The Wycherly Woman by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online

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?”
    “No. Money was never mentioned. As far as I could see, the object was sheer malice.”
    “Was Phoebe