The Valentine Estate

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘I see. Is that what you really woke me up to tell me?’

  ‘No. That idea about dope smuggling started going around in my brain, and I knew I’d never get to sleep until I told you about it. But I knew we’d wind up like this. That’s why I took a shower and put on some surefire perfume before I told you. After all, you’re only human.’

  He felt her hand, warm now, insinuating itself beneath the waistband of his pyjama pants.

  ‘And pooped,’ he said. ‘Forget it, blondie. I’m in no shape for any of your communions.’

  ‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ Beth said equably. ‘Why not let’s make an honest effort to find out?’

  After they had found out at length, and, pleasantly satiated, he had untangled the covers of the bed, neatly rearranged them, and was under them again with her, spoon fashion, his belly against her back, he felt her stir restlessly.

  ‘Chris? I have to tell you something.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Bobby Talbot. I was lying about him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You do? What do you know?’

  She started to turn around to face him, but he locked his arm around her waist to keep her from doing it and held her securely like that.

  ‘I know you didn’t drop him,’ he said. ‘He dropped you. And it did matter to you when he told you he was marrying Hilary. In fact, it almost killed you. And you wish he could see you right now.’

  Her body stiffened with resentment. Then it relaxed, yielding completely to his encircling arm.

  ‘After all, I’m only human too,’ she said contentedly.

  11

  They left the hotel at seven the next evening, two hours before flight time, and took a cab the few blocks down Commonwealth to where the rented car had been parked near the Prendergast house. Chris had the cabby pull up a fair distance away from the car and walked over to check it inside and out. It looked harmless, there was small chance Prendergast even knew this was his car, but it would be too late to learn he had underestimated Prendergast when he turned the key in the ignition and set off a bomb under the hood.

  Satisfied that there was nothing menacing under the hood or anywhere in the car, he unloaded Beth and the suitcase into it.

  ‘Can you drive?’ he asked her.

  ‘Sure. I can even handle a stick shift.’

  For which she could probably thank Bobby Talbot, he thought with irritation. It would be entertaining to put a stick shift, bucket seat hero like Talbot in the saddle of a stripped-down Harley-Davidson 1200 and show her what a joke he really was. Or take him on in a couple of sets of tennis, name your own stakes. It would have to be a two-out-of-three match because of the goddam knee, but there wasn’t a chance of it going beyond two sets. Love sets.

  ‘Look,’ Beth said plaintively, ‘you asked if I could drive, and all I said was I could. Will you please tell me what’s so grim about that?’

  ‘Nothing. Slide over behind the wheel. I’ll be lookout.’

  ‘But even if you see somebody following us, there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?’

  ‘I know. I just want to get one good look at their faces. Maybe the same faces’ll show up on the plane or in London. And go slow until you’re past the house.’

  Passing the Prendergast house, he scanned it carefully. Window-shades still drawn, no car showing in the driveway or through the open doors of the garage, it looked as if Prendergast had not yet returned here. It was a relief, Chris found, when the house was out of view. Empty or not, the mere sight of it gave him the horrors.

  He kept close watch along the way, but when they reached the airport all he knew with frustration was that either they hadn’t been followed, or that whoever was following was an artist at it. And either way, it was impossible to tell yet whether Big Brother intended to let him leave the country. That was a big question to leave unanswered until the last minute, a nerve-racking one, and he saw that, emotionally, it was going to be Miami airport all over again. Worse. This time it wouldn’t be enough just walking aboard the plane. Until he felt it actually lift off the ground, it was going to be a very bad time.

  And everything along the way seemed calculated to make it worse.

  When he settled the bill for the rented car he realized that his wallet, so reassuringly plump for these past few days, was now dismally flat. He had been living too high. His half of Prendergast’s gift cheque hadn’t been up to the strain. Gift cheque, hell. Bait. But for what?

  ‘How much of that Prendergast handout do you have left?’ he asked Beth. ‘That cheque he gave us.’

  ‘A lot of it.’

  He knew he was being ungracious in the way he took the money without thanks when she unquestioningly handed it to him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  ‘Is it enough?’ she asked.

  ‘For a while. If it doesn’t carry us down to the wire, you can hit up Warburton for a loan. Jesus, I completely forgot. He said he’d be waiting for us at the airport this morning. He must be going out of his skull wondering what happened to us.’

  ‘I know his office address. We could send a cablegram there right now.’

  ‘No use. We’ll be at his office tomorrow morning before he’s even there. And let’s not get on the subject of cablegrams. If you hadn’t been so damn trusting when Prendergast told you he got one from Warburton, we would have been in London already. Why you had to head out of Miami like a scared rabbit when a man tells you a transparent lie –’

  ‘Chris, don’t be unfair. If you had been with me when he called –’

  ‘I didn’t leave you to go cruising on my yacht, remember? I was taken to headquarters by the police. What did you want me to do? Wake you up and invite you along?’

  ‘Please, Chris, you’re talking too loud. Everybody’s looking at us.’

  And that was another irritant, the fact that, whether his voice was raised or not, everyone near by did seem to focus on them as they walked along the terminal. The men especially, just as in the hotel lobby the day before. Which meant that Big Brother, if he was still on the job, had perfect cover for watching as close as he wanted to without being spotted.

  Not that there weren’t some other pretty wild mini-skirts around to stare at, Chris saw, if that was what a man required to give him the hots. There were. And a couple of them on highly attractive females at that. But this suddenly psychedelic wife of his was so damn long-legged that hers looked almost flagrantly indecent by comparison. And with that glossy length of blonde hair over her shoulders, and that sunburn, and those long-lashed, darkly exotic eyes, she managed to give the effect of being in Technicolor where everyone around her was in black and white.

  He had watched her painstakingly putting on the eyelashes before the dressing-table mirror, her tongue thrust out of the corner of her mouth, her face screwed up with concentration, and when she had finally risen from the dressing-table and turned to give him the full effect of the head to foot ensemble, he saw with amusement that she was still unsure of herself, still a little apprehensive of what she had done to the old Elizabeth Jones. Now, watching her as she walked over to the news-stand while he waited for service at the flight insurance counter, he had to admit to himself that women were uncannily adaptable. There wasn’t the least sign of self-consciousness about her. From the way it looked, she might have graduated from the cradle into the Jet Set.

  When he had dropped the flight policy into the mailbox addressed to Dom by way of Augie Bloom, he picked her up at the news-stand.

  ‘We’ve still got half an hour to kill,’ he said. ‘How about a drink to help kill it.’

  ‘Good thinking, man.’ She had fallen into wary silence after their last loud passage and was plainly happy at this overture. ‘I was wondering when you’d ask.’

  In the bar, he had a double cognac to her single, then another. When he ordered a third he caught her giving the waitress a small, warning shake of the head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told the waitress b
rightly, ‘but we really don’t have time. If you’ll just bring the check –’

  ‘And another double,’ Chris said in a voice that stopped the girl in her tracks as she was moving away.

  He waited until she hastily returned with the drink and the check, and had taken off again. Then he leaned across the table towards Beth.

  ‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’ he said with slow, hard emphasis.

  ‘Chris, this isn’t the time to get loaded.’

  ‘Never again, do you hear? And that doesn’t mean I’m telling you to be any animated gatefold. All I’m telling you is never to put me down in front of people like the kind of bitchy wives I used to watch give their husbands the works at Cobia. Or else.’

  She seemed stunned into speechlessness by this. Then she recovered herself.

  ‘I read you loud and clear, Mr Monte. It will never happen again.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. First, you’ll have to memorize a couple of never agains from my book.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as, you will never again address me in that tone of voice, Chris. And you will never again threaten me with your royal displeasure like every man I’ve known does with his woman, whether he’s her father or husband or boss. I’ve had it with that. And there’s no use your resenting my attitude, because you’re the one who exorcized the old Patient Griselda out of me. Anyhow, most of it.’

  ‘You mean, coming into a million dollars had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘That money still isn’t real to me. You are. For which I rejoice.’

  That, added to the three double cognacs, warmed him pleasantly. More than warmed him. The cognac was doing its familiar job now, settling fluttering nerves, giving him that detached, faraway view of the world which made it almost entertaining.

  He carefully leaned back in his chair to regard his wife from this view. Quaint, Bobby Talbot had called her, which wasn’t a bad description of the old Elizabeth Jones. And even a calculating little bastard like Mookerjee had talked marriage to her. The quaint old Elizabeth, too, not this mistily glowing new one. However you felt about Mookerjee, you had to give him credit for seeing the possibilities.

  The possibilities.

  The idea was the size of a mustard seed. Then it sprang into full growth and swelled to monstrous proportions. It opened, petal by petal, and horribly flowered. A flesh-devouring plant. A Venus fly-trap so enormous that it was hard to comprehend. Baited with a cloyingly sweet syrup, triggered by a touch. The jaws snap shut, and down you slide to destruction.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Beth asked.

  He blinked at her, trying to get her back into sharp focus.

  ‘Mookerjee wanted that million dollars,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All of it, not just the cut Prendergast offered him. That’s why he tried to get you to marry him.’

  ‘Oh?’ Beth bridled humorously. ‘Well, that’s hardly flattering, is it? But you happen to be wrong, pal. He didn’t even know about the money then. That was a long time before anyone knew about it.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Prendergast knew about it all along.’

  ‘Chris, he couldn’t have.’

  ‘But he did. Because he knew Clive Valentine from way back to when Valentine came to Boston in his early days. And he knew all about Valentine and your father and what would be in the will. He knew even more about it than Warburton. So when the will finally turned up, he was ready to take you and Warburton together. And me. Because you had to be stuck with a husband to collect your money. You and Warburton and me. Three fish in a barrel. Prendergast dropped us into it, and Mookerjee was supposed to do the shooting.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Beth whispered. ‘It’s too wild. Prendergast would have known it was too wild.’

  ‘Not with a million dollars as the pay-off. And it almost worked. It still might.’

  ‘Worked how?’

  ‘Like a time bomb set going the day Valentine died. The one thing that would have ruined the deal was if the will didn’t turn up, and Prendergast and Mookerjee must have been in a fine sweat until it did. Then you walked right into the trap by making Prendergast your residuary legatee on account of his kind heart. It was simple after that. You collect your money, we get knocked off – me first, you later – and the money is all Prendergast’s. Naturally, Mookerjee gets a fat slice for doing at least half of the dirty work. If he didn’t think he could make a better deal with me than with Prendergast, he would have done it already.’

  Beth was a frozen image of horror.

  ‘You mean that from the time I was invited to live in that house –’

  ‘That’s right. They had everything to gain, and, if things didn’t work out right along the way, nothing to lose except the money they invested in you. I suppose McClure was the one who sucked me in. They needed a lot of cash while they were waiting all that time for the will to turn up, so McClure became their money man. When they were looking around for a husband for you, he must have seen I was the perfect set-up. Who could be better for the job than the pigeon who had already alibied him out of a murder rap? A washed-up tennis bum with a touch of that magic the ladies go for.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Chris. It makes me feel worse than all the rest of it. And you could still be wrong about the whole thing. You say Prendergast counted on my making him my residuary legatee. But don’t you remember how furious he was when I made out my will just that way?’

  ‘That was an act, baby. A snow job. And a smart one. If he wound up with the estate after two sudden deaths in the family, Warburton would damn well be suspicious of him. But come out against the will at the start, and there’s no room for suspicion later on.’

  ‘All right, then why did he try to have you killed before I claimed the estate? Wouldn’t that just keep me from claiming it?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. Not if there’s some legal loophole that would allow you to present the marriage licence to the court instead of me in person, no matter what the will says. Mookerjee’s a lawyer. A slick one too, from the look of him. I guarantee he found that loophole before he and Prendergast made their first move.’

  This, he saw, really hit home. Beth pressed her hands to her cheeks and stared at him wonderingly.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You must be. That’s the craziest part of it. The way we’re sitting here calmly talking about it. Don’t you see how crazy it is to just sit and talk calmly about getting murdered? We have to do something about it. Right now.’

  ‘Beth, there’s nothing we can afford to do right now. But in about twelve hours from now we’ll be meeting Warburton, and he’s the one to dig us out of this hole. Only Warburton. No one else should even be told about it.’

  ‘That we’re threatened with murder?’ Beth demanded hotly.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, you don’t understand at all, do you? You just don’t see it the way the police would. The way any outsider would. That I’ve been partners with Prendergast and Mookerjee and McClure from the start, and now that I’ve got you and your money all wrapped up I’m trying to double-cross them. Or maybe get rid of them.’

  ‘Chris, you must be so drunk –’

  ‘Beth, wake up! Face the facts, and look at the bind I’m in. Don’t you realize that you yourself can’t produce one scrap of evidence to prove I wasn’t their partner and out to double-cross them? And as far as getting rid of them, what does the record show? Saturday night, McClure was killed a few blocks away from my house. Sunday, I pulled a gun on Mookerjee and set him adrift on the high seas in a stinking little rowboat. Yesterday, at three o’clock in the morning, I walked into Prendergast’s home, and now he’s disappeared. All right, I’m drunk and you’re sober. So take a nice sober look at the picture and tell me what you see.’

  ‘I only know –’

  ‘Not what you know. What you see.’

  She shook her head dully.

  ‘I don’t want to see it like that.’ Her eyes were plea
ding. ‘Chris, it won’t be like this in London, will it? They won’t keep trying to get at you there, will they?’

  ‘They will, if they know when, where, and how. But their plans are all up in the air now, because I wasn’t supposed to make it that far. By now I was supposed to be dead a couple of times over. Anyhow, tomorrow morning Warburton becomes my lawyer as well as yours whether he likes it or not, and the whole thing becomes his baby. He’s already got that Teodorescu and Katia Danska to worry about, so a couple more wolves around the campfire shouldn’t bother him too much. But it’s Warburton and nobody else. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes. But you forgot one thing, Chris. Big Brother. The CIA. Whatever it is. They know that Prendergast tried to have you killed. Or at least that somebody tried to have you killed. When we talk to Warburton –’

  Suddenly a cold, invisible hand rested on his shoulder. ‘Your nice wife and your nice kid brother,’ a cold voice whispered into his ear.

  ‘No,’ Chris said sharply. ‘We don’t say anything about that to Warburton. Nothing.’

  Beth’s face clouded.

  ‘But that’s unreasonable. If we could only find them, they’d be witnesses for you.’

  ‘Not the kind I want. And we won’t even try to find them. That’s the way they want it, and we’ll go along with it. I’ve watched them operate.’

  ‘Darling, you’re a lot more important to me than they are.’

  ‘Good. Then do as I say.’

  She tried to smile.

  ‘Just call me Patient Griselda,’ she said.

  12

  They had no trouble boarding the plane. Maybe they had left the worst behind, Chris thought prayerfully as it found its altitude and headed eastward through the night over the North Atlantic. Prendergast. Big Brother. Lieutenant Greenberger and every cynical cop like him. All of them left behind. And ten miles farther back with every minute.

  Even Mookerjee could be ruled out as a threat. If he meant what he had revealed in that phone call, about continuing the hunt in London, he was going to have a hard time catching up to his intended victim. The airline ticket he had seen aboard Chirica II was for yesterday’s flight out of Miami, so it was as lucky a piece of misdirection as the victim could hope for. At the very least, it offered time to manoeuvre in.