As I listened, I thought of Lieutenant Barnes. This was what he was going to hear. Bill’s word was our only weapon against him.
“Pop, if you’d seen him! He was like a crazy man. He screamed and yelled. He said the filthiest things about Jean— about everyone. I wanted to hit him. God, I wanted to hit him. But Jean wouldn’t let me. She made me go. She said it was better that way, that I should go. And I guess it was. It was hopeless to try to explain with all that mess going on. So I went. Johnson was in the hall, listening to everything, I guess. He—he let me out. I went and I walked and I walked. Not going any place. Just walking. And I was so mad, so mixed up, so frightened.” He ran a hand across his forehead. “So sort of scared of myself, I mean. I felt I was going to crack up or something. If you’d known what I’ve been through, what it’s been like … And I figured I’d better get help. I had to tell someone all about it and have them help me.”
He gestured vaguely at Sylvia Rymer. “I thought of Sylvie. But, heck, Sylvie, I didn’t want to drag you in any deeper. Then I thought of Peter and Iris. They’ve always been swell to me. In the past, I mean, they’ve always helped me out. I thought I’d go to them. There wasn’t anyone else.”
He broke off, looking down at the bare floor. There wasn’t anyone else! He had said that without the slightest intention of hurting me. He just hadn’t thought of me then and he wasn’t thinking of me now.
He said: “So I went to Peter and Iris. I guess it was around seven. I don’t know. I went in. I was going to blurt it all out right away. But there they were, eating dinner, and the maid was there and—and suddenly I couldn’t do it. I mean, they were so sort of—I don’t know—so assured and everything. I just knew I couldn’t tell them. And that’s when I figured I shouldn’t put it on anyone else anyway. It was my problem and Jean’s. And I saw then what a coward I’d been to leave, to play it Ronnie’s way just because Jean was scared of all the stink and everything. I had to be alone to figure it out I couldn’t just go on sitting there at the table with Peter and Iris. So I got up and went into the living-room. And I saw then that I had to go back to 58th Street and put all the cards on the table. I mean, I’d started it and it was my only chance and Jean’s. I had to go back and make her come with me. If she stayed any longer with that bastard, if she gave in any more, she’d be lost. We’d both be lost. I got up. I was going to leave. I…”
He looked up at me. “That’s when I remembered about Peter’s gun, Pop. You don’t know what Ronnie was like. I mean, making threats, saying he’d call the police … Suddenly I figured I’d better take the gun… I went over to the drawer and put the gun in my pocket. I was just going to leave but Iris came in and started asking questions. And somehow I stalled her and got out of there…”
There were beads of sweat now on his forehead. One of them was trickling down his cheek.
“Pop, I never thought about using the gun. Pop, honest, I swear it. I just thought: God knows what will happen with Ronnie. I’d better take the gun… And I walked back to 58th Street. And I rang the buzzer and—and it was Ronnie who opened the door. I wasn’t expecting it. I mean, I thought it would be Johnson. But there he was. There was Ronnie. And he looked at me as if he couldn’t believe it, as if I would never dare be there. And he said: Get out. Get out of here or something like that. And seeing him again, I was so mad. I hated him so. I—I pulled the gun out of my pocket and I pointed it at him and I said: I’ve got to see Jean. I’m going to take Jean out of this stinkhole. And I backed him up the stairs with the gun. Pop, I didn’t even know if it was loaded or not. And Jean was there in the living-room. And I said: Jean, we can’t go on like this. You understand now, don’t you? You’re coming with me. And she looked at the gun and she was angry. I’ve never seen her so angry. And she said: Give it to me. Give me the gun. Bill, give me the gun. I guess I was half crazy by then, Pop. But she said that and I listened to her and I gave her the gun and she threw it down on a table. And Ronnie hit me.”
Jean had said nothing about this on the phone. She had said Ronnie had locked her upstairs right after I had left. Had she, then, been trying to protect Bill?
He put his hand against his stomach! “Ronnie hit me and Jean was shouting: Bill, please. Go away, Bill. Do you hear me? Go away. And I suddenly lost track of everything. I mean, I knew Ronnie was hitting me, but I couldn’t somehow hit back at him. I just let him hit me and Jean ran out of the room. I guess she ran upstairs. And Ronnie went on hitting me and he—he took me by the collar and the seat of the pants and he dragged me down the stairs and I still couldn’t…” He put his head down in his hands. “I don’t know why I let him do it. And he dragged me down the stairs and he opened the door and he threw me out into the street and I stumbled and I fell down in the gutter…”
He started to sob. I would have given anything I owned to comfort him. But I didn’t dare get up and go over to him. We were too far away from each other. Sylvia Rymer put her arm round him. He shook it away savagely. He whispered as if to himself:
“I was so humiliated. I’d gone there to get her, to take her away and I’d let him … I’d let Ronnie … I got up. My pants were all dirty. I tried to brush them off. I started to walk. I guess I just walked. Then I went to a movie. Some movie, I don’t know. And I sat there in the movie and I came out and I came back here and I was so tired…”
His voice trailed off. He looked up.
“That’s it, I guess. That’s what happened, Pop.”
“When did you leave Ronnie’s?”
“Gee, I don’t know. I was only there a couple of minutes.”
“And you arrived about eight?”
“I guess so.”
I believed him, of course. There wasn’t a thing about the story that didn’t ring true. With Bill as he was and with Ronnie as he had been. I believed him and my bowels ached for him and I hated myself.
He said: “I’ll have to tell it all to the police?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you think they’ll believe me?”
I didn’t have to bring Lieutenant Barnes into my mind. He had never left it. I thought: Bill’s fingerprints won’t be on the gun. At least they’ll be blurred by Jean’s. Maybe when Barnes finds that out, he may … But that was such a small hope. Bill had taken the gun there; he’d threatened Ronnie with it. And, although he’d left over an hour before the crime, he’d gone alone to a movie. Some movie, I don’t know!
I said: “You’re sure Jean ran out of the room?”
“She ran out of the room.”
“Then she didn’t see you leaving?”
“No. She didn’t see me. There was only Ronnie.”
Jean wouldn’t have been much of a witness, but she would have been a witness. But Jean hadn’t seen him leave.
“And the gun? Where was the gun after Jean had taken it from you?”
“I don’t know, Pop. I wasn’t thinking about the gun.”
“But you’ll be able to remember the movie?”
“I guess so. It was on Third Avenue.”
“But you didn’t see anyone who’d remember you?
“See anyone? Why should I see anyone? I …” He broke off and repeated bleakly: “You think they’ll believe me?”
“Believe you! ” It was Sylvia Rymer who spoke. “Are you crazy? As if the police would believe you when the gun was right there, when your own father poured out the entire story of you and Jean..
She turned to me. The old implacable hatred was on her face.
“How could you have been so monstrous? I knew you weren’t much of a father. Any friend of Bill knows that. But why in heaven’s name did you leave the gun there, why did you blab everything to the police? Was it to avenge Ronnie? To provide a suitable sacrifice for the great Ronald Sheldon?”
Her voice went on in a stream of invective. I didn’t listen because she had made her point. Iris would have removed the gun. Peter would have stood by her. Maybe we could have squared their maid. Maybe we could have obl
iterated the whole damning sequence of the gun and the second visit to 58th Street.
But I had forbidden it. I, in my righteous rage, had been the one who insisted on siding with the police. I had had my reasons, I supposed. I couldn’t think any more what they were. Once again, I was invaded by Felicia. Because of Felicia, I’d lost faith in Bill. Because Bill was Felicia’s son, and I’d thought the choice was between Bill and Ronnie, I’d picked Ronnie.
I sat there, enduring. Sylvia Rymer was still railing. Let her rail.
The front door buzzer rang. Sylvia Rymer broke off. I got up.
I said: “That’s Arthur. I’ll let him in.”
I went to the door. I opened it.
Lieutenant Barnes was standing there alone. He smiled at me casually like an old friend who had dropped in for a nightcap.
“I imagine I’ll find your son here, Mr. Duluth.”
12
He came into the drab little hall and closed the door behind him. The smile was apologetic. It seemed to me immensely hypocritical.
“I had one of my men follow you, Mr. Duluth. I thought that would be the simplest way of tracing your son.”
All my old fear and dislike of him crowded back. Here he was, once again, outwitting the crafty witness, letting me know how skillfully he had permitted me to make my own trap and fall into it. And, once again, he was being so wrongly clever. I hadn’t been a crafty witness. I hadn’t left Ronnie’s with any elaborate plan of protecting Bill. I hadn’t had that much enterprise. I had just gone home…
This, I knew, was the crucial moment, but I was too tired and angry to handle it well.
I said: “You’ve come to arrest Bill?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“He didn’t?” He looked mildly surprised. “You’ve changed your mind.”
“Yes. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t do it. He told me he didn’t. He left the house over an hour before the murder.”
His grey eyes watched me curiously. “And his proof?” “There isn’t any proof. Not what you’d call proof.”
“Oh.”
“But when I told him Ronnie was dead, he was amazed You could see it on his face. He hadn’t the slightest idea of it. There’s a girl here who’s a witness.”
Lieutenant Barnes didn’t say anything.
“He’s telling the truth,” I insisted. “Anyone can tell when a person’s telling the truth.”
“They can, Mr. Duluth? That hasn’t been my experience. But then, I’m not a walking psychology primer.” He said that without irony, almost as if he didn’t realize he was quoting my words back to me. But he did realize it, of course. He paused and then added: “Someone killed Mr. Sheldon.”
“Of course.”
“Who?”
“How should I know who?”
“You have no one else to suggest?”
He stood there, watching me patiently, waiting for me to answer, just as if that had been a real question instead of a final, lethal dart. When I didn’t say anything, he eased himself past me and went into the living-room. I followed. Bill had got up. So had Sylvia Rymer. Barnes turned on my son his mild, maddeningly unaccusatory gaze.
“Lieutenant Barnes from Homicide.”
Bill watched him apprehensively. Sylvia Rymer said: “Don’t say a word, Bill, till the lawyer comes.”
Barnes glanced back at me. “So you’ve hired a lawyer!”
“Any objections?”
“On the contrary. It seems like a very sensible move. What lawyer have you hired?”
“Arthur Freedland. He’ll be here any minute.”
“He was Mr. Sheldon’s lawyer, wasn’t he?”
“He was.”
Barnes turned back to Bill. Once again Sylvia Rymer cried:
“Don’t say a word, Bill.”
Lieutenant Barnes looked at her. “You are Miss Sylvia Rymer?”
“I am.”
“And you, I suppose, are not going to say a word until the lawyer comes, either?”
“I’m not.”
Barnes shrugged. “In that case, perhaps you won’t object if I sit down. I’m rather tired.”
He glanced at the studio couch with the pajamas on it and then sat down on the other one. He didn’t pay the slightest attention to any of us. He just sat there studying, with apparent interest, Sylvia Rymer’s mobile. It was the most unnerving thing he could have done.
In an attempt to distract myself from my anxiety, I started to wonder about him, trying to accept the fact that he was a human being. What had he been doing before Peter’s call conjured him up in Ronnie’s house? He must have some life of his own apart from these sinister intrusions into the lives of other people. At least he was “rather tired.” Was he married? Was there someone who was pleased to see him, who could glance up as a door opened and say, quite casually: Oh, there he is? The effort to reconstruct a background for him defeated me utterly. He was just there, sitting on the studio couch, studying the mobile, waiting to arrest my son.
Soon Arthur Freedland arrived. I let him in. He was a tall, well-dressed, handsome man with pouches under his eyes which suggested a world of night clubs and dissipation. In fact, he was most respectably married, living in Central Park South with his wife, his wife’s mother and a Welsh terrier called Miss Boo. He’d been on Ronnie’s “dull but inevitable” guest list. He was carrying his Burberry top-coat over his arm.
“Jake.”
“Thanks for coming, Arthur.”
“That’s all right, old boy.”
I’d forgotten he’d picked up that “old boy” from Ronnie. It brought back a dozen dinner parties at Ronnie’s with Arthur holding forth on his golf scores. Suddenly I felt there could not be much help from Arthur. He handed me his coat. He was the sort of man who always assumed there was someone to whom a coat could be handed. I put the coat down on a chair. He walked into the living-room.
He saw Barnes and stopped. “Barnes.”
“Hello, Mr. Freedland.”
I said bitterly: “So you two know each other.”
“Oh, yes.” Arthur Freedland was uncomfortable. “Everyone in the legal profession knows Lieutenant Barnes. But … but… what’s the trouble, old boy? Not serious, I hope.”
He asked that as if I’d brought him out of bed to discuss a traffic violation.
Before I could say anything, Lieutenant Barnes indicated Bill. “This is Mr. Duluth’s son, Mr. Freedland. He’s your client. I’ve come to arrest him for the murder of Ronald Sheldon.”
“Ronnie!” Astonishment and shock made Arthur Freed-land’s majestic profile momentarily moronic. “Ronnie— murdered! ”
“I am perfectly ready to let you know the evidence I have against him,” said Barnes. “But I imagine your clients would like to tell you their story first.” He looked at Sylvia Rymer.
“Is there some other room? Perhaps I could go in there until the conference is over.”
“No,” I said. “You stay here. Arthur, Bill, come in the bedroom.”
Sylvia Rymer wanted to come with us but I'd had enough of her clumsy championing. The three of us went into the bedroom.
It was so small that there was no room for us to stand. We all sat down on the unmade bed. Arthur looked preposterously out of place and, as first I and then Bill told him everything there was to tell, I watched his face with growing uneasiness. In spite of his expensive legal mask, traces of the first shock were still there and something else too-something very like hostility. Bill told his story almost exactly as he had told it to me but somehow it seemed much less convincing this time. I still believed it, of course, but it sounded less convincing.
When he had finished, I said : "So you see, Arthur, it looks pretty black -against him, but he didn't do it. He left over an hour before the murder."
Arthur looked at his wrist watch. I couldn't conceive what connection the time could have with our predicament.
He said : "I'd like to hear what Barnes has to say."
Bill said : "Mr. Freedland, you believe me, don't you?"
Arthur got up with difficulty from the low bed, shaking the creases back into his trousers. "Let's hear what Barnes has to say."
We went back into the other room. Barnes was sitting where we had left him. Sylvia Rymer was elaborately ignoring him.
She got up and went to Bill. Arthur crossed to Barnes. In his monumental stuffiness, he seemed to me almost as ominous a figure as the detective. “Let’s hear the evidence, Barnes.”
“Of course, sir.” Barnes stood up, respecting an older man. “I don’t think you’ll quarrel with it, Mr. Freedland. In the first place, the motive is apparent. As you may know, Bill Duluth and Mrs. Sheldon…”
“Yes,” broke in Arthur hastily as if checking an indelicacy. “Yes, yes.”
“In the second place, it is established that the murder weapon was stolen by Bill Duluth from his uncle’s apartment and taken by him to Mr. Sheldon’s house a short time before the crime. While it is true there are no fingerprints on the gun, Bill Duluth could have wiped them off as well as anyone else.”
So much for the question of the fingerprints to which I had clung so hopefully.
Arthur Freedland nodded stiffly.
Barnes turned his gaze on Bill. “I haven’t, of course, heard Bill Duluth’s statement yet, but I imagine he has no alibi. If he had, he would hardly have waited for legal advice.”
He paused. He didn’t have to pause. In my despair and hatred of him, it seemed to me to be a deliberately melodramatic device to push home his point, to show how complete and deadly was the collection of weapons on his side.
Arthur Freedland was looking down at Sylvia Rymer’s old pink rug.
Barnes continued: “Mr. Freedland, are you claiming an alibi for your client?”
Sylvia Rymer’s hand clutched Bill’s. Arthur, still looking down at the rug, said: “He claims to have left Mr. Sheldon’s house one hour before the crime and to have gone to a movie— alone. He doesn’t, I believe, remember very clearly the actual whereabouts of the cinema.”
My Son, the Murderer Page 10
