The Man with Two Wives

by Patrick Quentin

  He looked down at his hands again. “Frankly, Mr. Harding, I don’t think it will be easy. Against you, the prosecutor will, of course, have Mr. Callingham who will do everything that money and vindictiveness can do to discredit you. But there won’t only be that. Once Miss Callingham’s alibi is officially destroyed, Miss Hodgkins will no longer have any reason to lie. In fact, if you use Rickie’s testimony, Mr. Callingham will certainly insist on Miss Hodgkins giving hers, and she will tell the court that, a few hours after the crime, she caught you and Miss Roberts making love. You will be branded as an adulterer and, when the rest of your actions after the crime are brought out, everything you did will confirm the fact that you were besottedly in love with your first wife and doing everything in your power to shield her. The Prosecutor may even convince the jury that you were an accomplice and that you deliberately arranged for her to come to you as soon after the murder as possible for an alibi. Certainly he’ll convince them that you were an infatuated man whom Miss Roberts could easily have used as a dupe. If you go through with this, Mr. Harding, I would say your chances of being able to help her to any appreciable degree are about one to a million—or less. I’ve already mentioned the damage to your son. I don’t have to point out the public humiliation your wife will suffer. And as for you, the notoriety of the trial should make it difficult for you to get any kind of adequate employment for a long time.”

  His voice was so low now that it was difficult to follow. “That’s what is more or less bound to happen if you take that course, Mr. Harding. The other course is simple. You admit you’re licked. You let the trial proceed without you and your son. Miss Callingham’s escapade will not come out. We will prefer no charges against you. And, as I understand it, Mr. Callingham is even prepared, under those circumstances, to have you back in your old job or, if you prefer it, to guarantee you a similar position elsewhere.”

  He looked up again. “That’s what the D. A. and the Commissioner have asked me to put up to you. We haven’t the slightest desire to influence your decision one way or the other. We just want to know. The Commissioner and the D. A. in fact are waiting in the D. A.’s office now for me to telephone your answer to them.”

  Although I’d gone on listening, there had been no real need. From the moment he’d told me of the alteration in the murder time, I’d realized that Angelica could have been lying to me. She could have taken a taxi. She could have called me to use me as a catspaw in a trumped-up alibi. Had I then done everything for nothing? Had I thrown my career away and tormented my wife only to be exposed as an absurd, gullible fool tricked by a murderess? Depression seized me and with it came the greatest temptation I had felt. There was still a way out, mortifying though it was. C. J. was still waiting with the biggest bribe of all. If I decided that Angelica was guilty after all, I could put the clock back as if nothing had happened. Even, to make it less painful, I could go, not back to Callingham Publications, but to a “similar position elsewhere.”

  But there was something I hadn’t accounted for—anger. As I sat opposite Trant, I felt, far stronger than any other emotion, a stubborn anger against them all—against C. J. for his bland assumption that I was still corruptible, against Trant’s tactful, loaded neutrality, even against Betsy for the pressure that her unhappiness was putting on me. I was sick and tired of being pushed around. I’d had my fill of it. Whatever I did from now on, it was going to be me who was doing it. To hell with their evidence. To hell with Trant’s apocalyptic descriptions of my future. Was I going to let them infect me with their doubts about Angelica? Although I’d fought so hard against admitting it, hadn’t I always known that she’d done everything since the arrest to shield me? If she’d come to me that night, guiltily, for an alibi, why in heaven’s name hadn’t she used me as one? Did the truth always have to be complicated? Why couldn’t it be simple for once? And if the truth was simple…

  I said to Trant, “Can I see her?”

  “Of course.” He got up. “I thought you’d probably want to. She’s waiting down the corridor.” He went to the door and opened it. A cop was outside. He said, “Take Mr. Harding to Miss Roberts.”

  I went with the cop a few yards down the corridor to another door. He opened it and stood aside for me to enter. Angelica was sitting there alone. The cop shut the door behind me.

  Angelica got up. She looked haggard and homely. I’d never thought she could look homely.

  “Have they told you about the change in the murder time?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then it’s useless. There’s nothing you can do to help. You see that, don’t you? You’d be mad to appear at the trial.”

  I wanted to feel indifferent to her; it would have made it so much easier. But it wouldn’t work. I was conscious at last that what had happened to me through her was nothing in comparison to what had happened to her. If she’d told the truth about me to the police at Claxton, she might not be here. In a way, it was through me that she had to sit there in a cell, watching the net close around her, alone, day after day, with the fear of death. And even now, in this extremity, it was of me she was thinking not of herself. Okay. So she loved me or thought she loved me or thought I had loved her. But what difference did that make? It was pathetic, no more than that. Only a monster could have failed to feel grateful to her and chastened.

  I said, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “No, Bill.”

  “And you did walk all the way from Tenth Street to my apartment, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. I didn’t have any money. I only had that dime.”

  I looked at her and I thought: What’s been the matter with me? I knew this woman better even than I knew Betsy. Although I was miles apart from her now, I had once been as close to her as anyone can be to anyone. I knew her weaknesses. She was feckless, stubborn, as romantic and impractical as her father. But I also knew her strengths. She’d never had a revengeful bone in her body. She could no more have killed a man because he’d tired of her than she could fly. She was far too humble and far too honest. Suddenly, confronted by the axiomatic fact of her nature, the evidence, the D. A. and all the Jesuitical intricacies of Lieutenant Trant seemed perfect nonsense to me.

  I said, “I’ll appear at the trial—and so will Rickie.”

  “But, Bill…”

  “If they’re dumb enough to try an innocent woman, I’m not going to stand by and watch. To hell with them. Let it all come down.” In the assurance of my anger, another idea came. “Better yet. I’ll find out who did it. Someone did it. No one else is thinking about that small, unimportant fact. If I find out who did it, I won’t have to appear at the trial. Neither will you. There won’t be any trial.”

  She stood there, listlessly, as if she had no more vitality at all. Somehow the forlorn, defenseless quality of her face reminded me of Rickie and my anger raged up. All of them were yelling about how Rickie had to be protected; how the poor, sensitive little boy had to be spared the ordeal of appearing in court. What about his mother?

  I said, “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll find out who did it. Don’t worry. We’ll lick this.”

  I went back to Trant. When I told him my decision to appear at the trial, he made no attempt to argue with me. He merely smiled his quiet, noncommittal smile.

  “I rather suspected it would come out this way. I’ll call the D. A. and let him know. From now on, you won’t be seeing too much of us. Your contact, of course, will be Miss Roberts’ lawyer. His name is Macguire. He’s an excellent lawyer.” He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s the address. I’d advise you to go around right away. You’ll need all the time you can get.”

  He rose. “You know where your son is, don’t you? You can pick him up on your way out.”

  I was hardly listening to him. I was thinking now of Betsy’s face when I told her how deep into the darkness I had condemned her to travel. Then I realized that, as always, he was holding out his hand.

 
I took it automatically. “So long, Lieutenant.”

  “Good-by.” He had dropped the professional mask. For a moment he looked almost like a human being and his smile was almost a human smile.

  “The D. A. will be mad as a hornet,” he said. “You know something, Mr. Harding? You’re quite a guy.”

  chapter 21

  My decision to break the case had been born on the spur of the moment from anger. But, as I took Rickie home, dreading the interview ahead of me with Betsy, I saw that in finding the murderer lay the only hope for all of us. And was it necessarily so impossible an undertaking? I had my theory of Jaimie’s date which Trant had so airily brushed aside. Perhaps the Browns might know something. Trant had questioned them, but Trant with his pig-headed, single-track approach could have overlooked a lead in their testimony. There was Daphne, too. If she’d speak to me after what I’d done to her and C. J.—which I doubted—I might get a clue from her. Because there was nothing else to cling to, I clung to that. I would find out who killed Jaimie. I would stop the trial. At least I would spare Betsy that ultimate humiliation.

  When I got to the apartment, my wife wasn’t there. I’d expected she’d stay home from the office. But she hadn’t. That postponed the ordeal. I called Macguire and went to see him. I was with him an hour. He was young and amiable and presumably bright. He showed enthusiasm tempered with faint incredulity at my determination to appear in court for the defense. But his smile became maddeningly quizzical when I told him I was going to find the murderer and suggested that he should help me.

  “Of course I’ve been doing everything I can, Mr. Harding, and of course I’ll go on trying. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t try either. But I’m afraid you’ll find the amateur detective is an invention of fiction writers. In the final analysis, finding murderers is a job for the police. Don’t underestimate Trant. Whatever the higher-ups may have decided, he’ll keep an open mind and go on following every lead. He’s by far the best man they’ve got. He was my year at Princeton. Trust him.”

  Trust Trant because he’d been Macguire’s buddy at Princeton! I might have known Trant was an Ivy League man. That’s where he’d learned how to be wrong the clever way. I looked back at the lawyer’s condescending, clannishly professional eyes and wrote him off. I got the Browns’ address from him and went to see them.

  Mr. Brown wasn’t there, but Mrs. Brown was, a small, pretty blonde with a cold. When I explained I was Angelica’s ex-husband, she couldn’t have been more sympathetic. She told me everything, but it was exactly the way Trant had repeated it to me and the Callinghams.

  I said, “But there’s nothing else you’ve thought of?”

  “Not exactly. But my husband and I talk about it all the time and we’re quite sure Jaimie did have a date and now we also think the date had something to do with money.”

  “Money?”

  “You see, he hadn’t paid a cent of rent since he’d moved into mother’s apartment. But—well, it wasn’t too much anyway and my husband and I rather liked him so we made a kind of gag of it. That evening, when we asked him to go to the party with us and he refused, saying he had this date, he said, ‘Don’t tempt me or your mother’ll never forgive you.’ My husband and I think he must have been talking about the rent and hinting that, because of this date, he was expecting to be solvent again.”

  That wasn’t much. It was hardly anything. But it was all she had to offer. She came to the door with me, blowing her nose.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  Because nothing else occurred to me, I called Daphne. Henry answered, sounding startled when he heard my name. I didn’t expect Daphne to come to the phone, but she did.

  “Bill, you’ve got your nerve. Don’t you know you’re a leper around this establishment?”

  “I’m sorry, Daphne. I didn’t want to louse up your alibi.”

  “But you certainly loused it, didn’t you? Police reports come rattling in for Daddy like machine-gun bullets. I hear the latest is you’re going to appear at the trial and bare your bosom and bare Daddy’s bosom and bare my bosom—all over the front pages. I’m going to be branded as a scarlet woman from coast to coast.” She giggled. “Really, when you get going, you certainly go, don’t you?”

  There had been times in the past when I had been stuffily shocked by her frivolity. Now I adored it.

  I said, “I want to talk to you. You wouldn’t come out and meet me, would you?”

  “Of course, darling. You’ve become my favorite man. I can’t conceive why you married Betsy and didn’t marry me. Where shall we meet? Somewhere extremely chic where I can toast you in champagne.”

  I mentioned a fashionable cocktail bar she liked which wasn’t far from her apartment. I got there first, but soon she came in, a-dazzle with mink and smiles. I ordered champagne. She lifted her glass to me.

  “To the only man who’s ever stood up to Father! And long live scandal. I can hardly wait. When do you think I’ll be denounced in the headlines? But what can I do to help? That’s the important thing. I’m your ally, darling. The courageous female cleaving to the doomed hero whence all but her had fled.”

  There was a genuine affection in her smile. It surprised and touched me. I told her my decision to try to break the case and explained my theory that Jaimie had dumped her at Angelica’s because he’d had a date at his own apartment. She took it all very seriously and admitted that I was probably right.

  “Of course, I was so stinking on Martinis at the time that it all seemed perfectly natural. But I guess that’s what it was.”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea whom he was planning to meet?”

  “Why, no. He was an awful liar, but he was always going on about not knowing a soul in New York. Not a soul, of course, except the Prop.”

  “The Prop?”

  “You know that. They grew up together in California. Once he’d met up with her again at you and Betsy’s, he was seeing her all the time.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Once he said he was trying to get a job through her or something.”

  “A job?”

  “Well, not exactly a job, but something or other…” She giggled. “Now don’t start getting ideas. They weren’t having an affair. That’s one thing I can be absolutely certain about.”

  There was a curious gleam in her eyes. I said, “Why can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know. That’s why.” She looked at me for a moment, the strange, musing expression still in her eyes. Then she said, “Why don’t I tell you anyway? Daddy’s being so stinking about you. I can’t begin to list the campaigns he’s planning against you. And what do you have to fight back with? Nothing, you poor dear, but your bare manly fists.”

  She leaned across the table and patted my arm. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to let Betsy know unless you really have to? Poor old Betsy. She’s always put Daddy up on a pedestal. Heaven knows why. If she got an inkling of this, she’d go into a decline.”

  “Sure,” I said, bewildered. “I promise.”

  “I’ve been dying to divulge my secret for years, but I never quite dared.” She picked up her champagne glass and toasted the air. “I know Jaimie wasn’t having an affair with the Prop because no one can have an affair with the Prop. She’s not on the market. She’s Daddy’s sex life.”

  That came to me as an overwhelming surprise. As I stared at her, she went on:

  “I found it out when I was a kid. On the yacht, in fact. Just before we got to Portofino and met you. I went into a cabin and saw them. In those days I was a tender, virginal little bud and it quite pinned my ears back. But only for a while.” She smiled wryly. “Soon I got hep to the fact that I was on to something good. From then on, being Father’s pet was a cinch. I had him where I wanted him and I’ve kept him there.” For a moment I could only think of that as a piece of Callinghamiana, a devastatingly unexpected twist which threw a completely new light on C. J., the Prop, Paul and Daphne herself. But
gradually, with incredulous excitement, I saw that it could have an immediate, vital significance.

  I said, “This is still going on?”

  “Oh, yes. Discreetly, twice a week in the afternoons when Paul’s at work. It’s a ritual. Father knows I know, but we never talk about it. In fact, we’ve never talked about it: I just get a speedboat or some other little trinket once in a while, and I know his conscience has been acting up. Oh, he’s mad for me, too, of course—so I get it both ways, adoration and shame. It’s the jackpot.”

  The excitement was spreading through me. As if, because of the date, he was expecting to be solvent again! “When you went to Jaimie with that crazy plan of yours, didn’t he claim there was nothing to worry about, that the wedding would go through, that he’d have your father eating out of his hand in a week? Isn’t it possible he was so against your plan simply because he was afraid it might louse up his own, better one?”

  Daphne’s face was awed, almost frightened. “You mean, if he’d got that out of the Prop? If he’d been planning to use it as a lever on Daddy to let him marry me? Bill, what are we getting into?”

  “What—indeed?”

  “But I never dreamt… What are you going to do?”

  “Call the Prop,” I said.

  I got up from the table and went into the telephone booth. The Prop was home. She said, “Sure, Bill, come on over. I’m so bored. Television. Why don’t they invent something new?”

  I went back to Daphne. “You are telling the truth, aren’t you?”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “And you don’t mind my going through with this?”

  She shook her head. “No. You’ve got to. I see that. But, for pity’s sake, watch your step.”

  “I’m going to talk to the Prop right now.” I started to signal the waiter but she stopped me.

  “It’s all fixed, darling. I paid when you were phoning.” She still looked rather scared but a small, almost shy smile came. “After all, you’re unemployed now. You don’t have to buy champagne for me. And don’t worry about me. I’ll stay on here a while. Getting sozzled on champagne alone in a public place is as good a way as any of launching my new international career as the Beautiful and Damned Miss C.”