me that. Do you suppose he's interested in Laura?'
'I wouldn't know.'
'She's a lovely young woman, don't you think?'
I wondered if she'd had some wine at dinner that made her silly. 'I have no opinion on the subject, Mrs. Bradshaw. I called to see if you're willing to follow through on our conversation this afternoon.'
'I'm afraid I couldn't possibly, not without Roy's consent. He handles the money in the family, you know. Now I'm going to ask you to cut this short, Mr. Archer. I'm expecting to hear from Roy at any moment.'
She hung up on me. I seemed to be losing my touch with little old ladies. I went into the washroom and looked at my face in the mirror above the row of basins. Someone had written in pencil on the wall: Support Mental Health or I'll kill you.
A small brown newsboy came into the washroom and caught me grinning at my reflection. I pretended to be examining my teeth. He looked about ten years old, and conducted himself like a miniature adult.
'Read all about the murder,' he suggested.
I bought a local paper from him. The lead story was headlined: 'PPC Teacher Shot,' with the subhead: 'Mystery Student to be Questioned.' In effect, it tried and convicted Dolly. She had 'registered fradulently, using an alias.' Her friendship with Helen was described as 'a strange relationship.' The S and W thirty-eight found in her bed was 'the murder weapon.' She had 'a dark secret in her past'--the McGee killing--and was 'avoiding questioning by the police.'
No other possible suspect was mentioned. The man from Reno didn't appear in the story.
In lieu of doing something constructive I tore the paper to pieces and dropped the pieces in the trash basket. Then I went back to the telephone booths. Dr. Godwin's answering service wanted to know if it was an emergency.
'Yes. It has to do with a patient of Dr. Godwin's.'
'Are you the patient, sir?'
'Yes,' I lied, wondering if this meant I needed help.
The switchboard girl said in a gentler voice: 'The last time the doctor called in he was at home.'
She recited his number but I didn't use it. I wanted to talk to Godwin face to face. I got his address out of the directory and drove across town to his house.
It was one of a number of large houses set on the edge of a mesa which normally overlooked the harbor and the city. Tonight it was islanded by the fog.
Behind the Arizona fieldstone front of the house a tenor and a soprano were singing a heartbreaking duet from La Bohe'me.
The door was answered by a handsome woman wearing a red silk brocade coat and the semi- professional smile that doctors' wives acquire. She seemed to recognize my name.
'I'm sorry, Mr. Archer. My husband was here until just a few minutes ago. We were actually listening to music for a change. Then a young man called--the husband of one of his patients--and he agreed to meet him at the nursing home.'
'It wasn't Alex Kincaid who called?'
'I believe it was. Mr. Archer?' She stepped outside, a brilliant and very feminine figure in her red coat. 'My husband has spoken of you. I understand you're working on this criminal case he's involved with.'
'Yes.'
Her hand touched my arm. 'I'm worried about him. He's taking this thing so seriously. He seems to think that he let the girl down when she was his patient before, and that it makes him responsible for everything that's happened.' Her fine long eyes looked up at me, asking for reassurance.
'He isn't,' I said.
'Will you tell him so? He won't listen to me. There are very few people he will listen to. But he seems to have some respect for you, Mr. Archer.'
'It's mutual. I doubt that he'd want my opinion on the subject of his responsibility, though. He's a very powerful and temperamental man, easy to cross.'
'You're telling me,' she said. 'I suppose I had no right to ask you to speak to him. But the way he pours his life away into those patients of his--' Her hand moved from her breast in an outward gesture.
'He seems to thrive on it.'
'I don't.' She made a wry face. 'Physician's wife, heal thyself, eh?'
'You're thriving by all appearances,' I said. 'That's a nice coat, by the way.'
'Thank you. Jim bought it for me in Paris last summer.'
I left her smiling less professionally, and went to the nursing home. Alex's red Porsche was standing at the curb in front of the big plain stucco building. I felt my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Something good could still happen.
A Spanish American nurse's aide in a blue and white uniform unlocked the door and let me into the front room to wait for Dr. Godwin. Nell and several other bathrobed patients were watching a television drama about a pair of lawyers, father and son. They paid no attention to me. I was only a reallife detective, unemployed at the moment. But not, I hoped, for long.
I sat in an empty chair to one side. The drama was well directed and well played but I couldn't keep my mind on it. I began to watch the four people who were watching it. Nell the somnambulist, her black hair hanging like tangled sorrows down her back, held cupped in her hands the blue ceramic ashtray she had made. A young man with an untrimmed beard and rebellious eyes looked like a conscientious objector to everything. A thin-haired man, who was trembling with excitement, went on trembling right through the commercial. An old woman had a translucent face through which her life burned like a guttering candle. Step back a little and you could almost imagine that they were three generations of one family, grandmother, parents, and son, at home on a Saturday night.
Dr. Godwin appeared in the inner doorway and crooked his finger at me. I followed him down the hallway through a thickening hospital odor, into a small cramped office. He switched on a lamp over the desk and sat behind it. I took the only other chair.
'Is Alex Kincaid with his wife?'
'Yes. He called me at home and seemed very eager to see her, though he hasn't been around all day. He also wanted to talk to me.'
'Did he say anything about running out on her?'
'No.'
'I hope he's changed his mind.' I told Godwin about my meeting with Kincaid senior, and Alex's departure with his father.
'You can't entirely blame him for falling by the wayside momentarily. He's young, and under great strain.' Godwin's changeable eyes lit up. 'The important thing, for him as well as Dolly, is that he decided to come back.'
'How is she?'
'Calmer, I think. She didn't want to talk tonight, at least not to me.'
'Will you let me have a try at her?'
'No.'
'I almost regret bringing you into this case, doctor.'
'I've been told that before, and less politely,' he said with a stubborn smile. 'But once I'm in I'm in, and I'll continue to do as I think best.'
'I'm sure you will. Did you see the evening paper?'
'I saw it.'
'Does Dolly know what's going on outside? About the gun, for instance?'
'No.'
'Don't you think she should be told?'
He spread out his hands on the scarred desk-top. 'I'm trying to simplify her problems, not add to them. She had so many pressures on her last night, from both the past and the present, that she was on the verge of a psychotic breakthrough. We don't want that to happen.'
'Will you be able to protect her from police questioning?'
