Puzzle for Pilgrims

by Patrick Quentin

  “And Marietta.”

  “Marietta?” Her face sharpened with anger and disgust. “Why shouldn’t he turn against Marietta? Why should anyone bother about her? Martin’s right. She’s just a—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  That strange, passionless closeness which I had felt when we were together in my apartment in Mexico City had come again. Iris and I. I wondered if very old people who had been married many years felt like this. Impersonal, but fond.

  I said, “Anything’s better for Martin than this?”

  “Anything. Anything.”

  “And you don’t think Martin killed Sally?”

  “No, Peter.”

  “And you didn’t kill her yourself?”

  “Do I have to say that again.”

  “Then why did you let this go on? Why didn’t you go to the police? Martin didn’t do it. You didn’t do it. What did you have to lose?”

  She watched me steadily. “I didn’t dare.”

  “Because you were afraid Martin might have done it after all?”

  “Because I was afraid they would think so.”

  “And why do you suppose Martin didn’t go to the police if he’s innocent and if life is so intolerable to him this way?”

  A faint flush showed in her cheeks. “There is this thing he did in the past. Jake has evidence of that. Martin knew that even if he wasn’t accused of the murder, they’d put him in jail.” She looked at her drink. “Peter, why didn’t you go? To the police? You were never involved at all. Even Jake never pretended you could have done it.” She shrugged. “That’s a foolish question of course. It was for Marietta.”

  “And you,” I said.

  “Me?” There was genuine surprise in her voice, surprise and a kind of pleasure as if I had complimented her. “You mean you could still worry about me—after the way I’ve behaved?”

  “I’m not Emily Post.”

  Very quietly she said, “In the street just now Martin accused Marietta of killing Sally.”

  “That was only talk.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, Peter? Do you think Marietta might have done it? Do you?” Marietta was so near then that I could almost see her sitting at the table between us. And for the first time her life seemed to fall into some kind of pattern. She was still an enigma, but I saw there was a sort of key. Marietta was passive. Marietta had no will. Martin had broken her will when they were children, and from then on she was in a void, belonging to Martin, losing Martin, drifting to Jake like a will-less steel filing to a magnet, always drifting, reacting to other people’s desires, having no aggression in her own. And I knew then, with a conviction almost strong enough to be true, that Marietta could not have killed Sally. She couldn’t have thought of a thing and clung to it and carried it through. Marietta couldn’t have gone to that house, struggled body against body with Sally, forcing her will on the other woman, pressing her back onto the rotten balustrade.

  I said with a suddenness that seemed to rasp the individual silence of our table, “No, Marietta didn’t kill Sally.”

  Iris said, “So you do think it was Martin—or me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Peter, you do know. There isn’t anyone else.”

  Strange as it sounds, until then I had never faced the situation that squarely. Because I knew one of them was a murderer, I had shied away from the kind of speculation that might pin the crime on one of them in particular. Marietta? Iris? Now with this new conviction that it couldn’t have been Marietta, the censor was lifted. I was released into thinking, Iris’s sentence stayed in my mind like a challenge. And, as I considered it, a thought came, dazzling as the cascade of silver fire from the cathedral wall. Once it had come, it seemed unbelievable that it had not occurred to me before. Excitement flooded through me.

  I said, “There is someone else.”

  “Not…?” Iris’s eyes darkened with anxiety. “Peter, you don’t mean that you…?”

  “No. Not me.”

  “Then—who?”

  “Jake,” I said.

  “Jake.”

  “Sally hired him. She took him into her confidence. She told him all her stupid neurotic fears that one of you wanted to murder her. She gave him the evidence she had against Martin and Marietta. He knew about the will. He knew Martin inherited everything if she died; he knew Martin and Marietta would be saved from jail if she died; he knew you would get Martin if she died.”

  “So he killed her.” Iris leaned across the table, groping to complete the pattern. “Because we all had such terrific motives, he knew we’d be sure it would have to be one of us. He suppressed all the evidence. Maybe he even planted it. He squared the police. And he had us in the palm of his hand. He knew we’d pay for the murder he committed. He knew we’d go on until all Sally’s money… Peter.”

  “It could be.”

  “It is, it is.”

  She went on excitedly. I hardly listened, because I was feeling now and not thinking. There was the relief that neither Marietta nor Iris nor Martin need be a murderer any more. I was feeling Jake too, with his crude cleverness. There was a sort of outrageous genius in the idea of killing a woman whom a lot of people wanted to kill and then blackmailing them for his own crime. Jake was exactly the type to have that genius.

  If it happened that way, there was a sort of justice, too, of Sally hiring a detective as a final, malicious twist to make us suffer, Sally being destroyed by the monster she had created.

  “Everything’s different now.” Iris was radiant with a new optimism. “We can call his bluff. All this can be over. We can go back.”

  Already she was thinking futilely that Martin would love her again.

  I said, “We have no proof.”

  “We don’t need proof. He bluffed us. Why can’t we bluff him?” She got up. “Come on, Peter. Let’s find Martin. Quick. Let’s tell him.”

  “No,” I said.

  Her face fell. “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t have proof. Because we’ve got to go slowly. Because Martin hates his guts so much, we couldn’t trust him.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, you’re right. We shouldn’t tell Martin.”

  “Or Marietta.”

  She looked at me curiously. “You mean Marietta might—be on Jake’s side?”

  Somewhere down at Mocambo, down near the night-pounding roar of the Gulf, Marietta was dancing with Jake, pressed close against him, his hand hot against her back, his mouth near her dark, soft mouth.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think Marietta might be on Jake’s side.”

  And saying that hurt as much as if I had dug a toothpick under my nail.

  Twenty-one

  We walked back to the hotel up the Malecon. The broad water-front avenue was strung with lights. Their little reflections glowed in the dark harbor water. But all the curio stalls were closed. Hardly a person was on the street. Everyone had been drawn to the Zocalo, the Cinco de Mayo, the nerve centers of the carnival. An Argentine freighter was in dock. Its silhouette loomed black as charcoal, illuminated only by lonely riding lights. A wind was blowing in from the north. It brought flying grains of sand from the great dunes beyond the town. It skittered the fiesta flotsam, the twisted streamers, the soiled confetti -the relics of that morning’s triumphant parade of the Queen of the Carnival.

  After the noise, the quietness was a balm. It seemed to smooth away my uncertainty. I was sure now that I was right about Jake. In the whole group, Sally and Jake had been the only positive characters. Martin, Marietta, even Iris, were all, in a way, destined to be victims rather than protagonists. The pattern made sense with Jake, the predatory male animal, killing Sally, the predatory female animal, and with Martin, Marietta, and Iris suffering for it.

  Looking back, a fatal meeting between Sally and Jake seemed inevitable. Jake with his thick, cruel wrists and his sadistic virility. Sally, small, female, bright-eyed at the bullfight,
in love with death.

  They fascinate me, the bullfights… blood and the ballet… dressed up for death…

  I could see Sally, struggling in Jake’s big arms, being relentlessly carried to the balcony. Perhaps she had enjoyed it. Perhaps, without knowing it, that was what she had been waiting to find at the end of her pilgrimage, a man crude as a bull to kill her.

  We reached the hotel. The light showed in the transom of Martin’s room. Iris veered to the door.

  “No,” I said.

  She looked at me pleadingly. “I only wanted to know if he’s all right.”

  “No. Better not tonight.”

  She obeyed me passively. I went with her to her room. She dropped down on the edge of the bed. Beneath the dark hair, her face and the skin of her throat were white. She looked like a gardenia that had been pelted by a rainstorm—drooping.

  I said, “I’ll handle Jake.”

  She looked up. “Alone, Peter?”

  “He’s got nothing on me. I’m on his level. It’s best that way.”

  “You—you think we’re right?”

  “I’m sure we are.”

  “What’ll you do—say?”

  “Something. I’ll think of something. I’m not going to rush. Maybe later tonight—or tomorrow.”

  “Peter?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s still the evidence of the thing Martin and Marietta did. If you expose Jake, Martin and Marietta will still go to prison.”

  “We don’t have to expose him. The police are satisfied. He’s seen to that. We’ve just got to get rid of him.”

  She got up and came to me. She put her hands on my arms.

  “Peter, I’m frightened.”

  “For Martin?”

  “For you.”

  “For me?”

  “Jake’s dangerous. If he’s really killed Sally, he’s dangerous.”

  I grinned. “I’m no woolly lamb myself.”

  “Be careful, darling.”

  “I’ll be careful.” I kissed her. She clung to me, tense and dry. I said, “Don’t worry. Maybe after tonight, after all this is over, Martin—”

  “Don’t be nice, Peter. You treat me like an idiot child.”

  I put my hand under her chin, tilted her face up. “Isn’t that what you are, baby? An idiot child?”

  She smiled then, quickly, vividly. “Yes, darling. That’s what I am.”

  She kissed me again. Her lips were warm. “What would I do without you?”

  “Stick to the script,” I said.

  I drew away from her, patting her arm.

  “Goodnight, Iris.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I started for the door.

  “Peter

  “Yes.”

  “If anything happens tonight, tell me.”

  “All right.”

  “However late. I won’t be asleep.”

  “Okay.”

  “Goodnight, Peter.”

  “Goodnight, Iris.”

  Dim light fanned in through the window of my room. The strengthening north wind rattled the shade. I could hear music from the Zocalo below. The carnival was still swirling on. I didn’t bother to turn on the light. I lay down on the bed and lit a cigarette. I had a job to do.

  After weeks in which I had been forced, against my will, to play the role of onlooker, it was pleasant to be released into action again. But it was a different assignment. I was morally sure now that Jake had killed Sally. But I had absolutely no proof. Jake would know I had no proof. It would be my bluff against his.

  I tried to work out a plan, but my thoughts strayed. The music drifting up from the square made me brood about Marietta. She was still with Jake. I could see the great, open-walled pavilion at Mocambo on the sea. The orchestra would be playing; the dancers would be pressed even closer than in the Cinco de Mayo. I could see Marietta clinging to Jake, crushed against the scarlet domino in the rotating throng, Marietta drifting on the tide of her own strange destiny, eschewed by Martin, wanted by Jake. And wanting him?

  Marietta’s image haunted me. I couldn’t concentrate on what had to be done. I stubbed the cigarette. Better leave it till tomorrow. It was wiser anyway to wait, to exploit the advantage of the morning. I had no idea of the time, but I was tired. I undressed, put on pajamas, and lay in the bed, listening to the music against my will, trying to remember what life had been like before I met Marietta.

  It was later, much later, when she came. I was still awake. The door opened and closed and I could see her, slim and straight, in the faint light from the window. I knew who it was before she reached the bed, and my heart seemed to turn over. She almost ran to me.

  “Peter.”

  She slid onto the bed. She put her arms around me. She was cold as ice and shivering.

  “Hold me, Peter. Hold me.”

  “Marietta.”

  “Hold me.”

  I propped myself against the pillows. I drew her close. Her whole body was racked with shakes like an ague. She was still in the Tehuantepec costume, but the headdress was gone. I could see her hair, like a shining shadow, against the white of the pillow slip. Her lips darted meaninglessly up and down my face, kissing my cheek, my ear, my eye. She was like a child, infested with night terrors, running blindly to the first human contact.

  “Hold me, Peter. Don’t talk. Hold me.”

  I stroked her hair. I kissed her cold forehead. I rocked her back and forth as if she were, in fact, a child. Gradually I could feel some of the violence subsiding.

  I said, “What is it, Marietta? Tell me.”

  Her teeth were chattering.

  “What is it, Marietta?”

  In the semidarkness, I could only see the shape of her, the outline of her shoulder, the white curve of her cheek, and a faint gleam that was her eyes. All in black and white, like a blurred spirit photograph.

  Still holding her, I reached to the bedside table, lit a cigarette, and put it between her lips.

  “Here.”

  Her hand came up. It took the cigarette and brought it downward in a little arc of flame. The spasm of shaking was over, but her body was still quivering.

  “Jake,” she said.

  “Jake?”

  “I’ve been with Jake. In Jake’s room… Jake.”

  She said the name three times as if it were some dreadful rune. She dropped down so that her head was lying in my lap. She was completely quiet. The room was so quiet that the music from the square seemed to blare like a radio turned up. I couldn’t see her face, I couldn’t hear her, but I knew she was crying. There was something unendurable about the passive weight of her and the knowledge of that silent, desolate weeping.

  Marietta had always been impervious. Marietta had walked through disaster, serene, cryptic, never demanding. Seeing her like this was wrong as thunder in January.

  I said, “Nothing matters, Marietta. Remember that. Nothing really matters in the long run.”

  She moved her head on my lap so that she was looking at me. The tears had made her eyes luminous. In a quick, breathless voice, she said, “I’ve got it. He doesn’t know. After he said that, I knew they were there with him somewhere. I found them in a brief case when he was in the bathroom. I threw it into the harbor. I destroyed the ticket. He doesn’t know.”

  I said, “Threw what in the harbor, Marietta? Destroyed what ticket?”

  “The bracelet. The pawn ticket.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The things—the proof Sally had against Martin.” She repeated,” I took them. He doesn’t know.”

  I said, “I never knew about that, Marietta.”

  She brought the cigarette to her lips. As she drew on it, the glow illuminated her face. It looked naked, violated, like a face in Poland during the German occupation.

  “Three years ago, Peter. Before Martin married Sally, we had no money left. The book wasn’t finished. He had to finish the book. The woman came. She was a tourist. She was horrible, grabbi
ng, greedy, rich. She wanted Martin. There was the emerald bracelet. Martin stole it. They never knew. They thought it was the guide. But they didn’t do anything to the guide. There wasn’t any evidence.”

  I put my hand down. I laid it on the smooth skin of her shoulder above the deep swooped neck of the embroidered blouse.

  “Go on.”

  “He brought it to me. I knew he’d stolen it. He told me. We had to have money to live, to keep us from being sent to the British Embassy for deportation. He didn’t know what to do with it. Martin never knows what to do. I didn’t know either. But I took it to Mexico City. I found a place. I pawned it. The money was enough.”

  The fall and rise of her shoulder under my hand was gentler.

  “Sally was suspicious. Sally was always suspicious. After the marriage, she searched around in Martin’s things. She found the pawn ticket. She went to Mexico City. She redeemed the bracelet. She knew then. She kept it. Somehow she kept the ticket too, tucked away. Scheming, waiting, so she could have them as an ace against Martin if she needed them. Then, after Martin and Iris went away together, she threatened him with the bracelet. She threatened me too. She hired Jake. She gave the bracelet and ticket to Jake because she was afraid we would try to get them back. Jake had the bracelet. But now they’re gone. I took them. I threw the bracelet in the harbor.”

  She stopped speaking, bringing the silence back. Now that the tawdry story was out at last, it seemed almost insignificant to me. The only aspects that still had life were Sally’s devious planned spite—and Marietta. Marietta, who always seemed so remote from action, had been the one who had stepped in and turned the spoils of Martin’s feckless theft into bread and butter. And here in Veracruz, while the rest of us had been sunk in apathy Marietta had set herself a goal. She had determined to retrieve the evidence against Martin, to outwit Jake. She had outwitted him.

  A curious elation began. I said, “So all this time you’ve been playing Jake’s game, giving him the come-on, just for a chance to get the evidence away. Poor kid, you’ve put up with him, let him maul you, been through all that—just for Martin.”