With a strange harshness, she went on: “I’d never seen anyone dead before. I should have been shocked, frightened, even pitying, shouldn’t I? But I wasn’t. I stood there, looking down at him. I didn’t even feel surprised. All I felt was a great sense of relief, a sense of the rightness of things—as if justice had been done.”
In spite of myself, my desire not to believe her was flickering then. If I’d been Barnes, if I’d even been Peter, I could, I knew, have been adamant in my purpose. But I was me and I was stuck with it. And I began to see that there was no use in believing Angie had killed Ronnie if she hadn’t. In the long run, building faith on an illusion was more heartbreaking than facing the truth.
But I hadn’t completely given up yet. I said: “If you merely found Ronnie there dead, Angie, why didn’t you call the police?”
“But I did. I went right to the phone. I picked it up—and it was busy. I heard Jean’s voice and then yours. Jean said: ‘I couldn’t hear anything else. Just the shots. No voice or anything. Should I call the police?’ And you said: ‘No.’ And Jean said: ‘You’ve got a key for the front door. The other day you let me in. You’d better bring it.’ ”
That, of course, was exactly what we had said. There was no doubt that Angie had lifted up the phone. And, if she’d been guilty, if she’d just shot Ronnie, would she ever, in a million years, have gone to the phone?
She was saying: “I knew then that you were coming and I thought it was better that way. Better that you should come and that you should handle the police. So I went right back to Gwendolyn. I told her. And together we decided on the alibi.”
I made a last, forced effort. “The alibi! To save you from being arrested?”
“Arrested? Do you think I’d have cared about that? Why should I? What did it matter anymore? No, Jake, no. It wasn’t because of me. It was because …”
She got up. She came to the bed. A handbag was lying on it. She opened it and took something out. I couldn’t see what it was because she had her palm closed over it. She stood there a moment and the look on her face terrified me. It was the look of a soft-hearted judge passing the death sentence.
“It was better that the police shouldn’t know I came back because of this …”
She opened her palm and held out towards me what was on it.
“I found this, Jake. In Ronnie’s hand. He was lying there dead on the floor and he was clutching this in his hand.”
The thing she was holding out was a button, a jacket button with a scrap of check tweed still clinging to it. I recognized it, of course. And the old familiar exhaustion engulfed me.
It was the button from Bill’s sports jacket.
Dimly I thought: Perhaps, by preparing myself and accepting the possibility of Angie’s innocence, I had spared myself a little of the pain that now was stabbing at me. Perhaps … I would never know.
“Jake, dear, you see now why I told you not to raise your hopes too high. You thought Bill left an hour before the murder. He did, of course. But he came back. Ronnie could only have had the button in his hand if Bill had come back. Somehow Bill must have had a key. He must have crept in, made a jump at the gun—and Ronnie grabbed at him … and then the shots.”
She was putting the button in my hand. “You keep it, Jake. You do what you think’s best.”
It was cold in my hand, cold and hard—and terrible.
She said: “You’ve got to face it, Jake. You do see that now. You can’t live on hope any more. Bill killed him.”
“No! ” I said.
Her hand was on my arm, like Iris’s hand, like Jean’s, like Sylvia Rymer’s—a hand that comforted and paralyzed.
“Jake, dear, listen, please, listen. Isn’t it best to tell Lieutenant Barnes the truth? They’ve got Bill. They’re not going to let him go. But if we told them the truth, if they knew what a monster Ronnie was and what he’d done to Bill’s mother… Jake, if we all tell the truth about Ronnie, wouldn’t any jury understand? Wouldn’t they let Bill off with the minimum … ?”
Give in, give in, give in. What are you but a fool, a poor benighted fool of a father who found out too late that you and your son might have been happy together? I got up from the bed. My legs were numb.
“Jake, dear, please—don’t look like that.”
I started for the door.
“Jake, I had to tell you. I knew it was cruel. But you had to know.”
The door seemed to be miles away. Angie’s voice was hoarse with suffering. But I didn’t want to listen.
I went out of the room and down the stairs.…
23
But I hadn’t shaken Angie off. She was still there in my mind, forcing me out of the shelter of illusion into the biting wind of “truth.” The Pattern! Now that the whole extent of it was exposed to me, wasn’t it as inevitable as a Greek play? The destroyer of the mother destroyed by the son! The jump … the years between in which hatred had slowly ripened—and then, the revenge for the jump! Tell Lieutenant Barnes everything?
Was that then to be the pitiful end of it all? To fling ourselves on Barnes’s mercy? All of us baring our wounds, showing what Ronnie Sheldon had done to us? Look what he did to Jake Duluth, to Felicia Duluth, to Angie Sheldon, to Gwendolyn Sneighley, to Sylvia Rymer! See the monster— applaud the monster-slayer!
I reached the hall. I heard the eager shuffle of Johnson’s footsteps coming towards me. I couldn’t cope with Johnson. I let myself out of the front door. I started to walk down the street. A hand took hold of my arm.
“Jake. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
I looked up. There was Peter. And Iris was with him. But I hardly saw them because, behind them at the curb, Lieutenant Barnes was climbing out of a police car with a cop.
Barnes never failed. He was always there at the moment when I was least equipped to face him. He joined us, standing by Peter, looking at me gravely.
“Have you talked to McGuire?”
Had I decided to give up and accept the insanity plea! That was what he meant. As always, he managed to make me angry.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t talked to McGuire.”
He glanced down at his hand and then up again quickly “Mrs. Sheldon told me about the key.”
“The key?”
“That she heard the murderer let himself in with a key—at nine.”
This, of course, was another trap. In my confusion and dread, I tried to marshal some agility of mind.
He said: “You know about that, don’t you? Mrs. Sheldon told me she’d told you.”
Surely there was no need to deny it. “Yes,” I said.
He said casually: “You have a key to this house, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t give it to your son, I suppose? Or your son couldn’t have… ?”
“Of course not,” broke in Iris. “Jake had his key when we found Ronnie. That’s how we got into the house.”
Barnes smiled that quick smile of his which I had learned to fear. “I thought so.” He was still looking at me. “You realize, Mr. Duluth, that this is the first fact that’s come out in your son’s favor. Clearly, from Mrs. Sheldon’s statement, he did leave the house after the episode with the gun. To have killed Mr. Sheldon he must have come back with a key. I’ve questioned the Sheldons’ butler. He seems certain Mr. Sheldon never gave Bill a key, and there’s no evidence at the present time to connect him with a key. That’s a good point. You should take it up with McGuire.”
There it was again, that bewildering, maddening fairness and solicitude. Once again, I had the feeling that he was omniscient, that, in advising me to concentrate on the lack of a key when I knew Bill had had access to one, he was perfectly aware of the irony of the situation. I was almost ready then to take Angie’s advice and throw my hand in. But there was still something in me that resisted. I thought: So long as he doesn’t know about Jean’s key, there’s still hope, and so long as there’s hope, I’ll wait.
He w
as saying: “I’m going to the Laceys now. After I’d spoken to Mrs. Sheldon, I went to your apartment looking for you. Your brother and his wife were there and asked if they could come along.”
“Come with us,” said Peter.
“Yes, Jake.” Iris slipped her arm through mine. “Please, dear, we want you.”
Barnes nodded. “Yes, Mr. Duluth, why don’t you?”
I knew it was dangerous to be where Barnes was. He never invited me anywhere without an ulterior purpose. But Jean had said she was going upstairs to her parents. Barnes was all out to discover about the key now. There was a better chance of Jean’s standing up to him if I was present.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”
We went up in the lift. Lady Phyllis Brent opened the door to us. She surveyed us with hostility.
“Well, what do you want?”
“There are a few questions I’d like to ask,” said Barnes.
Phyllis Brent still stood belligerently on the threshold.
“Basil’s working.”
It was inevitable that Basil should be working and equally inevitable that Phyllis should announce the fact. Basil would be working at the Last Trump and Phyllis would be scolding the angels for making too much racket.
Barnes said: “Perhaps he wouldn’t mind stopping for a few minutes.”
“What is it, Phyllis?”
Norah Lacey came round the comer. She saw us and said : “Oh, good afternoon. Come in. Basil’s working, but…”
We trooped past the reluctant Phyllis and followed Norah into the living-room. Jean was there, very pale and still, sitting in a chair. Phyllis came in after us. The policeman, rather awkward, stood by the door.
Norah said: “You want me to tell Basil, Lieutenant?”
“If you please.”
Norah went to the library door and tapped. Then she slipped inside and, a few moments later, came out with her husband. Jean got up. I wondered if she’d been trained always to get up when her father entered a room. The whole atmosphere of the Shropshire shrine, bizarrely transported to Manhattan, oppressed me. Basil Lacey and his priestesses! Basil Lacey— another kind of Ronnie, with Norah another kind of Angie, slaving, obliterating herself, wasting her goodness …
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. Good afternoon to you all.”
Basil Lacey was all courtesy and charm. He was making it clear that we need not feel guilty for having interrupted him. “Is there something we can do to help you?”
Barnes said: “First of all, Mr. Lacey, Mr. Duluth has a couple of things he would like you to clear up.”
For a few confused moments I thought he was referring to me. But Peter took a step forward. I hadn’t really looked at my brother until then. I’d been too blanketed in despair and fear of Barnes. But now, as I saw the slight, almost concealed smile on Peter’s lips, I thought: My God, has he got something?
I was taut with expectation. I glanced at Iris. She, too, had that same air of excitement under control. But I wouldn’t hope. I had suffered too much already from hope.
Peter said: “If you don’t mind, Mr. Lacey, I’d like to run through the alibi again.”
Basil Lacey looked at him and then turned, at his most affable, to Barnes. “I am more than ready, of course, Lieutenant, to do anything in my power to help you. But is Mr. Duluth qualified …?” A gesture of a delicate hand completed the sentence.
Barnes said: “He hasn’t told me what he wants to know, Mr. Lacey. But I can see no reason why he shouldn’t question you, can you?”
Norah sat down on the arm of a chair. Phyllis lit a cigarette. Basil gave a shrug.
“Why, no, I suppose not. If it has your sanction.”
“It has my sanction.”
Peter said: “Lady Phyllis got you the house seats for Town Meeting from Miss Staines, Mr. Lacey. You arrived at the theater around eight-thirty. You spoke to Miss Staines and her husband on your way in and again during the interval. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
Basil Lacey said testily: “I wasn’t aware that those facts had ever been under dispute.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Peter. “As you know, I produce that show. This morning I called the box-office. They had a record of the three seats released to Miss Staines. We always keep house-seats in blocks of four. In that section of the house, therefore, there was still a single seat to dispose of.” He paused. “The business manager, needless to say, remembers the set-up perfectly. It was only yesterday. The fourth seat was taken at the last minute by a Hollywood director who’d flown in from Europe and was taking the midnight plane to the Coast. I happen to know the director. Robert Alden. I called him in Beverly Hills. He’s a most dependable man. I can assure you of that. And …”
Peter broke off. He was looking at Basil Lacey with a mildness that would have fooled nobody.
“On the phone Robert Alden told me he is quite positive that last night, during the first act, the seat on his left was empty. During the second act, however, it was occupied by a tall, thin man with a goatee.”
He looked at Iris. Iris smiled. Then he turned to Barnes. “That’s all I want to clear up. The first act curtain falls at nine-forty-five. That gave Mr. Lacey more than enough time to slip away to Ronnie’s after his first talk with Miss Staines and to return for the second talk in the interval.”
“It alters the picture slightly, doesn’t it?” said Iris. “Now Mr. Lacey has no alibi at all.”
“And I suggest,” said Peter, “that last night Ronnie came up here, just before Basil Lacey was going to the theater. He told Basil Lacey that the gravy train was to be discontinued and that the whole family was going to be shipped back to England. Losing his twelve thousand a year? Losing his nice luxurious free apartment? Basil Lacey didn’t like that at all. He scuttled off to the theater and his womenfolk and got an alibi with Miss Staines and her husband. Then he went back to Ronnie’s—and murdered him, knowing that he was perfectly safe because everyone would suspect Bill.”
That sudden change was too much for me. I looked at Peter and Iris, calm but formidable, standing between Barnes and Basil Lacey. I saw Jean staring in bewilderment. I saw Norah, pale and distraught, and Phyllis sharp-eyed and wary as a beagle. None of them seemed real. The whole scene had a quality of illusion—as if, in my abject depression, I had invented a vision of how I could have wished it all to end, a vision which was hopelessly unattainable because it went straight against the pattern, ignoring the very core of the matter, Ronnie’s treachery, Bill’s anguish, my anguish—the jump.
No, Peter might seem to have won where I had failed. But this would turn out to be just another will-o’-the-wisp. Of course it would. We were not to get off as lightly as this.
I looked at Barnes, trying once again to gauge from his face what was going on in his mind, and once again I was defeated. He stood there, as quiet, as smooth, as frighteningly uncommitted as ever. When he turned to Basil Lacey, there was nothing in his manner to indicate there had been any change at all.
He said: “Well, Mr. Lacey, what do you have to say to that?”
It frightened me too that Basil Lacey had remained so exquisitely unruffled. He had listened to Peter’s accusation with smiling politeness. Now the charming, slightly self-deprecating smile turned its full power on Barnes.
“There’s only one thing I can say, Lieutenant, and that is to admit I have not been totally frank with you.” For a moment he shed the encouraging radiance of his smile on his wife and Phyllis. “But I hope that when you hear what I have to tell you, you will realize that my reticence was—if not strictly legitimate, at least pardonable in terms of human frailty.”
For a moment, he paused. He had, of course, the full attention of the room, and I saw to my disgust that he was enjoying himself. Even this was the spotlight. And the spotlight, whatever the drama, was Basil Lacey’s spiritual climate.
“Yes, Lieutenant, Mr. Duluth, with his theatrical flair, has managed to divine a few things that are true. It
is true that Mr. Sheldon came up to this flat last evening, just as I was preparing to leave for the theater. It is true, also, that he was in an alarmingly accusatory mood. Oh, he made the most formidable threats. My daughter had disgraced our entire family. We had abused his generosity. We should all instantly be shipped back to England like so many bundles of spoiled hay.
I can assure you that he was very different from the man I had learned to admire and respect. I can assure you, also, that I am not accustomed to that sort of unpleasantness and that I was most ill-equipped to cope with so—so hysterical a mood.” He turned then towards Peter. “So, as you suggested, Mr. Duluth, I did scuttle off to the theater and my womenfolk. I did tell them what had happened. We did, as it chanced, run into Miss Staines and her husband. But …”
Here again he paused. His blue eyes were twinkling now. Even the goatee seemed to be twinkling. “But there, Mr. Duluth, is where your theatrical reconstruction and the truth part company. I have a feeling that you did not talk in sufficient detail with your director friend in Hollywood. Or perhaps he is less dependable than you imagine, less observant than I should suppose such a gentleman to be. For it is true that the seat next to him was empty during the first act, yes. It is also true that during the second act, I occupied it. But that doesn’t prove, does it, Mr. Duluth, that I was absent from the theater during the first act? In fact, I can assure you that I wasn’t. During the first act I happened to have taken the seat on the aisle, that is, the seat away from your director. I am sure that if you telephone to him again and refresh his memory, he will recall this fact. For I remember him clearly—a rather pudgy man. He came in late, after the curtain was up. Indeed he stumbled over my legs and was civil enough to apologize. ‘Pardon me,’ he said. And I said: ‘Gladly.’ I am fairly sanguine, Mr. Duluth, that, if you phone him again, he will remember that rather distinguished morsel of dialogue.”
He had moved now so that he was standing beside Norah, who sat, still as a mouse, on the arm of a chair. As he glanced at Barnes, he put his right hand on his wife’s shoulder.
My Son, the Murderer Page 20
