Not yet—not now. At that moment, lying in his arms, she had surely almost found the courage. And she would have found it, perhaps the very next day—if she had lived.
Distorting everything, the rage was back and a sense of irreparable loss because the death of Maureen had deprived him not only of his loving wife but of his child too. His child, the thing he had wanted more than anything in the world!
Vaguely he became aware again of the lieutenant and of the present. How long had he been standing there saying nothing? He had no idea. He only knew that Lieutenant Mooney continued to sit in front of him, watching him from the blue unwinking eyes, as free from impatience as an inanimate object.
The lieutenant’s voice sounded, “Well, Mr. Jordan, I’m waiting. Have you got an explanation as to why your wife was pregnant and kept it from you?”
Tell him? What? That Maureen had married him despising him, lying to him and then, through his “great” love for her, she had changed and grown to love him too? Tell him that the baby she had been carrying was his and yet she had not had the courage to admit it? For the first time he was testing what he himself believed against what the world would believe. Who, except himself, would believe that? Ned? He could see his brother’s outraged stare. “Pregnant? After lying about Dr. Williams? Who was her lover? My God, the filthy little bitch.” No, not even Ned.
Certainly not Lieutenant Mooney.
He thought of the lies, the evasions, the half-truths with which he had already parried the lieutenant’s questions, and dimly, because most of his attention was still fixed on Maureen, he felt a net closing around him.
“I know it sounds odd,” he said. “If I could make it seem less odd, I would. All I know is that my wife told me she couldn’t have children and I had no idea she was pregnant.”
“And there’s nothing you can think of that would explain that?”
“Nothing.”
The gleam of triumph was glinting again in the lieutenant’s eyes. “Does it occur to you, Mr. Jordan, that your wife could have been one of those neurotic women who’re scared of having babies? Maybe that’s why she lied to you. And then when she found out she was having one, she kept it from you because she was planning to get rid of it. That’s one explanation. Do you buy that?”
Exhaustion was welling up inside Andrew. He sat down on the arm of a chair. “I don’t know.”
“Of course, if it wasn’t for the two shots, she could have got so scared and mixed up about the kid that she killed herself. But it wasn’t that way, was it? Somebody murdered your wife.” The lieutenant looked down at the leather-bound notebook, flicking through the pages. “By the way, Mr. Jordan, I talked to your secretary at the office. She tells me you let her go at five and said you were staying on to clear up some work. Now maybe you stayed on and maybe you didn’t, but your office is twenty minutes away from here on a slow walk and the M.E. sets the time of the murder between four-thirty and six.”
He shut the notebook. He got up. He buttoned the buttons of his topcoat. It was too tight for him. He must, thought Andrew, have put on weight since he bought it.
“Mr. Jordan, there is one explanation for this death which I think you might go along with. Your wife told you she couldn’t have a baby. You believed her. You were crazy about her. Then you found out she had a lover and that she’d been lying to you and that she was having a baby by the other man.”
He was smiling. When he smiled his eyes almost disappeared under the heavy lids. It gave his usually uncomplex face an Asiatic inscrutability.
“Do you buy that as a motive, Mr. Jordan? After all, that’s all we need—a motive, isn’t it? It was your gun, your apartment, your wife, and you could have been there at the time.”
Andrew had known that sooner or later this would come and, paradoxically, now the lieutenant had actually put it into words, some of the pressure was released. As he returned the policeman’s gaze, he realized that whatever his own expression might be—calm, worried, indignant, incredulous—it would to the lieutenant seem automatically an expression of guilt. His headache was worse. Nothing seemed to matter very much.
Cumbersomely the lieutenant was stuffing the notebook into his topcoat pocket. Without looking up, he said, “That’s one question you’re not going to answer, is it, Mr. Jordan? Okay. I don’t blame you. But before we go any further, I don’t want you to be getting any wrong ideas about me. I’m not one of those cops who jump the gun. I think what I think and I take my time. I gather evidence. And then, when I’m pretty sure of the way the land lies—I take action.”
He was holding out his hand and smiling his Fu Manchu smile again. Andrew took the hand. The lieutenant withdrew it and started to put on heavy leather gloves.
“The M.E. has released the body, Mr. Jordan. You can make the funeral arrangements whenever you want. And if you get any ideas, you know where to find me. You’ll be seeing me soon anyway so—until the next time.”
He raised one big gloved hand in a conventional gesture of farewell and started slowly and deliberately toward the front door.
Against all reason, it was harder without him. It was as if the lieutenant had been some sort of buffer between Andrew and his feelings. Now he was alone it seemed incredible to Andrew that on the very day after his wife’s death he could have been ready at the first opportunity to suspect the worst of her, to reject her, to lie to the police. And for what? To save his own skin when already, in spite of all he had done, he had been accused of her murder? The wraith of Maureen, the obsessive image he had created of her, still seemed to be floating around him—not the Maureen he had known but the Maureen who had been concealed from him, the terrified little girl behind the dazzling façade, struggling with problems which had been far too big for her, problems which he should have solved for her but which he had, in fact, only heightened. Yes, there was that to face, too. Through his own weakness, the contemptible insecurity which he could so glibly blame on his “unhappy childhood,” he had been for Maureen not a pillar of strength but that most despicable of all things—a jealous husband.
His head was aching unmercifully. He went into the kitchen and made himself a drink. He came out with it into the living room, hating himself with a futile self-hatred and, above all, hating the murderer of his wife.
The persecutor … the blackmailer. Who? Someone he knew?
There was the sound of a key in the front-door lock. He turned sharply to the hall. Ned, in a raincoat and no hat, was letting himself in.
“Hi, Drew.”
His brother stood in the hall, taking off his raincoat. The sun-whitened hair gleamed; he was grinning his broad, friendly grin, brilliant white teeth against honey-brown skin. Ned his only friend, the one person in his life for whom there was affection left—Ned who had assisted at his first betrayal of Maureen. “Scheming little bitch.” As his brother threw the raincoat on a chair and started toward him, Andrew felt himself closing chillily against him.
“I was waiting outside, Drew. I knew the cop was here. The moment I saw him leave I came on up.”
Ned had reached him; he was putting his hands on his arms. The grin which was almost always automatically there, unless there was a reason for extinguishing it, had gone. The blue eyes were veiled with worry.
“Did he tell you he’d been to see me? He was at my place just before he came here. That’s why I hurried over. I had to. It was too important just to telephone. Drew, he thinks you did it.”
Andrew sat down on the couch. The ice in his highball jostled against the glass with a high musical ringing sound. He remembered the day when the glasses had arrived and Maureen, happy as a little girl, had flicked at one of them with her fingernail, making the sweet chime come.
Wildly expensive, I’m afraid, darling. But they’re exactly the same as some Aunt Margaret has.
His brother was looking down at him earnestly. “He didn’t actually say it, Drew. He was too smart for that. But he thinks you did it. I’m sure of it. Did he come out with
it to you? Did he actually accuse you?”
“He accused me.”
“My God.”
“He didn’t arrest me. He just accused me.”
There was nothing in Ned’s expression but love and anxiety, no inkling of any understanding of what Andrew was feeling. Ned had never had any faculty for realizing what other people might be thinking of him. He just felt fond of them and assumed they felt fond of him.
He sat down on the couch, putting his hand on Andrew’s knee. That was always Ned’s way too, as if it was only through physical contact that he could establish a bond.
“Did you get rid of Maureen’s jewels?”
“No, they’re in a drawer in the highboy in the bedroom.”
“My God, he could have found them.”
“He didn’t.”
“And if he found them … For Christ’s sake, we never figured on this. I mean, even without the letter, without knowing that I faked the burglary, without anything, that goddam son-of-a-bitch still thinks you killed her. Drew, do you want me to tell him everything now? I will, you know that.”
His face, close to Andrew’s, was so completely yielded up to affection that Andrew felt the resentment fading away and in its place came an odd muddle of shame and love. What could you do about Ned? Hate him because he’d disliked Maureen, because, from the start of the marriage, he’d felt there were sides to be taken and had whole-heartedly plunged in on the side of his brother? Scheming little bitch. What did it matter how Ned felt about Maureen? He had come to his own terms with his wife now. That didn’t have to involve estrangement from Ned.
He looked at his brother. Do you want me to tell him everything? He meant it, Andrew was sure of that. This Ned who was ready to rush to his defense with the police was the same Ned who had rushed to his defense against Maureen.
He put his hand on his brother’s. “There’s no point in your telling the lieutenant anything.”
“But, Drew, if he thinks you did it.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“But if he thinks … Drew, will he arrest you?”
Andrew had never taken the thought that far. Would there come a time when Lieutenant Mooney did actually arrest him? Arresting innocent people? Did it happen? Probably it happened. Because he hadn’t been ready for the idea, it brought a chill of panic.
“Maybe,” he said.
“But we can’t let that happen.”
“How can we stop it?”
For a moment Ned sat beside him on the couch. Then he got up and started pacing the room. As he turned to glance back at Andrew, Andrew noticed that his lower lip was pushed upward, half covering the upper lip. Ned’s trick. Ned pensive—Ned thinking up a lie?
“Drew, if I knew something …”
Andrew was alert again, wary, feeling an unfocused anxiety. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means …” Ned stopped his pacing. He moved until he was standing in front of Andrew. “Drew, I hadn’t wanted to tell you. I didn’t want anyone to know. So long as there was no need, I thought: ‘To hell, let things ride. Don’t mention it. That’s the best way.’ But now, if they are going to arrest you …”
He paused. “Isn’t it better anyway? Whatever happens, doesn’t it make more sense if the two of us … two heads…?”
He broke off again, watching Andrew with the intense concentration of a little boy. It was the old familiar “Drew will know what to do” look which took it for granted that Andrew would make the decision even though he hadn’t the faintest idea of what the decision was about.
“It’s pretty bad. I mean, if it has to come out, it’ll raise a stink from here to Hawaii. It …”
Impulsively Ned’s hand went into his breast pocket. He brought out a stiff, folded piece of paper.
“It was in the jewel box. In the bottom drawer. When I got the box home and opened it, I found it along with the jewels and everything. The moment I saw it I realized how hot it was. I figured, ‘Don’t let anyone see it, not even Drew. Keep it and then—maybe, give it back to him. Not for his sake, of course, but for Ma.’ Poor old Ma, poor old Mrs. Jordan Eversley Mulhouse Pryde.”
He held the paper out to Andrew. Andrew took it and looked at it. It was the photostatic copy of a marriage license dated November 5—more than a year ago—at City Hall between Lemuel Patrick Pryde and Rowena Robertson.
“You see,” Ned was saying. “Look at the date. November fifth. Lem married Mother in California on December twelfth. Only one month later, for God’s sake. How could he possibly have got himself divorced from this Rowena Robertson before he married Mother?”
THIRTEEN
Rowena Robertson—Rowena La Marche. There was no mystery any more about 215 West 61st Street.
As Andrew looked at the license in his hand, he thought of big blowzy Rowie, lumbering around that sordid little apartment. He thought of Lem strutting in with the gift-wrapped package, being greeted by the chihuahuas as the Head of the House. He thought of his mother too, and, even then when so much else was crowding in, he felt an awed incredulity, tinged with the faintest touch of malice, that the tormentingly inaccessible goddess of his childhood should have become the prey of a seedy bigamist who kept a pink and blue lovenest just a few blocks from “her” hotel.
Ned was saying, “Maureen never told you about this, did she?”
“No.”
“Then she was using it against Lem. What else could it possibly have been? The little bitch, she was a blackmailer too.”
That, of course, was how Ned would see it. There had been a time—only that morning?—when Andrew would have seen it that way, too. But now it was quite different. If Lem had married their mother bigamously, why couldn’t Lem also be the person who had been blackmailing Maureen? Why couldn’t Maureen, driven to despair, finally have turned and fought back? It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to have followed him to 215 West 61st Street, to have extracted the truth from the pathetic, gin-sodden Rowena. Once she’d got a copy of the marriage license and the photograph of Rowie’s squalid alcoholic collapse on the street, she could have confronted him with them and he could have killed her.
Lem, the bigamist. Lem, the blackmailer. Lem, the murderer. Here was a solution in which he could believe. At last his rage had something on which to focus.
He got up and went to the phone. He dialed the Plaza and asked for Mr. Pryde. He got his mother.
“Andrew? What a coincidence. I was just going to call you. Listen, Andrew, about the funeral. Several ladies have spoken to me. It’s shocking that we have to be so vague. Surely those policemen can’t hold it up indefinitely. I want you to speak very sharply to that Lieutenant O’Malley.”
“It’s Lieutenant Mooney, Mother, and it’s all arranged. He’s just told me they’re releasing the body.”
“They are? Then you must come here immediately. There’s so much to discuss. Andrew, I know this is painful, but it’s got to be done. Can you come right away?”
“Is Lem there?”
“Of course. Where else would he be? He’s just come in from his club.”
His club! “All right, Mother, I’ll be right over.”
Andrew dropped the receiver.
Ned, at his side, said, “Drew, do you really think Lem did it?”
“I think he did it.”
“But we can’t be sure, can we? There isn’t any proof. He had a motive, of course, but if Maureen was doing that to him, she could have been doing much worse to dozens of other people.” Ned gave a pale little smile. “I mean, we’ve got to be fair. If they try to arrest you, then we’ll have to tell about Lem. Of course we will. It’s much better for it to be Lem than you. But you will be careful, won’t you? If there’s any chance that we’re screwed up about this … Poor old Ma, she isn’t at all well these days. She’d rather die than admit it, but I’m sure of it. So, unless you simply have to—don’t tell her. It’d knock her out. It’d …”
Andrew put the license in his pocket and went
out into the hall for his coat. He was in no mood to listen to Ned being “understanding” about their mother. All he wanted was to get his hands on Lem Pryde.
Ned went down with him to the street, hatless, in his thin raincoat. The February evening was bitter, but Ned, although he spent most of his life following the sun, never seemed to feel the cold. He strode along at Andrew’s side as they hunted a taxi.
“I’m having dinner with Rosemary, but we’ll be through early. We’ll go back to my place and wait for you. You’ll come, won’t you, and let us know how you make out?”
“All right.”
“And Drew, I mean it. Please be quite sure before you do anything. Old Lem’s a bit of a crook, of course. I’ve always realized that. But he makes Ma happy, and she’s got to have some sort of a male in tow. Besides, can you actually see Lem killing anybody? I mean, to kill someone you’ve got to have a certain sort of character and Lem …”
A taxi swung into the street. Andrew hailed it. As he got into it, Ned, standing at the curb, was still being “understanding” about Lem.
It was Lem who let him into the suite at the Plaza. Beyond, in the living room, Andrew could hear his mother’s tinkling, melodious voice talking to someone. Lem was looking grotesquely uneasy.
“Listen, old boy,” he whispered,” you’re not going to tell your mother about—er—my sister, are you? There are reasons. Very good reasons, I assure you. I’ll explain it all later.”
“I’m planning on that,” said Andrew.
His stepfather looked even more uncomfortable. He fluttered, if so large and military a figure could be said to flutter, then he strode ahead of Andrew into the living room, announcing in a voice of a professional mourner, “Norma my dear … here’s Andrew.”
Mrs. Pryde was perched on the edge of a daffodil chair, facing the window. It was too late for the paraphernalia of tea but she had a martini in one hand and her jade cigarette holder in the other. In a chair opposite her was Mr. Thatcher, who rose when he saw Andrew.
“Ah, here you are, Andrew,” said Mrs. Pryde. “Lem darling, get Andrew a martini. Andrew, you know Mr. Thatcher, don’t you?”
The Green-Eyed Monster Page 11
