. You can see for yourself that he was in Europe.”
I looked over the postcards. There were about fifteen of them, arranged in order: the Tower of London (postmarked London, July 18), the Bodleian Library (Oxford, July 21), York Cathedral (York, July 25), Edinburgh Castle (Edinburgh, July 29), The Giant’s Causeway (Londonderry, August 3), The Abbey Theatre (Dublin, August 6), Land’s End (St. Ives, August 8), The Arc de Triomphe (Paris, August 12), and so on through Switzerland and Italy and Germany. I read the card from Munich (a view of the English Gardens, postmarked August 25):