“Meant to kill him. Murdered him, okay? Is that clear enough for you?”
I let her accusation hang there between us like an obscenity. She looked away again, across the room, nervously dug another cigarette from her case and lit it, exhaling the smoke vehemently, a mixture of anger and impatience. I knew she was operating in a kind of vacuum, obviously unaware of Varada’s return to torment the Saberdenes. Although I was far from an expert on feminine psychology, you didn’t need to be an authority to know that Samantha Barber’s observations about another woman would have to be taken with more than a grain of salt. She must have held a grudge against Victor, whatever their subsequent relationship, from the time he unceremoniously dumped her. Shortly thereafter he had married Caro. One look at Samantha Barber and you knew that she would be a bad loser in the sexual skirmishes which were bound to be her customary context. The anger she’d felt for Victor would surely have been easily enlarged to include Caro. And, of course, there was still that one joker lurking in the pack. I decided to play it.
“Caro was upset because she believed you were sleeping with her husband. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Well what?” she snapped, continuing to avoid my eyes.
“Were you?”
“Look, I haven’t killed anyone. We’re not talking about me—”
“But, for the record, were you?”
“Victor said his wife was frigid—”
“So, were you having an affair with Victor? Sleeping with him?”
“What of it? What if I was? She wouldn’t—”
“So, one woman confronts another about having an affair with her husband. Somebody gets slapped. Big deal. No way in the world that’s evidence of having a homicidal streak. In fact, I’d say that you got off lightly. And if I were you I wouldn’t drag Caro’s name through New York’s fashionable watering holes, as they say … I wouldn’t want to see any of this in Liz Smith’s column.”
She was pulling herself together for rebuttal. She leaned back and regarded me with a faint smile through the drifting smoke. “Why,” she said softly, “am I putting myself through this conversation? What do you imagine I have to gain from telling you this? If you can answer that one, let me know because it’s escaped me. Think about it, Mr. Nichols.”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said.
“I’m telling you this because Caro murdered Victor and Victor meant a great deal to me. And because he always spoke of you with great affection. I guess I’m trying to warn you about Caro, whatever your relationship with her is or may come to be.”
“You don’t need to warn me about her. Shall we leave it at that?”
“She didn’t just slap me and storm off in a huff. She did hit me, bloodied my nose. Then she grabbed a poker from the fireplace set and was coming after me … when Victor came into the room and got it away from her. I’m telling you, she would have murdered me on the spot. Victor kept that from happening … but she didn’t fail when she shot Victor. He didn’t have anyone to save him from her. Victor believed, he knew she was unstable and dangerous.” She was finally looking at me straight on, her eyes narrow and unfaltering. “You’d do well to believe me, Mr. Nichols. Or are you too far gone to hear what I’m saying … yes, I suppose you are. In that case I’m truly sorry for you. You have a very dark way to go …”
“Victor loved his wife very deeply,” I said.
“And she killed him—”
“He told me that he loved her and his every action proved it to me. He was far from perfect—I’m an authority on being imperfect—and their marriage was probably just as troubled as most. But let me be frank, Mrs. Barber—the story you’ve told me rings with spite and cruelty. As you’ve pointed out, your motive escapes me. Except that you couldn’t possibly have said such things were Victor still alive. And for your own information let me assure you that you don’t know anything like the whole story—try to believe that. And let me suggest again that you keep your accusations to yourself.”
“You needn’t worry about that. Whatever you may believe, I am not a gossip. You are the only person in the world who needs my advice about Caro Saberdene.” She sighed, dropped her gold lighter into her bag, and put on sunglasses. “Since you’re not about to take it, I can only wish you the very best of luck. I’ve done what I can and my conscience is,” she smiled almost sadly, “well, fundamentally clear. I’ve done what Victor would have wanted me to do. Please, don’t get up. I’m already running late. Finish your drink.” She stood looking down at me. “Victor loved you, Mr. Nichols. He’d want you to take care of yourself.”
Chapter Thirteen
ONE
IT WAS A RELIEF, WHEN I checked the messages on the machine back at the house, to hear Caro telling me that she’d be spending the evening at the hospital with her father. She’d get a sandwich in the coffee shop. Then she and Andy were planning to watch Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. She laughed and said they had a chair for me if I felt like attending. “If you come,” she said, “bring the popcorn.”
I stood by the desk smiling at the sound Of her voice, half-thinking I might join them. But no, Samantha Barber had put me in a rotten mood and I was relieved that I didn’t have to inflict it on Caro. She was very sensitive to my moods. She would have asked me what was wrong and the last thing I wanted to do was haul out the specter of Victor’s old girlfriend. Whatever had happened between them, if indeed Caro had ever gone to the Barber place at all, it was bound to bring up unpleasant and unnecessary associations.
Samantha Barber’s motivation continued to elude me. The more I thought about it the more the woman’s performance tended to splinter. If I hadn’t known Caro I might have believed the story. Which only went to show you the value of the objective outsider’s opinion: it could be so easily pushed and pulled into an unwarranted monstrosity. Thank God I did know her, could protect her from a character assassin.
In the latter part of the evening I needed to get out of the house. It had begun to rain and the heat had eased into the midseventies. The rain was coming down hard, bouncing in a blur off the pavement, reflecting the headlights of the cars sending up furls of water from the paving. I stood at the top of the steps feeling the first cooling breeze in a long time. I opened Victor’s umbrella with its ash handle, had a momentary flashback, to Victor standing in the rain in Harvard Square more than twenty years before, felt the twinge that came when I realized I would never see him again, that now the times we had shared were truly fading into oblivion where they would finally disappear as if they had never happened, as if Victor and I had never existed.
I pulled myself out of that, looked across the street to where I’d once seen Varada from a window in Victor’s study. Varada, Varada …
Where the hell was he? What was he doing now? Had he left New York, left our lives? And how would we know whether he had or not? How long would he linger in our minds, threatening us? How desperately insignificant Samantha Barber seemed when you had even the memory of Varada. I thought how many heart-stopping memories of him I had gathered in so short a time. And the gallery of those snapshots of time Caro must have stored inside her …
I was still contemplating Carl Varada when I crossed the FDR Drive with the traffic swishing along the wet, shiny highway below and reached the sidewalk running along the East River. The fog riding above the water and rain muffled the sounds of the city. The moon had long ago called it quits. The lampposts loomed up before me like tall skinny stalks topped by furry blurred blooms. A garden of the night and the river and the occasional foghorns moaning from ships you could no longer see.
The idea of ships you couldn’t see dovetailed a little too neatly with my thoughts of Varada. Every instinct I had was telling me that he was still there, still watching and waiting, preparing to leap and strike when we least expected it.
I didn’t know how far I’d walked but I was working up a sweat under my jacket, and the umbrella seemed to have sprung a
leak. I stopped and leaned against the fence, looked out across the river to Queens and Brooklyn blinking and glowing behind the fog. It was only then that I fully registered the steady clicking of footsteps that had been trailing along behind me for maybe ten minutes. I cocked my head like a poorly trained mime, tried to pierce the fog for a glimpse of my companion, when the clicking stopped.
A large shape became faintly visible along the fence, leaning on it as I was, unmoving. When I moved away along the walkway the clicking began again. When I turned a corner I stopped, moving off the path to stand beside a steel buttress anchoring another overpass across the FDR. I don’t know what exactly I thought I was doing but the bottom line was that I had the feeling deep in my gut that the clicking was Varada. He’d come for me. He was stalking me.
My legs were a little rubbery. And even if I’d felt like running I didn’t know where the path went, where the next overpass was, and I didn’t want him to know I’d spotted him. I just wanted to become slightly invisible and get a look at him.
The shape materialized out of the fog, its face hidden beneath a broad umbrella, like a doorman’s. He couldn’t see me and I couldn’t identify him. But he stopped opposite my hiding place, turned slowly. He was big and he was looking for me.
Then he spoke.
“Mr. Nichols? Is it you, Mr. Nichols?”
The voice wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Varada.
I stepped out from behind the support. “I’m right here.”
Slowly he shifted and turned toward me, the umbrella still in my line of vision. “I’ve been following you, Mr. Nichols.”
“So I noticed,” I said.
He came toward me.
“Lift the fucking umbrella,” I said.
He lifted it slowly. Everything he did, he did slowly.
“You may not remember me, Mr. Nichols. My name is Martin Edel. We met at dinner at the Saberdenes’.” I remembered the heavy, drooping lower lip and the way Caro’s delicate hand had escaped his wrinkled paw on the tablecloth. Judge Edel. He turned his heavy jowled old poker face on me and waited.
“Someone called you a hanging judge,” I said.
“Victor. Victor always found that an amusing riposte. Why I cannot imagine but then I never spent much time trying to plumb the depths of Victor’s idea of wit. He was my friend, always my friend, and I never analyzed him. I might have been better off had I done so, the way things have turned out.” He tweezed the lower Up between thumb and forefinger, tilted his head back fractionally so that he looked rather like a pig regarding a truffle beyond price, said: “Walk with me a moment, Mr. Nichols.” We fell into step. “You noticed I was following you. Very alert. Who did you think I was, pray tell?”
“Varada.”
“Of course. I daresay you were delighted when my identity was revealed.”
“I daresay. Why were you following me, Judge?”
“I’ve been thinking about you for the past few days, debating a point. I went out to take a long walk in the rain, found myself heading for the Saberdenes’ with the idea that we should have a chat. Then I saw you ahead of me. An omen, I told myself. So I followed you and here we are. I have something to discuss with you.”
“About what?”
“About the Saberdenes. Come see me, Mr. Nichols. At my home. Sixty-second and Fifth. Tomorrow evening? Could you arrange that?”
“Why? What has it to do with me?”
“I’m unsure as to how to answer either question. After you see what I have to show you, you may be able to tell me yourself. But I am not in any way a frivolous man. I have no intention of wasting your time. Let’s say nine o’clock. Does that suit you?”
“All right. I’ll take you at your word, Judge. It’s strange, if you don’t mind my saying so, the way your face gives away not one damn thing.”
“I’m a judge. That’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Keeps everyone in suspense, I find. I love suspense.” He made a small smile above his jowls. “Don’t you love suspense? Plenty of it in your books.”
“Suspense is just grand,” I said.
We stopped at the next overpass. “This is my stop,” he said. He looked down at me when he’d gone halfway up the stairs. “By the way, I’ll have a chap on hand to meet you. He has quite a story to tell. You’ll find it interesting, I’m sure. And Nichols …”
“Yes?”
“Be sure you come alone. That above all. Alone.” He flapped a huge hand at me. “Goodnight, young fellow.”
He’d used the same words that Samantha Barber had used, urging me to come alone. Meaning no Caro. Obviously it was just a coincidence. The judge might just have been thinking of her tender feelings at this time. Maybe he had something to tell me about Victor, something not fit for a widow’s ears.
TWO
The next day my publisher, Neal Davidson, had me to lunch in the Pool Room at the Four Seasons. He always had a corner table and he lived in fear of two things: that the tax laws would be changed to alter his expense deductions and that either of his two former wives would be seated nearby and thereby ruin his lunch. Beyond those dangers, he seemed to lead a life of cheerful and profitable mischief making. After a couple of gin gimlets and desultory reports on reviews of my new book which were beginning to trickle in from the outback, he fixed me with, yes, a gimlet stare and got to the real point of the exercise.
“You’ve had rather an exciting visit to the old homelands,” he said. “I mean, the synchronicity of it … or is it serendipity? I can never get those two straight—”
“Let’s try it in context,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Just that you, one of the world’s—yes, Charles, one of the world’s—foremost writers of true crime books, you come to New York and not only stay at the home of your oldest friend, who happens to be one of the world’s leading criminal defense lawyers, but then by a miracle of chance the lawyer’s wife murders the lawyer … well, Charles, the old publisher’s mouth fairly waters at the prospect of such a story—indeed, the prospect of such a book. Egad, Charles, a golden apple has plummeted from out the sky and into our laps … ah, here are your shrimps. At seven dollars per shrimp, I do hope you enjoy them.” He grinned first at the shrimps, then at me. “Synchronicity? Serendipity?”
“Try coincidence,” I said, “and of course you’ve got it all screwed up. Particularly the crucial point—”
“Well, unscrew me, do!”
“There was no murder.”
“No? The chap’s dead, Charles.”
“It was a tragic accident. Period.”
“Are you quite sure of that? I mean to say, I’ve heard the odd rumor that there’s a past involved. You know, a Past, as in ‘woman with a past.’ Somerset Maugham country. You’re right on the scene, I realize. I thought you might have the lowdown, so to speak.” He maneuvered a bit of cold salmon with sauce verte onto a fork and eased it into his mouth, savoring it. “Eat, eat. Mangia!”
I snuggled up to the shrimp in mustard sauce and ate one, seven dollars’ worth, hardly noticing it. “Who’s dealing with rumors about the Saberdenes?”
“Who knows? One hears so much drivel. I might have heard something from Marc Foxx at a party a while back. He worked on Victor’s book, you know. He may have said that he’d found Mrs. Saberdene something of a mystery.” He shrugged and nudged my arm with his elbow. “I naturally have an obligation to discuss the book aspects … after all, you’re virtually a part of the story, wouldn’t you agree?” He smiled blandly. “You’re the man to write the book, Charles, or someone else will. I understand there was a murder, a trial, the woman in the case sending the killer to prison with her testimony … then cracking up … then marrying the famous lawyer. And now she kills the lawyer. Goodness gracious, Charles. It’s a ready-made saga … and the poor fellow who went to prison turns out to be innocent! I mean, what does one want for one’s nickel?”
“You seem to know a hell of a lot, Neal.”
“One hears this and
that. Lifeblood of publishing.” He looked up and gasped sharply, then slumped back in the banquette.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, never better. For just an instant I thought Marian had come in. Christ. A reprieve.”
“Neal, listen to me. I will not write a book about the agonies of the Saberdenes.”
“Nobody would ever have you stay with them again, is that what you’re saying? Blackballed in the houses of your friends?”
“Neal, you live in another world. Victor’s death was a ghastly accident and using it to sell books is one bloody hell of an awful idea. Clear on that, are we?”
“All right, you must be guided by your own lights. I realize that. You’ve always been a gent, I’ve always said that. However, I think you should know that I’ve already had two agents onto me with proposals for books on this ghastly accident. And they don’t know a tenth of what you do, nor would they have the slightest interest in sparing Mrs. Saberdene. And Marc Foxx’s agent has a call into me this morning and you just know what it’s about … so, maybe you ought to at least think it over, Charles.”
“It’s simply impossible.”
“Do I detect a personal component in your reasoning?”
“Indeed,” I said.
“How personal, Charles? You might as well tell me, I’m so damned insistent.” He pushed his plate a few inches away. “I only eat half of any meal these days. Got to drop a fast twenty. I’m a paragon of will.” He winked at me, smiling, happy with his leaven of malice. “You know, you really can trust my discretion, Charles. What’s going on with you and the Widder Saberdene?”
I figured what the hell. He’d been my publisher in the States for a long time and I’d gone through his divorces with him and we knew where each other’s bodies were buried. And it would do me some kind of psychological good to tell someone.
“All right, Neal. I’m in love with her. Don’t press me beyond that.”
He stared at me, making a soft whistling sound through pursed lips. He crooked a finger at a waiter and said nothing until the coffee arrived. He emptied a packet of artificial sweetener into the cup and stirred.
The Saberdene Variations Page 13
