death of my good friend Helen. And when I found her body--'
Her eyes opened wide. Then her mouth opened wide. Her body went rigid, as if it was imitating the rigor of the dead. She stayed like that for fifteen or twenty seconds.
'It was like finding Mommy again,' she said in a small voice, and came fully awake. 'Is it all right?'
'It's all right,' Alex said.
He helped her up to a sitting position. She leaned on him, her hair mantling his shoulder. A few minutes later, still leaning on him, she walked across the hallway to her room. They walked like husband and wife.
Godwin closed the door of the examination room. 'I hope you gentlemen got what you wanted,' he said with some distaste.
'She talked very freely,' Jerry said. The experience had left him drained.
'It was no accident. I've been preparing her for the last three days. Pentothal, as I've told you before, is no guarantee of truth. If a patient is determined to lie, the drug can't stop him.'
'Are you implying she wasn't telling the truth?'
'No. I believe she was, so far as she knows the truth. My problem now is to enlarge her awareness and make it fully conscious. If you gentlemen will excuse me?'
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'You can spare me a minute, doctor. I've spent three days and a lot of Kincaid's money developing facts that you already had in your possession.'
'Have you indeed?' he said coldly.
'I have indeed. You could have saved me a good deal of work by filling me in on Bradshaw's affair with Constance McGee.'
'I'm afraid I don't exist for the purpose of saving detectives work. There's a question of ethics involved here which you probably wouldn't understand. Mr. Marks probably would.'
'I don't understand the issue,' Jerry said, but he edged between us as if he expected trouble. He touched my shoulder. 'Let's get out of here, Lew, and let the doctor get about his business. He's cooperated beautifully and you know it.'
'Who with? Bradshaw?'
Codwin's face turned pale. 'My first duty is to my patients.'
'Even when they murder people?'
'Even then. But I know Roy Bradshaw intimately and I can assure you he's incapable of killing anyone. Certainly he didn't kill Constance McGee. He was passionately in love with her.'
'Passion can cut two ways.'
'He didn't kill her.'
'A couple of days ago you were telling me McGee did. You can be mistaken, doctor.'
'I know that, but not about Roy Bradshaw. The man has lived a tragic life.'
'Tell me about it.'
'He'll have to tell you himself. I'm not a junior C-man, Mr. Archer. I'm a doctor.'
'What about the woman he recently divorced, Tish or Letitia? Do you know her?'
He looked at me without speaking. There was sad knowledge in his eyes. 'You'll have to ask Roy about her,' he said finally.
chapter 29
On his way to the courthouse to question McGee, Jerry dropped me at the harbor, where my car had been left sitting. The moon was higher now, and had regained its proper shape and color. Its light converted the yachts in the slips into a ghostly fleet of Flying Dutchmen.
I went back to my motel to talk to Madge Gerhardi. She had evaporated, along with the rest of the whisky in my pint bottle. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried her number and got no answer.
I called the Bradshaw house. Old Mrs. Bradshaw seemed to have taken up a permanent position beside the telephone. She picked up the receiver on the first ring and quavered into it:
'Who is that, please?'
'It's only Archer. Roy hasn't come home, has he?'
'No, and I'm worried about him, deeply worried. I haven't seen him or heard from him since early Saturday morning. I've been calling his friends--'
'I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Bradshaw.'
'I have to do something.'
'There are times when it's better to do nothing. Keep still and wait.'
'I can't. You're telling me there's something terribly wrong, aren't you?'
'I think you know it.'
'Does it have to do with that dreadful woman--that Macready woman?'
'Yes. We have to find out where she is. I'm pretty sure your son could tell me, but he's made himself unavailable. Are you sure you haven't seen the woman since Boston?'
'I'm quite certain. I saw her only once, when she came to me for money.'
'Can you describe her for me?'
'I thought I had.'
'In more detail, please. It's very important.'
She paused to think. I could hear her breathing over the line, a faint rhythmic huskiness. 'Well, she was quite a large woman, taller than I, red-haired. She wore her hair bobbed. She had quite a good figure, rather lush, and quite good features, too--a kind of brassy good looks. And she had green eyes, murky green eyes which I didn't like at all. She wore very heavy makeup, more appropriate for the stage than the street, and she was hideously overdressed.'
'What was she wearing?'
'It hardly seems relevant, after twenty years. But she had on a leopardskin--an imitation leopardskin coat, as I recall, and under it something striped. Sheer hose, with runs in them. Ridiculously high heels. A good deal of costume jewelry.'
'How did she talk?'
'Like a woman of the streets. A greedy, pushing, lustful woman.' The moral indignation in her voice hardly surprised me. She had almost lost Roy to the woman, and might yet.
'Would you know her if you saw her again, in different clothes, with her hair perhaps a different color?'
'I think so, if I had a chance to study her.'
'You'll have that chance when we find her.'
I was thinking that the color of a woman's eyes was harder to change than her hair. The only green-eyed woman connected with the case was Laura Sutherland. She had a conspicuously good figure and good features, but nothing else that seemed to jibe with the description of the Macready woman. Still, she might have changed. I'd seen other women change unrecognizably in half the time.
'You know Laura Sutherland, Mrs. Bradshaw?'
'I know her slightly.'
'Does she resemble the Macready woman?'
'Why do you ask that?' she said on a rising note. 'Do you suspect Laura?'
'I wouldn't go that far. But you haven't answered my question.'
'She couldn't possibly be the same woman. She's a wholly different type.'
'What about her basic physical characteristics?'
'I suppose there is some resemblance,' she said dubiously. 'Roy has always been attracted to women who are obviously mammals.'
And obviously mother figures, I thought. 'I have to ask you one other question, a more personal question.'
'Yes?' She seemed to be bracing herself for a blow.
'I suppose you're aware that Roy was Dr. Godwin's patient.'
