William Harding, the brilliant young author of Heat of Noon, is an ex-marine and only twenty-four years old. When writing Heat of Noon, he was still a GI Bill sophomore at Claxton University, Iowa. Recently married to Angelica Roberts, daughter of the Professor of English at Claxton, he and his wife are planning to spend a year in Italy and France…
Dimly Lieutenant Trant’s voice came through to me. And dimly, through my visions of a future in ruins, I realized that the voice was just as soft, just as unhostile as ever.
“The book was a big help, Mr. Harding. I just happened to pick it up one evening after I’d been at your office. And there was the picture—there was the name. I can’t claim any intelligence in the matter. It was sheer luck.”
I made myself look at him. “So you found her?”
“It wasn’t very complicated to call the police in Claxton.” Incredibly, he was still smiling. “Quite frankly, Mr. Harding, for a while I was puzzled by you. I’ve heard of all sorts of amnesia. But the specialized amnesia of forgetting your own wife’s name was something rather new. I had the most elaborate suspicions of you. I let myself get quite carried away. Which is, of course, a great mistake for a policeman. I’m always telling myself that, but I never seem to learn. I apologize.”
He leaned across the desk, took the book from me and put it down on a neat pile of papers.
“Of course you knew your first wife’s name was Angelica Roberts. But, of course too, you didn’t for a moment connect her with this case. You haven’t seen her for over three years, have you? You imagined she was somewhere in Europe, infinitely remote, with no connection whatsoever to Jaimie Lumb.”
I went on looking at him, completely at sea. Could he really have said that? Was he then as fantastically stupid as I had first thought him to be? Or was this just some new, subtle, perverse trick for trapping me?
Desperately playing the advantage for the thousand and first chance that it might, in fact, be a real advantage, I said the most neutral thing I could say. I repeated, “So you found her?”
“Oh, yes, it couldn’t have been simpler. She was right there in Claxton living with her father. The police picked her up right away and then called me after they’d talked to her. That’s when I stopped thinking of you as a puzzlement, Mr. Harding. Her statement couldn’t have been clearer so far as you were concerned. She’d known you were in New York and she’d agreed to let Mr. Lumb take his novel to you, but she made him promise not to mention her to you. Even later, when he broke into the Callingham circle, she made him keep the promise. She had never seen you or communicated with you in any way, she said. In fact, she had strong objections to having any connection with you whatsoever. She wanted the past to be completely wiped out.”
Angelica! I thought. And the feel of her was so near that it was as if she were with me in that horrible little cell-like office. I saw, of course, what she was doing, but the craziness of it, the quixoticism, the enormous magnanimity were almost more than I could grasp. When the police arrested her in Claxton, she had known she had my whole new life in her hands. And she was playing it my way. Against all reason, against the withering contempt of her last parting from me, she had decided to save Betsy for me and C. J. for me… Angelica! I thought with a kind of wonder. And slowly the marvel of it began to grow.
I looked back into Trant’s clever eyes, the knowledge of my improbable reprieve merging with another, far more immediate sense of fear for Angelica.
“So she was the one—your Angelica Roberts?”
“Oh, yes. She admitted everything. She admitted buying the gun; she admitted having quarreled with Lumb; she admitted being thrown over by him; she admitted leaving town on the day after the murder. She admitted everything.”
The sick feeling of anxiety for her had quite overwhelmed any sense of victory now. “But not the murder.”
“Oh, no. That would have been expecting too much, Mr. Harding. She claims, it seems, that Mr. Lumb came to her at about eleven on the night of the murder and told her she had to leave the apartment. Apparently it had been he who had loaned it to her and he told her the man who owned it had come back unexpectedly and needed it. So she packed a suitcase, she says, and, having nowhere to go, went to a movie—alone, and after that to a hotel. The next day she went back for the rest of her things and took the train to Claxton.”
His face was grave, maddeningly sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harding, I’m sure this must be a shock for you. On the strength of the statement, they had to hold her. She made no difficulties and waived extradition. So they’re bringing her here on the train. She’ll be in some time tonight. If she wants to see you, of course, you will be allowed to visit her.”
“You mean she’s arrested?”
“She’s being held, yes, for further questioning.”
He got up then and stretched out his hand. He was always doing that at the most improbable times. Suddenly I loathed him for his refusal to act in any way like a policeman. I loathed him for his incomprehensible sympathy, for his perverse determination never to press an advantage, for his seemingly meaningless habit of taking your side rather than his own. From the way I’d reacted, he must have had a thousand reasons for suspecting how deeply implicated I was. Any other cop in the world would have only just started the inquisition at that point. But not Trant. He couldn’t possibly behave as simply as that.
“I’ll let you know the moment they bring her in, Mr. Harding. I’ll call you. Will you be at home?”
Betsy and I were dining with C. J. I would somehow have to fix that. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be at home.”
He was smiling again. “I wouldn’t worry too much yet, Mr. Harding. After all, people have been known to go to the movies alone. It’s possible she is telling the truth. And if she can prove the alibi she will, of course, be released immediately.”
If she can prove the alibi! Was that a deliberate goad? Did he know everything there was to know after all? I didn’t begin to understand him. But I was gradually beginning to realize my predicament and to see that it was almost more excruciating than total defeat would have been. For Angelica was rescuing me at the expense of sacrificing herself. The only thing that could save her was the alibi; and the only thing that could destroy me—was the alibi.
Lieutenant Trant was still holding out his hand. I looked at it and I thought: I’ve got to tell him now. I can’t let Angelica take this fantastic risk. If I don’t tell him, I’ll never be able to live with myself.
I opened my mouth to speak but before I could do so, he had said, “Then I’ll call you, Mr. Harding. It’ll probably be around ten.”
He gestured toward the door. He was dismissing me.
chapter 15
So I hadn’t told. I had tried, but Trant hadn’t given me the chance. As I went home in a taxi, I clung to that fact, telling myself that somehow it exonerated me. And, shamefully, I began to manufacture reasons to justify continued silence. After all, this was Angelica’s idea, not mine. For all I knew, she had thought up some plan for clinching her alibi at the movies which had nothing to do with me. It would have been stupid and rash to have blurted everything out before, at least, I’d had a chance to talk with her. In any case, she was innocent and, I told myself, people don’t get convicted for crimes they haven’t committed. Possibly in a few days Trant would find the murderer anyway and she’d be released. If she chose to shield me, why, with so much at stake, didn’t I have enough sense to accept the good fortune of my reprieve and leave it at that?
It almost worked. When I let myself into the apartment, my conscience had been temporarily lulled. In the future—some vague future—I might have to do something drastic, but at the moment the sensible thing was to stall. I would have to tell Betsy that Angelica had been arrested, of course; it would be in the papers anyway. But that was all. I would be all right so long as I didn’t lose my nerve, the way I had so nearly lost it in Trant’s office.
Betsy was home. I found her in the bedroom, changing to go
to C. J.’s. When I told her about Angelica her face became almost stupid with astonishment. My efforts to deceive her had been so successful that it took her some seconds to grasp the fact that I really meant Angelica, the Angelica who ought to have been in Europe.
“But, if Jaimie knew Angelica, if she was here in New York, why didn’t he ever tell us?”
“She made him promise not to—apparently. Betsy, they’re bringing her in this evening. Trant says I can see her. I think I should. Is it okay for you to go to C. J.’s alone?”
“Of course it is. I’d better tell him too, hadn’t I, before he reads the papers. He’ll be furious at the publicity of her having been married to you and everything.” She looked at me, stricken. “Did she do it?”
“Don’t ask me!”
“Oh, why did she have to come back? Why did she have to ruin everything? Why couldn’t she…? I’m sorry, Bill. The poor woman. Of course you’ve got to do everything you can for her.”
She sat down on the bed and started putting on her stockings. “It’s terrible for you.” Her lips tightened into a formidable line. “And Rickie,” she said. “Whatever happens, we must keep Rickie from hearing about this. Rickie must never know—never.”
I hung miserably around the bedroom while she finished dressing. When she was ready, she went to the kitchen to tell the cook to get me some dinner. I saw her off at the front door. She kissed me.
“Try not to worry, darling.”
As she stood there with my arm around her, the little puzzled furrow showed between her eyes.
“Did you say Angelica was the one who bought the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Then, when Trant called you about it the other day, didn’t you know then that it was Angelica?”
“I guess she used another name,” I said.
“Oh, I see.” She smiled at me, perfectly convinced. “Good-by, darling. I’ll do the best I can with Father. And tell Angelica from me that—that I hope it will be all right.”
Trant called at ten-thirty.
“She’s here. They’ve got her at Centre Street. She’s ready to see you.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
“And I wouldn’t worry too much, Mr. Harding. We’re arranging for a lawyer. Everything that’s possible will be done for her.”
Centre Street had the same chilly impersonal gloom as the precinct house only on a larger scale. I had expected Trant to be there, but he wasn’t. They knew about me, though. A cop took me through interminable passages to a small bleak room and left me. Soon Angelica came in with another cop. The cop left us alone. But I didn’t feel alone. I was very conscious that he was waiting outside, that Angelica had been brought from a cell, that, rearing up between us, Trantlike, was the Law. I was horribly conscious, too, of my own embarrassment.
Angelica was wearing the same old black suit that she had worn when I put her on the train. Vaguely I’d thought that anyone would be changed by what had happened to her. She looked pale and tired but really not changed at all. And beautiful, of course. Always that indestructible, exasperating beauty.
She didn’t greet me, and her face was stubborn. I knew the expression so well from the old days. It was her “I’m the one who knows what’s right” expression.
She said, “I’m not going to tell them. You know that, don’t you?”
“I gathered it.”
“This won’t take long. I want to explain. And then I want you to go. I’ve done a lot of thinking and it’s all completely clear. This isn’t your thing. It’s mine. If I hadn’t called you that night, you wouldn’t have any connection with it at all. There’s no point in dragging you in. It isn’t as if there was anything to worry about. I’m innocent until they prove me guilty. They can never prove I wasn’t at a movie. Besides, I didn’t do it. You know that. All they can do is to hold me here for a couple of days.”
She had her pocketbook with her. Her hand moved to it and then stopped.
“Have you got a cigarette?”
I brought out a pack, lit a cigarette for her and said clumsily, “Keep the pack.”
She took it and put it in her pocketbook, watching me with that level, determined gaze.
“You do understand, don’t you? Probably in a few days they’ll find out who did it and that will be that. Then, if I’d told or you’d told, you’d only hate me and hate yourself for the rest of your days. So there it is. That’s all I’ve got to say. Go home. Leave this to me.” She was, of course, only saying what I had already said to myself. She was using the identical arguments. And, because I so passionately needed to be convinced, the arguments, coming from her, sounded even more persuasive. I felt temptation sliding through me. But, at the same time, I despised myself for being tempted.
Uncannily, as if she had read my thoughts, she added, “And don’t think I’m doing this for you. I’m not in the slightest. I’m doing it for myself.”
“For yourself?”
“Is that so difficult to understand? What have I been doing all these years! Charles Maitland! Jaimie Lumb! Kidding myself I could redeem people through the ennobling influence of my love! Never realizing that it was just fatuous vanity and a lovely excuse for drifting around in the gutter myself! It’s about time I faced up to something real for a change. I picked Jaimie. It’s up to me to take everything that goes with him. I’ve needed a good kick in the pants for years. This is it.”
Suddenly she smiled. “So don’t have a guilty conscience or anything, Bill. It’s all right. I want it this way. If I need you, I’ll tell you. But I won’t need you. So—good-by.”
Quickly, cheating me out of a chance to make my own decision, she walked out of the room. For a moment I stood there in crippling self-division. She had done it so smoothly, so tactfully, that part of me was more than ready to leave it her way. After all, wasn’t she even right about herself? Of course her life had been a mess. Of course the shock of being arrested had opened her eyes to herself and of course she would probably get some satisfactory moral chastening out of a moderate amount of unpleasantness and discomfort. And would it be any more than that?
But I couldn’t fool myself. I understood what she was doing better, probably, than she did herself. In spite of her big talk about change, she hadn’t changed at all. She had just transferred her Charles Maitland Jaimie Lumb Mother of the Downtrodden attitude to me. Now I was the one she could be noble for; I was the one who was Needing Her.
She had found yet another way of unmanning me. I hated it. I didn’t want to need her. I loathed the realization that from now on my life with Betsy would owe its very existence to Angelica’s heroic gesture. If I’d followed my instincts, I would have run out into the corridor after them, dragged them back and blurted out the whole truth to the cop. But I didn’t, of course. I merely took a taxi home.
Betsy hadn’t come back. I poured myself a drink. For the hundredth time I told myself that it was all right, that I’d only done what anyone else would have done in my position. It didn’t work.
Betsy came home around midnight. She hurried into the living room without taking off her coat.
“Bill, what happened?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I saw her. That’s all.”
She stood in the doorway, looking at me. “But she didn’t say anything?”
“Nothing really.”
She took off her coat and threw it over a chair. “I told Father. He hit the ceiling at first. Then he calmed down. He called the Police Commissioner. He’s a friend of his. He asked him to try to keep it out of the papers that she’d been married to you. I guess the Commissioner’s going to do what he can.”
She came to me, sitting on the arm of my chair, her face glossed with concern. “Bill, darling, don’t look so wretched. You did all you could for her. I know it’s horrible for you. But it isn’t as if—as if…”
She broke off.
“As if—what?” I said.
“I mean, as if you cared for her any m
ore. I mean, of course you care, but… oh, Bill.”
She pressed her face against mine. I knew then that all evening she had been tormenting herself with the idea that, because this had happened, my old love for Angelica might blaze up. Was I going to succeed in hurting her whatever I did?
Not wanting to touch her, not wanting to touch anyone, I put my arms around her and eased her down onto my lap.
“Betsy. Betsy, baby, you know this doesn’t make any difference between us.”
She kissed me hungrily on the lips. “I am sorry for her. Really I am. But it’s you and Rickie who matter. It’s you I’m thinking of.”
We went to bed but even that was blighted. Long after she had gone to sleep, I lay awake, thinking of her and of Rickie and of Angelica in a cell at Centre Street. I tried to be grateful to Angelica. But I couldn’t. I could only hate her. Damn her. Why had she ever been born?
I slept at last and woke up feeling no better. I got through the day at the office. I even got through an interview with C. J. in which he told me of his talk with the Police Commissioner and pompously informed me that he did not hold my former connection with Angelica against me. But I felt emasculated and as exhausted as if I had been sick for weeks. The evening with Betsy was an ordeal. And the night that followed. And the next two days.
Angelica’s arrest was in the papers, but she was always called Angelica Roberts and there was not much excitement about it. She was just an obscure woman held for questioning in an obscure murder. Without the Callingham connection, it wasn’t newsworthy. And I never heard from Trant. Because I was sure by then that he must suspect me and was merely, for some sinister reason, biding his time, his silence was as nerve-racking as an onslaught. A dozen times I decided I couldn’t bear my anomalous position any longer and toyed with the idea of calling him and confessing everything. But each time the shreds of a self-preservation instinct and the thought of Betsy deterred me.
On the morning of the third day, just as I was going out to lunch, Trant called me at the office. Hearing his voice was almost a relief.
The Man with Two Wives Page 12
