The Wycherly Woman (5 page)

“I don’t want to talk any more. I’m getting pretty sick of your insinuations. You keep hinting that I’m lying.”

“I think you’re holding back on me, Bobby—suppressing some of the facts. I want them all.”

“We can’t stand here all day.”

“Sit down then.”

He didn’t move. “What else do you want to know?”

I picked a fairly neutral subject. “How was she doing in school?”

“Pretty well. She knocked off mostly B’s at the mid-terms. She was majoring in French, and she has a knack for languages. She told me she was doing a lot better than last year at Stanford—didn’t have so many emotional problems.”

The wry and ugly smile took hold of his mouth again. He straightened it out, but it left the impression that he was mocking himself.

“What about her emotional problems?” I was wondering about his.

He shrugged his muscle-packed shoulders, awkwardly. “I’m no psychiatrist. But anybody could see that she had her moods. She was up one day and down the next. I thought she ought to go to a psychiatrist. She told me she’d tried that.”

“When?”

“Last spring in Palo Alto. She didn’t give it much of a try, though. She only saw the doctor a couple of times.”

“What was his name?”

“I wouldn’t know. Her aunt might be able to tell you. Mrs. Trevor. She lives on the Peninsula near Palo Alto.”

“Do you know the Trevors?”

“No.”

“Or the rest of the family?”

“No.”

“How long have you known Phoebe?”

He thought about his answer. “Just since she came here, in September. About two months altogether. Less than two months.”

“In less than two months you decided to get married?”

“I decided right away. Something clicked,” he said, “the first time I saw her.”

“When was that?”

“In September. She came to look at the apartment. I was painting the kitchenette.”

“I understood you met her before that.”

“You understood wrong.”

“You didn’t meet her at a beach last summer, and talk her into coming to college here?”

He went into deep thought, which left his face inert and his eyes blind. I thought for an instant that this case was going to be short and successful and bitter: the girl dead, killed by the boy, who was getting ready to crack.

“Yeah,” he said painfully. “As a matter of fact I did.”

“Why lie about it?”

“I didn’t want my mother to find out.”

“I’m not your mother.”

“No, but you’ve been talking to her. You’ll probably be talking to her again.”

“Why is it so important that she shouldn’t know?”

“I guess it really isn’t. It’s just that I didn’t tell her. She wouldn’t have liked the idea of Phoebe taking one of our apartments. She has a suspicious mind.”

“So have I. Were you and Phoebe having an affair?”

“No. We weren’t. It wouldn’t be any business of yours if we were. We’re both adults.”

“Legally, anyway.
Were
you having an affair?”

“I said we weren’t. You don’t fool around with the girl you want to marry. I don’t.”

I almost believed him.

“Where did you meet her?”

“A place called Medicine Stone, north of Carmel. I went up there for a week in August. They have a good reef for surfing—better than anything around here. Phoebe was staying there with the Trevors and I got to know her on the beach.”

“You picked her up?”

“That’s twisting what I said. She wanted to try surfing, I let her. She was looking for a school to shift to, and I told her about this one. She’d been considering it, anyway.”

“And while you were at it you rented her an apartment.”

“She asked me to find an apartment for her,” he said, flushing.

“So you had a cozy two months.”

His fists tightened; the muscles stood out like brown wood in his arms. I thought he was going to hit me, and I sort of wished he would. Give me a chance to shake out the truth that I felt I wasn’t getting from him.

But he held himself under rigid control. “Crack wise if you like. We had a
good
two months. Followed by the worst two months of my life.”

“When did you see her last?”

He seemed ready for the question: “On the morning of November the second, that was a Friday—early in the morning. She was going to drive up to San Francisco to see her father off. She asked me to check her oil and tires, which I
did. My own car wasn’t running, and on the way out to the highway she dropped me at the corner of the campus. That was the last time I saw her.” He said it without emotion.

“What kind of a car was she driving?”

“1957 green Volkswagen two-door.”

“Do you know the license number?”

“No, but you can get it from the dealer. She bought it secondhand at Imported Motors, in town here. I helped her to pick it out.”

“How long before she left?”

“A month, or more. She found out she needed one here, to get around. The bus service to town is pretty chancy.”

“Was she in good spirits when she left?”

“I think so. You never could tell about Phoebe. Her moods were always changing, as I said.”

“Did she tell you what her plans were for the weekend?”

“No. She didn’t.”

“Or when she was coming back?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I asked her. I took it for granted that she would be back Sunday night or Monday morning.”

“Did she mention anyone that she was going to see, besides her father?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t ask her what she was going to do all weekend?”

“No.”

“What do you think she did, after she said goodbye to her father and left the ship?”

“I have no ideas on the subject.” But he had ideas. They flickered darkly at the back of his green eyes like fish in water too deep for identification.

Suddenly he looked sick. He lowered his head. The color of his eyes seemed to have run and tinged his cheeks greenish.

“Did you by any chance go along to San Francisco with her?”

He waggled his hanging head.

“Where did you spend that weekend, Bobby?”

He looked at his hands as if they fascinated him. “Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“I mean here. At home.”

Mrs. Doncaster said behind me: “Bobby was here with his mother, where he should be. He came down with a touch of the flu that Friday. I kept him home in bed all weekend.”

I moved sideways along the wall, and looked from the son to the mother. Her face was grim. His eyes were intent on it. He nodded almost imperceptibly. He was very much his mother’s boy at the moment.

“Is that true, Bobby?” I said.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” the woman said. “Because if you are I want to know about it so that I can take legal recourse. My son and I are respectable citizens. We don’t have to put up with any guff from people like you.”

“Have you ever been in trouble, Bobby?”

He looked to his mother for an answer. She was boiling with answers:

“My son is an upright young man. He’s never been in trouble, and he’s not going to start now. You’re not going to drag him into something like this, just because he had the misfortune to go out a few times with a foolish girl. You go and peddle your dirt someplace else. And I warn you, if you besmirch our good name, you’ll find yourself at the receiving end of legal action.”

She moved on him in a kind of possessive fury and put her arm around his waist. I left them looking at each other.

Outside, the offshore wind was rising. The choppy sea at the foot of the street reflected crumpled light.

I
DROVE BACK
to the college and picked up Homer Wycherly. He was angry and frustrated. Most of the college people were out to lunch; the only person he’d been able to contact who even knew Phoebe by name was an assistant counsellor in the Dean of Women’s office. She knew of no particular reason why Phoebe had dropped out of school, and showed no particular excitement about it. Students were leaving without notice all the time.

Wycherly had an appointment with the Dean for later in the day. He asked me to drive him to the Boulder Beach Inn and when we got there invited me to have lunch with him. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 3
A.M
., and I was glad to.

It was a big old-fashioned resort hotel, Spanish Mission in style, which stood in extensive gardens on the sea at the edge of town. The furnishings in Wycherly’s bungalow were like his life, heavy, expensive, and uncomfortable. The waiter who took our orders had a Swiss-German accent; the menu was in restaurant French.

“You haven’t told me what
you
found out,” Wycherly said when the waiter had left the room. “I presume you found out something.”

I told him in general what my three witnesses had said, suppressing the doubts I had about Bobby Doncaster. There was no point in turning an angry father loose on him. I wanted Bobby to stay in one place.

“The indications are,” I concluded, “that your daughter intended to come back here after a weekend in San Francisco. Something happened to change her mind.”

We were sitting in a window embrasure facing each other. Wycherly leaned forward and grasped my knee, letting me
feel his weight. His hand was thick, with sun-bleached hairs sprouting like straw on the back of it. His leaning body gave an impression of heavy blind force which went strangely with the anxiety in his face:

“You suspect foul play, don’t you? Be honest with me now.”

“I can’t rule it out. Phoebe was last seen in a section of San Francisco where people have been killed for carfare. She was carrying a large amount of cash. I think you should get in touch directly with the San Francisco police.”

“I can’t. I simply can’t endure any more publicity. You don’t know what the papers did to us last spring when Catherine divorced me. Besides, I can’t believe that she’s been killed.” He removed his hand from my knee and applied it to his chest. “I feel, here, that my daughter is alive. I don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing, but I’m certain she’s alive.”

“The chances are she is. Still, it’s better to think and act as if she isn’t.”

“You expect me to abandon all hope?”

“I didn’t say that, Mr. Wycherly. I’ve barely started on the case. If you want me to carry on by myself, I’m willing.”

“That’s what I want. Definitely.”

The waiter knocked gently at the door. He brought in a loaded cart and set a table for us. Wycherly went to work on the food as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. He sweated as he ate.

I looked out the window, munching my steak. The grounds of the hotel, green as any oasis, sloped down to a sea wall against which the water seemed to brim. A pair of black-suited skin divers were braving the January sea, kicking up their fins like mating seals. Farther out, a few sails slanted in the wind.

I tried to imagine Wycherly’s voyage to the islands and countries that hung below the curve of the horizon. The South Pacific I remembered smelled of cordite and flame throwers; and Wycherly was a hard man to imagine anything about. He blabbed out his feelings freely but kept his essential self hidden
—as hidden as his daughter was below the curve of time.

“Something else came up,” I said, “when I was talking to the roommate, Dolly Lang. Your daughter told her about some letters that were delivered at your house last spring. She was very disturbed about them, according to Dolly.”

He gave me a guarded look across the table. “What did the girl say?”

“I can’t reproduce it exactly. She was talking a blue streak and I didn’t take notes. I gather that these letters slandered your wife.”

“Yes. They made some unpleasant allegations.”

“Were they threatening letters?”

“I’d say so, in an indirect way.”

“Did they threaten Mrs. Wycherly?”

“They were a threat to all of us. They were addressed to the whole family—which is how Phoebe happened to see the first one.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Just the two. They came a day apart.”

“Why didn’t you bring them up before?”

“I didn’t think they were relevant, to the present situation.” But the thought of them pressed more sweat out on his forehead. He wiped it off with his napkin. “I didn’t know that Phoebe was especially upset about them.”

“She was. Her roommate said she blamed herself for them in some way.”

“How could that be?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I have no idea what she meant. Of course she was rather shocked when the first one came. She was home for the Easter break, and she happened to bring the mail up to the house that morning. The letter was addressed to The Wycherly Family, and naturally she opened it herself. Then she showed it to me. I tried to keep it from Catherine, but my sister Helen saw it and mentioned it at the breakfast table—”

I cut in on his anxious explanations: “Exactly what was in the letters?”

“They both said very much the same thing. I won’t smell up the air with it.”

“Did they accuse your wife of having an affair with another man?”

Wycherly picked up his knife and fork and brandished them over his clean plate. “Yes.”

“Did you take the accusation seriously?”

“I didn’t know what to think. The letters had a wild note to them. I suspected they were the work of a psychopathic mind. But I had to take them seriously.”

“Why?”

“They were just about the last straw in my marriage. Catherine blamed me for doing nothing about them. She was always blaming me for sins of omission. When actually I did everything possible to find out who was sending them and put a stop to it. I even hired a—” He compressed his lips.

“A detective?”

“Yes,” he admitted unwillingly. “A man named William Mackey, from San Francisco.”

“I know him slightly. What were his conclusions?”

“He didn’t come to any. Sheriff Hooper thought it was probably a disgruntled employee, or ex-employee. That didn’t shed much light. We have employees all over the valley, all over the state, and the employee turnover in our business is high.”

“Was there any extortion involved?”