Andrew was gripping the arms of his chair. Lem reached over him and took a cigarette out of a box. He hardly ever smoked and like all non-smokers made a big production of it, lighting the match with a flourish, sucking at the cigarette, puffing out smoke.
“Every Thursday afternoon from then on, whenever your mother left for her allergy shots, Maureen would show up. Each week I stalled; each week she threatened. Finally, needless to say, she saw the whole thing was a farce. She came right out and admitted it. She said, ‘I must have been mad thinking you’d have any influence on the old woman. I must have been mad wasting my time trying to get money for Andrew when there’s so much more I can get for myself.’ ”
Lem brandished the cigarette in the air. “That’s when she switched to the jewels.”
“Jewels?”
“Sure,” said Lem. “Mind you, I’m telling you all this because I trust you, Andrew. You mustn’t get the idea that I ever suspected you were in on it with her. It would never have occurred to me, not even if she hadn’t made it plain she was strictly on her own. But the moment she outlined what she had in mind about the jewels, I knew I was licked. You see, I’d got to know her by then. I knew she was as tough and as dangerous as Al Capone and this idea was so simple, so smooth—well, old boy, give the devil his due, I’d call it a stroke of genius.”
His plump hand stretched out and came to rest momentarily on Andrew’s knee. “You know how your mother always likes me to choose what jewels she’s to wear. Well, here was Maureen’s plan. I was to persuade your mother that it was dangerous to keep her jewels here in the suite. I was to convince her it would be much better to check them into the hotel safe, where they’d be adequately protected. And then, every day I could decide which jewels she’d need, go down to the safe and bring them up for her. Get it? That was to give me complete control over the jewels, and once I’d arranged it that way I was to take one major piece each week and give it to Maureen. She knew some crooked jeweler. I don’t know who it was but it was someone. Each week she’d take a ring or a clip to this guy, who’d take out the major stones and replace them with copies. Each time she came for a new piece she’d bring me back last week’s piece with the phony stones inserted. And, Andrew, you know something? By the time she got herself bumped off, that little charmer of a wife of yours had all your mother’s biggest stones stashed away—the rubies from those earrings, that big emerald in the ring she always wears, those diamonds in the clip old Mulhouse gave her. Doesn’t know it, of course, poor old girl, but there she is, the great Mrs. Pryde, walking about like a peacock, flashing her rings and her bracelets, flashing a lot of colored glass, a lot of worthless junk …”
Lem’s major’s smile had become a rueful smirk of admiration. “Yes, got to hand it to that wife of yours. I could have wrung her neck, of course, but—what could I do? Absolutely bloody nothing. She had me just where she wanted me and she knew it.”
He paused. “Well, old boy, you wanted the truth. There it is. That’s the saga of poor old Lem Pryde and his dear little daughter-in-law.”
For a moment, while Lem had been talking, Andrew had felt the panic surging through him, threatening once and for all to sweep him away into despair. Could Lem have invented a story like this? Would he dare to lie about the jewels being replaced when he must surely realize that all Andrew had to do to expose him was to take one of the so-called “duplicated” pieces to an expert for assessment? No, the jewels must certainly have been substituted. Then—then Lem was telling the truth? Maureen had been what he claimed she had been? Everything he’d struggled to believe about his wife had been nothing, after all, but self-deception?
There was a long agonized moment before he realized that, even if the jewels had been tampered with, it didn’t necessarily implicate Maureen. At Mrs. Pryde’s death, everything except a “little something for Lem” went to Ned. Why couldn’t Lem have decided to feather his own nest while there was still time? If he had taken the jewels himself, what could be more ingenious than to invent this story which put the blame on Maureen?
Andrew got up from his chair. His relief at having once again staved off despair was far stronger than any anger he felt toward Lem. He stood looking down at his “stepfather.”
“So that’s your story.”
“Sure, old boy, that’s it.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Lem’s eyes, their whites marbleized by prominent red veins, were bulging with astonishment. “You don’t believe—what?”
“That Maureen chiseled those jewels out of you.”
“But—but … What do you mean you don’t believe it? Can’t you see how it explains everything? It wasn’t just some little two-bit hoodlums who broke into your apartment on the off chance of picking up a few trinkets. Don’t you realize what happened? That crooked jeweler of hers tipped off the big boys that she had almost eighty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels stashed away. That’s why they came and that’s why, when she put up a fight, they shot her. My God, the stakes were real stakes. Almost eighty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels in that jewel box of hers.”
“In the jewel box?” Andrew could hear the hoarse distortion in his own voice.
“That’s right, old boy. That’s where she kept them. She was always telling me about the jewel box. I think she got a kick out of rubbing salt in the wound. She used to say, ‘If you feel so bad about this, Lem, why don’t you break into the apartment one day and steal them back. You’ll find them right there in a red-leather jewel box in the top right-hand drawer of the highboy in the bedroom.’ And when she’d say it, she’d giggle, because she knew, of course, that I was about as dangerous to her as a mouse with its teeth extracted.”
Lem got up too. He threw his arm chummily across Andrew’s shoulders.
“So you can imagine how I felt yesterday at your place, old boy, when your mother sent me into the bedroom and I saw her lying there. Brother, was I frantic. I dashed to that top drawer. The moment I found the jewel box wasn’t there, I realized what had happened, of course. It’s too bad we can’t tell the cops. If they knew about those jewels, they’d be putting a hell of a lot more effort into trying to locate those hoodlums. But we can’t tell them, can we? I’m sure you agree. Why, if it all got smeared over the cheap press, it’d kill the old girl, wouldn’t it? Poor old thing, she’d be a laughingstock to all her friends.”
As Lem stood smiling at him, conspiratorial, shameless and yet without the slightest indication of guilt in his expression, Andrew felt himself teetering on the edge of an abyss. Lem knew exactly where Maureen had kept the jewel box. How was that possible unless … Wait a minute. Yes, of course, Lem had been there the night before when he’d told the lieutenant about the jewel box. So that didn’t mean anything and, since he still believed that the police accepted the hoodlum theory, Lem was merely adding a plausible end to his lying story by pretending that the jewels which he himself had been hiding away had, in fact, been taken by Maureen and put into the jewel box which had been stolen by the “hoodlums.” That had to be it. It was inconceivable that there could have been eighty thousand dollars’ worth of his mother’s jewels in that box. If there had been, Ned would have found them and Ned would have told him and …
Ned …
His face must have given him away, for Lem said sharply, “What’s the matter, old boy? You think we ought to tell this to the police? That’s crazy. Of course, maybe it’ll all have to come out eventually, but at the moment there’s absolutely no need to say anything. They’re looking for hoodlums anyway. All this means is that the hoodlums were bigger-time than they realize.”
“There weren’t any hoodlums,” said Andrew. “The burglary was a fake. The police have known it from the beginning.”
“Then …” the skin of Lem’s face was turning a greenish gray. Little bubbles of sweat were breaking out on his forehead. “But there must have been hoodlums. There … Andrew, what are you trying to say? You can’t think I killed her. Me—killing her
to get your mother’s jewels back? Are you out of your mind? Me killing anyone? You don’t know me. Just the sight of blood, a cut finger, and I’m dizzy, half-fainting like a woman.”
He made a clutching motion toward Andrew’s arm. “Andrew, listen to me. I didn’t kill her. I swear it. You’ve got to believe that, old boy. Don’t waste your time thinking about me. It’s the jewel box. That’s the thing. I’m telling you there was eighty thousand dollars’ worth of stones in that box. Okay, you say there were no hoodlums. So there were no hoodlums. But somebody stole that box, and whoever stole it killed her. Don’t you see? That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to find out who took that box.”
They stood looking at each other. Andrew’s headache was back, raging in his temples. The desperate fight to go on disbelieving his stepfather had sapped almost all his energy, and yet he had to continue with the struggle because to believe Lem now would be to accept Maureen as the lowest, most contemptible of blackmailers and Ned as a …
“Andrew.” Lem’s voice came through to him. “Haven’t you any idea who could have taken that box? Think. For God’s sake, think. What if she’d had a partner, some guy who was in with her on the jewel racket, a boy friend, perhaps, a … Yes, that’s it. I’m sure of it. You see, there’s something …”
He broke off as the bedroom door opened. They both turned to see Mrs. Pryde coming into the room. She was wearing a gray evening dress with a stole of silver-gray fur. The dress swept full-skirted around her ankles. There were little touches of blue. Mrs. Mulhouse’s diamond (?) necklace glittered at her throat. She was holding white gloves in a hand on whose middle finger gleamed Mrs. Eversley’s huge emerald (?) ring. She moved toward them with magnificently assured serenity.
“So you’re still here, Andrew. Lem dear, you are ready I trust. It’s almost half past seven.”
She started to put on a glove. They were long ones, reaching to the elbow. She was maneuvering it as dexterously as a geisha girl with a fan.
“Oh, Andrew, if you see Neddy, I wish you’d give him a message. Tell him I was charmed with Mr. Thatcher, quite charmed. And tell him he was most reasonable about the marriage arrangements. For a while he seemed to feel that I should do something to augment Neddy’s little income, but when I explained that I was in no position to do so, he made a counter suggestion which I find eminently sensible. It seems he is eager to preserve his family name. If Neddy changes his name to Jordan-Thatcher—and there’s no conceivable reason why Neddy could object; it’s done all the time in Europe—Mr. Thatcher will be more than ready to give them a very generous allowance.”
In the tumult of his thoughts, Andrew had been listening to his mother with only token attention. The last sentence struck him like a hammer.
“An allowance?” he said. “But I thought Rosemary had money of her own.”
His mother glanced up from a last-minute twitch to the glove. “Oh no, dear. I made a point of asking Mr. Thatcher and he was most definite on the subject. She’s completely dependent on him, and he’s been very sensible with her, keeping her on the strictest basis of schoolgirl pin money. So much wiser until they reach a responsible age. But all that will change, as I said. He’s promised to be more than generous.”
Who cares whether Maureen went to the Thatchers or not? Ned’s voice, so frank, so boyishly convincing, was echoing in Andrew’s mind. Rosemary’s of age. She has money of her own. Maureen couldn’t possibly have done anything to stop the marriage.
Rosemary had said it too. They’d both been lying. Everything was adrift again.
Mrs. Pryde moved to Lem. With the pretty lightness of a girl, she put her hands on his shoulders and, stretching on tiptoe, kissed his ear.
“You’re all right, chickie? No horrid little flutters of the heart today?”
Lem was beaming his complacent smile, strutting in the full splendor of admired masculinity. The public personality seemed to have been completely re-established.
“No, chickie. Fairly good form today.”
“That’s my boy.” Mrs. Pryde turned back to Andrew. “Poor Lem, he felt very low yesterday. He had to lie down all afternoon and I read out loud to him right through from lunch until almost six. He loves being read to. He’s just like a little child.”
There it was—an alibi for Lem. No one had asked for it. Mrs. Pryde had merely proffered it. Unless for some fantastically complex reason she was lying to shield him before she even knew there was any need for him to be shielded, Lem couldn’t have killed Maureen.
Andrew realized what that meant. If it was no longer possible to suspect Lem of the murder, it was no longer reasonable to disbelieve his story. So this was the end of his heartbreaking journey toward the truth? His wife had been a monster, far more of a monster than even Ned had imagined.
And Ned?
Mrs. Pryde had looped her gloved hand through Lem’s arm. Together they had started for the door. When they had almost reached it, Mrs. Pryde glanced back over her shoulder.
“If you want to stay a little longer and have another drink, it’s perfectly all right, Andrew. But don’t turn out any of the lights when you leave, will you? You know how I loathe coming back to a dark room. So gloomy.”
They disappeared into the foyer. Andrew could hear the front door open and close again. He stood with the empty martini glass in his hand, gazing blindly ahead of him toward his mother’s daffodil chair.
FIFTEEN
Ten minutes later Andrew was walking up the steps of Ned’s apartment house. When he pressed the buzzer in the drab little foyer, there was no response, but the front door was unlocked. He climbed to the fourth floor. Someone in one of the apartments was playing a guitar. He knocked on Ned’s door. Nothing happened. He would have to wait. While the mournful strum of the guitar drifted up from the stairwell, he stood with his back against the wall, exhausted, without hope, dreading what would have to come next.
It wasn’t long before Ned and Rosemary arrived. He heard their footsteps and their voices. Then they came into view moving up to the landing. The moment they saw him, they were running to him, full of apologies. Had he been waiting long? Ned unlocked the front door. A single lamp was alight in the living room.
“Keith’s gone,” said Ned. “He left for Florida this afternoon.”
“Andrew dear, you look all in. Sit down, do.”
Rosemary was patting the one overstuffed chair, smiling a hostess smile as if they were married already and in their “little place” in Mexico. Ned got drinks. Once Andrew was settled in the chair, he and Rosemary sat down together on the daybed. Dimly Andrew realized he had never seen them together before. Together they looked different, both of them much more sure of themselves, almost formidable. Young love militant.
Ned was looking at him with anxious affection. “Well, did you see him?”
“I saw him.”
“And he admitted he’d never got a divorce from that woman?”
“He did.”
“And Maureen had been blackmailing him?”
“That’s what he said.”
“But what was she doing?” said Rosemary. “Getting money out of him?”
All right, thought Andrew. Give it to them. “He says she made him sneak Mother’s jewels to her one by one. She took them to some crooked jeweler, who copied the stones. She kept the genuine stones and gave the pieces with the phony stones back to Lem. He says she got away with almost eighty thousand dollars’ worth.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Rosemary’s voice cracked. “And I thought I’d misjudged her. I thought she’d changed. What a fool I was.”
Andrew was watching his brother. He had expected to be ready for this moment, but when he saw the flicker of lashes, the “innocent” (and hopelessly betraying) widening of the blue eyes, he felt his heart sinking.
“Okay, Ned,” he said. “Where are they? Do you still have them or have you sold them already to that guy you know who doesn’t give much of a price?”
“Andrew!” cri
ed Rosemary.
Andrew kept his eyes fixed on Ned’s face. For a long moment his brother sat quite motionless. Then the faintest suggestion of a smile came.
“So old Lem did know where she kept them.”
“She told him.”
“Well, what do you know!”
“That’s why you thought you were safe putting me on to Lem, wasn’t it? You knew he’d tell me about the jewels but you never dreamed Maureen would have admitted to him that she kept them in her jewel box.”
The small, private, self-mocking smile still flickered around the corners of Ned’s mouth. “Would you have dreamed that a dame who’d been chiseling jewels out of someone would have had the gall to tell him where she kept them?” He paused. “So that’s the way it goes. You know.”
“I know.”
“Then you see, don’t you? I mean, you see why I couldn’t possibly have told you about them.” Ned slipped his hand out of Rosemary’s and, leaning forward, laid it on Andrew’s knee. “My God, you were ready enough to suspect me of killing her when it was only a question of her own few crummy jewels. What were you going to think if you knew I had all that loot of Ma’s too? I’ve been terrified, I don’t mind telling you—scared out of my wits. You know how broke I am. You’ve always thought I was a crook about money anyway. Of course I never had the slightest idea they’d be in the box. I only took the goddam thing because I was trying to fake a burglary. But when I opened it and found them and realized what Maureen had been up to … ‘Brother,’ I thought, ‘if Andrew finds out about this, I’m sunk.’ ”
The Green-Eyed Monster Page 13
