The drowning pool

“Besides, the next note might be handed to him personally. Would it matter so much if he read it?”

“It would matter terribly.”

“Why? Is he violently jealous?”

“Not at all, he’s a very quiet man.”

“And you’re in love with him?”

“I married him,” she said. “I haven’t regretted it.”

“If your marriage is a good one, you don’t have to worry about a poison-pen or two.” I tossed the letter on the desk-top between us, and looked into her face.

Her mouth and eyes were tormented. “It would be the last straw. I have a daughter who is still in school. I simply won’t permit this thing to happen.”

“What thing?”

“A breakup and divorce,” she answered harshly.

“Is that what it means if your husband gets one of those?” I pointed my cigarette at the scrap of white paper.

“I’m afraid it does, Mr. Archer. I could cope with James, perhaps, but he’d take it to his mother, and she’d hire detectives.”

“Could they find grounds for divorce? Is there evidence against you?”

“There must be,” she said bitterly. “Someone knows.” Her entire body moved slightly, twitched like a worm on a hook. For the moment she loathed her sex. “This is very painful for me.”

“I know,” I said. “My wife divorced me last year. Extreme mental cruelty.”

“I think you might be capable of it.” There was gentle malice in her voice; then her mood changed again: “Please don’t imagine I take divorce lightly. It’s the last thing I want.”

“On account of your daughter, you say?”

She considered that. “Ultimately, yes. I was the child of a divorced couple myself, and I suffered for it. There are other reasons, too. My mother-in-law would like it much too well.”

“What sort of woman is she? Could she have sent the letter?”

The question caught her off guard, and she had to think again. “No. I’m sure she didn’t. She’d act much more directly. She’s a very strong-minded woman. As I told you, I haven’t the slightest idea who sent it.”

“Anybody in Quinto then. Population about twenty-five thousand, isn’t it? Or anybody who passed through Quinto on Monday. It’s a pretty tough setup.”

“But you will try to help me?” She wasn’t too much of a lady to arrange herself appealingly in the chair, and dramatize the plea. There was a chance that she wasn’t a lady at all.

“It will take time, and I can’t promise any results. Are you fairly well-heeled, Mrs. Slocum?”

“Surely you don’t reserve your services exclusively for the wealthy.” She looked around at the plain small, square office.

“I don’t spend money on front, but I charge fifty dollars a day, and expenses. It will cost you four or five hundred a week, and with what I’ve got to go on it may take all summer.”

She swallowed her dismay. “Frankly, I’m not well off. There’s money in the family, but James and I don’t have it. All we have is the income from a hundred thousand.”

“Thirty-five hundred.”

“Less. James’s mother controls the money. We live with her, you see. I do have a little money that I’ve saved, though, for Cathy’s education. I can pay you five hundred dollars.”

“I can’t guarantee anything in a week, or a month for that matter.”

“I have to do something.”

“I have an idea why. The person who wrote that letter probably knows something more definite, and you’re afraid of the next letter.”

She didn’t answer.

“It would help if you’d let me know what there is to be known.”

Her eyes met mine levelly and coldly. “I don’t see the necessity for me to confess adultery, or for you to assume that there is anything to confess.”

“Oh hell,” I said. “If I have to work in a vacuum, I’ll waste my time.”

“You’ll be paid for it.”

“You’ll waste your money, then.”

“I don’t care.” She opened her purse again and counted ten twenties onto the desk-top. “There. I want you to do what you can. Do you know Nopal Valley?”

“I’ve been through it, and I know Quinto slightly. What does your husband do with the Quinto Players?”

“He’s an actor, or thinks he is. You mustn’t try to talk to him.”

“You’ll have to let me do it my own way, or I might as well sit in my office and read a book. How can I get in touch with you?”

“You can phone me at home. Nopal Valley is in the Quinto book. Under Mrs. Olivia Slocum.”

She stood up and I followed her to the door. I noticed for the first time that the back of her handsome suit was sun-faded. There was a faint line around the bottom of the skirt where the hem had been changed. I felt sorry for the woman, and I liked her pretty well.

“I’ll drive up this morning,” I said. “Better watch the mailbox.”

When she had gone, I sat down behind the desk and looked at the unpolished top. The letter and the twenties were side by side upon it. Sex and money: the forked root of evil. Mrs. Slocum’s neglected cigarette was smouldering in the ash-tray, marked with lipstick like a faint rim of blood. It stank, and I crushed it out. The letter went into my breastpocket, the twenties into my billfold.

In the street when I went down the heat was mounting toward ninety. In the sky the sun was mounting toward noon.

Chapter 2

An hour north of Santa Monica a sign informed me: YOU ARE ENTERING QUINTO, JEWEL OF THE SEA. SPEED 25 MILES. I slowed down and began to look for a motor court. The white cottages of the Motel del Mar looked clean and well-shaded, and I turned into the gravel apron in front of the U-shaped enclosure. A thin woman in a linen smock came out of the door marked OFFICE before I could stop the car. She danced towards me smiling a dazed and arty smile.

“Did you wish accommodation, sir?”

“I did. I still do.”

She tittered and touched her fading hair, which was drawn tightly back from her sharp face in a bun. “You’re traveling alone?”

“Yes. I may stay for a few days.”

She blinked her eyes roguishly, wagging her head: “Don’t stay too long, or the charm of Quinto will capture you. It’s the Jewel of the Sea, you know. You’ll want to stay forever and ever. We’ve a very nice single at seven.”

“May I look at it?”

“Of course. I believe that you’ll find it delightful.”

She showed me a knotty pine room with a bed, a table, and two chairs. The floor and furniture shone with polishing wax. There was a Rivera reproduction on one wall, its saffrons repeated by a vase of fresh marigolds on the mantel over the fireplace. Below the western window the sea glimmered.

She turned to me like a musician from his piano. “Well?”

“I find it delightful,” I said.

“If you’ll just come up and register, I’ll have Henry fill the carafe with ice water. We do try to make you comfortable, you see.”

I followed her back to the office, feeling a little uncomfortable at her willingness to tie herself in knots, and signed my full name in the register, Lew A. Archer, with my Los Angeles address.

“I see you’re from Los Angeles,” she said, taking my money.

“Temporarily. As a matter of fact, I’d like to settle here.”

“Would you really?” she gushed. “Do you hear that, Henry? The gentleman here would like to settle in Quinto.”

A tired-looking man half-turned from his desk at the back of the room, and grunted.

“Oh, but you’d love it,” she said. “The sea. The mountains. The clear, cool air. The nights. Henry and I are awfully glad we decided to buy this place. And it’s full every night in the summer, no-vacancy sign up long before it’s dark. Henry and I make quite a game out of it, don’t we, Henry?”

Henry grunted again.

“Are there many ways to make a living here?”

“Why, there are stores, and real estate, all sorts of things. No industry, of course, the Council won’t permit it. After all, look what happened to Nopal Valley when they let the oil wells in.”