The man
with two wives
Patrick Quentin
A Dell Mystery
chapter 1
The strangest part of it all was that I had just been thinking of Angelica. My wife and I had been to the theater with the Fowlers, Paul and Sandra had come home with us for a drink afterward, and I had driven them back to their apartment in the Village. I don’t know what had brought Angelica into my mind, because it had been months, almost years since I’d cured myself of her, and the evening had been as remote as anything could be from that rhapsodic, dangerous, doomed period in Europe when she had been my wife and, it had seemed, my only love. Paul and Sandra Fowler, of course, had known her in the old days, and Paul, for all his prosperity and new steadiness, still had some of Angelica’s gaiety and recklessness of spirit. But I saw Paul all the time. It couldn’t have been that. I think it was the Village itself which brought her back. The Village, although Angelica and I had never actually lived there together, was Angelica’s sort of place. Perhaps that was why the image of her came, as vivid as if it had been only yesterday that she had deserted me and our son for Charles Maitland in Portofino.
And then, improbably, like a ghost conjured up, I saw her through the car window, standing on West 10th Street outside a shabby brownstone apartment house, paying off a taxi.
Sheer astonishment—nothing more complicated—made me stop the car and go up to her. The taxi had driven away and the March night was bitter. She was standing, bareheaded, searching in her pocketbook.
“Hello, Angelica,” I said.
Nothing ever took Angelica by surprise. That was one of her most characteristic traits. She merely looked up with those large, inscrutable gray eyes and said, “Bill, Bill Harding.”
In the old days after the divorce and in the early months of my second marriage, I had imagined this meeting a thousand times, and I had always seen it as a Great Moment, involving drama, vindictiveness and even, perhaps, an insane flare-up of my old infatuation. But her refusal to make anything of it affected me and I seemed to feel nothing at all except mild curiosity and mild wariness.
I said, “I didn’t know you were in New York.”
“We only arrived a few weeks ago.”
I didn’t ask if “we” involved Charles Maitland. I said, “You’ve married again?”
“No, I’m not married.”
She had moved and, in the illumination from the street light, I could see her clearly for the first time. She was still as beautiful as she had ever been, and I had always thought Angelica the most beautiful woman I had known. But there was a difference that jolted me. Her most essential qualities, her lightheartedness and her conviction that she knew what was right for her, seemed to be missing. She was wearing an old coat with a red scarf knotted at her throat. She looked sick and somehow pathetic.
I said, “You’re not well, are you?”
“Not very. I’ve had flu. I suppose I shouldn’t have gone out tonight, but I had to.”
She took keys from her pocketbook. I said, “You’re staying here?”
“The apartment belongs to some friend of Jaimie’s who’s in Mexico. He lent it to me.”
“And you live here alone?”
“Yes. Jaimie has a place on the east side. He prefers it that way. It gives him more freedom.” She avoided my gaze. “Jaimie’s a writer. He’s in a bad phase now. But, one day, he’s going to do something good.”
So she hadn’t changed a bit, I thought. Wouldn’t she ever grow out of her obsessive desire to worship some self-appointed genius? Hadn’t she learned at least that lesson from me—and Charles Maitland? I felt unreasonably exasperated with the unknown Jaimie who was none of my business. She just stood there with the keys in her hand. She didn’t invite me in, but she didn’t seem to want me to go either.
In the clipped, social voice which she had always reserved for bores, she asked, “I suppose you’re not writing any more?”
“No. It finally dawned on me that I wasn’t a novelist.”
She jingled the keys and it was only then that, under the knuckle of her third finger, I noticed the garnet ring carved like a dolphin which had been my mother’s and which I had given her six years ago just before we were married from her father’s house on the Claxton campus. The sight of the ring and the incredible fact that she was still wearing it threw me off balance.
In the same bright clipped voice, she went on, “You married Betsy Callingham, didn’t you? It was in the papers.”
“Yes.”
“And you do something with her father’s magazines?”
“I’m in the advertising end.”
“You’re—what?”
She swayed slightly from one foot to the other. I wondered, uneasily, whether she could be drunk. In the old days I had never seen her take more than one highball, even at the wildest party.
“But you’re happy?” she asked. “That’s the point. I mean…”
She lurched sideways. I caught her just as her legs crumpled under her. Her body, in my arms, was limp and unnaturally hot.
I said, “You are sick.”
“It’s nothing. Just the flu. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry.”
She leaned more heavily against me. None of the old excitement I had always felt when I touched her had revived. I took the keys.
“You ought to be in bed. I’ll get you up to the apartment.”
“No, no, I’m…”
I helped her up the steps and unlocked the glass-paneled front door. The apartment was on the third floor. The door opened into a tiny living room which was painted shrimp pink. There was no furniture except a rickety table and a monstrous “amusing” Victorian arm-chair, decorated with stags’ antlers. Through another open door, I could see the bedroom with a pair of Angelica’s shoes scattered on the bare floor.
She sank into the chair with the antlers. I went into the bedroom, found a pair of pajamas and brought them to her.
“Can you undress yourself?”
“Of course. And, Bill, there’s no need. Really…”
I went back through the bedroom into the kitchen. It was one of those kitchen-bathrooms with a tub. A few dishes were strewn on the table and a few cans. At the divorce she’d stubbornly refused any help from me, but she’d inherited something from her grandfather just before we’d broken up. The uncomfortable thought came: Is she broke? I went back into the bedroom.
Angelica, with the pajamas buttoned up to her throat, was lying in the bed. She looked defenseless, like a tired child, underminingly like Rickie, our son.
I said, “Hadn’t I better call a doctor?”
“No. I’m all right now. It wasn’t anything.” She gave a vague smile. “Go, please, Bill. This has happened and it’s over and thank you. There’s no point in resuming diplomatic relations.”
She had dropped back against the pillows. The top button of her pajama jacket had slipped loose. The skin of her throat seemed curiously dark as if it had been bruised. The pillows were awkwardly sandwiched on top of each other. I lifted her head up and started to straighten them. As my fingers went under the corner, they touched some metallic object. I pulled it out.
It was an old chipped .45 Colt automatic.
I could hardly believe it. For Angelica, who had always been the least theatrical of women, a gun was as unlikely a possession as a leopard cub.
I said, “What have you got this for?”
She hadn’t noticed what I’d done. When I spoke, she turned, saw the gun and made a feeble gesture toward it with her hand, the hand with my ring on it.
“Give it to me.”
“I want to know what you’ve got it for.”
“It’s none of your business, is it? I n
eed it. That’s all there is to that.”
I was looking at her throat again. She saw me looking and threw her hand up to fix the button. I pushed her hand away and pulled down the material. The dull red bruises were cruelly exposed. There was no doubt in the world what had caused them.
In utter astonishment, I said, “Someone tried to strangle you.”
“Please, Bill.”
“When did this happen?”
“Oh, a few days ago. It was nothing. He was drunk. He…”
“This—Jaimie?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t go to the police?”
“Of course I didn’t go to the police.”
The downstairs buzzer started to shrill in the kitchen. A look of complete exhaustion came over her face. The screech blared uninterruptedly on.
“He’ll keep it up all night,” she said.
“Jaimie?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want him here. That’s why I went out. To meet him in a bar. But he didn’t show up. I might have known he’d come here anyway. I should have waited.”
“I’ll get rid of him.”
The front she had tried to keep up was completely shattered now. Her pride, her dislike of me, whatever complicated feelings she must have had toward me, were no longer important.
“Please, Bill. Explain. Tell him I did wait at the bar. Tell him I’m sick. That I can’t see him. Not tonight.” The nerve-fraying blare stopped and then began again. I put the gun down on the bed and started for the living room. Her voice followed me, horribly maternal.
“But don’t hurt him. Please. It isn’t his fault. They turned down his novel. He’d been working on it for two years. If he’s drunk, you can’t blame him, and he needs me. I’m the only one. In his way he loves me.”
In his way he loved her! I didn’t listen to any more. I was too disgusted. I went down to the hall. Through the glass door, I could see a man leaning unsteadily against the buzzers. I opened the door, went straight to him and shoved him away. He staggered, almost losing his balance. Then he turned and stood blinking at me.
He was slim and young. In the dim illumination, he looked about nineteen and, although he was stupidly drunk, he was one of the handsomest boys I had ever seen. His hair was jet black. And so were his eyes. A morbid image came of him and Angelica together, and absurd vestigial jealousy joined my anger.
I said, “Get out of here.”
He blinked again and started to weave in a grotesque caricature of a prize fighter. Then he lunged past me and jammed his finger on the buzzer again.
I grabbed his arm and swung him away. He hurled himself at me, flailing with both arms, kicking, trying to gouge me with his knee. It was ludicrously ineffective, but it was frightening too because of the homicidal fury in him. All I did was step aside. As he lurched past me, still raining meaningless blows in the air, I hit him hard on the temple and he fell heavily onto the hall floor.
I looked down at him, my heart pounding from a kind of triumphant physical satisfaction. I obviously couldn’t leave him lying there. If I did, he would come to and, once I’d left, start on the buzzer again. I went out and stood at the top of the front steps. A woman was getting out of a taxi at the curb. I flagged the cab and went back to Jaimie. He was still lying crumpled on the floor. I felt through his pockets and found his wallet. There were three dollars in it. I took them out and put the empty wallet back in his pocket.
As I did so, the woman from the taxi came into the hall. She was tall and blonde with large cynical eyes and prominent front teeth like a beaver’s.
“Boys!” she commented. “They will have their fun!”
She took out a key and went into the hall. I lugged Jaimie to his feet. He was conscious again but hopelessly muzzy. I got him into the cab, gave the driver an address at random in Brooklyn and a ten-dollar bill.
“Don’t let him out till you get there,” I said. “His poor old mother’s waiting up for him.”
I climbed back to the apartment. Angelica was still in the bed. The gun was no longer visible.
She said, “You didn’t hurt him?”
I wanted to shout at her: A couple of days ago he tried to strangle you; he scared you into buying a gun for protection; and now you’re babbling about his not being hurt.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t hurt him.”
I made up some story about having argued him into going home. I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not. I didn’t care.
She said, “I didn’t want to mix you up in this. It’s the last thing in the world I wanted. But, if you knew him! He’s not bad really. All the things he does… He’s just unhappy. He…”
Suddenly she started to cry. She was lying on her side, her face, under the glossy black hair, pressed against the pillows. The sobs were deep, racking, without hope. Against all the promptings of my reason, my body remembered hers and ached for her. She seemed as much a part of me still as Betsy or Rickie. “Angelica,” I said.
“Go away.” She pushed herself up against the pillows. Bitterness distorted her face, making it the face of a stranger. “Go back to the Callingham yachts and the Callingham Cadillacs. They’ll be tapping their feet.”
The spell was broken then. There was nothing here for me. Without looking back, I hurried into the living room, threw the keys down on the table and left.
I felt as if I had escaped disaster by a hair.
chapter 2
It was only just after one when I got home to Beekman Place. Betsy was in bed, reading, with her reading glasses on. She took them off when I came in and smiled her warm, transfiguring smile. She had always thought she was ugly and that no one could want her except for her money. It had been her obsession before she married me. “C. J.’s older daughter. Not Daphne. The homely one, the one who’s given to good works.” At the sight of her, smiling, so sure that her world was stable now, I felt a rush of tenderness and of gratitude that our marriage had done so much for both of us.
She didn’t ask why I was late; she didn’t even ask if I’d stopped for a nightcap with the Fowlers. Betsy was always scrupulous about respecting my independence. That was because the Callinghams were so rich and I worked for her father. She was determined not to be the Boss’s Daughter.
“Rickie was awake when I got back,” she said. “Ellen couldn’t do a thing with him. I had to sing to him. It’s his new thing. I croaked like a laryngitic crow for hours, but he thought it was divine.”
In the car I’d taken it for granted that I’d tell her about Angelica. I’d never kept anything from her. But now, as I started to undress, it seemed far more complicated. Betsy, I knew, was intimidated by Angelica’s beauty and the feeling I’d once had for her. I knew, too, that always at the back of her mind was the dread that Angelica, as Rickie’s mother, might try to take him away from us. Betsy couldn’t have children herself and her love for Rickie was as strong really as her love for me. Suddenly I decided: What’s the point of telling her? It’d only worry her for no reason and I’ll never see Angelica again anyway.
Lying in bed we talked of our date with C. J. the next night and about the Betsy Callingham Leukemia Fund which Betsy had started after her mother died of leukemia and her father had shamelessly directed all his affection to his younger daughter, Daphne. Before our marriage, the Fund had been the most important thing in Betsy’s life and now it came second only to Rickie and me. The annual Spring Drive was just starting and our dinner with my father-in-law was to be a key one since Betsy and Paul Fowler, who worked as her manager, were hoping to start the Drive rolling with an enormous check from C. J. Betsy knew it was going to be tough, for C. J., with his frightening tycoon’s whimsicality, was always as slippery as he was tyrannical. But she was confident they’d pull it off and, in her confidence, she was relaxed and happy.
Her happiness was infectious. Soon I’d forgotten all about West Tenth Street. I was at home; I was with my wife whom I loved; everything was normal and good and fine. That was
the mood in which I fell asleep.
I dreamed of Angelica. It was a confused nightmare from which I awoke with a start. I could hear Betsy’s quiet breathing in the bed next to me. But the dream was still real and suddenly the contrast between my happiness and Angelica’s disintegration seemed grotesquely unfair. As if a sense of guilt had been lying dormant all this time, I felt like a criminal accused at the bar and, in spite of myself, our years together, which I had tried so hard to forget, opened in front of me like the pages of some embarrassing manuscript unearthed from a trunk.
It had all begun so uneventfully, with me as a ferociously ambitious ex-Marine finishing college on the G. I. Bill, and Angelica, as the beautiful, restless daughter of the widowed English professor at Claxton. It was Heat of Noon, of course, which made everything so different for us. In a burst of creative exuberance, urged on by Angelica’s enthusiasm, I had written my first novel in less than six months. When, astonishingly, Heat of Noon was accepted by a publisher, we had married and when, later, it had been even more astonishingly praised by the critics and bought for Hollywood, we had shaken the Iowa dust of Claxton from our shoes and sailed for Europe. After a rhapsodic six months wandering from Spain through Italy to France, we had rented a little house in Provence. That was where the new rich life was supposed to begin.
I had hardly thought of that house in Provence for years, but now, as I lay quietly in bed, remembering, some monstrous perversity transfigured the bed into the bed in Provence and it was Angelica lying there peacefully at my side. A hand slipped into mine. For the fraction of a second I thought it was Angelica’s hand.
Betsy said, “You’re awake, aren’t you, dear?”
“Yes.”
“There isn’t anything wrong?”
“No, baby.”
My wife’s hand, so confident, so ignorant of betrayal, squeezed my fingers and then patted my leg. With a savage determination to punish myself, I forced my memory on to what had happened later, to the dark days. In our first year of Provence, Angelica produced Rickie and I produced one half of a second novel which I tore up. During the next two years, fresh abortive beginnings were squeezed out and abandoned while I was, in turn, arrogant, surly, hopeful and panicked. Finally, with the thin pretense of finding me “stimulation,” we left the house and drifted from one tourist resort to another where, every night, I lounged in bistros while Angelica sat patiently with me and Rickie was left with the femme de chambre in the hotel room. That summer half the international riff-raff made one sort of advance or another to Angelica, particularly Charles Maitland, a young novelist who was, if possible, more self-deluded, more self-pitying than I. But she ignored them all. I seemed to be her entire life and, with nothing left but our love, she became as essential to me as air.
The Man with Two Wives Page 1
