Dear Moms:
Yesterday I visited Hitler’s eyrie at Berchtesgaden – a beautiful setting made grim by its associations – and today, by way of contrast, I took a bus to Oberammergau, where the Passion Play is performed. I was struck by the almost Biblical simplicity of the villagers. This whole Bavarian countryside is studded with the most stunning little churches. How I wish you could enjoy them with me! I’m sorry to hear that your summer companion is presenting certain prickly aspects. Well, the summer will soon be over and I for one will be happy to turn my back on the splendors of Europe and come home. All my love.
Roy
I turned to Mrs. Bradshaw. “Is this your son’s handwriting?”
“Yes. It’s unmistakable. I know he wrote those cards, and these letters, too.”
She brandished several letters under my nose. I looked at the postmarks: London, July 19; Dublin, August 7; Geneva, August 15; Rome, August 20; Berlin, August 27; Amsterdam, August 30. I started to read the last one (“Dear Moms: Just a hasty note, which may arrive after I do, to tell you how I loved your letter about the blackbirds…”) but Mrs. Bradshaw snatched it out of my hand.
“Please don’t read the letters. My son and I are very close, and he wouldn’t like me to show our correspondence to a stranger.” She gathered all the letters and cards and locked them up in the secretary. “I believe I’ve proved my point, that Roy couldn’t have been in Nevada when you say he was.”
For all her assurance, her voice was questioning. I said:
“Did you write letters to him while he was away?”
“I did. That is to say, I dictated them to Miss What’s-hername, except for once or twice when my arthritis allowed me to write. I had a nurse-companion during the summer. Miss Wadley, her name was. She was one of these completely young women–”
I cut in: “Did you write a letter about the blackbirds?”
“Yes. We had an invasion of them last month. It was more of a fanciful little tale than a letter, having to do with blackbirds baked in a pie.”
“Where did you send the blackbird letter?”
“Where? I think to Rome, to American Express in Rome. Roy gave me an itinerary before he left here.”
“He was supposed to be in Rome on August 20. The blackbird letter was answered from Amsterdam on August 30.”
“You have an impressive memory, Mr. Archer, but I fail to see what you’re getting at.”
“Just this. There was a lapse of at least ten days between the receiving and the answering of that letter – time enough for an accomplice to pick it up in Rome, airmail it to Roy in Reno, get his airmail reply in Amsterdam, and remail it to you here.”
“I don’t believe it.” But she half-believed it. “Why would he go to such lengths to deceive his mother?”
“Because he was ashamed of what he was actually doing – divorcing the Macready woman in Reno – and he didn’t want you, or anyone else, to know about it. Has he been to Europe before?”
“Of course. I took him there soon after the war, when he was in graduate school at Harvard.”
“And did you visit many of these same places?”
“Yes. We did. Not Germany, but most of the others.”
“Then it wouldn’t have been hard for him to fake the letters. As for the postcards, his accomplice must have bought them in Europe and mailed them to him.”
“I dislike your use of the word ‘accomplice’ in connection with my son. There is, after all, nothing criminal about this – this deception. It’s a purely personal matter.”
“I hope so, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
She must have known what I meant. Her face went through the motions of swallowing pain. She turned her back on me and went to the window. Several white-eyed blackbirds were walking around on the tiles of the patio. I don’t suppose she saw them. One of her hands combed roughly at her hair, over and over, until it stuck up like molting thistles. When she turned around at last, her eyes were half-closed, and her face seemed tormented by the light.
“I’m going to ask you to keep all this in confidence, Mr. Archer.”
Roy Bradshaw had used very similar language last night, about his marriage to Laura.
“I can try,” I said.
“Please do. It would be tragic if Roy’s career were to be ruined by a youthful indiscretion. That’s all it was, you know – a youthful indiscretion. It would never have happened if his father had lived to give him a father’s guidance.” She gestured toward the portrait over the fireplace.
“By ‘it’ you mean the Macready woman?”
“Yes.”
“You know her then?”
“I know her.”
As if the admission had exhausted her, she collapsed in the platform rocker, leaning her head on the high cushioned back. Her loose throat seemed very vulnerable.
“Miss Macready came to see me once,” she said. “It was before we left Boston, during the war. She wanted money.”
“Blackmail money?”
“That’s what it amounted to. She asked me to finance a Nevada divorce for her. She’d picked Roy up on Scollay Square and tricked the boy into marrying her. She was in a position to wreck his future. I gave her two thousand dollars. Apparently she spent it on herself and never bothered getting a divorce.” She sighed. “Poor Roy.”
“Did he know that you knew about her?”
“I never told him. I thought I had ended the threat by paying her money. I wanted it over with and forgotten, with no recriminations between my son and me. But apparently she’s been haunting him all these years.”
“Haunting him in the flesh?”
“Who knows? I thought I understood my son, and all the details of his life. It turns out that I don’t.”
“What sort of a woman is she?”
“I saw her only once, when she came to my house in Belmont. I formed a most unfavorable impression. She claimed to be an actress, unemployed, but she dressed and talked like a member of an older profession than that.” Her voice rasped with irony. “I suppose I have to admit that the redheaded hussy was handsome, in a crude way. But she was utterly unsuitable for Roy, and of course she knew it. He was an innocent lad, hardly out of his teens. She was obviously an experienced woman.”
“How old was she?”
“Much older than Roy, thirty at least.”
“So she’d be pushing fifty now.”
“At least,” she said.
“Have you ever seen her in California?”
She shook her head so hard that her face went loose and wobbly.
“Has Roy?”
“He’s never mentioned her to me. We’ve lived together on the assumption that the Macready woman never existed. And I beg you not to tell him what I’ve told you. It would destroy all confidence between us.”
“There may be more important considerations, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
“What could be more important?”
“His neck.”
She sat with her thick ankles crossed, more stunned than impassive. Her broad sexless body made her resemble a dilapidated Buddha. She said in a hushed voice:
“Surely you can’t suspect my son of murder?”
I said something vague and soothing. The eyes of the man in the portrait followed me out. I was glad the father wasn’t alive, in view of what I might have to do to Roy.
Chapter 27
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and on my way into town I stopped at a drive-in. While I was waiting for my sandwich, I made another call to Arnie Walters from an outside booth.