“Oh, damn it!”
“Temper,” Gordon Sable said.
She pivoted like a dancer. I saw that she wasn’t a girl, but a woman with a girl’s body. A slow blush spread over her face. She covered her discomfiture with an exaggerated pout which made the most of her girlishness:
“I’m off my form. Sheila never beats me.”
“I do so!” cried the girl on the other side of the net. “I beat you three times in the last week. Today is the fourth time.”
“The set isn’t over yet.”
“No, but I’m going to beat you.” Sheila’s voice had an intensity which didn’t seem to go with her appearance. She was very young, no more than eighteen. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion and soft doe eyes.
The woman scooped up the bird and tossed it over the net. They went on playing, all out, as if a great deal depended on the game.
A Negro maid in a white cap let us into a reception room. Wrought-iron chandeliers hung like giant black bunches of withered grapes from the high ceiling. Ancient black furniture stood in museum arrangements around the walls under old dark pictures. The windows were narrow and deep in the thick walls, like the windows of a medieval castle.
“Is Dr. Howell with her?” Sable asked the maid.
“Yes, sir, but he ought to be leaving any time now. He’s been here for quite a while.”
“She didn’t have an attack?”
“No, sir. It’s just the doctor’s regular visit.”
“Would you tell him I’d like to see him before he leaves?”
“Yes, sir.”
She whisked away. Sable said in a neutral tone, without looking at me: “I won’t apologize for my wife. You know how women are.”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t really want his confidences.
If I had, he wouldn’t have given them to me. “There are certain South American tribes that segregate women one week out of the month. Shut them up in a hut by themselves and let them rip. There’s quite a lot to be said for the system.”
“I can see that.”
“Are you married, Archer?”
“I have been.”
“Then you know what it’s like. They want you with them all the time. I’ve given up yachting. I’ve given up golf. I’ve practically given up living. And still she isn’t satisfied. What do you do with a woman like that?”
I’d given up offering advice. Even when people asked for it, they resented getting it. “You’re the lawyer.”
I strolled around the room and looked at the pictures on the walls. They were mostly ancestor-worship art: portraits of Spanish dons, ladies in hoop skirts with bare monolithic bosoms, a Civil War officer in blue, and several gentlemen in nineteenth-century suits with sour nineteenth-century pusses between their whiskers. The one I liked best depicted a group of top-hatted tycoons watching a bulldog-faced tycoon hammer a gold spike into a railroad tie. There was a buffalo in the background, looking sullen.
The maid returned with a man in Harris tweeds. Sable introduced him as Dr. Howell. He was a big man in his fifties, who carried himself with unconscious authority.
“Mr. Archer is a private investigator,” Sable said. “Did Mrs. Galton mention what she has in mind?”
“Indeed she did.” The doctor ran his fingers through his gray crewcut. The lines in his forehead deepened. “I thought that whole business of Tony was finished and forgotten years ago. Who persuaded her to drag it back into the light?”
“Nobody did, so far as I know. It was her own idea. How is she, Doctor?”
“As well as can be expected. Maria is in her seventies. She has a heart. She has asthma. It’s an unpredictable combination.”
“But there’s no immediate danger?”
“I wouldn’t think so. I can’t say what will happen if she’s subjected to shock or distress. Asthma is one of those things.”
“Psychosomatic, you mean?”
“Somatopsychic, whatever you want to call it. In any case it’s a disease that’s affected by the emotions. Which is why I hate to see Maria getting all stirred up again about that wretched son of hers. What does she hope to gain?”
“Emotional satisfaction, I suppose. She feels she treated him badly, and wants to make up for it.”
“But isn’t he dead? I thought he was found to be legally dead.”
“He could have been. We had an official search made some years ago. He’d already been missing for fourteen years, which is twice the time required by the law to establish presumption of death. Mrs. Galton wouldn’t let me make the petition, however. I think she’s always dreamed of Anthony coming back to claim his inheritance and all that. In the last few weeks it’s become an obsession with her.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” the doctor said. “I still think somebody put a bee in her bonnet, and I can’t help wondering why.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
“Cassie Hildreth, perhaps. She has a lot of influence on Maria. And speaking of dreams, she had a few of her own when she was a kid. She used to follow Tony around as if he was the light of the world. Which he was far from being, as you know.” Howell’s smile was one-sided and saturnine.
“This is news to me. I’ll talk to Miss Hildreth.”
“It’s pure speculation on my part, don’t misunderstand me. I do think this business should be played down as much as possible.”
“I’ve been trying to play it down. On the other hand I can’t downright refuse to lift a finger.”
“No, but it would be all to the good if you could just keep it going along, without any definite results, until she gets interested in something different.” The doctor included me in his shrewd glance. “You understand me?”
“I understand you all right,” I said. “Go through the motions but don’t do any real investigating. Isn’t that pretty expensive therapy?”
“She can afford it, if that’s what worries you. Maria has more coming in every month than she spends every year.” He regarded me in silence for a moment, stroking his prow of a nose. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t do your job. I wouldn’t ask any man to lie down on a job he’s paid to do. But if you find out anything that might upset Mrs. Galton–”
Sable put in quickly: “I’ve already taken that up with Archer. He’ll report to me. I think you know you can rely on my discretion.”
“I think I know I can.”
Sable’s face changed subtly. His eyelids flickered as though he had been threatened with a blow, and remained heavy over his watchful eyes. For a man of his age and financial weight, he was very easily hurt.
I said to the doctor: “Did you know Anthony Galton?”
“Somewhat.”
“What kind of person was he?”
Howell glanced toward the maid, who was still waiting in the doorway. She caught his look and withdrew out of sight. Howell lowered his voice:
“Tony was a sport. I mean that in the biological sense, as well as the sociological. He didn’t inherit the Galton characteristics. He had utter contempt for business of any kind. Tony used to say he wanted to be a writer, but I never saw any evidence of talent. What he was really good at was boozing and fornicating. I gather he ran with a very rough crowd in San Francisco. I’ve always believed myself that one of them killed him for the money in his pockets and threw him in the Bay.”
“Was there any indication of that sort of thing?”
“Not to my certain knowledge. But San Francisco in the thirties was a dangerous place for a boy to play around in. He must have dredged pretty deep to turn up the girl he married.”
“You knew her, did you?” Sable said.