The Galton Case (4 page)

“I can use it.”

A telephone shrilled somewhere, like a cricket in the wall. Cassie Hildreth came out of Mrs. Galton’s room and moved briskly toward us:

“You’re wanted on the telephone. It’s Mrs. Sable.”

“What does she want?”

“She didn’t say, but she seems upset about something.”

“She always is.”

“You can take it downstairs if you like. There’s an extension under the stairs.”

“I know. I’ll do that.” Sable treated her brusquely, like a servant. “This is Mr. Archer, by the way. He wants to ask you some questions.”

“Right now?”

“If you can spare the time,” I said. “Mrs. Galton thought you could give me some pictures, perhaps some information.”

“Pictures of Tony?”

“If you have them.”

“I keep them for Mrs. Galton. She likes to look at them when the mood is on her.”

“You work for her, do you?”

“If you can call it work. I’m a paid companion.”

“I call it work.”

Our eyes met. Hers were dark ocean blue. Discontent flicked a fin in their depths, but she said dutifully: “She
isn’t so bad. She’s not at her best today. It’s hard on her to rake up the past like this.”

“Why is she doing it?”

“She had a serious scare not long ago. Her heart almost failed. They had to put her in an oxygen tent. She wants to make amends to Tony before she dies. She treated him badly, you know.”

“Badly in what way?”

“She didn’t want him to live his own life, as they say. She tried to keep him all to herself, like a—a belonging. But you’d better not get me started on that.”

Cassie Hildreth bit her lip. I recalled what the doctor had said about her feeling for Tony. The whole household seemed to revolve around the missing man, as if he’d left only the day before.

Quick footsteps crossed the hallway below the stairs. I leaned over the balustrade and saw Sable wrench the front door open. It slammed behind him.

“Where’s he off to?”

“Probably home. That wife of his—” She hesitated, editing the end of the sentence: “She lives on emergencies. If you’d like to see those pictures, they’re in my room.”

Her door was next to Mrs. Galton’s sitting-room. She unlocked it with a Yale key. Apart from its size and shape, its lofty ceiling, the room bore no relation to the rest of the house. The furniture was modern. There were Paul Klee reproductions on the walls, new novels on the bookshelves. The ugly windows were masked with monks-cloth drapes. A narrow bed stood behind a woven wood screen in one corner.

Cassie Hildreth went into the closet and emerged with a sheaf of photographs in her hand.

“Show me the best likeness first.”

She shuffled through them, her face intent and peaked,
and handed me a posed studio portrait. Anthony Galton had been a handsome boy. I stood and let his features sink into my mind: light eyes set wide apart and arched over by intelligent brows, short straight nose, small mouth with rather full lips, a round girlish chin. The missing feature was character or personality, the meaning that should have held the features together. The only trace of this was in the one-sided smile. It seemed to say: to hell with you. Or maybe, to hell with me.

“This was his graduation picture,” Cassie Hildreth said softly.

“I thought he never graduated from college.”

“He didn’t. This was made before he dropped out.”

“Why didn’t he graduate?”

“He wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction. Or his mother. They forced him to study mechanical engineering, which was the last thing Tony was interested in. He stuck it out for four years, but he finally refused to take his degree in it.”

“Did he flunk out?”

“Heavens, no. Tony was very bright. Some of his professors thought he was brilliant.”

“But not in engineering?”

“There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, if he wanted to. His real interests were literary. He wanted to be a writer.”

“I take it you knew him well.”

“Of course. I wasn’t living with the Galtons then, but I used to visit here, often, when Tony was on vacation. He used to talk to me. He was a wonderful conversationalist.”

“Describe him, will you?”

“But you’ve just seen his picture. And here are others.”

“I’ll look at them in a minute. Right now I want you to tell me about him.”

“If you insist, I’ll try.” She closed her eyes. Her face smoothed out, as if years were being erased: “He was a
lovely man. His body was finely proportioned, lean and strong. His head was beautifully balanced on his neck, and he had close fair curls.” She opened her eyes. “Did you ever see the Praxiteles Hermes?”

I felt a little embarrassed, not only because I hadn’t. Her description of Tony had the force of a passionate avowal. I hadn’t expected anything like it. Cassie’s emotion was like spontaneous combustion in an old hope chest.

“No,” I said. “What color were his eyes?”

“Gray. A lovely soft gray. He had the eyes of a poet.”

“I see. Were you in love with him?”

She gave me a startled look. “Surely you don’t expect me to answer that.”

“You just did. You say he used to talk to you. Did he ever discuss his plans for the future?”

“Just in general terms. He wanted to go away and write.”

“Go away where?”

“Somewhere quiet and peaceful, I suppose.”

“Out of the country?”

“I doubt it. Tony disapproved of expatriates. He always said he wanted to get
closer
to America. This was in the depression, remember. He was very strong for the rights of the working class.”

“Radical?”

“I guess you’d call him that. But he wasn’t a Communist, if that’s what you mean. He did feel that having money cut him off from life. Tony hated social snobbery—which was one reason he was so unhappy at college. He often said he wanted to live like ordinary people, lose himself in the mass.”

“It looks as if he succeeded in doing just that. Did he ever talk to you about his wife?”

“Never. I didn’t even know he was married, or intended to get married.” She was very self-conscious. Not knowing what to do with her face, she tried to smile. The teeth between
her parted lips were like white bone showing in a wound.

As if to divert my attention from her, she thrust the other pictures into my hands. Most of them were candid shots of Tony Galton doing various things: riding a horse, sitting on a rock in swimming trunks, holding a tennis racket with a winner’s fixed grin on his face. From the pictures, and from what the people said, I got the impression of a boy going through the motions. He made the gestures of enjoyment; but kept himself hidden, even from the camera. I began to have some glimmering of the psychology that made him want to lose himself.

“What did he like doing?”

“Writing. Reading and writing.”

“Besides that. Tennis? Swimming?”

“Not really. Tony despised sports. He used to jeer at me for going in for them.”

“What about wine and women? Dr. Howell said he was quite a playboy.”

“Dr. Howell never understood him,” she said. “Tony did have relations with women, and I suppose he drank, but he did it on principle.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes, and it’s true. He was practicing Rimbaud’s theory of the violation of the senses. He thought that having all sorts of remarkable experiences would make him a good poet, like Rimbaud.” She saw my uncomprehending look, and added: “Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. He and Charles Baudelaire were Tony’s great idols.”

“I see.” We were getting off the track into territory where I felt lost. “Did you ever meet any of his women?”

“Oh, no.” She seemed shocked at the idea. “He never brought any of them here.”

“He brought his wife home.”

“Yes, I know. I was away at school when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“The big explosion,” she said. “Mr. Galton told him never to darken his door again. It was all very Victorian and heavy-father. And Tony never did darken his door again.”

“Let’s see, that was in October 1936. Did you ever see Tony after that?”

“Never. I was at school in the east.”

“Ever hear from him?”

Her mouth started to shape the word “no,” then tightened. “I had a little note from him, some time in the course of the winter. It must have been before Christmas, because I got it at school, and I didn’t go back after Christmas. I think it was in the early part of December that it came.”

“What did it say?”

“Nothing very definite. Simply that he was doing well, and had broken into print. He’d had a poem accepted by a little magazine in San Francisco. He sent it to me under separate cover. I’ve kept it, if you’d like to look at it.”

She kept it in a manila envelope on the top shelf of her bookcase. The magazine was a thin little publication smudgily printed on pulp paper; its name was
Chisel.
She opened it to a middle page, and handed it to me. I read:

“Did Tony Galton write this? It’s signed ‘John Brown.’ ”

“It was the name he used. Tony wouldn’t use the family name. ‘John Brown’ had a special meaning for him, besides. He had a theory that the country was going through another civil war—a war between the rich people and the poor people. He thought of the poor people as white Negroes, and he wanted to do for them what John Brown did for the slaves. Lead them out of bondage—in the spiritual sense, of course. Tony didn’t believe in violence.”

“I see,” I said, though it all sounded strange to me. “Where did he send this from?”

“The magazine was published in San Francisco, and Tony sent it from there.”

“This was the only time you ever heard from him?”

“The only time.”

“May I keep these pictures, and the magazine? I’ll try to bring them back.”

“If they’ll help you to find Tony.”

“I understand he went to live in San Francisco. Do you have his last address?”

“I had it, but there’s no use going there.”

“Why not?”

“Because I did, the year after he went away. It was a wretched old tenement, and it had been condemned. They were tearing it down.”

“Did you make any further attempt to find him?”

“I wanted to, but I was afraid. I was only seventeen.”

“Why didn’t you go back to school, Cassie?”

“I didn’t especially want to. Mr. Galton wasn’t well, and Aunt Maria asked me to stay with her. She was the one sending me to school, so that I couldn’t very well refuse.”

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

“Yes.” The word came out with pressure behind it.

As if on cue, Mrs. Galton raised her voice on the other side of the wall: “Cassie! Cassie? Are you in there? What are you doing in there?”

“I’d better go,” Cassie said.

She locked the door of her sanctuary, and went, with her head down.

After twenty-odd years of that, I’d have been crawling.

I
MET
the doctor’s daughter on the stairs. She gave me a tentative smile. “Are you the detective?”

“I’m the detective. My name is Archer.”

“Mine’s Sheila Howell. Do you think you can find him for her?”

“I can try, Miss Howell.”

“That doesn’t sound too hopeful.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

“But you will do your best, won’t you?”

“Is it important to you? You’re too young to have known Anthony Galton.”

“It’s important to Aunt Maria.” She added in a rush of feeling: “She needs somebody to love her. I try, honestly, but I just can’t do it.”

“Is she a relative of yours?”

“Not exactly. She’s my godmother. I call her aunt because she likes me to. But I’ve never succeeded in feeling like a niece to her.”

“I imagine she makes it hard.”

“She doesn’t mean to, but she simply doesn’t know how to treat
people.
She’s had her own way for so long.” The girl colored, and compressed her lips. “I don’t mean to be
critical.
You must think I’m an awful person, talking about her to a stranger like this. I really do wish her well, in spite of what Dad thinks. And if she wants me to read
Pendennis
to her, I will.”

“Good for you. I was on my way to make a phone call. Is there a telephone handy?”

She showed me the telephone under the stairs. It was an ancient wall telephone which nobody had ever bothered to change for a modern one. The Santa Teresa directory lay on a table under it. I looked up Sable’s number.

He was a long time answering. Finally, I heard the receiver being lifted at the other end of the line. After another wait, I heard his voice. I hardly recognized it. It had a blurred quality, almost as if Sable had been crying:

“This is Gordon Sable.”

“Archer speaking. You took off before we could make definite arrangements. On a case like this I need an advance, and expense money, at least three hundred.”

There was a click, and then a whirring on the wire. Someone was dialing. A woman’s voice said: “Operator! I want the police.”

“Get off the line,” Sable said.

“I’m calling the police.” It was his wife’s voice, shrill with hysteria.

“I’ve already called them. Now get off the line. It’s in use.” A receiver was fumbled into place. I said: “You still there, Sable?”

“Yes. There’s been an accident, as you must have gathered.” He paused. I could hear his breathing.

“To Mrs. Sable?”

“No, though she’s badly upset. My houseman, Peter, has been stabbed. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Who stabbed him?”

“It isn’t clear. I can’t get much out of my wife. Apparently some goon came to the door. When Peter opened it, he was knifed.”