The Galton Case Read Free

you.” Sheila’s voice had an intensity which didn’t seem to go with her appearance. She was very young, no more than eighteen. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion and soft doe eyes.
    The woman scooped up the bird and tossed it over the net. They went on playing, all out, as if a great deal depended on the game.
    A Negro maid in a white cap let us into a reception room. Wrought-iron chandeliers hung like giant black bunches of withered grapes from the high ceiling. Ancient black furniturestood in museum arrangements around the walls under old dark pictures. The windows were narrow and deep in the thick walls, like the windows of a medieval castle.
    “Is Dr. Howell with her?” Sable asked the maid.
    “Yes, sir, but he ought to be leaving any time now. He’s been here for quite a while.”
    “She didn’t have an attack?”
    “No, sir. It’s just the doctor’s regular visit.”
    “Would you tell him I’d like to see him before he leaves?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    She whisked away. Sable said in a neutral tone, without looking at me: “I won’t apologize for my wife. You know how women are.”
    “Uh-huh.” I didn’t really want his confidences.
    If I had, he wouldn’t have given them to me. “There are certain South American tribes that segregate women one week out of the month. Shut them up in a hut by themselves and let them rip. There’s quite a lot to be said for the system.”
    “I can see that.”
    “Are you married, Archer?”
    “I have been.”
    “Then you know what it’s like. They want you with them all the time. I’ve given up yachting. I’ve given up golf. I’ve practically given up living. And still she isn’t satisfied. What do you do with a woman like that?”
    I’d given up offering advice. Even when people asked for it, they resented getting it. “You’re the lawyer.”
    I strolled around the room and looked at the pictures on the walls. They were mostly ancestor-worship art: portraits of Spanish dons, ladies in hoop skirts with bare monolithic bosoms, a Civil War officer in blue, and several gentlemen in nineteenth-century suits with sour nineteenth-century pusses between their whiskers. The one I liked best depicted agroup of top-hatted tycoons watching a bulldog-faced tycoon hammer a gold spike into a railroad tie. There was a buffalo in the background, looking sullen.
    The maid returned with a man in Harris tweeds. Sable introduced him as Dr. Howell. He was a big man in his fifties, who carried himself with unconscious authority.
    “Mr. Archer is a private investigator,” Sable said. “Did Mrs. Galton mention what she has in mind?”
    “Indeed she did.” The doctor ran his fingers through his gray crewcut. The lines in his forehead deepened. “I thought that whole business of Tony was finished and forgotten years ago. Who persuaded her to drag it back into the light?”
    “Nobody did, so far as I know. It was her own idea. How is she, Doctor?”
    “As well as can be expected. Maria is in her seventies. She has a heart. She has asthma. It’s an unpredictable combination.”
    “But there’s no immediate danger?”
    “I wouldn’t think so. I can’t say what will happen if she’s subjected to shock or distress. Asthma is one of those things.”
    “Psychosomatic, you mean?”
    “Somatopsychic, whatever you want to call it. In any case it’s a disease that’s affected by the emotions. Which is why I hate to see Maria getting all stirred up again about that wretched son of hers. What does she hope to gain?”
    “Emotional satisfaction, I suppose. She feels she treated him badly, and wants to make up for it.”
    “But isn’t he dead? I thought he was found to be legally dead.”
    “He could have been. We had an official search made some years ago. He’d already been missing for fourteen years, which is twice the time required by the law to establish presumption of death. Mrs. Galton wouldn’t let me make the petition, however. I think she’s always dreamedof