I stood looking down at her, thinking how much there was to know about Daphne Callingham and how little—in the past—I’d even begun to scratch the surface of it. I leaned across the table and kissed her.
“You’re an angel.”
“Oh, no, I’m not. I’m a bitch and you know it. Onward and upward. And let me know what new disasters you dig up for me. I’m collecting disasters now, like snuffboxes and paper-weights.”
chapter 22
The Fowlers lived just below Washington Square. It wasn’t a particularly fashionable neighborhood, but their apartment was like Hollywood’s dream of Park Avenue. The maid let me in. The maid seemed always to be there and almost always washing or pressing something for the Prop. She was an amiable, long-suffering maid. She took me to the living room. The Prop was lying on a couch in lounging pajamas watching television. She got up when she saw me. She was the only woman I’d ever known who could get up from lying on a couch without a single wrinkle coming in her clothes or a single hair falling out of place. Until recently the hair had been red; now it was platinum. It looked neither more nor less real platinum than it had red. But she didn’t look real anyway. As Paul said, she wasn’t like a flesh-and-blood model; she was like a model the way they come out in the four-color ads.
She turned off the television and crossed to kiss me. She was always affectionate. She had on a very light perfume and amethysts. She was mad about amethysts. They were so nice, she said, to knock about in at home in the afternoons. What Daphne had told me was still so fresh in my mind that I hadn’t really absorbed it. She still seemed just the same Prop, the placid, adored wife whose greatest emotional jag was to change the color of her nail polish.
She knew Angelica was arrested, of course, but that’s all she knew. As simply as I could I outlined my predicament to her, and her wonderful blank face without a trace of a line somehow managed to register sympathy.
“Gee, honey, all that stink in court. It’s going to be rugged for you and Betsy. And Betsy’s going to hate it about Rickie. You know how she is.”
I said, “There’s only one way to get out of it, Sandra, and that’s to stop the trial. And the only way to stop the trial is to find out who actually killed Jaimie. You see that?”
“Sure, I see it. But how would you do that? I mean people aren’t just going to come to you and say, ‘I did it.’ People aren’t like that.”
“Has Trant been here to see you—I mean, apart from that first time?”
“He was here just a couple of days ago.”
“Did you tell him about knowing Jaimie in California?”
“Gee, should I have? I didn’t. I didn’t tell him much of anything. Paul always says not to talk to the cops. Sooner or later something happens and you regret it.”
I said, “But you did know Jaimie in California?”
“Sure. He used to work in the Piggly-Wiggly. That’s a kind of store they have out there like the A&P. Carting groceries to the cars. I’d known him ever since I can remember almost. And then some rich, older babe got crazy about him and took him off to Europe.”
So that had been the prologue to Angelica’s attempt to “redeem” him through “the ennobling power of her love.”
I said, “But, once you’d met him again at our house, you saw quite a bit of him?”
“Oh, sure, he’d come around some afternoons. I always liked Jaimie. He was a screwball, I guess. But he was cute and we used to talk about this and that.”
“For example?”
“Oh, this and that.”
I disliked attacking her. It was like attacking a child. But it had to be done.
“Did you tell him about you and C. J.?” I said.
The Prop’s reactions were slow and monumentally untheatrical. She merely sat there for a long moment, blinking her great blue eyes in mild surprise. Then she said, “How do you know that? No one’s supposed to know.”
“Sandra, I hate butting into your private affairs like this. But it might have something to do with all this and I’ve got to know.”
“You mean—is it true? Of course it’s true. I do think it’s funny you finding out, though. C. J. didn’t tell you, did he?”
“No,” I said.
“But you think it’ll help you if I talk about it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s nothing much really. I mean, it’s been going on so long now. It all started when I first came to New York and I did a bit of modeling and there was this ad for Callingham Publications and I was the girl in it, reading the magazine and being the typical housewife or something. And C. J. saw the ad and asked to meet me. And—well, it just started. And ever since then it’s gone on. He didn’t want to marry me. He explained all that, he being so prominent and all and I guess his wife that died hadn’t been too hot on education and everything and had been a drag on him and he didn’t want that again so… that was the way it was. He’s funny really. I mean, he’s terribly old-fashioned. He’s got a thing about how we shouldn’t be seen in public together and all that. So he just comes here. Of course, earlier on, it wasn’t here; it was the apartment I was living in before I married Paul.”
After all my own agonizings and Betsy’s and Angelica’s, the Prop’s matter-of-factness was as refreshing as it was improbable. Just trying to imagine how it would feel to be like that threw me off a bit.
I said, “And all these years you’ve been able to keep it from Paul?”
“Oh, Paul knows about it.”
“He knows about it?”
“You see, it was all kind of through C. J. that Paul and I married. It was that time C. J. hired the yacht and took that trip in Europe. He wanted me to come too but, figuring the way he does and with his daughters along and all, of course he couldn’t. And Paul was in love with me at that time and C. J. heard about it. Paul didn’t have a job or anything. In fact, he was kind of down and out. And C. J. really fixed it up. I mean, he persuaded Betsy to give Paul the job on the Fund and that way we could get married and so we could all go on the yacht and it would be okay.”
I suppose if I hadn’t known the Prop so well I wouldn’t have believed her at that point. I would have taken it for granted that she was stringing me along with a preposterous tale to pay me out for being inquisitive. But I did know the Prop and I knew she was incapable of guile. That was what had happened and how it had happened.
Incredibly, for all these years, Paul had been working for Betsy, associating with C. J. on these terms. For a moment the thought of Paul and his staggeringly anomalous position monopolized my thoughts, but only for a moment, because I saw that the idea which had come to Daphne and me in the bar could be the right idea, after all. Controlling my excitement, I said, “Did you tell all this to Jaimie?”
She shook her head. “No, but he found out about it. One afternoon, when he dropped by, he saw C. J. coming out of the elevator. He was terribly smart, really, Jaimie. I mean, without my meaning to, he got it all out of me.”
So there it was. Excited and at the same time slightly intimidated by the implications of it all, I said:
“Don’t you see now, Sandra? Jaimie was determined to marry Daphne. He didn’t have a chance in hell to buck the Callingham clan on his own qualifications. But, once he knew this about C. J. and you, he had a bargaining point. He could have forced C. J. to come to his apartment to make a deal. Either C. J. let Jaimie marry Daphne or Jaimie released the scandal to the press.”
The Prop leaned slightly toward me, fingering an earring to make sure it was firmly attached. “Do you mean that it was C. J. who kept that date with him and killed him?”
“It could have been, couldn’t it? Can you see C. J. letting a little jerk like that get away with threatening him? Can you…?”
“But, Bill, honey, C. J. was in Boston that night giving a speech at the Press Banquet. The banquet went on ’til midnight. I read about it in the papers. I read his speech too. I always read his speeches. He’s a fine speaker. He could have been a
politician. You know that? Of course he’s great anyway. But he could have got to the top of the tree. Maybe President.”
The naïve pride in her voice was as fantastic as everything else about her, but I was only vaguely conscious of it through the gloom of seeing my bubble pricked. I’d read that report of the banquet in the paper too. If I’d stopped to think, I would have realized that from the beginning it had eliminated C. J. as a suspect. But I hadn’t stopped to think, and it had taken the Prop, of all people, to disillusion me.
I looked dispiritedly around the luxurious room, feeling I’d invaded my best friend’s privacy for no purpose and that I was back where I’d started from.
“So I guess all this comes from C. J.?”
“Oh, no. Gee! The apartment and everything? That would be terrible—like I was a kept woman or something. C. J. wouldn’t go for that.”
I stared at her. “You mean he doesn’t give you a thing?”
“Oh, sure, he gives me gifts. Personal gifts. You know, like furs or maybe a bracelet or a necklace or… Gee, it’s always something. Sometimes I wish he’d lay off for a while because Paul…”
“What about Paul?”
“Paul’s funny too. You know, we don’t talk about C. J. I don’t think he’s ever once mentioned him after it was all fixed at the beginning. But I figure he thinks about him most all of the time and he’s gotten this idea that when C. J. gives me anything he’s got to go one bigger and better. I guess he figures it’ll make him seem a bigshot too and make me love him more. It’s dopey. I mean he ought to know I love him anyway. He’s just one thing and C. J.’s another. It’s just the way it worked out. That’s all. Sometimes I’d kind of like to explain he doesn’t have to spend all that money, but I’m not too hot at explaining and Paul—well, he’s the way he is.”
The excitement was stirring again. “Paul doesn’t have a private income, does he? He told me he didn’t.”
“Oh, no. Paul’s never had a cent since I knew him. He used to way back. But not now.”
“Then how in hell can he afford all this?”
The Prop looked puzzled. “That’s peculiar. That’s just what Jaimie asked. Why, he gets it from his salary, I guess. All that money he makes at the Fund.”
I didn’t know Paul’s salary. I’d never asked Betsy. But now it was forced on my attention, I knew as surely as I knew anything that, at the highest, it would never begin to cover those pathetic love gifts of his. “That’s just what Jaimie asked too.” Now that it had come it seemed so obvious that I was amazed it hadn’t occurred to me before. The Sandra Fowler Fur, Jewel and Automobile Fund. That was what Paul always called it, and constantly, too, he was making cracks about stealing the Fund’s cash. Wasn’t that exactly like Paul to make a flagrant, cynical joke of something which was, in fact, all too true? The pattern had fallen into place just when I least expected it. The date that would make Jaimie solvent! Jaimie hadn’t gone after C. J. C. J. had been far too big game for him. But Paul, the embezzler whom he’d caught out as simply as I’d caught him, was a different matter. For Jaimie, the small time blackmailer, Paul, properly handled, could have meant solvency for years.
I said, “Sandra, you remember the night of the murder, don’t you?”
“Sure I remember it. It was Thursday, the night I do my hair.”
“Your hair?”
“Gee, it’s terrible. It’s so complicated. Some girl from Beverly Hills showed me how, but I can’t find anyone who can fix it right. Honest, I’ve tried everywhere. So I always do it myself. Paul hates it. I mean, I never let him see me when I’m doing it. I look a mess. You wouldn’t believe it. So I fix it in the bathroom and lock myself up in the bedroom. Four hours it takes with all that ink stuff and everything. That’s why Paul hates it. You know how he is. He’s so restless. He hates just sitting there watching television alone. He never can figure out why I don’t do it in the daytime, but there’s so much to do, I never get around to it.”
That, then, had been Paul’s alibi! His evening at home with his wife had been an evening with the Prop locked in the bedroom for four hours, fixing her hair! It had all come with almost incredible ease. I got up, feeling unsteady.
“Thanks a lot, Sandra. I’m sorry about all this. I’ve got to be running along.”
“Gee, Bill, I’m sorry, too. I’d have liked to help.”
She came with me to the door. All through the interview a vague suggestion of puzzlement had lingered in her eyes. Just as we reached the door, it disappeared and she smiled a broad, delighted smile.
“I just figured out how you knew about me and C. J. It was Daphne, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“She came into the cabin once on the yacht. Years ago. I’d almost forgotten. Gee, that’s a relief. It’s been bothering me so.”
She kissed me. “I wouldn’t tell Betsy. I mean, she’s a bit old-fashioned too like her father, and with Paul working there at the Fund and everything… you understand?”
“Sure. And don’t tell Paul I came. There’s no point in letting him know.”
“Gee, no,” said the Prop, “I wouldn’t tell Paul anyway. Well, good-by, honey. See you soon.”
chapter 23
I’d got the solution. I was sure of it. There was no actual proof yet, but the fact that Paul had been embezzling seemed screamingly obvious now and, almost certainly, I could get all the proof of that I needed from the Fund’s books. George Dort, the treasurer of Callingham Publications, was a good friend of mine. Leper though I had become around the office, I knew George would check the books for me. I could get the books from Betsy. It was after five. She should be home now.
I took a taxi. For a while I felt nothing but the satisfaction of my unlikely triumph over Trant and Macguire and a kind of mingled astonishment and shock about Paul. But, as we got near home, the thought of what this would do to Betsy hit me. I was saving her from Rickie’s appearance in court and the public disintegration of our marriage, sure I was, but only at the expense of ripping apart the one other thing that mattered to her—her Fund. Whatever happened, it was always Betsy who had to take it on the chin. Poor Betsy, the only one of us whose nose wasn’t dirty one way or the other! As I let myself into the apartment, I heard her call, “Bill.” Then I heard her footsteps hurrying toward me and, for the second time that day, I felt like an executioner.
She came around the corner. I was expecting the chill, stone mask of the night before but, with a quickening of amazed gratitude, I saw that her face was warm and smiling.
“Oh, Bill.” She kissed me. “I’m so ashamed about last night. Can you forgive me?”
“Forgive you!”
“I’ve been with Father all afternoon, and he told me how you’ve decided to appear in court with Rickie. He’s incredible. He raged and stormed and made every conceivable threat to force me into trying to stop you. And as I listened to him, I thought: Last night I was just as monstrous as he’s being now. You think she’s innocent and, by God, that’s all that matters. Of course you’ve got to go ahead and fight them all. How could I have been such a feeble, whining dope?”
Why was I always letting Betsy surprise me? Hadn’t I learned by that time that she was the perfect wife—the perfect woman? I kissed her on the mouth and the cheek and the ear, ashamed that I had been dreading to confront her, feeling no more qualms at all about telling what I had to tell.
I said, “Maybe I won’t have to appear in court. Neither will Angelica. I think I’ve found out who killed Jaimie.”
With my arm still around her, I drew her into the living room, away from the hall couch, that symbol of my other rebel self which I had managed to defeat. I told her everything. I had planned to spare her the relationship between C. J. and the Prop, but I told her that too, because I realized then that to protect her was only to insult her. When I told her what I suspected about Paul, it was a dreadful blow to her. I could see that from her face. But she took it as I should have known she would take it. She merely ga
ve a bleak little shrug.
“If it’s the truth, then it’s the truth. I can hardly believe it, but…”
“Paul is the one who keeps the books, isn’t he?”
“Of course he is. He does all the business end. That’s always been the arrangement.”
“You know how the Fowlers live. He couldn’t swing that on his salary, could he?”
“I don’t see how. The salary’s more or less a token salary. I always thought he had money of his own.”
“And how do you have the books audited?”
“Paul has some friend who’s a certified public accountant. Some man, I don’t know. But Paul’s always given him the job. He says he’s an old friend and needs the work.”
“You can get the books, can’t you?”
“Of course. They’re in the office safe.”
“I’m pretty sure George Dort will look them over for us. He’d be able to find out if they were fixed. I don’t know how Paul could wangle it, but…” An idea came. “Do you know a Mrs. Mallet?”
“Frances Mallet? Why, yes. You know her too. She’s Mrs. Godfrey’s sister.”
“Did she subscribe to the Fund this year?”
“Yes.”
“How much”
“She’s not on my list; she’s on Paul’s. We divide them up. So I only saw it on Paul’s statement. She gave five hundred.”
Excitedly, I said, “I was in the Fund office when you were away in Philadelphia. Paul was talking on the phone to Mrs. Mallet and he thanked her for a thousand.”
“A thousand. You’re sure?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Maybe she changed her mind. They often do.”
“Call her.”
“But I’ll look such a fool. I…” She gave a rueful smile. “Well, it seems I am a fool anyway, so what difference does it make?”
The Man with Two Wives Page 18
