Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  “But you didn’t give him your address?”

  “I certainly didn’t.”

  “But he got your name.” Lieutenant Trant was smiling again and this time the smile had a maddeningly factitious amiability. “There was nothing to prevent him looking in the telephone book and writing down your address, was there?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  The smile went. “But there again he would hardly have taken the trouble to write down your address unless he had some reason for wanting to get in touch with you again, would he?”

  “It wouldn’t seem so.”

  “But you can’t think of any reason he might have had?”

  “None at all.”

  “Of course, at this early stage, we know virtually nothing about what sort of a man Olsen was, so we still have no idea as to what sort of reason he would have for wanting to get in touch with people.” Lieutenant Trant gave a shrug. “We don’t seem to be getting very far, do we?”

  “Nowhere, I’d say.”

  “But I’m sure you admit, Mr. Denham, since he had your address in his pocket that it was logical to assume he was planning to pay you a visit.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But he didn’t pay you a visit?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Or try to get in touch with you in any way?”

  “No way I know of.”

  “Ah well. Now, Mr. Denham, it so happens that Quentin Olsen had a girl friend—a girl I’m sure you remember since she’s the principal attraction at the Club Marocain.”

  “Esmeralda ?” His girl friend. Here at last was something, the first piece of new information Trant had given me.

  “Esmeralda,” repeated Trant. “I went to see her before I came here. I showed her your address and told her your name and I must admit she said she’d never heard of you. But she did say that Olsen was out most of yesterday afternoon, that he came back to the hotel for a moment around four-thirty, told her he had to see someone and left just after five. She never saw him again and the medical examiner seems to feel he was shot sometime not long after that—say, five-thirty, six-thirty. It seems to me that the person he went to see was probably the person who shot him, who concealed his body and later on drove it downtown. At the risk of sounding monotonous again, Mr. Denham, you must admit that for a moment at least you seemed the most likely candidate.”

  He paused as if he was waiting for me to make some comment. When I didn’t, he shrugged again. “Oh well, things are seldom as simple as that, are they? After ten years on the force I should be resigned to that fact by now.”

  It was a most peculiar sort of duel, because he, just as much as I, was pretending that no duel existed. There had never for a single second been anything in his voice, his tone or his manner to indicate an accusation. Was it possible then that I had been imagining his deviousness? Had his interest in me after all been merely casual and had I been able to satisfy it? That was the undermining thing about Lieutenant Trant. You just couldn’t tell.

  “Well, Mr. Denham, that seems to be that, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been more helpful.”

  “On the contrary, you’ve been most co-operative, but I’m afraid I’ve been wasting my time and your time after all. So let’s get this over as quickly as possible. Let’s hear—just for the record—what you actually were doing yesterday between shall we say five o’clock and … oh well, from five o’clock on.” Be careful. Don’t let him put you too much at your ease. I gave him the detailed account of our actions which I had rehearsed with Virginia. To my relief it sounded quite plausible. He made no attempt to mterrupt me. He merely wrote it all down with quick, competent strokes in the notebook.

  It was only after I’d finished and he’d closed the book that he looked at me. The smile was almost a grin.

  “Well, Mr. Denham, that’s one of the most crowded evenings I’ve come across in some time. What an impressive alibi it would make. Too bad it’s all got to go to waste, isn’t it?”

  Was I supposed to take that as a joke? He got up. He put on his coat. He came back to the desk, holding out his hand. I got up too.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Denham.”

  I took his hand. “Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

  He crossed to the door. At the door he turned.

  “I’m sorry to have aroused your curiosity without being able to satisfy it. I can imagine how tantalised you must be. But don’t worry, Mr. Denham. The moment I find out why Olsen had your address in his pocket, I’ll make a point of letting you know. Oh yes”—he took a card from his wallet and handed it to me—“in case you should want to get in touch with me … here.”

  I was absolutely sure then that he hadn’t believed a word I’d told him. That didn’t imply that he actively disbelieved me. He was merely letting me know that if I’d been hoping to get away with anything, he was going to see to it that I didn’t.

  He left the office and closed the door behind him.

  I sat down at my desk again. Now that he was no longer actually in the room it was much harder to keep my anxiety under control. He would go to Virginia—of course he would—if only to check on my alibi, and he would use on her that same devious, intimidating technique of saying one thing and implying a dozen others. How should she handle him? It was desperately important to decide. Should she deny ever having heard of Olsen? That would have fitted our original plan, and if we could bank on Trant’s failure to discover the marriage in Paris, it was still the obvious way for her to play it. But what if he didn’t believe her any more than he’d believed me, what if he checked and eventually found out the truth through Mexico? Wouldn’t the lie then turn out to be far more dangerous than an admission now that at one time she had been married to Olsen but had lost touch with him long ago? The alternatives jarred against each other. The longer I struggled with them the more uncertain I became. Don’t wait any longer. Call her. Maybe the very fact of doing something would clear my mind.

  I had an outside phone which didn’t go through the switchboard. I called the apartment. Virginia answered immediately.

  “Has he gone?”

  “Yes. But he’s coming to you. He didn’t say so, but I know he is. Look, it’s bad. He found my address in Olsen’s pocket.”

  “Oh no! And the cigarette-case, too?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t mention it but that doesn’t mean a thing. He’s as tricky as they come and we’ve got to be terribly careful.”

  I told her everything that had happened, concluding, “When he comes, give him the alibi just the way we rehearsed it. That’s what I did and it sounds all right. But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that he’s going to ask you if you knew Olsen.”

  Quickly she said, “My God, he’s suspicious of us now. He’ll investigate. He’ll find out about the marriage in Paris.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Then—then what shall I say? Shall I admit it? But I can’t. How can I? He’ll discover what sort of a person Quentin was. He’ll be certain he came to blackmail me and … Oh, Lew, what am I going to do?”

  It was only then that I realised how completely impossible our situation had become. A decision either way would be disastrous. Except for one thing—time. To admit she’d been married to Olsen would give us no time at all. But to stall—to try as long as possible to put off the inevitable—would at least give us time in which perhaps—just perhaps—I could find an escape hole in the net which was now about to encircle us. But how could I do that? By deflecting his interest from us, of course. By finding another suspect.

  “Listen,” I said. “Don’t tell him.”

  “But, Lew …”

  “You don’t know a thing. You’ve never heard of Quentin Olsen. You never even saw him at the Club Marocain. Whatever he tries to trick out of you …”

  I broke off as I heard the other phone in the apartment ringing.

  She said, “Oh God, that’ll be him.”

  I hea
rd her footsteps clicking away. Soon she was back and her voice sounded on the edge of hysteria.

  “He’s coming.”

  “Right away?”

  “Yes. Oh, Lew, are you sure that’s right?”

  “Yes. You know nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just give him the alibi. That’s all.”

  “But if he produces the cigarette-case?”

  “You never saw it, either.”

  “But—but what if later on …?”

  “To hell with later on. Somebody killed that man, somebody’s trying to frame you, and if Trant’s going to fall into a trap that he’s meant to fall into … then it’s up to me … Please. Believe me. Do what I say. Just do what I say, darling, and …”

  Mary came in with some papers in her hand. She stopped by the door.

  I said into the phone, “Okay, fine. Then I’ll be seeing you,” and hung up.

  Mary said, “I’ve finally got the Denver contracts straight.”

  It was absurd, with so much else to worry about, that I should feel embarrassed with her. There had never been anything romantic in our relationship. My clumsiness in having failed to tell her about Virginia involved no sort of betrayal. And yet I felt guilty and foolish when I said, “I guess it’s time to reveal my dark secret. That was my wife.”

  “Your wife!”

  For a moment her face was quite blank. Then she gave a quick, warm smile.

  “Why that’s wonderful. I’m so glad. I do congratulate you.”

  “I know you’ll like each other.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  She had been much better at it than I. If, as a friend, she had felt slighted at the delayed confidence, there was no sign of it. I felt exaggeratedly relieved. And once she’d left, my self-assurance zoomed. Things weren’t as bad as they had seemed. At least I had a plan of action—a plan which obviously must start at the only available starting-point … Esmeralda.

  I called the Club Marocain. It was not until the dial tone was actually sounding that I realised the risk of going to see her as myself. She would tell Trant. What was there to stop her? And how could I explain why the perfectly innocent husband of a perfectly innocent wife should be showing such interest in a crime which had nothing to do with either of them? When the Club Marocain answered, I said I was a reporter trying to get in touch with Esmeralda. They gave me the address right away. It was the Hotel Crystal, one of those seedy, anomalous hotels in the West Forties on the fringes of the theatre district. I called the hotel. Esmeralda was in her room. Although the thick, husky voice sounded dubious, she said I could come right over. Ten minutes later I was getting out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Crystal.

  Esmeralda’s room was squalid enough in itself, but Esmeralda—or Esmeralda and Quentin Olsen together—had made it considerably more so. There were clothes of both sexes strewn around on the beds, on the only chair and even on the chest of drawers, which was also piled with an indiscriminate assortment of cold cream jars, junk jewellery and a single golden sequin-covered slipper.

  Off stage, Esmeralda, who had seemed passably Arabian in her sleazy near-nakedness at the Club Marocain, was obviously no more a product of the Soukhs of Meknes than I. At a guess I would have placed her as a Czech or a Pole, certainly an Eastern European. Unexpectedly, however, she was far more attractive fully clothed. It wasn’t of course the Denham style of attractiveness. Hugo, with his impeccable taste for virginal princesses, would have winced from the full curves which shamelessly ripened the little black dress, and the huge black eyes which watched me with a suspiciousness at once stupid and wary. But given the right grandparents and the right convent, she could have competed with Tanya or any other beauty on her own ground.

  I was a little thrown because I hadn’t expected in the urgency of my mission that I’d feel any personal reaction at all.

  She made no effort to tidy the room and no effort to charm me, which broke every rule I’d ever heard of for an “artiste” handling the Press. She merely let me pass her into the room, closed the door behind her and said, “You come from the newspapers?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you come to ask about Ollie?”

  Ollie? Quentin Olsen. Ollie. She went to the chest of drawers and, with a hand made dazzling by three phony diamond rings, deftly pulled a packet of cigarettes out from under a pair of stockings as if that were her normal place for keeping them.

  She lit a cigarette.

  Without looking directly at me, she said, “Tell the newspaper I know nothing. I am a girl from a foreign place. It is bad for me now to be alone and to make my bread. But of what happened, I know nothing.”

  That’s what she would have said anyway. She was still not looking at me but merely at some arbitrary point in front of her. Then, for the fraction of a second, the black eyes slid sideways, glancing at me, assessing me. I knew what that meant—money. But I was scared in my role of reporter of being too brazen about it. Wait until she made a more explicit demand.

  I sat down on one of the beds. “Had you known Mr. Olsen long?”

  “Known?” she echoed suspiciously as if by “know” she thought I had mean “known carnally”.

  “I mean, just when did you meet him?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, two years, three years, maybe. I dance for him in Paris—Zürich. Wherever he says. He says come to New York. I come.”

  “So he got you the job at the Club Marocain?”

  “He buys himself part of this club from another man. They want a sexy dancer. So Ollie says—come.”

  For some reason my reactions had been delayed. It was only then that the panic hit. My God, she’d known Olsen for three years. Mustn’t she therefore at least have heard about the marriage to Virginia? What if she’d already told Trant? What if his whole interview with me at the office had been an elaborate hoax?

  I said, “Since you’ve known him so long. you must know a lot about him. I mean about his private life. For example, was he married?”

  It seemed like an hour before she answered.

  “Was he married?” The sulky, wary gleam in her eyes was completely unchanged. “I do not know. I do not know things like that. Nothing. He did not tell me things like that.”

  So to Olsen she had just been a body, something to sleep with when there was nothing better available, something to exploit off and on in the tawdry clubs?

  I said, “Do you have any idea why anyone should have killed him?”

  “How would I know in a country which is a strange land? This I say already to the police. Already I say it all to the police.” She did look at me then, but the huge black eyes, which could have been beautiful if there’d been any intelligence to brighten them, hardly seemed to be seeing me. They were veiled, sleepwalker’s eyes. Dope? Probably. Then, once again, there appeared in them a faint but unmistakable glint of avarice. “Why do I say what I know again for your newspaper? For what good?”

  This was the moment.

  “If you tell me something I can use,” I said, “I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

  “Now?”

  “No, later.”

  “Twenty-five later.”

  “Okay. Tell me everything you know about what Olsen did yesterday.”

  “Already I tell the police.”

  “Tell me.”

  “About ten we get up from here. We have breakfast down below in the restaurant. After that he went out.”

  “To do what?”

  “How do I know? To see someone, he said.”

  “Who?”

  “How do I know? To see someone, he said.”

  She put the cigarette into her full, unmade-up lips and, letting it droop there, puffed on it.

  I said, “That’s not worth twenty-five bucks, is it?”

  The beringed hand, palm upward, rather dirty, shot out. “Ten dollars now.”

  “All right.”

  I took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and dropped it into the cupped hand. She grabbed it and i
ncredibly—surely people didn’t do that—tugged up the skirt of her dress and tucked the bill into the top of her stocking.

  “I do not know who the person was but it was someone important.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Ollie give me twenty dollars. Go out, he said, while I take a bath, and buy flowers. Twenty dollars for flowers? I say. Yes, he said, and spend every cent at some grand shop. So I go out to the big shop. What is this called? On Madison Avenue? Constance?”

  “Constance Spry?”

  “Yes. And I buy them. Twenty dollars for flowers. Ollie never spent so much for flowers and such things, not except for someone important. You are with someone and you notice what they do.”

  What else, I wondered, had she noticed? That Quentin Olsen was a blackmailer? If she had, it was probable that she had been at least a tacit accomplice. It was highly unlikely she would admit it.

  I said, “Do you know what he did when he went to see such people?”

  “What he did?” She shrugged. “Speak with them, I suppose. I do not ask such things of men.”

  The implacablity of her tone told me there was nothing to be gained from that direction.

  “Did you see him again after he went with the flowers to these important people?”

  “Yes. About four-thirty he come back. Only for a short time. Then he went out again.”

  “To do what?”

  “To see someone. Some man. The police tell me the name but I forget. Denning. Denton, something like that.”

  It was as if Lieutenant Trant were there in that dreadful little room with us. Trant telling Esmeralda—not asking her—that at five o’clock Olsen had gone to see Mr. Denning, Mr. Denton, Mr. Denham—me! Trant in action before I had even met him! Once again I became acutely conscious of the invisible net creeping around Virginia and me and of the fact that this was the only place where I had any chance to pick up any sort of trail which might save us. If I failed here—then what?

  I said, “So that’s all you know about yesterday?”

  “That is all.”

  I took a shot in the dark. “What about the day before?”

  “The day before?”

  “You did your act at the Club Marocain, didn’t you?”