The Man Who Loved His Wife

by Vera Caspary

  Elaine walked as if in a trance, her hand stretched out like a blind woman’s. The sight of death so frankly uncovered caused a kind of paralysis. Fletcher was no less rigid than the woman standing with her hand extended above his body. At the door, like a lost child in her ruffled, baby doll nightgown, Cindy sobbed.

  “He must have killed himself,” Elaine said and stared at her hand as though she were surprised by her ability to move it. She looked about the room like a stranger who had never seen it before. And her hand dropped heavily, brushing the edge of the mattress.

  No longer a desolate child, Cindy had become an old woman with a hag’s jutted chin, fierce eyes, hard cords in her neck. “Why do you say that? How do you know?”

  Elaine pushed her aside and went to the telephone. Cindy had left the handset dangling. Elaine hung up and waited for the dialing tone. The first name that came to her mind was Ralph’s. She looked up his number and called his office. An operator’s stilted voice asked if this was an emergency call. “Yes,” Elaine said. “My husband’s dead. This is Mrs. Fletcher Strode.”

  “How can you?” wailed Cindy.

  If the girl had not been sniffling behind her, Elaine might have let go herself. It was safer, she felt, to force herself to immediate tasks. “We’d better have some coffee.” She measured it out and poured water into the pot as though this were an ordinary day and she were preparing her husband’s breakfast. Her eyes were dry. “You’d better wake Don.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “What! He’s gone out? So early?”

  “He had a very early appointment. About a job,” Cindy said between sobs. Don wanted to be away from the house in case the real estate agent called. He had given her instructions carefully. “He thought the conference might last all morning, and he has a lunch date, too.”

  “Can’t you get in touch with him?”

  “I don’t know where he is,” wept the girl.

  “You’d better lie down and try to pull yourself together. I’ll take care of things,” Elaine said.

  She forced herself to go back to Fletcher’s room. There was a bluish cast to his flesh, and his face was expressionless as stone. He did not look like a man who had tumbled a girl about on beds and couches, on the back seat of a car, on the sand at the beach and, one crazy night in Kentucky (he had just won nine hundred dollars at the races) on the bathroom floor. She could not recall shared laughter, the touch of his hand, the scent of his flesh, the quarrels and the fun. Nothing; not even the fury of last night’s insult, the hurt they had given each other. Upon the bed she saw, not her husband, not her lover, not her man—death lay there. “I’m sorry, Fletch,” she said in a voice directed at nothing and with no life in it.

  THE MORNING FOG had lifted. Watery sunshine shimmered on the hill while the streets below lay drowned in warm mist. The temperature rose. Sweating in a wool jacket, Ralph wished that doctors could dress as comfortably as truck drivers. He rang the Strodes’ bell several times before the door was opened. The daughter stood there. She wore a dark robe that gave the correct note of mourning. Her fair hair had been combed, but lay limp about her face. “In there,” she said through a damp handkerchief pressed to her lips.

  Elaine stood beside the bed. Ralph took her hands. They were cold and dry. She wore a transparent nightgown with only spaghetti straps over her shoulders. Ralph was embarrassed by the lightly shrouded nudity, so that he could not offer the comfort of an embrace. Her quiet manner seemed sadder than a teary display of grief. “What happened?”

  She nodded toward the bed.

  “I mean this.” He raised his hand toward her bruised face.

  She shuddered as though he had touched a sharp instrument to an open wound. “It’s nothing.”

  It was clear that she did not want to speak ill of the dead. While Ralph began his examination of the body, she stood motionless with bowed head.

  “Put on some clothes. You’re disgusting!” cried Cindy.

  “Excuse me.” Elaine used the tone of a minor social error. She hurried out of the room.

  There was nothing for Ralph to do but inform the coroner’s office. He used the kitchen phone so that he could make a report without adding to the distress of Fletcher Strode’s women. He had barely hung up when the telephone rang. Elaine hurried to answer. She was covered from chin to instep by a flowing robe of a soft moss-green fabric. The call was from New York. Mr. Stoner said he had called before but been disconnected, and had tried for half an hour to get a connection. He had profitable information for Fletcher and wanted to tell him immediately.

  Elaine could not blurt out the news that her husband was dead. “Sorry, he can’t come to the phone now. He’s not feeling well. I don’t want to disturb him. You might call back later in the day.”

  “How can she?” wailed Cindy. “She hasn’t shed a tear.”

  “Shock affects some people that way. They cut off all feeling, but later they suffer in other ways.” Ralph spoke curtly. He had already noted Cindy’s intolerance of her stepmother, but wondered at the vindictiveness in this hour of grief.

  Like a simple housewife on an uneventful day, Elaine carried in the tray with coffee. Finally, when she had poured out three cups and asked about cream and sugar, she spoke of Fletcher. “Did he suffer?”

  “I can’t say. It doesn’t look that way, but I’ve only made a superficial examination. I should say he became unconscious quickly. There’s nothing in his face nor the position of the body to show that he struggled.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  Cindy sprang up as though she had been catapulted out of her chair. “There’s not going to be any autopsy on my father.”

  “My dear,” Ralph used his smoothest bedside tone, “you’ve got nothing to be alarmed about. It’s the regular routine of the coroner’s office.”

  “What do we want a coroner for?”

  In a voice sharpened by the strain of self-control Elaine said, “Let the doctor do what he has to.”

  “It’s the law, Mrs . . .” For the life of him Ralph could not remember the girl’s married name. “When a doctor’s called in after death has occurred, he may not sign a death certificate unless he’s seen the patient within three weeks or has been treating him for a condition that might cause mortality. Let’s not get upset. It’s quite natural, I assure you.”

  All the color had been drained from Cindy’s face. She trembled violently. “You weren’t my father’s doctor. Why did she call you?”

  “He’s my doctor. I thought of him first,” Elaine said.

  “You should have called Daddy’s doctor. Now there’ll be all kinds of fuss. Newspapers and stuff.” Cindy fell back into her chair. She was not only frightened, but on the verge of sickness. At last night’s party she had drunk too much. Champagne always made her sick, but it was so expensive and so correct to profess a love for good wine that she forced herself to live up to other people’s taste.

  “Was he like this . . . in this position . . . when you first found him? Has anyone touched him?” Ralph scanned both of their faces.

  “Cindy found him.”

  “He was just like that.”

  Gingerly, with the tips of thumb and forefinger, Ralph lifted the triangular white bib that protected the wound. The opening was unobstructed. “Then the stoma wasn’t covered?” Ralph said.

  Neither girl spoke.

  “Only with this bib?”

  “Yes, that was all,” Cindy said.

  “You’re sure there were no blankets or anything that you pulled off?”

  “The blanket was just like that,” Cindy said.

  Ralph said, “It’s obvious that he wasn’t smothered by the blanket then. Nor by turning his head in his sleep, twisting his neck and blocking the stoma. Usually a patient in that condition,” he tapped his own Adam’s apple, “wakes up when the air is cut off, just as you and I would if our mouths and noses were covered. So it apparently wasn’t
that. Did he take sleeping pills?”

  “Is that what it looks like? Can you tell?” asked Elaine.

  “The color of the skin indicates anoxia.”

  “Why did you ask about sleeping pills?”

  “They cause respiratory depression. Air doesn’t get to the lungs and the brain is deprived of oxygen.” Ralph used layman’s language so that they would understand. “There could be various causes. Gas leaks, smoke, smothering. A blanket over the stoma, as I said, or if his head was in the wrong position and he was too heavily drugged to wake up. The stoma might also have been blocked by something else. But it isn’t.” He raised the bib to show them that the opening was unobstructed. “What about sleeping pills? Did he take them?”

  Elaine sat like an ancient figure sculptured in marble upon a tomb. When she had worked as a model, she had learned to remain still until the photographer gave her permission to move. Such repose made the others nervous. They could not see that, under the exquisitely calm surface, her nerves were drawn tight. She rearranged a fold in her robe.

  “I gave him two last night.”

  “Only two? Anything else? Had he been drinking?”

  “My father didn’t drink.”

  “No one said he did, Cindy dear. He had a couple before dinner. That could be dangerous, couldn’t it, mixing alcohol and sleeping pills?” Elaine asked.

  Her voice was too bland, her self-control almost abnormal.

  Perhaps, thought Ralph, she was straining to make herself believe that her husband’s death had been an accident. The wife of a suicide too often blames herself. Before he could comfort her, Ralph had to know more of the facts. “When and how much did he drink? Do you know?”

  “Daddy wasn’t a big drinker. He usually had one, maybe two at most, before dinner.”

  “What time was that?”

  “We eat at seven-thirty,” Elaine said.

  “Six-thirty last night. Don and I wanted to leave early,” Cindy explained.

  Elaine fixed appealing eyes on Ralph. He said, “I don’t know. A fatal dose would depend upon the quantity of alcohol—which was slight—the number of pills and how he reacted to the combination. Had he ever taken both before?”

  “I gave him two pills every night.”

  “Were more available to him?”

  “Wait,” Elaine said and ran out of the room. A few seconds later she came back with a red lacquer box painted intricately in gold and black. From the largest drawer she took a vial of pills as brilliantly red as the Chinese box. “I found these in his closet yesterday. He’d been hiding them in an old riding boot. You see, he’d been planning . . .”

  “You had the pills hidden, you say?”

  “Yes. This box was in my dresser. He couldn’t possibly have got hold of them without coming into my room and waking me up. Besides, they’re all here.”

  “What about the pills you gave him every night? If these were hidden, there must have been others in the house.”

  “He couldn’t have got those without waking me either. Let’s look.” She beckoned Ralph to follow her. Cindy came along sulkily. In Elaine’s room stood an old cabinet filled with art books and portfolios of reproductions. Behind a fat volume on Leonardo da Vinci she found a second vial of pills. “I kept changing the places I hid them. This was the latest.”

  “That’s why you were so nervous,” said Ralph, remembering the hesitancy and flushes on the day he had examined her in his office. “You’ve been afraid of this all along?”

  She nodded.

  “Your husband must have known, since you were so cautious with the pills.”

  “We didn’t talk about it directly. I said I didn’t want Fletcher to get the habit, one more pill a night and then another. I said it was dangerous for a man who slept so badly to have the pills in his room.” Her eyes begged for understanding.

  “Do you know how many pills were left in this bottle?”

  “Twelve. I counted them yesterday and figured that we had only a few more days before I’d have to call Dr. Wilson for a new prescription. That was before I found the ones he’d hidden.”

  “My father didn’t commit suicide.” Cindy began to retch.

  “Come along, young lady, I’m giving you a shot and putting you to bed.”

  In spite of the sickness, Cindy clung to her chair like a child unwilling to be sent to her room while grown-ups carried on their mysterious affairs. It was not surprising that she had become hysterical, but it seemed to Ralph that there was a strange contradiction in her concern for exterior circumstances. He managed to get her out of the chair and to her bedroom. Elaine tried to take her other arm, but Cindy jerked her off. “I want my mother,” she sobbed.

  The bell rang and Elaine went to the door to admit a pair of detectives.

  BEFORE AN AUTOPSY is performed upon the body of a person suspected of suicide, the police visit the premises and prepare a report for the coroner. This is mere routine. The detectives were very polite to the new widow. The older man, Redding, looked like a public accountant. The other, stocky and dark, was heroically named Juarez. He remained silent while Redding asked questions. Elaine repeated what she had told Ralph about the sleeping pills, showed the two small bottles, and told them about having found the hidden vial in the boot while she and Dorine were cleaning Fletcher’s closet. Redding asked questions as if he were following instructions in a manual for detectives. Both men were as solemn as mechanics inspecting a faulty machine.

  Redding wondered if Mr. Strode had not got his pills from another source. The whole town was crawling with lousy peddlers who sold barbiturates to kids and addicts. Fletcher Strode might easily have dealt with these crooks. Elaine doubted it. She told them of Fletcher’s extraordinary sensitivity to strangers. “Even Dr. Wilson’s prescriptions were taken to the drugstore by me. He was afraid the clerk might ask him if he liked the climate.”

  Had he been alive, Fletcher would be stamping about the house, intolerant of strangers who had invaded his privacy. Elaine shuddered. The memory of that voice was a ghost that threatened to roar garbled notes at the intruders. The voice became so real and so close that she was afraid the others might hear and remark upon the strangeness.

  Ralph told the detectives about Fletcher’s operation, explaining that the suicide urge was not uncommon in laryngectomy patients. “Mr. Strode seemed unwilling to cope with the disability. I suggest that you see Dr. Ira Wilson, who’s been attending to Mr. Strode since he came to California. No doubt Dr. Wilson has the whole case history.” And once again Ralph showed the stoma and explained its function.

  Redding nodded agreement as though he were a specialist called in for consultation. Juarez, who had not said a word until now, asked if the opening could not be blocked by some object inserted into the tube.

  “Almost anything of the right size—a cork, a wad of cleansing tissue, a piece of handkerchief,” Ralph said. “But you see, the opening’s clear. How could he have got rid of it?”

  They looked around as if they expected to find the object beside the bed. If, in a final moment of panic, the dying man had discarded such an object, certainly it would have been there. He could not have got up, hidden, or destroyed the thing and returned to his deathbed.

  “Then he wouldn’t have died. If he’d had the strength to take it out, he’d have breathed in some air and stayed alive,” Juarez said.

  Ralph replied that it was not impossible for the dead man to have, at the end, regretted the suicidal act, managed to remove the obstruction, and fight for his life. “But too late. And you’ll notice that neither his face nor posture indicates struggle.”

  Redding was sure it had been sleeping pills. “These barbiturate suicides are a dime a dozen.” Hastily, “Excuse me, Mrs. Strode,” he added, “but when you’ve seen as much as I have, and you put two and two together, cancer, insomnia, and a sleeping pill habit, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  They returned to the living room. Redding filled out the report. Ralph te
lephoned his office to say that he might be detained for an hour. Elaine stood at the window and looked out at the autumn flowers. A few marigolds still bloomed and the chrysanthemums were in full glory, russet, tawny, gold, and pure white. Chrysanthemums were one of the few flowers Fletcher had known by name. When her mother died, he had sent an extravagant white blanket of gigantic blossoms. A sudden vision came to her, Fletcher under a burden of flowers. She shut her mind to it and thought, instead, of her husband as he had been yesterday, marching about the house, issuing commands in that broken voice. It echoed again, clearer than Redding’s announcement that an ambulance would come for the body.

  The body. This is what Fletcher Strode had come to. A body, a thing to be picked up, cut up, probed by rubber-gloved hands as he lay upon a white slab. Elaine thought of the man’s pride.

  “We’ll ask for immediate action on the autopsy. To make it a bit easier for you, Mrs. Strode. Waiting’s hard on the family of a deceased. We’ll let you know when you can have your own mortuary take him.”

  She dropped to the window seat. The detectives left, and Ralph came to sit beside her. His hand fell upon hers. She gave no sign of feeling. He moved closer. She edged away. After a while, her eyes fixed on the flowers. Elaine said, “There’s something you ought to know.”

  He waited.

  She picked at a bit of fluff on her robe. For all of her efforts at self-control, she gave signs of tension. Her hands could not be still, and her eyes avoided contact. “He knew I was unfaithful. But not with you. I never told him it was you.”

  “You feel guilty?”

  “I shouldn’t have told him.”

  “Why did you?”

  “He asked me.”

  “And you told the truth?”

  “Should I have lied?” Fury flashed out. There was a quivering in the air as when high-tension wires shiver in a strong wind. “He asked me! Would you have wanted me to lie?” She had never before been shrill. “I’m sorry I hurt him. But he asked and I told him. I said I’d been unfaithful once, only once, but I never said it was you.”