Wife or Death

by Ellery Queen

  "Thirty-four what?"

  "Subscription cancellations. In one morning! Amos, what do you hear around town?"

  "Gossip," the printer said.

  "About me?"

  "Nobody else, Jim."

  "Do you believe it?"

  Amos looked thoughtful. Finally he asked, "Which part?"

  Denton exploded. "Don't tell me you think I killed my wife, tool"

  "Don't say I do, don't say I don't."

  "Oh, you're not sure!"

  "Let me put it this way, Jim," the old printer said with a shrug. "If you did, you had your reasons."

  "Well, I didn't!"

  He looked relieved. "Glad to hear you say that, Jim. Didn't want to come right out and ask." And old Amos walked over to hang his coat and hat on the clothestree.

  Without another word he slipped into his inkstained coveralls and headed for the press room.

  Just then Ted Winchester slunk in. He was sporting a magnificent black eye.

  "What happened to you?" Denton demanded.

  Young Winchester mumbled something.

  "He was in a fight over to Frawley's," Amos Case said, pausing in the doorway, "that's what happened to him."

  "You? Fighting?" Denton eyed his employee. "What the devil were you doing in a barroom brawl, Ted?"

  "Oh, it wasn't anything."

  "The hell it wasn't, way I heard it," the printer said. "Sir Galahad in person. Defending the fair name of a lady."

  Young Winchester glared at the old man. "Why don't you shut up?"

  "Think Jim ought to know how his demon reporter acts in public," Amos said imperturbably. "Seems Red Almacher made a kind of dirty crack about you and Mrs. Guest, Jim. So Sir Galahad here socks Red on the jaw. You know Red—he'd rather fight than eat. It was quite a scrap, I understand. Sonny-boy here wiped Frawley's floor up with the big galoot—knocked out two of his front teeth and pretty near broke his nose. Do we make a page one item out of it, Jim?"

  "I wish you hadn't, Ted," Denton said.

  "I wish I hadn't, too," Winchester said miserably. "I don't know what happened to me—"

  "Might say you saw Red," chuckled the old printer.

  "Damn you, Amos! I mean, Mrs. Guest is such a darn nice gal, Jim. I just couldn't let her name be bandied about at a lousy bar by some filthy-minded town crocks. And to do it at a time like this, when her husband's hardly cold in his grave! But you're right, Jim, I probably only made matters worse. I'm sorry."

  "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Ted," Denton said gravely.

  "Fire me? I've got it coming."

  "Give you a five-dollar raise. There's little enough decency left in this town."

  "Jim," began young Winchester.

  "Don't you want it?"

  "Thanks, Jim."

  "I'll take it," Amos Case said.

  "You!" shouted Denton. "You've got the first dollar you ever scrounged. You're already making more out of this rag than I am. You go on the hell back to work."

  "Capitalist slave driver," the old man said with a grin, and went about his business.

  At 3:30, when Amos Case and Ted Winchester were gone for the day and he was alone in the office, Denton found himself dialing Corinne Guest's number.

  20

  Corinne's mother answered the phone. She greeted him so cordially that he knew she could not have heard the gossip linking him and Corinne in the murder of Angel and the death of George. It relieved him, for that meant Corinne had not heard it, either. The absolute certainty that it would reach her ears eventually he tried not to think about.

  "How's Corinne holding up, Mrs. Chase?"

  "Pretty well, Jim, considering. She's depressed, of course, but I think she's over the big shock. Would you like to talk to her?"

  "Is she up to it?"

  "Well, she gave me a list of the people she'd talk to if they called, and you head the list, Jim. Hold on a minute."

  When Corinne came to the phone, she said with an odd mixture of listlessness and warmth, "Hello, there."

  "You sure you're up to talking, Corinne?"

  "I'm glad you called. I've had a lot of time to think today, Jim. I've been awfully selfish. I haven't asked you for days what progress the police are making. Do they have any idea yet who did it? I mean . . , about Angel?"

  So she refused to think of George's death in the same terms, he thought. Poor Corinne.

  "I still seem to be their star suspect," he said lightly.

  "Oh, no! I thought they'd dropped that foolishness when they released you after that first questioning. They can't really believe you did it."

  "Well, they're also investigating other angles. Maybe they'll turn up something. But I called to talk about you. How do you feel?"

  "Sort of coming back to life, Jim. I'm just beginning to realize he's actually gone. But I'll be all right. Fred's had to go back to Houston, and my sister Kate has a job she can't afford to jeopardize, so she left this morning, too, but mother's staying for a while, and so are Dad and Mom Guest—at least till after the will is read and the legal matters are straightened out, I mean the store and things. I'm an absolute poopout where business is concerned—Dad Guest is going to help me."

  "How long is your mother staying?"

  "Until Monday. I'm sure I’ll be able to function by then. I'll have to. I can't go walking around like a zombie forever."

  "Of course you can't. Is there anything I can do, Corinne?"

  "Not a thing, Jim. Maybe next week, when I won't have anyone to baby me." She actually laughed.

  "Atta girl. Well, I'll be talking to you, sweetie."

  "Yes. Do that. Please."

  He hung up.

  And sat brooding.

  The resilience of the human spirit was remarkable. Corinne had loved George Guest deeply; his death had been the worst shock of her life. Yet already—the day after burying him—she had begun the bounce back to reality.

  Within a month the mourning bands would be gone from under her eyes. Within a year George would be an impossibly idealized memory which gave her only an occasional proud heartache. The most stubborn effect of his loss, her loneliness, might go on and on. But even the loneliness would fade in time. If someone else came along, it would die altogether. And so, at last, George Guest would be truly dead, a mysteriously remembered shadow of the past whose unimaginable bones lay somewhere beneath a name on a gravestone.

  After all, Corinne was only thirty years old and—a memory of his own flickered briefly to life—a passionate and desirable woman.

  She'll be all right, he thought.

  And I?

  But that was when Jim Denton jumped up from his desk, got hastily into his coat and locked up the Clarion office.

  It had been press day, and on the sidewalk outside the street door Denton noticed that at least a dozen of the bundles of newspapers left there for the local news carriers had still not been picked up. He glanced at his watch. It was after four. High school let out at a quarter past three. The carriers should have completed their pickups over a half hour ago.

  The hell with it, he thought. Let the papers rot.

  It was the parents, of course. Couldn't have their innocent little sons working for an adulterous murderer.

  He wondered cynically what the next development would be. Probably stones hurled through the Clarion window. Or dirty words painted all over the front of his house. Or both. And then—who knows?—a mob with a rope.

  Denton shrugged and crossed the square to the court house. He found the district attorney and the police chief with their heads together in Spile's office.

  The chief said hastily, "Hello, Jim."

  Crosby said nothing.

  Denton said, "Hi, Augie," and tossed the empty match folder he had found in Angel's candy box into Crosby's lap. Crosby picked it up and glanced at it. His face reddened.

  "What's this supposed to be?"

  "If you don't know, why are you blushing?"

  The district attorney suddenly crush
ed the matchbook and flung it into August Spile's wastebasket.

  "Exactly what I did with the note Angel left on her pillow," Denton remarked. "So you see, Ralph? It's the human thing to do."

  Crosby compressed his lips. Denton laughed and turned to the other man. "Talk to Norm Wyatt and Gerald Trevor, Augie?"

  The police chief nodded uneasily. "Up at the lodge."

  "Well?"

  "Well," the chief said, and stopped to clear his throat. "Course, Jim, I had to go slow. Couldn't come right out and start throwing accusations around. Made out like I was trying to trace George's movements last Friday night. Tried to pry out of 'em in every way I could think of if anything out of the way happened at the lodge that night. They just kept saying no. And I can't say I noticed any funny expression on Trevor's face."

  "So you didn't get anything at all, I take it?"

  "Well, I spotted four shotguns in the gun rack. Two were twelve-gauge."

  Crosby growled, "It was a waste of time. Angel wasn't meeting any lover that night."

  Denton looked at him. "On what ground do you base that profound opinion, Mr. D.A.? That my late wife was above it?"

  "I seem to have more respect for your late wife's memory, as you put it, than you do!"

  Denton took from his pocket the note signed "Curt" and held it before the district attorney's eyes. "Exhibit A. Recognize the handwriting?"

  Crosby's flush returned. "No."

  "Augie does. Don't you, Augie?" Denton held it before the chief. "Remember the witty little messages—mostly four-letter words, as I recall—he used to pass us in school? You were his favorite correspondent, Augie. Now tell me you don't know his handwriting."

  Spile said slowly, "Curt Oliver."

  "Right you are. It's an ancient memento I found in Angel's auld-lang-syne box. Purely historical interest, of course. Curt didn't attend the Wyatts' party, so he can't be the man she arranged to meet." He brought out the handmade valentine and held that before Ralph Crosby. "Exhibit B, Mr. District Attorney. Familiar?"

  Crosby's flush deepened. Denton stowed away the cartoon heart and produced the note signed "A."

  "Exhibit C. A for Arnold, surname Long, your immediate predecessor for Angel's—ah—favors. Exhibit D you just tossed in the wastebasket. I found her box of sweet memories last night. She kept one message from each of her lovers as a, record of her conquests. There were twenty-six, I believe, since I married her. I didn't count the ones before that."

  Crosby's face had undergone a swift change. The blood drained out of it as if sucked by a powerful pump, to be replaced by a suffering pallor. And the pale face contorted with despair.

  "You liar, Denton," he said thickly. "You goddam liar."

  "Well, what do you know," Denton said. "Then you really were in love with the trollop. Still are, Ralph. I imagine the others knew what she was and were satisfied with a few rolls in the hay. But not you. You fell for her. And, wonder of wonders, you're still nuzzling the fire in the torch. Can't you get yourself to believe what every last man, woman and juvenile delinquent in this town knows to be a fact? That my wife and your one-time mistress was a willing pushover for every John that asked her?"

  "You—shut—your dirty—mouth!" Crosby choked. At the complete silence of Denton and Chief Spile, he tried to come to himself. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the spittle off his lips. He did not meet their eyes. For a moment Denton felt sorry for him.

  "Look, Ralph, I'm not really enjoying this," Denton said quietly. "After all, I must hold some sort of record for cuckoldry. It's just that I find myself suspected of having murdered her, and I'm damned if on top of everything else she did to me I'm going to let her put me in the hot seat for something I didn't do. You knew perfectly well that when she dropped you it was to take on a new man. That's the man she left me to run off with. And that's the man I think did the job on her. How about leaving your personal feelings out of this, Ralph, and tackling the case on the level?"

  Crosby simply got up and walked out.

  After a long moment August Spile cleared his throat again. "Find anything in that box you mentioned? I mean from Norm Wyatt?"

  "No." Denton was frowning at the door the district attorney had just closed. "But then most of the note writers I couldn’t identify. If you want, I'll turn it all over to you for handwriting examination. Though I don't think it will advance us any. There was nothing in the box from Angel's last lover,"

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because she had the stuff arranged in chronological order, and Ralph Crosby's—that match cover—was the bottom one. If she'd received any message from the new boy, one of them should have been under Crosby's. The guy must have been too crafty to put anything in writing."

  "Could be, though, she filed it out of order," the police chief said. "You bring in the box tomorrow, Jim. I'll get hold of a sample of Norm Wyatt's handwriting some way and do a little comparing. If necessary, we can call in a handwriting expert. Mind if I hang on to the box? I'll give you a receipt for it."

  "Fine, Augie. FU drop it off in the morning."

  "By the way, Jim."

  Denton, halfway to the door, turned around.

  "I phoned Buffalo," August Spile said. "The polygraph man can bring his machine down here Friday. You still willing to take
  "You have said it, O Chief," Denton said, and grinned. "Just holler when ready!"

  He walked out almost as if he could see daylight and the edge of the woods.

  21

  Denton went back across the square to the Clarion office. The bundles of unclaimed newspapers were still lying there. His watch said twenty to five. He unlocked the door and threw the bundles inside.

  Then he phoned his garage.

  "Jim Denton. Will you have someone run my car over to my office? I'll drive him back."

  "Sorry, Mr. Denton," the attendant said. "We've been so rushed we haven't been able to get to it. Have to wait over till tomorrow."

  Was this another result of the gossip? He was sure that a week ago the Clarion editor's car would have received immediate attention.

  Denton shrugged and hung up. There was no point in calling for a cab; at this time of day it would be like trying to get a seat on the New York subway at the height of the rush hour. It was a sunny fall day with the temperature in the sixties. He decided to walk.

  He found himself enjoying it. Ridgemore was beautiful in Indian summer, and this fall it was spectacular. The old elms lining both sides of the streets spread their great branches so far out that they almost touched. It was like walking under a fiesta canopy.

  Some years, Ridgemore was hip deep in snow by early November. Winter would come soon, and suddenly, falling like an ax. Overnight the temperature would drop forty or fifty degrees. This might be his last chance to savor the dying autumn.

  Denton breathed deeply and slowed down.

  He was still seven blocks from his house when he had to stop for a traffic signal. A car heading in the same direction pulled up for the light as he waited on the corner.

  It was Matt Fallon, alone.

  And the cartoonist was pretending not to have seen him. Fallon's eyes were fixed on the traffic light, his neck unnaturally stiff.

  It was less awkward, Denton supposed, than having to offer the pariah a lift and perhaps be seen in his company.

  Denton felt a twitch of irritation. It had spoiled his walk.

  He called loudly, "Why, Matt old boy! Hiya!"

  Fallon's glance jumped his way in exaggerated surprise. He forced a smile. "Oh, Jim, hi. Didn't see you. Going my way?"

  "You bet," Denton said heartily, and he jumped into the cartoonist's car.

  The light changed, and Fallon stepped on the gas. He began to drive fast.

  "Whoa," Denton said. "Trying to break my neck, Matt, or get rid of me? Slow down."

  Fallon grinned feebly and slowed down. Once or twice he made a gargly sound, but it died in his throat. He seemed desperately anxious for Denton t
o say something—anything, to break the swelling silence.

  But Denton sat, furiously quiet. All the frustrations and unfairness of the past six days were boiling up in him. Matthew Fallon at that moment symbolized the town that had dirtied his reputation and Corinne's, and was getting ready to destroy them.

  He said nothing until Fallon, obviously relieved, braked to a stop at the Denton mailbox.

  "Okay, old boy?" the cartoonist said with a strained smile.

  Denton did not get out. "No, Matt, it's not okay," he said in a voice that shook. "It's not okay by a hell of a damn sight. You think I'm a wife-killer, too, don't you? AD my friends do. I've been tried and convicted by this town even before Augie Spile can bring himself to throw me in the clink. My so-called friends are still polite when they can't avoid meeting me—like you—but—also like you, Matt— they make like they're blind if they think they can get away with it. Have you cancelled your subscription to the Clarion yet?"

  Fallon said, "Now, Jim—

  "Ridgemore is loaded with friends like you. They started showing their friendship for me long before this by, one after the other, laying my wife. But you know all about that, don't you, Matt? You were in there demonstrating your friendship along with the rest."

  "What's the matter with you, Jim?" the cartoonist stammered.

  "Why, nothing, nothing at all!" Denton yanked the valentine out of his pocket and thrust it at Fallon. The man's face turned gray. "What have I got to worry about? Maybe there'll be a change in the rumors soon. Maybe you'll be the target. You know why I'm still walking around like anybody else instead of holding my head in one of those soggy cells in the court house sub-cellar?"

  Fallon mutely inched away. His expression suggested that he was dealing with a homicidal maniac.

  "Because Augie Spile can't prove anything on me," Denton rasped. "He's even beginning to accept what I've told him from the start—that Angel ran off to meet a lover that night who knocked her off for good. All her past playmates are in for investigation. At least those who were at the Wyatts* party that night. Her killer was at that party. That pretty well narrows it down, Matt. You're one of the few suspects. And maybe before long you'll know how it feels to have your fiends turn their heads and make believe they haven't seen you!"