I rang the doorbell. Clare was so close to my back I could feel her breath. A woman in a purple flannelette wrapper opened the door. Her hair hung in two gray braids, which were ruler-straight. Her hard black eyes surveyed the three of us, and stayed on Gretchen.
“What is it now, Mrs. Falk?” she said brusquely.
“This is Mrs. – Miss Larrabee’s sister Clare.”
“Miss Larrabee is probably sleeping. She shouldn’t be disturbed.”
“I know it’s late,” Clare said in a tremulous voice. “But I’ve come all the way from San Francisco to see her.”
“She’s doing well, I assure you of that. She’s completely out of danger.”
“Can’t I just go in for a teensy visit? Ethel will want to see me, and Mr. Archer has some questions to ask her. Mr. Archer is a private detective.”
“This is very irregular.” Reluctantly, she opened the door. “Wait here, and I’ll see if she is awake. Please keep your voices down. We have other patients.”
We waited in a dim high-ceilinged room which had once been the reception room of the mansion. The odors of mustiness and medication blended depressingly in the stagnant air.
“I wonder what brought her here,” I said.
“She knew old lady Lestina,” Gretchen said. “She stayed with her at one time, when Mrs. Lestina was running a boardinghouse.”
“Of course,” Clare said. “I remember the name. That was when Ethel was going to San Diego State. Then Daddy – got killed, and she had to drop out of school and go to work.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Poor Ethel. She’s always tried so hard, and been so good to me.”
Gretchen patted her shoulder. “You bet she has, honey. Now you have a chance to be good to her.”
“Oh, I will. I’ll do everything I can.”
Mrs. Lestina appeared in the arched doorway. “She’s not asleep. I guess you can talk to her for a very few minutes.”
We followed her to a room at the end of one wing of the house. A white-uniformed nurse was waiting at the door. “Don’t say anything to upset her, will you? She’s always fighting sedation as it is.”
The room was large but poorly furnished, with a mirrorless bureau, a couple of rickety chairs, a brown-enameled hospital bed. The head on the raised pillow was swathed in bandages through which tufts of blond hair were visible. The woman sat up and spread her arms. The whites of her eyes were red, suffused with blood from broken vessels. Her swollen lips opened and said, “Clare!” in a tone of incredulous joy.
The sisters hugged each other, with tears and laughter. “It’s wonderful to see you,” the older one said through broken teeth. “How did you get here so fast?”
“I came to stay with Gretchen. Why didn’t you call me, Ethel? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, darling. I should have, shouldn’t I? I didn’t want you to see me like this. And I’ve been so ashamed of myself. I’ve been such a terrible fool. I’ve lost our money.”
The nurse was standing against the door, torn between her duty and her feelings. “Now you promised not to get excited, Miss Larrabee.”
“She’s right,” Clare said. “Don’t give it a second thought. I’m going to leave school and get a job and look after you. You need some looking after for a change.”
“Nuts. I’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.” The brave voice issuing from the mask was deep and vibrant. “Don’t make any rash decisions, kiddo. The head is bloody but unbowed.” The sisters looked at each other in the silence of deep affection.
I stepped forward to the bedside and introduced myself. “How did this happen to you, Miss Larrabee?”
“It’s a long story,” she lisped, “and a sordid one.”
“Mrs. Falk has told me most of it up to the point when Dewar made you drive away with him. Where did he take you?”
“To the beach, I think it was in La Jolla. It was late and there was nobody there and the tide was coming in. And Owen had a gun. I was terrified. I didn’t know what more he wanted from me. He already had my twenty-five thousand.”
“He had the money?”
“Yes. It was in my room at Gretchen’s house. He made me give it to him before we left there. But it didn’t satisfy him. He said I hurt his pride by leaving him. He said he had to satisfy his pride.” Contempt ran through her voice like a thin steel thread.
“By beating you up?”
“Apparently. He hit me again and again. I think he left me for dead. When I came to, the waves were splashing on me. I managed somehow to get up to the car. It wasn’t any good to me, though, because Owen had the keys. It’s funny he didn’t take it.”
“Too easily traced,” I said. “What did you do then?”
“I hardly know. I think I sat in the car for a while, wondering what to do. Then a taxi went by and I stopped him and told him to bring me here.”
“You weren’t very wise not to call the police. They might have got your money back. Now it’s a cold trail.”
“Did you come here to lecture me?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”
“I was half crazy with the pain,” she said. “I hardly knew what I was doing. I couldn’t bear to have anybody see me.”
Her fingers were active among the folds of the sheets. Clare reached out and stroked her hands into quietness. “Now, now, darling,” she crooned. “Nobody’s criticizing you. You take things nice and easy for a while, and Clare will look after you.”
The masked head rolled on the pillow. The nurse came forward, her face solicitous. “I think Miss Larrabee has had enough, don’t you?”
She showed us out. Clare lingered with her sister for a moment, then followed us to the car. She sat between us in brooding silence all the way to Pacific Beach. Before I dropped them off at Gretchen’s house, I asked for her permission to go to the police. She wouldn’t give it to me, and nothing I could say would change her mind.
I spent the rest of the night in a motor court, trying to crawl over the threshold of sleep. Shortly after dawn I disentangled myself from the twisted sheets and drove out to La Jolla. La Jolla is a semi-detached suburb of San Diego, a small resort town half surrounded by sea. It was a gray morning. The slanting streets were scoured with the sea’s cold breath, and the sea itself looked like hammered pewter.
I warmed myself with a short-order breakfast and went the rounds of the hotels and motels. No one resembling Dewar had registered in the past week. I tried the bus and taxi companies, in vain. Dewar had slipped out of town unnoticed. But I did get a lead on the taxi driver who had taken Ethel to the Mission Rest Home. He had mentioned the injured woman to his dispatcher, and the dispatcher gave me his name and address. Stanley Simpson, 38 Calle Laureles.
Simpson was a paunchy, defeated-looking man who hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He came to the door of his tiny bungalow in his underwear, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “What’s the pitch, bub? If you got me up to try and sell me something, you’re in for a disappointment.”
I told him who I was and why I was there. “Do you remember the woman?”
“I hope to tell you I do. She was bleeding like a stuck pig, all over the back seat. It took me a couple of hours to clean it off. Somebody pistol-whipped her, if you ask me. I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she said no. Hell, I couldn’t argue with her in that condition. Did I do wrong?” His slack mouth twisted sideways in a self-doubting grimace.
“If you did, it doesn’t matter. She’s being taken good care of. I thought you might have got a glimpse of the man that did it to her.”
“Not me, mister. She was all by herself, nobody else in sight. She got out of a parked car and staggered out into the road. I couldn’t just leave her there, could I?”