The Man with Two Wives

by Patrick Quentin

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harding. I have bad news for you. Miss Roberts’ lawyer has done all he can to establish the alibi. So have we. But there’s no evidence to support it at all. This morning the D. A. decided to go ahead and indict.”

  “You mean she’ll come up for trial?”

  “Exactly. I’m afraid she hasn’t been at all cooperative. The D. A. is quite convinced she’s guilty. And he’s sure he can get a conviction without much trouble.”

  The end came without my making any conscious decision. Almost before I knew what I was saying, I blurted, “I’ve got to see you right away.”

  “Of course, Mr. Harding. I’m here at Centre Street. Come right down.” He paused and then added, “I’m glad you’ve made up your mind at last. In the long run it’ll be easier for everyone.”

  chapter 16

  I took a taxi to Centre Street. I had never dreamed I would do it like this, without consulting Betsy, without warning C. J. But I was beyond caring about anything except the sheer physical necessity of relieving the pressure. I didn’t even try to understand Trant’s cryptic remark. Only one thing mattered—to pay my debt to Angelica, to escape from that suffocating obligation once and for all.

  At Centre Street, a cop took me to the same room I’d been taken to before or to one exactly like it. Soon Trant came. He was smiling that usual, friendly, intimidating smile.

  “I hope you haven’t changed your mind, Mr. Harding.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  There was a wooden table with a chair behind it. He sat down looking at me.

  “Just to make sure you won’t, I think I should explain a few things first. I’m afraid I haven’t been exactly on the level with you. Policemen, unfortunately, can’t afford to play by the rules. I’ve known most of this from the beginning. You see, the moment Mr. Callingham mentioned your name on the phone, I wondered if you were the William Harding of Heat of Noon. As a matter of routine, before seeing you, I checked with the photograph of your dust jacket. I’d just come from Lumb’s and I had that dolphin ring in my pocket. Of course I recognized it right away as the ring your ex-wife was wearing in the photograph. So I knew then that she was involved and that probably you were too. Later, when you denied recognizing the ring, I knew you were hiding something. And then—later still—when I showed your photograph to Mrs. Schwartz and she recognized you as the man she’d seen fighting with Mr. Lumb in the hall of Miss Roberts’ apartment house—I realized what it was you were hiding.”

  With a dim curiosity, as if it had nothing whatsoever to do with me, I thought: So the woman who came out of the taxi that first night, the blonde with the beaver teeth, had been Mrs. Schwartz.

  Lieutenant Trant was leaning toward me across the desk, being as gentle and long suffering as ever. “I could, of course, have challenged you at the beginning. But I thought I had you summed up pretty well—if only from reading Heat of Noon. I’d say you’re a romantic man, Mr. Harding, but you’re also a responsible man. You don’t like being pushed around, but in the end you’ll always do what you think’s right. If I pushed you around, I decided, I wouldn’t get anywhere. But, on the other hand, if I let you simmer, softened you up once in a while, you’d come around, in your own good time, to realizing that your duty as a citizen was more important than any notion of romantic chivalry.”

  I was listening to him with difficulty, trying, through my exhaustion, to follow the words with some sort of intelligence. The clever eyes, which now seemed almost smugly conscious of their own cleverness, were still fixed on my face.

  “And it worked, didn’t it? A little later than I’d expected, but it worked. Once you knew she was going to be indicted anyway, once you knew that you couldn’t appreciably help her any more, you decided to tell the truth. The D. A., I assure you, can do with your testimony. It will make everything a lot easier.”

  I was still struggling to catch up with him. Through the fog, his quiet, fantastically unpoliceman-like voice ran on: “You’d been seeing your ex-wife since she got back to New York, hadn’t you? You’d even been trying to help her with her difficult and dangerous and completely worthless lover. When he was shot, you knew at once that she’d killed him. I’m not implying that you had any actual evidence, that you have been in any legal sense an accessory after the fact. It was merely that you knew enough of the circumstances to be sure she’d done it. And since your attitude was ‘He deserved it,’ you made your decision. You were going to stand by her; you were going to clam up to the police; you were even going to help her make a getaway.”

  My eyes were still fixed on his face. It was as if I couldn’t tear them away from his bland, assured smile.

  “You see, I even know that you went to the Hotel Wilton on the day after the murder. Probably you gave her money. Probably, too, you saw her onto the train. Probably—because that’s the sort of man you are—you would even have tried to give her an alibi if you’d been alone on the night of the murder instead of with Miss Callingham.”

  Because my mental processes were so blunted it was only then that I understood—only then after he had crossed every t and dotted every i. And, for a moment, I was so staggered that I could feel nothing but astonishment at the cleverness with which he had discovered everything and then preposterously misunderstood it.

  I said, “You think I’ve come here to give evidence against Angelica?”

  “Well, haven’t you, Mr. Harding?”

  “My God,” I said, “and I thought you were smart. I’ve come here to tell you she’s innocent. At two o’clock, at the time Jaimie was murdered, she was with me—in my apartment.”

  I told him everything, the episode with Ellen, my lie to C. J. on the phone, my inextricable involvement in the false alibi for Daphne, Daphne’s relationship with Jaimie in detail, her own version of what she’d done that night and my conviction that Jaimie had been killed by someone with whom he’d had a date. As I told him, I even felt a kind of sour satisfaction in realizing how wrong he’d been. I hadn’t forgotten I was throwing everything away, my job, the Callinghams, perhaps even Betsy, but the restored self-respect that came with confession was worth it. This was the greatest of the many ironies—that only by rejecting Angelica’s sacrifice and making the sacrifice myself could I free myself from her.

  I didn’t bother to look at Trant while I was talking. He had ceased to exist as a person. He was just an ear, a disembodied intelligence in a confessional.

  “So that’s the way it was,” I finished. “And I was crazy not to have told you at the beginning.”

  “So that’s the way it was, Mr. Harding.” Trant spoke for the first time since I had started my confession. The sound of his voice made me look at him. There was no way of telling whether he was embarrassed at having made such a fool of himself. There was no way, either, of telling what he was thinking about me. His face was veiled, quite expressionless.

  “So Miss Callingham has been lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mr. Callingham has been lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ellen has been lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Miss Roberts has been lying even at the risk of getting herself convicted of murder?”

  “Of course she’s been lying. She has some quixotic notion of protecting me. She knows what all this will mean with Mr. Callingham and—well, with my wife.”

  “I see.” For a moment Trant just sat looking at nothing with his hands on the table. Then he got up. “Excuse me. I’ll be back.”

  I sat alone, not thinking where he had gone, not thinking anything but: It’s over. I knew how I was going to feel later when I confronted C. J. and when I confronted Betsy. But it didn’t really matter now. Now I felt purged—at peace with myself for the first time in weeks.

  Eventually Trant came back. “I’ve been to see Miss Roberts. She wants to talk to you. I’m having them bring her here.”

  I hadn’t prepared myself for that, and all my resentment
of her came crowding back. I’d done it. I’d gotten her out of her jam. Having to face her on top of everything else was too much.

  “You can have as long as you want with her, Mr. Harding. And don’t think there’ll be any traps. No one will be listening. You will be quite alone.”

  The door opened then and she came in with a cop. Trant and the cop left, shutting the door behind them. Angelica hurried toward me.

  “Bill, you didn’t tell, did you? Trant was just trying to trick me.”

  “I told,” I said.

  Her eyes were incredulous. “But why?”

  “They indicted you.”

  “I know that. But it doesn’t mean anything. Even if they try me, they’re not going to convict me. How many times do I have to tell you?” She paused. Her face was wearing that same maddening expression of stubbornness. “I told Trant that if you’d really said what he claimed you said, you were lying. I said you must have some absurd guilt fixation about me and felt you had to martyrize yourself.”

  I looked back at her, amazement warring with indignation. “Are you crazy?”

  “What’s crazy about it? The only thing you want in life is to cling on to the Callinghams, isn’t it? You’ve done everything in the world to try to keep it that way. You didn’t really want to tell. When you heard I’d been indicted, you just had a qualm of conscience. Thanks, Bill. But I don’t need that kind of gesture.”

  There she was. At it again! Mulishly determined to be the One and Only Martyr. Did she even have to meddle with the only decent impulse I’d had in weeks? Suddenly I didn’t hate her any more because she no longer had the slightest power to tempt me. Because I was free of her at last, she was just another woman—a silly, muddled, well-intentioned woman who was a terrible nuisance and nothing more.

  I said, “There’s no point in arguing. There’s nothing to argue about. I’ll get Trant now. I’ll bring him in here. You can retract that absurd statement about my guilt fixation and tell him the truth.”

  For a long moment she stood watching me as if she’d never seen me before.

  “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  “But—but I still don’t see why.”

  To get you out of my life for good. I couldn’t say that. I said, “Does it matter why?”

  “You mean…?”

  Her face crumpled. All the stubbornness and pride disintegrated. In a thin little voice, she said, “Bill.”

  As I looked at her, embarrassed and bewildered, she took a quick step toward me.

  “Oh, Bill, I was so scared. I can admit it now. Sitting there in that cell, I was so scared. I was sure you’d never risk anything to help me. And I swore, so long as you wanted it that way, I wasn’t going to force you. Even just now when Trant said you’d told… oh, how could I have been so wrong?”

  “Wrong?” I echoed uneasily.

  A radiant smile had come, transfiguring her face. “For three years I’ve been so wrong. If you knew what I thought when I left you in Portofino, when I saw you with the Callinghams, dazzled, bowing down to the risen sun. I thought I was so smart. I thought I really understood you at last. You didn’t want to write, I thought. That was just what I’d made you think you wanted. You didn’t want me and my sort of life. All you wanted was a miserable safe little job under safe solid patronage with a safe solid wife thrown in. I watched you and I thought I understood and I said: There’s nothing here for me. Charles Maitland is better than this.”

  She came to me, putting her hands on my arms. “But I was wrong, wasn’t I? I wasn’t such a fool to love you, after all. You only thought you wanted that life. You just went one wrong way and I went another. But now we both see our mistakes. When you kissed me that night in my apartment, I tried not to kid myself. I said: It’s nothing. It’s just a hangover from the past. And then, on the night that Jaimie was killed… Oh, Bill, I didn’t want it to happen. I swear I wanted everything to stay right between you and Betsy so long as you wanted it that way. I swore I wouldn’t be an interloper. But now that you realize all that was phony, now that you’re ready to let it all go…”

  As I felt on my arms the touch of her hands which had once had so much power over me and which, even now, could stir an idiotic response, I felt horror slide through me. I said, “For God’s sake, you don’t think I’m doing this because I love you!”

  She stepped back from me as if I’d hit her and her smile faded before a look of excruciating embarrassment.

  “I thought… When you said, I… Then—then why did you tell Trant?”

  “So that I can live with myself,” I said. “So that I can face Betsy without feeling the lowest of heels.”

  I knew that it was cruel to say it like that. I also knew that I had to be cruel to save myself from becoming suffocated by this new, appalling misconception of hers. But, having said it, all the satisfaction there had been in escaping from my false position disappeared. Now what had to be done with Trant was just a dreary, sterile chore with no joy.

  Angelica’s shoulders were stooped. She looked haggard and old. In a voice that was almost a whisper, she said, “And I thought, sitting in that cell, that I’d hit the bottom. The bottom! I’m only just beginning to go down the hill.”

  She looked up at me. “Okay. Get Trant. I’ll tell him anything you want. I never knew that people really did things like this for an abstract principle. I take my hat off to you. You’re the noblest martyr of them all!”

  chapter 17

  I went out of the room. The cop was in the corridor. I told him I wanted Trant. He went away. I stayed outside. I couldn’t endure the thought of waiting inside with Angelica. Soon Trant came. We went in together and I told him that Angelica was ready to confirm my story. His face remained unrevealing. He merely said he would take our statements. A detective came in with a shorthand machine. Trant told me to wait outside while he took Angelica’s statement. Eventually he called the cop in who came out again with Angelica. They passed me going up the corridor. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at her. Then I went in and repeated my statement while the detective tapped away at his machine. It didn’t take too long, but to me it seemed interminable.

  When the detective had gone away, I said to Trant, “You’ll let her go now?”

  “It’s hardly as simple as that, Mr. Harding. This job’s got to be finished first. Miss Hodgkins, of course, will corroborate your story. I must see her.”

  He had to do that, of course. I could visualize Ellen’s face, gleaming with satisfied malice, when she was at last “reluctantly” forced to expose that trashy, no-good Mr. Harding. With Ellen the new ordeal would begin. I said, “Shall I call her?”

  “No, Mr. Harding. But you can come with me if you will.”

  We drove to my apartment in a police car. Trant was still withdrawn into himself. That was all right with me. Betsy, thank heavens, was at the office. We found Ellen alone in the nursery. She got up immediately and stood with lowered eyes, assuming the correctly respectful pose of an underling about to be interviewed by the Law.

  Trant said: “As you know, Miss Hodgkins, an Angelica Roberts has been arrested for Mr. Lumb’s murder. This Angelica Roberts is Mr. Harding’s ex-wife. Mr. Harding has just made a statement at Centre Street. In his statement, he claims that he and Mr. Callingham between them persuaded you not to tell the truth about the night of the murder.”

  Ellen looked up. The blue, gimlet eyes flashed to my face and then to Trant’s. “Not the truth, sir?”

  “Mr. Harding claims that Miss Callingham was never in this apartment at all and that, just about the time of the murder, Miss Roberts was here with him. He claims, in fact, that he was making love to her and that you interrupted them. You realize, of course, how important this is for Miss Roberts and you mustn’t be frightened that you’ll get into trouble. All you have to do is to tell the truth.”

  The blush—the inevitable, Ellen blush—had broken out. Vaguely, not really caring a
ny more, I waited for the gleam of malice to show in her eyes. But it didn’t come. Instead she merely registered a mixture of bewilderment and embarrassment.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t quite understand. Mr. Harding says…”

  She broke off, twisting her hands together in a fluster.

  Patiently Trant repeated what he had said. When he was through, she shot me a look of startled incomprehension which seemed completely convincing.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But I don’t really know what Mr. Harding means. Of course Miss Daphne was here. I served the supper to her myself. And as for the other lady and the—the other circumstances… if she was here, sir, I’m afraid I didn’t see her.”

  For a moment I couldn’t believe it—but only for a moment. Then I realized that I should have been prepared for this from the beginning. Angrily I said to Trant:

  “She’s lying. It’s perfectly obvious. Mr. Callingham bribed her by promising to have her niece flown over from England. She’s scared if she tells the truth that Mr. Callingham will withdraw the offer.”

  Ellen’s flush heightened. Not a muscle of Trant’s face moved.

  “Is that true, Miss Hodgkins?”

  She burst into a torrent of words. “Of course Mr. Callingham is bringing my little niece over for an operation. Of course he is. Mr. Callingham’s always so good and considerate. He treats me like one of the family. They all do—Mrs. Harding, Miss Daphne, all of them. They’re wonderful to me. But—but to suggest that he was bribing me into saying what isn’t true! As if Mr. Callingham would do a thing like that.” She turned to me, her eyes bright with outraged respectability. “Really, Mr. Harding! And I’ve always tried to do my best, I’m sure. I’ve always tried to give satisfaction here. But now…”

  Her words were choked off into a helpless blubbering.

  Trant said, “So, according to you, there isn’t a word of truth in Mr. Harding’s statement?”

  “Of course there isn’t. I’ve never been so insulted in my life. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Harding and the little boy, I’d…”