Ross Macdonald - The Ferguson Affair

Ross Macdonald
The Ferguson Affair

Ross Macdonalds real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the United States as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britains Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

Also by Ross Macdonald

The Dark Tunnel
Trouble Follows Me
Blue City
The Three Roads
The Moving Target
The Drowning Pool
The Way Some People Die
The Ivory Grin
Meet Me at the Morgue
Find a Victim
The Name Is Archer
The Barbarous Coast
The Doomsters
The Galton Case
The Wycherly Woman
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
The Chill
Black Money
The Far Side of the Dollar
The Goodbye Look
The Underground Man
Sleeping Beauty
The Blue Hammer

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK LIZARD EDITION, DECEMBER 2010

Copyright 1960 by Ross Macdonald, and renewed 1988 by Margaret Millar

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1960.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Buenavista and Mountain Grove are imaginary cities; their citizens and denizens are all imaginary, intended to represent no actual persons living or dead. Some of them are fantastic. R.M.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Macdonald, Ross.
The Ferguson affair [by] Ross Macdonald.
New York, Knopf, 1960.
p. cm.
PZ3.M59943 Fe PS3525.I486
60009990

eISBN: 978-0-307-74078-6

www.blacklizardcrime.com

v3.1

To Al Stump

chapter

T HE CASE BEGAN QUIETLY , on the womens floor of the county jail. I was there to interview a client, a young nurse named Ella Barker who had been arrested on a stolen-property charge. Specifically, she had sold a diamond ring which was part of the loot in a recent burglary; the secondhand dealer who bought it from her reported the transaction to the police.

Our interview started out inauspiciously. Why you? she wanted to know. I thought that people in trouble had a right to choose their own lawyer. Especially when theyre innocent, like me.

Innocence or guilt has nothing to do with it, Miss Barker. The judges keep an alphabetical list of all the attorneys in town. We take turns representing defendants without funds. My name happened to be next on the list.

What did you say your name was?

Gunnarson. William Gunnarson.

Its a funny name, she said, wrinkling her nose.

She wasnt intending to be rude, but she was suspicious of me. Fear made her stiff and stupid. I wished we had a better place to talk than the visitors compartment of the jail.

Its an old Scandinavian name. Barkers an English name, isnt it?

I guess so. Does it matter?

She was trying hard to be blas, to find some armor she could put on against her surroundings. She looked around the room, at the steel-paneled door with its reinforced-glass peephole, the bars on the windows, the table and chairs bolted to the steel floor. Her dark eyes strained wide, trying to take it all in and realize her predicament. She had been in there one night.

You want to get out of here, dont you?

No, I want to set up housekeeping and live in here the rest of my life. Wouldnt anybody?

I was going to suggest that the quickest way out would be to tell the truth. Tell me how you got hold of the diamond ring you sold to Hector Broadman.

So you can broadcast it all over town?

Im your attorney, Miss Barker. What makes you think Id break your confidence?

I know about lawyers, she said cryptically. And theres nothing you can do to make me talk, so there.

She looked at me with a kind of bleak pride. In her thin, dark way, she wasnt a bad-looking woman. In decent surroundings, properly groomed, she could be a handsome onethe kind of girl youd want to give a ring to.

Who gave you the ring, Miss Barker? Im certain you didnt steal it. Youre not a burglar. Even the police dont think you broke into the Simmons house yourself.

Then why did they arrest me?

You know the answer to that as well as I do. Weve had a number of burglaries recently. Theres an organized gang at work in this area.

You think Im a member of it?

I dont. But your refusal to talk leads the police to that conclusion. They know youre covering up for criminals, and as long as you persist in that, it seems to make you one of them. Youre doing yourself a grave injustice.

She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. I thought that she was about to tell me the truth. But her dark gaze flickered down and away.

I found that ring, she said tonelessly. I picked it up on the sidewalk on the way home from the hospital. Just like I told the policemen.

Youre lying, Miss Barker. Somebody gave you that ring. If youll confide in me, and let me handle it, Im practically certain I can get you probation. But that means making a clean breast of everything.

All right. She touched her breast. It was given to me, like an engagement ring.

Who gave it to you?

A man. I met him on my vacation in San Francisco.

She was a poor liar. She spoke in a hushed voice, as if she could somehow avoid hearing herself lying.

Can you describe him?

He was very good-looking, tall, dark, and handsome like they say. Only he wasnt so tall. He was about your size. About your age, too, she concluded lamely.

What was his name?

He didnt tell me his name. I only met him the once.

But he gave you an engagement ringa diamond worth four or five hundred dollars.

He probably didnt know how much it was worth. Anyway, it was love at first sight. She tried to look pleased and proud, to make the fantasy real for herself.

If youre going to lie, Miss Barker, you might as well stick to the story that you found it on the sidewalk.

She plucked at her skirt with fingernails from which the polish was flaking. I dont see why you want to give me a bad time. Youre worse than Lieutenant Wills. Why dont you leave me be?

I will when you tell me the truth.

Say I do telltell you all about that fellow in San Francisco. His name, and everything. What happens then?

I think I can get you off. Hes here in Buenavista, isnt he? Are you in love with him?

Dont make me laugh. But she was far from laughing. Say you do get me off. What happens then?

To you, nothing. The worst you can expect is a couple of years on probation.