“Nothing, I don’t mean that.” Her speech was staccato. “You said that you’re a detective. Doesn’t that indicate trouble?”
“Say he is in trouble. What then?”
“I’d want to help him, naturally. Why are we talking in riddles?”
I liked her rapid, definite personality, and guessed that honesty went along with it:
“I don’t like riddles any more than you do. I’ll make a bargain with you, Miss Reichler. I’ll tell you my end of the story if you’ll tell me yours.”
“What is this, true confession hour?”
“I’m serious, and I’m willing to do my talking first. If you’re interested in John’s situation–”
“Situation is a nice neutral word.”
“That’s why I used it. Is it a bargain?”
“All right.” She gave me her hand on it, as a man would have. “I warn you in advance, though, I won’t tell you anything against him. I don’t know anything against him, except that he treated me – well, I was asking for it.” She lifted her high thin shoulders, shrugging off the past. “We can talk in the garden, if you like.”
We climbed the terraces to a walled garden in the shadow of the house. It was crowded with the colors and odors of flowers. She placed me in a canvas chair facing hers. I told her where John was and what he was doing. .
Her eyes were soft and black, lit tremulously from within. Their expression followed all the movements of my story. She said when I’d finished:
“It sounds like one of Grimm’s fairy tales. The goatherd turns out to be the prince in disguise. Or like Œdipus. John had an Œdipus theory of his own, that Œdipus killed his father because he banished him from the kingdom. I thought it was very clever.” Her voice was brittle. She was marking time.
“John’s a clever boy,” I said. “And you’re a clever girl, and you knew him well. Do you believe he’s who he claims to be?”
“Do you?” When I failed to answer, she said: “So he has a girl in California, already.” Her hands lay open on her slender thighs. She hugged them between her thighs.
“The girl’s father hired me. He thinks John is a fraud.”
“And you do, too?”
“I don’t like to think it, but I’m afraid I do. There are some indications that his whole story was invented to fit the occasion.”
“To inherit money?”
“That’s the general idea. I’ve been talking to his landlady in Ann Arbor, Mrs. Haskell.”
“I know her,” the girl said shortly.
“Do you know anything about this offer John had from a producer?”
“Yes, he mentioned it to me. It was one of these personal contracts that movie producers give to promising young actors. This man saw him in Hobson’s Choice.”
“When?”
“Last February.”
“Did you meet the man?”
“I never did. John said he flew back to the coast. He didn’t want to discuss it after that.”
“Did he mention any names before he dried up?”
“Not that I recall. Do you think John was lying about him, that it wasn’t an acting job he was offered?”
“That could be. Or it could be John was sucked in. The conspirators made their approach as movie producers or agents, and later told him what was required of him.”
“Why would John fall in with their plans? He’s not a criminal.”
“The Galton estate is worth millions. He stands to inherit all of it, any day. Even a small percentage of it would make him a rich man.”
“But he never cared about money, at least not the kind you inherit. He could have married me: Barkis was willing. My father’s money was one of the reasons he didn’t. At least that’s what he said. The real reason, I guess, was that he didn’t love me. Does he love her?”
“My client’s daughter? I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe he doesn’t love anybody.”
“You’re very honest, Mr. Archer. I gave you an opening, but you didn’t try to use her on me as a wedge. You could have said that he was crazy about her, thus fanning the fires of jealousy.” She winced at her own self-mockery.
“I try to be honest with honest people.”
She gave me a flashing look. “That’s intended to put me on the spot.”
“Yes.”
She turned her head and looked out over the lake as if she could see all the way to California. The last sails were converging toward shore, away from the darkness falling like soot along the horizon. As light drained from the sky, it seemed to gather more intensely on the water.
“What will they do to him if they find out he’s an impostor?”
“Put him in jail.”
“For how long?”
“It’s hard to say. It’ll be easier on him if we get it over with soon. He hasn’t made any big claims yet, or taken any big money.”
“You really mean, really and truly, that I’d be doing him a favor by puncturing his story?”
“That’s my honest opinion. If it’s all a pack of lies, well find out sooner or later. The sooner the better.”
She hesitated. Her profile was stark. One cord in her neck stood out under the skin. “You say that he claims that he was brought up in an orphanage in Ohio.”
“Crystal Springs, Ohio. Did he ever mention the place to you?”
She shook her head in a quick short arc. I said:
“There are some indications that he was raised here in Canada.”
“What indications?”
“Speech. Spelling.”
She rose suddenly, walked to the end of the garden, stooped to pick a snapdragon, threw it away with a spurning gesture. She came back toward me and stood with her face half-averted. She said in a rough dry voice:
“Just don’t tell him I was the one that told you. I couldn’t bear to have him hate me, even if I never see him again. The poor damn silly fool was born and raised right here in Ontario. His real name is Theodore Fredericks, and his mother runs a boardinghouse in Pitt, not more than sixty miles from here.”
I stood up, forcing her to look at me. “How do you know, Miss Reichler?”
“I talked to Mrs. Fredericks. It wasn’t a very fortunate meeting. It didn’t do anything for either of us. I should never have gone there.”
“Did he take you to meet his mother?”
“Hardly. I went to see her myself a couple of weeks ago, after John left Ann Arbor. When I didn’t hear from him I got it into my head that perhaps he’d gone home to Pitt.”
“How did you learn about his home in Pitt? Did he tell you?”
“Yes, but I don’t believe he intended to. It happened on the spur of the moment, when he was spending a week-end here with us. It was the only time he ever came to visit us here in Kingsville, and it was a bad time for me – the worst. I hate to think of it.”
“Why?”
“If you have to know, he turned me down. We went for a drive on Sunday morning. I did the driving, of course. He’d never touch the wheel of my car. That’s the way he was with me, so proud, and I had no pride at all with him. I got carried away by the flowers and the bees, or something, and I asked him to marry me. He gave me a flat refusal.
“He must have seen how hurt I was, because he asked me to drive him to Pitt. We weren’t too far from there, and he wanted to show me something. When we got there he made me drive down a street that runs along by the river on the edge of the Negro section. It was a dreadful neighborhood, filthy children of all colors playing in the mud, and slatternly women screaming at them. We stopped across from an old red brick house where some men in their undershirts were sitting on the front steps passing around a wine jug.
“John asked me to take a good look, because he said he belonged there. He said he’d grown up in that neighborhood, in that red house. A woman came out on the porch to call the men in for dinner. She had a voice like a kazoo, and she was a hideous fat pig of a woman. John said that she was his mother.