The Ferguson Affair

get?”

“Do you still have it?”

She nodded. “I forgot to throw it out. It’s in my apartment.”

“Where in your apartment?”

“In the bureau, the top drawer of the bureau in the bedroom. I have a little redwood chest I call my treasure chest. I put it in there. Mrs. Cline will let you in.” She shook her head. “I hate to think what her opinion of me must be.”

“I’m sure it hasn’t changed. Do I need a key to get into this treasure chest?”

“Yeah, it’s locked. But I don’t know where the key is. I must have lost it. It doesn’t matter, though. Break it open. I can get another.”

She raised her head and looked at me levelly with soft, bright eyes.

Mrs. Cline stood breathing on my shoulder and watched me open the bureau drawer. She was a short, egg- shaped woman wearing an upside-down nest of gray hair. She had snappy, suspicious eyes, a generous mouth, and an air of frustrated decency. Without saying anything about it, she left me in no doubt that my presence in Ella’s bedchamber was a violation of feminine privacy.

I lifted out the little redwood chest. It had brass corners and a brass lock.

“Do you have a key for it?” Mrs. Cline said.

“No. Ella lost it. She authorized me to break it open.”

“That would be a pity. She’s had it ever since high school. Here, let me see.”

She clamped the box between her thick arm and her thicker chest, plucked an old-fashioned steel hairpin from her head, and went to work on the lock. It came open.

“You’d make a good burglar, Mrs. Cline.”

“That isn’t funny, young man, under the circumstances. But then I know you lawyers get very callous. We knew lawyers. Cline was an accountant, he worked with lawyers in Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon, was our home. But after his demise, I couldn’t bear to stay on in the old town. Every building, every street corner, had its memory. So I said to myself, it’s time to start a new chapter.”

She stopped, when I was expecting her to go on. But that was all. She had told me her life story.

The contents of the treasure box told Ella’s life story, in fragments of another language: a Valentine from a boy named Chris who had written in brackets under his signature: “Your nice”; a grammar-school report card in which Ella was praised for obedience and neatness, and gently chided for lack of leadership; snapshots of girls of high- school age, including Ella, and one or two boys; an enlarged photograph of three people: a smiling man in a boiler- plate blue suit and a straw hat, a wistful woman who looked like an older version of Ella, and a small girl in a starchy dress who was her younger self, with the same hopeful dark eyes. There was a high-school graduation program in which her name was listed, a dance program almost full of young men’s names, a black-bordered card announcing the death of Asa Barker, and a gold-bordered card announcing Ella Barker’s graduation from nursing school.

Larry Gaines was represented by a brown gardenia and a worn sharkskin wallet.

I opened the back compartment of the wallet and found a tired old clipping, which was beginning to come apart at the folds. As Ella had said, it seemed to be a review of a high-school play. Part of it, including the headline and byline, was missing. The rest of it said:

Dorothy Drennan was her usual charming self in the role of ingenue. Claire Zanella and Marguerite Wood were charming as the bride’s-maids. Stephen Roche and Hilda Dotery performed excellently as the comic servant couple and had the large audience of friends and parents in stitches, as did Frank Treco and Walter Van Horn with their usual live-wire antics.

The surprise of the evening was Harry Haines in the demanding role of Jack Treloar. Harry is a newcomer to local high-school theatrics, and impressed us all with his talent. Also to be commended are Sheila Wood and Mesa McNab, who performed well in supporting roles, as did Jimmie Spence. The play itself left something to be desired in the writing department, but our young Thespians made it an enjoyable evening for all concerned.

The sentences about Harry Haines had been underlined in pencil. For a boy of that name, I thought, Larry Gaines would be a natural alias. I turned the clipping over. The other side carried a news-service story about Dwight Eisenhower’s election to the Presidency, late in the fall of 1952. I folded the clipping carefully, replaced it in the wallet, and dropped the wallet in my jacket pocket.

Mrs. Cline had picked up the Valentine, and was studying it. “Ella is a nice girl-one of the best I ever had in my apartment building. It’s a pity she had to get into trouble.”

“Her only crime was lack of judgment. They don’t keep people in jail for showing poor judgment.”

“You mean she really isn’t guilty?”

“I’m convinced she isn’t.”

“The police are convinced she is.”

“They always are, when they arrest people. It takes more than that to make them guilty.”

“But Lieutenant Wills showed me the watch that was stolen.”

“Ella didn’t know it was stolen.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so. Stolen property doesn’t fit in with my idea of Ella.”

“What’s your idea of Ella?”

“I’ve always considered her a good, sound country girl-no saint, of course, but a girl that you can count on. She nursed me through a bad spell last summer, when my blood pressure was acting up, and she’d never take a cent for it. There aren’t many like that any more. I tried to make it up to her when she was sick in the winter, but then I’m not a nurse. I was worried about her the way she lay around, with those big brown eyes of hers.”

“When was this?”

“In January. She cried through most of that month. The doctor said there was nothing the matter with her physically, but she couldn’t seem to summon up the energy to go to work. That was when she got so far behind. I lent her the money to go up north for a few days, the beginning of February-that seemed to snap her out of it.”

“Does she owe you any money?”

“Not a cent. She’s always been honest in our financial transactions. When she was behind for a while then, it really bothered her.”

“If this case comes to trial-I don’t think it will, but if it should-would you be willing to testify to Ella’s good character?”

“Yes, I would. And I’m not the only one. Her friends have been phoning her from the hospital-nurses and head nurses and even a doctor. They want to know if they can visit her in-jail.” She wrinkled her nose at the word. “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”

“Wait a day or two, Mrs. Cline. I’m trying to get her out. The trouble is, it’s going to cost money.”

Something descended over her face, like a hard transparent glaze. “How much do you plan to charge?”

“It isn’t money for me. It’s the bail. I haven’t been able to get it reduced.”

“It’s five thousand dollars, isn’t it?” She made a clicking noise between tongue and teeth, which had the effect of dissolving the hard glaze. “I don’t possess anything like that kind of money.”

“Five hundred dollars would do it, if we used a bail bondsman. But you wouldn’t get the five hundred back.”

She narrowed her eyes and imagined her bank balance with five hundred dollars lopped off. “They charge, don’t they?”

“Ten per cent.”

“Isn’t there any other way?”

“You could put up property, but that doubles the amount. Ten thousand dollars’ worth of property covers five thousand dollars cash bail.”

“Ten thousand dollars’ equity?”

“That’s right. I have to warn you, though, if Ella skipped, you’d lose your property.”

“I realize that.” She narrowed her eyes again and imagined herself without her property. “It’s quite a thing to think about, but I’ll think about it. Don’t tell Ella we discussed this, will you? I wouldn’t want her to build up any false hopes.”

“I won’t say a word on the subject. I take it there’s nobody else. No well-heeled friends or relatives?”