The Green-Eyed Monster

by Patrick Quentin

  He registered “being sunk,” playing it up, playing it to the hilt as usual.

  Andrew said, “So that’s why you just kept them and never mentioned them?”

  “Of course it is and I’ve been beating my brains out trying to figure out what to do with them. For a while I thought I had a plan. I’d give them back to Lem and have him somehow get them put back in Ma’s settings. But then when the cop started suspecting you and I knew, for your sake, I’d have to tip you off about Lem and the license …”

  The fair hair flopped over his forehead. He shook his head to toss it back. “I guess I messed this up like everything else, didn’t I? It was just that I was so scared you’d think I killed her.”

  “Particularly when in fact she could have stopped the wedding,” said Andrew. “If she had gone to the Thatchers, it would have been the end, wouldn’t it? You’d either have had to marry Rosemary without a cent between the two of you or give up the whole thing.”

  Ned’s face went blank. “But, Drew, are you out of your mind? When you know perfectly well that Rosemary has money of …”

  “It’s rather late in the day for that. Rosemary’s father has been to see Mother. Trust Mother to find out about finances. Mr. Thatcher told her the truth, which happens to be that Rosemary doesn’t have a cent to her name.”

  “But … but …”

  The look of astonishment in Ned’s eyes seemed absolutely authentic. He swung around to Rosemary. Andrew turned to look at her too. Her face was crimson.

  “Rosemary,” said Ned. “Rosemary baby …”

  “All right,” she said. “You don’t have to look at me like that, either of you. It’s not such a terrible crime, is it?” She got up. She stood very small and stiff and determined in front of Andrew. “You’re right. I admit it. I don’t have a cent of my own. I’ve been lying to you and to Maureen and to Ned as well.”

  “But Rosemary …” said Ned again.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t interrupt. I’ve got to explain. It’s perfectly simple. Yesterday at lunch I knew I had to prevent Maureen going to Mummy and Dad. The only thing I could think of to stop her was to make her believe that going to them wouldn’t do any good. So-so on the spur of the moment I invented all that about money of my own. And then, once I’d told her, I decided to tell you too—and Neddy.”

  “Why Ned?” cut in Andrew.

  The flush deepened. “Because—well, Neddy’s such a lousy liar. I thought it would be safer to make him believe what you and Maureen believed, and he did. He believed me just as much as you did. Oh, I knew it was a wild gamble, of course. If Maureen had gone to Mummy and Dad anyway, the whole thing would have been exposed in a second. But there was just a chance that somehow or other, everything would work out.”

  “Which it did,” said Andrew, “when Maureen was killed.”

  Rosemary was glaring at him through the glasses. “You think I don’t realize that? Of course I do. And if you want to think I killed her, all right, go ahead. I didn’t, as it happens. But that’s neither here nor there. All you’ve got to see is that none of this applies to Neddy. Neddy couldn’t have killed her to keep her from going to Mummy and Dad because he had no idea that she could stop the marriage. And he couldn’t have killed her for those jewels because he couldn’t possibly have known they were in that box until he brought it back here and opened it.”

  She moved to the couch and, standing by Ned, put her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes, fixed on Andrew’s face, were furious in their intensity.

  “Can’t you see that? Even a moron could see that. Oh, oh, you make me so mad. You know what Maureen was now. You know she was even worse than I used to think she was. You know from that letter why she married you. You know from Lem Pryde what she was doing to him and your mother. She was a monster, that’s what she was, a monster, and you ought to be delighted that somebody killed her. And—and yet, here’s Neddy, your own brother who loves you, who’s tried in every possible way to help you, faking a burglary, risking his own skin, doing everything … and, instead of being grateful, instead of realizing where your real friends are, you’re ready to believe the most horrible things … It’s disgusting. That’s what it is. Disgusting.”

  Her voice choked off. She dropped down on the daybed, threw her arms around Ned and burst into tears.

  “Baby, baby, it’s okay.”

  Ned was kissing her. Very gently he drew her head down to his shoulder and started stroking her hair. He looked up over her head to Andrew, grinning apologetically.

  “I’m sorry, Drew. She shouldn’t have said that. Sure, you ought to have suspected me. My God, all the things I’ve done in my time? I think you’re a saint not to have turned me in hours ago. But it’s just—well, I didn’t kill Maureen, honest I didn’t. And neither did Rosemary.”

  He paused. “Drew, do you want me to get you those jewels?”

  Without waiting for Andrew to say anything, he eased Rosemary’s head off his shoulder until it was resting against the pillows of the daybed, got up and went into the bedroom. In a few moments he was out carrying another manila envelope.

  “Gee,” he said. “The transfer of gems that goes on in this dump. It could be Amsterdam.”

  He gave Andrew the envelope. Rosemary blew her nose. She got up, straightening her skirt. She came over to Andrew.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew, I really am. It’s my temper, you know. It’s terrible.”

  Andrew had opened the envelope. She looked in at the gleaming heap of stones.

  “For pity’s sake,” she said, “what are we going to do with them?”

  “What are we going to do period?” said Ned. “That cop thinks Andrew killed her. That’s the important thing. That’s what we’ve got to stop.”

  “But how?” said Rosemary.

  How, indeed? thought Andrew. Lem wasn’t the murderer. He had an alibi. To expose his mother’s bigamous marriage would be cruel and meaningless. And Ned … Rosemary … Had he ever really believed that either of them had killed Maureen? He hardly knew any more. In his extreme exhaustion and battered self-esteem, he realized he had come to a point where he had lost any faculty for distinguishing what was true from what was false. He thought of Lieutenant Mooney, who “took his time,” who “gathered evidence,” and then, when he was pretty sure of the way the land lay, “took action.” How long would it be before he took action?

  The phone rang. Ned glanced at him and then at Rosemary. He hurried over and picked up the receiver.

  “Yes, yes, just a minute.” He looked at Rosemary. “It’s for you. Your mother.”

  “Mother?” Rosemary went to the phone. “Hello. Yes, Mummy … Yes, as a matter of fact, he’s right here. I’ll get him.” She cupped the receiver. “It’s you she wants, Andrew. She says she’s been trying to get you at your apartment. She called here because she thought I might know where you are.”

  Andrew took the phone from her. “Mrs. Thatcher.”

  “Thank God I’ve finally reached you.” Mrs. Thatcher’s voice sounded agitated. “This isn’t good news, I’m afraid, but I’ve talked to my husband and he agrees that it’s only fair to warn you. Lieutenant Mooney’s just been here. He’d been interviewing a friend of Maureen’s, a girl called Mary Cross. Do you know her? Maureen roomed with her when she first came to New York.”

  Mary Cross—the girl who shared an apartment with Gloria Leyden in the Village.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know who she is.”

  “It’s because of her that the lieutenant came to us. She’d told him about Maureen’s living with us. Perhaps I should have let him know about the—the episode in Pasadena. But I didn’t. It seemed unnecessary to make trouble when it was all so long ago. But, Andrew, this is awfully difficult. I don’t quite know how to say it, but it seems that everything I told you about Maureen this morning was idiotically wrong and naïve. According to this Mary Cross, before she married you, Maureen … well, she was very secretive, apparently, but this Mary Cross knew there’
d been man after man … And not only that, when she came to me and pretended to have forgiven me, it must all have been some devious, malicious act, because she told Mary Cross only a few months ago that she hated us and—and that the only satisfaction she’d got out of her marriage was the pleasure of flaunting it in our faces that she’d become Mrs. Pryde’s daughter-in-law.”

  Her voice was stricken with embarrassment and anxiety for him. As if it mattered! As if he were capable of any more suffering.

  “Andrew, it’s awful to tell you that. I know it is. But I’ve got to make you realize what Maureen was really like because it seems there weren’t any hoodlums … and now that the lieutenant has heard from Mary Cross about the other men and her motives for marrying you … Andrew, he says she was shot with your gun at a time when you could have been there. And not only that, there’s something else he knows which he wouldn’t tell us about but which seems very important to him. You do see what I’m trying to say, don’t you? When he left here, he told us he was going to the district attorney. It didn’t sound good and … well, we thought we should try to find out how the land lay. My husband happens to know the mayor. He got in touch with him and we’ve just had word. It seems that a warrant is going to be sworn out for your arrest tomorrow morning.”

  She paused. Then bleakly she added, “Andrew, I don’t know whether you killed Maureen or not. It would be ridiculous to pretend that I do, but I’m pigheaded enough to be sure you didn’t and honest enough, I hope, to feel terribly responsible. If she was as bad as she seems to have been, then maybe it was partly my fault. I can’t let them arrest you without at least trying to warn you. And please don’t think it’s just because of Rosemary and Ned. That’s something different. That’s their own affair. It’s you I want to help. Do you have a good lawyer?”

  “I’ll have to think.”

  “If you don’t, my husband can get you the best one in the city. And, Andrew, isn’t there something you know, anything, anything at all that might help to point to someone else?”

  To her daughter, for example? Or to her son-in-law-to-be? Would her Christian charity stretch that far?

  “There’s nothing that adds up to much, Mrs. Thatcher.”

  “But … but … oh dear, what can we do?”

  “You’re very kind and I appreciate it. But at the moment …”

  “But if you do think of something, if there’s anything we can do, absolutely anything, you’ll call us, won’t you? Promise me. Call any time, it doesn’t matter how late.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, Andrew, you’d do the same thing, I’m sure.”

  He dropped the receiver. Rosemary and Ned were watching him in taut silence. He sat down on the arm of the chair.

  “Lieutenant Mooney’s been to see her,” he said. “They’ve found out he’s swearing out a warrant for my arrest tomorrow morning.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Ned. “Then what are we going to do?”

  What was he going to do? It was as if he were in an echo chamber with that sentence bounding off the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Wearily he got up. He was still carrying the envelope which contained his mother’s jewels. The only thing in the world that he actively wanted at that moment was for his head to stop aching.

  “I’ll think of something,” Andrew said. He started for the door.

  “But, Drew, you’re not leaving.”

  “I’m going home. I’ve got to be alone for a while. I’ve got to think.”

  He turned to glance back at them. They were standing very close to each other, hand in hand again, their faces gaunt with anxiety.

  Ned said, “Just remember one thing, Drew. If you say the word, I’m ready to tell them everything. Absolutely everything.”

  “And so am I,” said Rosemary. “Of course I am.”

  Ned moved toward him and put his hand gently on his arm. “It’s whatever you decide, Drew. Just let us know. That’s all.”

  Mrs. Thatcher, Rosemary, Ned—all of them lavishing love and sympathy on him as if they were visitors at the bedside of a dying man.

  SIXTEEN

  When he let himself into the dark apartment, the feeling of Maureen was everywhere, intangible, poisonous as gas escaping from the stove. He turned on a lamp. He put the envelope of jewels down on a table. He was ravenous. He went into the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator. He made himself a bowl of cereal and milk and sat on a stool wolfing it down. Maybe food would make the headache go.

  Lieutenant Mooney. “I gather evidence.” He’d gathered evidence all right. “Man after man.” Wasn’t that what Mary Cross had said? A vision came of Maureen, smiling, dazzling in this man’s arms, in that man’s arms. The pain that came with it was as tormenting as the headache. There hadn’t been time yet for the wound to heal. His wife. The white rose …

  The self-pity that welled up in him humiliated him. Fight it down. Think of Lieutenant Mooney. The gun—the time of death—the “other thing” which he hadn’t confided to Mrs. Thatcher but which, of course, was the pregnancy. Maureen had married him as a dumb straw husband, Maureen was having a baby by one of her lovers, Maureen had been murdered in a fit of jealousy by the dumb straw husband. That was how Lieutenant Mooney saw it. That was how the district attorney would see it. And a judge? And a jury?

  “Andrew, don’t you know something, anything?” What did he know? No hoodlums, no blackmailer, no Lem, no Ned, no Rosemary. (Surely, no Ned, no Rosemary.) Then—what? The baby. He faced it because he had to face it. The child hadn’t been his. There wasn’t one chance in a million that it could have been his. One chance in a million? No, of course. Not even that. Two months pregnant, the Medical Examiner had said. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He had left New York almost exactly nine weeks ago for those three lonely, anxiety-ridden weeks in Scandinavia. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, there had been a lover. And what had Lem suggested? A lover who’d been an accomplice in the jewel racket? Why not? To begin with, Maureen had merely been trying to get the will changed, which indicated that she had still been thinking of herself primarily as his wife. But later, when she’d switched to the jewels, what had she said? “I must have been mad trying to get something for Andrew when there’s so much I can get for myself.” For herself—and a lover? A lover she’d taken a few months before the Scandinavian trip, when his doubts and tensions about telephones not answered and dates kept late had started? A lover who was in with her on the theft of the jewels, and consequently an impoverished lover? At least, a cynical lover who was only interested in her provided the jewels came with her.

  He put the cereal bowl in the sink. He went into the living room.

  A lover? Why not? But—who? Inevitably he thought of Bill Stanton. Even if Bill wasn’t himself the lover, he was the person most likely to know about him. “Oh, look, Bill, there’s Gloria,” dragging Bill away at the party to brief him. “Bill’s maid was sick. I spent the afternoon helping him get ready for the party.” At least Bill Stanton would know the truth about that. If he could get Bill Stanton to talk …

  He ran into the bedroom, turning on the light by the bed. Bill’s number was in Maureen’s book. He found it. Slumped across the bed, he dialed.

  “Bill, this is Andrew Jordan.”

  “Andrew!”

  “Are you alone?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you. I’m coming over.”

  “But, Andrew …”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  In under a quarter of an hour, he was knocking on Bill Stanton’s door. Bill opened it. He was wearing a red silk robe over shirt and trousers. The face, which Andrew had never quite liked, the smooth, Manhattanish, almost handsome face, wore a typical “nothing-surprises-the-sophisticated” expression.

  “Hi, Andrew. Come in.”

  He stood aside. Andrew went into the hall. Bill Stanton closed the door behind them. They went down steps into the sunken living room, which Andrew had never seen ex
cept at parties. Now that it was empty, it looked big and bleak and very faintly shabby—the room of somebody pretending to be more successful than he was. What did Bill do anyway? Free-lance design?

  “Sit down, Andrew. Sit down. What can I offer you? Scotch? Isn’t that suitably unfrivolous for a bereaved widower?”

  Andrew sat down in one of the Swedish modern chairs. Bill Stanton made two drinks at the bar and brought him one. He stood looking down at him.

  “Before you say anything, Andrew—just in case you’re planning to waste your energy being belligerent—I’d like you to know that there was no malice in my telling that lieutenant about the Adamses. If I hadn’t, they would certainly have gone to him themselves. They’re a very dreary couple. Seeing themselves as witnesses to a murder rehearsal is the most exciting thing that’s happened to them since Mrs. A. won sixty-seven dollars and an ice bucket on a daytime TV quiz show.”

  He smiled. It was a blandly friendly smile whose friendliness Andrew didn’t trust an inch.

  “Does that help to establish the right mood between us? I told the lieutenant about the Adamses but that was all I told him. Only that and nothing more. You should be grateful.”

  Andrew, sipping his drink, watched the other man, trying to assess him. “So there is more to tell?”

  “I am hardly someone who confuses a cop with a father confessor.”

  “And I should be grateful because you held back information from the police—for my sake?”

  “Well.” His lips drooping slightly at the corners, Bill Stanton sat down in a chair opposite him. “It was partly for my own sake, I must admit that. Much as I admired Maureen, once she was dead and in the domain of the cops, she wasn’t quite the kind of girl one wants to be linked with. But shall we say that, whatever my motives, my discretion was of incidental benefit to you? Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, what I have to say about her would have made the cops very interested in her husband—and I imagine they’re interested enough in you as it is, aren’t they?”

  The drooping corners of Bill Stanton’s mouth were clearly indicating the malice which he had denied. Malice—and perverse curiosity too. In his special way, Bill Stanton was just as excited as he claimed the Adamses to be. The dislike Andrew felt for him was almost a physical revulsion.