“When his mother died, I thought he’d turn to me. I was a dreamer. He transferred his fixation – yes, I’ve talked to the doctors – he transferred his fixation to poor little Harriet. It’s a terrible thing to see a person converting another person into a puppet, a kind of zombie. He supervised her reading, her games, her friends, even her thoughts. He made her keep a diary, which he read, and when he was away on duty she had to send it to him. He got her so confused that she didn’t know whether she was a girl or a boy, or if he was her father or her lover.
“He was worse than ever after the war, when he got back from Germany. The war was a disappointment to Mark; it didn’t do what he’d hoped for his career. Actually he only chose that career because it was a family tradition and his mother insisted on it. I think he would have been happier doing almost anything else. But by the time they retired him, he thought it was too late to start something new. And he had money, so he didn’t have to. There’s always been scads of money in the family, and he could afford to spend all his time on Harriet. He conceived the grand idea of turning her into a sort of boy-girl who would make everything come right in the end for him. He taught her to shoot and climb mountains and play polo. He even took to calling her Harry.
“It sickened me. I’m not the aggressive type, and I’d always been afraid of him – you get that way living with a man you don’t love. But I finally forced a showdown. I told him I would divorce him if he didn’t get some help, psychiatric help. Naturally he thought I was the one who was crazy – he couldn’t afford to think otherwise. Maybe I was, to stay with him for twelve years. He told me to go ahead and divorce him, that he and Harriet were enough for each other. She was only eleven years old at the time. I wanted to take her with me, but Mark said he would fight me to the limit. I couldn’t afford a court battle. Don’t ask why. Everything catches up with you in the end. So I lost my daughter, and now she’s really lost.”
We sat and let the darkness soak into our bones. I tried to relieve it.
“There’s a small chance that Harriet’s all right,” I said. “She and Campion may have decided to travel separately. It would account for his refusal to say what happened to her. She may turn up in Mexico after all.”
“But you don’t really think she will?”
“No. It’s just one of several possibilities. The others aren’t so pleasant to contemplate.”
There was a stir of life in the cab ahead. The driver got out and slouched toward us.
“You said a few minutes, ma’am. I don’t mind waiting if I know how long I got to wait. It’s this uncertainty that makes me nervous.”
“Things are rough all over,” I said.
“I was speaking to the lady.” But he went back to his cab.
Mrs. Hatchen opened the door on her side. “I’ve kept you longer than I meant to. You said you wanted to talk to Isobel.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she knows something she hasn’t told?”
“People nearly always do,” I said. “It’s why I have a hard life, and an interesting one.”
She reached for the letter, which was still in my hand. “I’d like that back if you don’t mind. It’s very important to me.”
“I’m sorry. The police will have to see it. I’ll try to get it back to you eventually. Will you be staying at the Santa Monica Inn?”
“I don’t know. Isobel asked me to stay with her, but that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“We don’t get along. We never have. She thinks I’m a silly flibbertigibbet. Maybe I am. I think she is a hypocrite.”
“I’d be interested in your reasons.”
“They’re simple enough. Isobel has always pretended to despise money and the things it can buy. Plain living and high thinking was her motto. But I notice she grabbed Mark and his money the first good chance she got. Please don’t quote me to Isobel. In fact, you better not tell her that you saw me.”
I said I wouldn’t. “One more question, Mrs. Hatchen. What happens to Ada’s trust fund if Harriet doesn’t live to enjoy it?”
“I suppose it reverts to Mark. Nearly everything does.”
26
THE MAID reluctantly let me in. I waited in the hallway, counting the pieces in the parquetry and wishing that I had never seen Isobel Blackwell, or taken her money, or liked her. She finally appeared, wearing the same dark suit and the same dark patches under her eyes. Her movements were carefully controlled, as if she was walking a line.
She said with unsmiling formality: “I hope the importance of your news justifies this late-night visit.”
“It does. Can we sit down?”
She took me into the drawing room, under the eyes of the ancestors. I said to them as well as to her: “I’m doing you a favor coming here. If you weren’t my client, there’d be policemen instead, and reporters trampling the roses.”
“Am I supposed to understand that?” Her speech was slurred, and her eyes had a drugged look. “If I am, you’ll have to explain it to me. And please bear in mind that I may not be thinking too clearly – I’m full of chloral hydrate. Now what were you saying about policemen and newspapermen?”
“They’ll be here tomorrow. They’ll be wanting to know, among other things, if you have an icepick with a square-cut silver handle.”
“We do have, yes. I haven’t seen it lately, but I assume it’s somewhere in the kitchen, or one of the portable bars.”
“I can tell you now it isn’t. It’s in the hands of Sergeant Wesley Leonard of the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department.”
I was watching her closely, and she seemed genuinely perplexed. “Are you trying to threaten me in some way? You sound as though you were.”
“The word is warn, Mrs. Blackwell.”
Her voice sharpened. “Has something happened to Mark?”
“Something has happened to Ralph Simpson and Dolly Stone. I think both those people were known to you.”
“Dolly Stone? I haven’t even seen the girl in years.”
“I hope you can prove that, because Dolly was murdered last May.”
She lowered her head and moved it from side to side, as if she was trying to dodge the fact. “You must be joking.” She stole a look at my face and saw that I was not. “How? How was she murdered?”
“She was strangled, by unknown hands.”
Isobel Blackwell looked at her hands. They were slender and well kept, but the knuckles suggested a history of work. She massaged the knuckles, as if she might be trying to erase the history.
“You surely can’t imagine that I had anything to do with it. I had no idea that Dolly was dead. I was quite close to her at one time – she was virtually my foster daughter – but that was years ago.”
“She was your foster daughter?”
“That may be putting it too strongly. Dolly was one of my projects. The Stones lived across the road from us, and I couldn’t help noticing the beginnings of antisocial tendencies in the child. I did my best to provide her with an example and steer her clear of delinquency.” Her voice was cool and careful. “Did I fail?”
“Somebody failed. You sound a little like a social worker, Mrs. Blackwell.”
“I was one before I married my first husband.”
“Ronald Jaimet.”
She raised her brows. Under them, her eyes appeared strangely naked. “Suddenly you know a great deal about my affairs.”