Murder At the Flea Club

by Matthew Head

  “Go ahead and give this interfering jackass the message, since he wants it that way,” said Mrs. Jones.

  “It’s short. Tony’s in jail because he won’t say where he was when Nicole was attacked. If you’ll come to Dr. Finney’s suite at the Prince du Royaume we’ll talk about ways to get him out of trouble. If you’re interested, that is.”

  She was interested. I had to say it all over again with elaborations and reassurances to the lawyer, but the end result was that they were starting immediately.

  “She’ll be here,” I said to Dr. Finney, hanging up. “And she’ll have her lawyer with her.”

  “Not a bad idea, either. That woman ought to carry a lawyer the way she does a handbag. Think we ought to let her and Freddy get into the same room, considering?”

  “What’s the advantage—or disadvantage? It might be spectacular. On the other hand, maybe they’d clam up.”

  “I dare say it would be the first time. We’ll try it.”

  “About Audrey,” I reminded her.

  First, Dr. Finney called Emmy to ask if Freddy and Bibi were still there. Emmy reported that they were, but that Bibi was getting restless. She wanted to go out and spend a lot of money. Miss Finney asked Emmy to ask them if they could wait another half-hour, and got a yes. We went over and sat by a window, where we could keep an eye out for the arrival of Mrs. Jones at the entrance, and I gave a brief résumé of the Freddy-Bibi business, then I said please, I wanted to know about Audrey.

  “There,” said Dr. Finney, “is a really miserable woman.”

  The murder at The Flea Club brought me my share of confidences and confessions to listen to, but I will always feel that I was gypped out of the high point because I missed Audrey under sodium pentathol. But Dr. Finney said I wouldn’t have liked it.

  “I bet I would have,” I insisted.

  “No.”

  “Yes. I’ve always known she was a liar and I’d have been fascinated seeing what kind of truth those lies were germinated in.”

  “No,” she repeated. “It was a kind of awful nakedness. It was sordid and pathetic.”

  Audrey, it appeared, had gone right on from where she had left off with me, except that, without restraint or inhibition of any kind, the story flowed from some dark, deep and terrible well into which Audrey herself had probably never dared to peer. It was all René, René, René.

  “There’s not a thing I can’t tell you about that one,” Dr. Finney said grimly. “The anatomical descriptions were explicit and detailed. That’s when I sent Marie Louise out of the room. Master René’s repertoire is beyond belief. A real stunt man. Nobody’s got any objection to a little variety, of course. But what was so horrible, listening to that poor woman mumbling on and on about it, was that there was never the impression that on René’s part there was ever anything but the most synthetic passion or desire, or even a good healthy interest in that kind of thing as a specialised sport. He’s a technician, pure and simple—neither pure nor simple, of course, but you know what I mean. I’m a hard person to shock, when it comes to departures from conventional norms, and I like almost everybody. Most people’s weaknesses are sort of endearing, once you come around to accepting them. But I don’t accept René. What René does hasn’t anything to do with weakness or pleasure or even personal viciousness. He’s a sexual machine who uses himself to victimise women, and he certainly found a perfect subject in Audrey.”

  “A lot he’s going to get out of it, with Audrey broke.”

  “I know. I’d like to be able to give out right now with a big horse laugh. Ordinarily I would—at both of them. It’s always gratifying to see a vicious fool get caught in his own trap. Trouble is, I can’t regard Audrey as a vicious fool any longer.”

  “Not vicious, or not a fool?”

  “Neither, really. Just a scared desperate spoiled selfish woman whose only saving grace is a kind of innocence of the world, oddly enough. She’s played the whole game at a very amateurish level, all the way through. And I imagine that she led pretty much a conventional and virtuous life while she was marking time married to Marie Louise’s father, waiting for the money. Pretty much a conventional and virtuous and sterile life. You probably don’t agree with me, but I suspect that René is her first extra-matrimonial adventure. And she’s his victim, not he hers, don’t make any mistake about that. These hysterics are nothing. She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t wind up with a good old-time nervous breakdown. As soon as René learns she hasn’t got any of this money she’s led him to believe she’s got, he’s off, and she knows it, and that’s what’s really driving her crazy. Believe me, Hoop, desire or passion or lust or whatever you want to call it—they give it funny names like hot pants, but believe me, it isn’t funny at all, in a case like Audrey’s, complicated by all her other confusions, especially. It’s a torture. Audrey is really on the rocks.”

  “Odd thing,” I said. “Even if Audrey really was as rich as she made a point of seeming, it’s odd that René should drop Mrs. Jones for her. Jonesy’s a lot richer and apparently was just as mad for him.”

  “What that’s all about, I hope to discover pretty soon,” said Dr. Finney. “Let’s go down and give me a chance to see Freddy and Bibi before Mrs. Jones gets here.”

  “Can you leave Audrey?”

  “For a few minutes. I’ll send Emmy up.”

  The six of us sat in Dr. Finney’s living-room—Mrs. Jones and Harry, Freddy and Bibi, and Dr. Finney and I. This lawyer, Harry, was about Mrs. Jones’s age, which is to say, somewhere over forty or forty-five, and somewhere this side of complete dissolution. He was a smooth, soft-looking fellow who had had a good figure and now had that pushed-up-into-the-chest look that you get from an elastic abdominal band. He had once had a good Ivy League face, too. Vestiges of it still remained, especially in profile, but it had sagged badly without getting lined, so that it combined suggestions of both middle age and immaturity at once and unpleasantly. He was the kind of person who looks young for his age but about whose age there could never be any question. He was certainly attached to some firm with a top-ranking name, but if I had had to have any legal advice involving anything more complicated than, say, making a deposit with the gas company, I wouldn’t have let him touch it with a ten-foot pole. I’m sure he was an honest lawyer, because the same set of social conventions which made it unthinkable for him to attend a formal dinner in his shirt sleeves also made it unthinkable that his firm should cheat a client, but if he’d had to choose between wearing the wrong dinner jacket and committing a felony, he’d have gone to pieces without arriving at a decision. He was well born, well bred, well connected, well groomed, and stupid.

  “I want it understood immediately,” he said, “that my client is here against my advice. I am present to protect her best interests and shall do so this morning, and in any subsequent circumstances resulting from this interview, with utmost vigour. I shall press to their most drastic conclusions any prosecutions within my power against any of you who take advantage of my client’s presence here to force any issues contrary to her interests.”

  “That’s just fine,” Dr. Finney stuck in, as he paused for breath. “Hooray for you.”

  He went on talking, but I was watching Mrs. Jones. She seemed steadier and quieter than I had ever seen her. She sat there with an aplomb I had never associated with her before. As Harry droned on she sat politely waiting, quite at ease, and if she was feeling any agitation over Tony, or over anything, it did not show. Once she gave a sudden harsh, short cough, and reaching into her handbag she drew forth a small jewelled box and snapped the lid open to take out a small white tablet which she swallowed. She did all this in a precise, unhurried and steady fashion, whereas I had always thought of her as a person who made vague, jerky, haphazard movements. There was something very attractive about this new soberness of hers—and when the word occurred to me, I knew where the difference lay. She was sober. I had never seen Mrs. Jones before without a few sheets to the wind. She caught my eye
as I stared at her, smiled as if at some small secret amusement, dropped the pillbox back into her bag, and turned her attention to what the lawyer was saying.

  ‘‘…no connection whatever with the circumstances surrounding the accident suffered by the singer Nicole. In view of his close association with this woman and with The Flea Club, I have advised my client to avoid any communication whatsoever with the man Tony Crew, or Antoine Croute, now being held—”

  “Harry,” interrupted Mrs. Jones, “you are very dull.”

  “I am not trying to be entertaining.”

  Freddy let out a sudden cackle of laughter. Mrs. Jones said to Harry, “This is Freddy Fayerweather I was telling you about.”

  “But he was introduced to me as Grasshopper,” said Harry. Freddy laughed again, but this time he had brought it down in tone, apparently not having liked the sound of his first outburst.

  “Well, it’s him, all the same,” Mrs. Jones said.

  “Freddy, who is this child? Is she deaf and dumb?”

  “Don’t you recognise Bibi? She doesn’t understand English, that’s all.”

  “I never saw her before in my life. You’re sure she doesn’t understand English? I’ve been wanting to say that she’s terribly overdressed for her type. But she’s a lovely-looking girl. Who’s keeping her?”

  “I am,” said Freddy.

  “Freddy! I couldn’t be happier for you. Since when?”

  “Since you threw that drink on me, two nights ago.”

  “What drink? Freddy, I never threw a drink on you in my life.”

  “Yes, you did. You said horrid things to me and called me a certain name and threw a full highball all over me.”

  “Freddy, that’s absurd. It must have been somebody else. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Not to you. I’m very fond of you and I don’t think you’re a certain name at all. When other people say you are, I always deny it. Now, am I forgiven?”

  “I’ve said I’d never forgive you. I promised myself.”

  “Well try, won’t you?”

  “What,” I asked, “has all this got to do with Tony? The man Tony Crew, as Harry calls him, is languishing in the hoosegow. I thought everybody was going to get excited about it.”

  Freddy said, “I refuse to get excited about it. They won’t hurt him. I’m not going to do anything about it.”

  “I’m not excited about it either,” said Mrs. Jones. “Because I know exactly what I’m going to do about it.”

  “Hattie!”

  “Oh, shut up, Harry. Dr. Finney, just exactly what is Tony being held for? Harry says one thing, but I never know when Harry’s telling me the truth, and when he’s doing what he calls looking out for my best interests. That always means keeping me from doing something I want to do. I think it’s perfectly obvious from the life I’ve led in the last twenty years that what he thinks of as my best interests just isn’t good enough.”

  “Hattie, that’s not fair. At any rate, don’t squabble in front of these people.”

  “Who’s squabbling? I asked Dr. Finney a question, that’s all, and you won’t give her a chance to answer it.”

  I saw that poor old Harry was really put upon, no doubt about it, but I was unable to feel sorry for him.

  Dr. Finney said, “Tony’s being held because he refuses to say where he was during the time Nicole was attacked.”

  “Is that all? I knew Harry was lying. It’s the simplest thing in the world. Tony was with me, as Harry knows.”

  “Hattie!”

  “—and had been, all night. Ask the concierge. Ask anybody. Ask the newspapers, tomorrow. I just don’t care. He saved my life, I really think. I told him I’d kill myself if he didn’t take me home, and maybe I would have—although I doubt it, on second thought. Then I told him I’d kill myself if he didn’t stay. So he stayed. What could be simpler?”

  “Hattie,” Harry groaned. “What good’s a lawyer when you—”

  “If you were any good to me yourself,” Mrs. Jones began, “maybe I wouldn’t have to go running around everywhere looking for—” which turned into the most tantalising remark made during the whole case, because it never got finished. The doorbell rang and she stopped right there. Everybody looked while I got up to answer it. It was Marie Louise and Luigi.

  “It’s the sweet pea!” carolled Freddy. They came in, and got caught in the business of being introduced around.

  Freddy said, “I’m simply lost. I distinctly remember Hoop introducing you two to each other at my table, and now you claim to be husband and wife. Nobody can work that fast.”

  “It’s too complicated to explain,” Marie Louise said. “Hoop didn’t know anything.”

  Freddy looked puzzled and said, “What did he introduce you as? Not as a Mrs. Miss What?”

  “It wasn’t Miss anything,” said Marie Louise. “He introduced me by my first name, like a little girl or something. It wasn’t Miss anything. It would’ve been Miss Bellen.”

  Mrs. Jones and Freddy said at almost the same time, “Bellen?” and Freddy went on, completely out of control. “No! Don’t tell me! It can’t be! Don’t tell me you’re something to Mrs. Bellen!”

  “Well naturally,” Marie Louise said, “I’m something to a Mrs. Bellen.”

  “Mrs. Lemuel Bellen,” said Mrs. Jones very carefully. “Audrey.”

  “Well, yes,” said Marie Louise, perhaps apprehensively.

  “Who is at this hotel,” Mrs. Jones went on.

  “Yes,” said Marie Louise. “Do you know her?”

  “In a way. Oh, yes, I think I may say that I know her, in a rather special way.”

  “Hattie. Please.”

  “Don’t worry, Harry. If I could have found that woman several nights ago I wouldn’t have answered for what happened. I could have killed her. But I feel perfectly calm about it now.” It was true, she was calm. She was awfully calm. “I have a message for Mrs. Bellen. Some information, rather.”

  “Hattie, don’t do this. I’m warning you.”

  “You’re always warning me. You lied to me about Tony, didn’t you? Did you lie to me about René?”

  “Hattie, I won’t be respon—”

  “Harry, if you don’t want a real scene, tell me now whether you lied to me about René.”

  “No I didn’t. Not about the Gutzeit girl,” and I saw Dr. Finney jump at the word. “That’s the truth. You saw the photostats, for that matter.”

  “That’s fine. Miss Bellen—I’m sorry, whatever your name is—do you think I could see your mother for five minutes, now?”

  “I’m afraid not. She’s sleeping.”

  “What I want to tell her,” said Mrs. Jones, “will wake her up.” Not long ago I had decided I liked her. Now I thought I had never seen anybody look meaner and more vindictive. I began to feel really sorry for Harry.

  Dr. Finney said, “Mrs. Bellen can’t be disturbed. She isn’t well.”

  “That’s a shame. I wanted to tell her this myself.”

  “Hattie, there’s no point—”

  “Shut up, Harry. Will one of you take a message, then? It’s quite a message. I’m sorry to miss seeing her face. I’d like to see how somebody looks when they feel the way I felt. I wanted to marry René, you know.”

  Harry had stopped saying “Hattie!” by now. He would moan softly from time to time, that was all.

  “Mind you,” said Mrs. Jones, “I don’t mind her having him. Not at all. It’s a matter of complete indifference to me. She’s welcome to him. I did mind her making a play for him while I had him, though. At the time, I was wild. Funny thing is, I thought she had won. I suppose all of you saw me getting ditched.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Freddy. “I did.”

  “I know you did. You were enthralled. You loved every bit of it. This fool here,” she said, nodding towards Harry, “was protecting me again. I admit he had a point. René’s really a leech, and I’m well out of it. Do you want to tell them what you did, Harry?”

  Harry’s face loo
ked like the inside of a large sweaty hand. He managed to say, “Our firm, representing our client’s best int—”

  “No!” commanded Mrs. Jones.

  Harry said miserably, “This is extremely distasteful. Concerned over the, um, acquaintance of our client and this man, we sought to discourage her interest, but failing, we set a rather large force of detectives to doing research into his past. We found that he is already married.”

  “Pooh,” said Dr. Finney smugly. “I knew that.” I said nothing because I was incapable of it.

  Mrs. Jones said, “You knew it? Did you know this woman? This what’s-her-name?”

  “Not exactly,” said Dr. Finney.

  “Gretel Gutzeit,” said Harry.

  Dr. Finney said, “What?”

  “Her name was Gretel Gutzeit,” Harry repeated.

  “Dear me,” said Freddy, “how un-René-sounding!”

  “You should have seen her,” said Mrs. Jones. “I saw her picture. She could hardly have been less René-looking. Side of a mud fence.”

  Something very curious was happening to Dr. Finney’s face. It began to glow as if with an inner light, but not with a light which was generally diffused. It was a very spotty inner light, of an orange colour, and it appeared to be increasing in intensity so that the speckling of small holes through which it shone grew more and more orange. I saw, then, that Dr. Finney was not glowing with an inner light at all. She was growing very pale, and her orange freckles were standing out against the oystery background of her face instead of blending into its usual ruddy pink.

  “…could have told me,” Mrs. Jones was saying, “but like a fool,” which by now I knew was Harry’s appellation, “he chose to tell only René. Oh, that was bright! He told René what he had found out, but that he would not let it go any further if René dropped his pursuit of me. Poor me! And all the time I had been begging him to marry me, and wondering why he wouldn’t. Everybody else did. Oh, dear, he had such curious explanations, all mixed up with honour. For delay. Then when he suddenly shifted to this Audrey bitch—I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Beld—Bald—whatever your name is, child—I made this utter spectacle of myself, coming around The Flea Club and screaming, and ready to tear this Audrey bitch apart if I found her. All of you saw me, I suppose, anyway most of you, and I hope you understand now. It wasn’t my fault at all, it was Harry’s and I didn’t get jilted at all. Not at all. But I thought I had been, and that’s how Tony happened. You know, I can’t even remember falling in love with Tony. But I am famous,” she said, “for my rebound.”