Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  “Yes.”

  “And after the show the two of you came back here?”

  “No,” she said. “He did not come—not until it was later.”

  “He was seeing someone?”

  “Yes.”

  I took another ten-dollar bill out of my wallet.

  “Who was it?”

  For a moment she hesitated, ignoring the bill.

  “Who was it?” I repeated.

  “This I do not tell to the police.”

  I took out a third bill. She snatched them greedily.

  “Who it was I do not know. But I saw them. They were waiting for Ollie at the door of the stage.”

  “They?”

  “I do not know the names. Ollie did not make me meet people. But I saw them. A young man who is blond. A woman, more older, very pretty with a fur coat and a blue dress.”

  In the first second I felt only astonishment, then gradually excitement came. Sheila and Ray Callender waiting at the stage door for Olsen! Everything that had happened that night at the Club Marocain was changed. I remembered the look of thunderous disgust on Ray. Callender’s face as he’d glared after the departing pianist. “Bastard!” I remembered too Sheila’s lightning lapse into social gossip about the Ellerys. Of course! She’d been covering up what Ray Callender had almost given away. And everything else—her pose as the gracious lady slumming, everything—had been a cover-up to throw Virginia and me off the scent of what they were actually doing there. Ray Callender hadn’t been showing Sheila “how the other half live”. They’d gone to the Club Marocain because they’d had business with Quentin Olsen. Business? What business could it have been but Olsen’s business—blackmail.

  Esmeralda was still holding the bills. She was watching me dubiously.

  “Is all right? That is what your newspaper wants? This is enough for thirty dollars?”

  Enough for thirty dollars? It was enough.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s fine.”

  She did have some peculiar ethical standards of her own, because it was only then, when she was sure that the bills were legitimately hers, that she lifted her skirt again and stuffed them alongside the other.

  “I tell the truth, mister. I only tell what I know, but I tell all the truth.”

  Had she? It didn’t matter any more. Within five minutes I was out of that squalid little room and in the street.

  As I walked east, I passed a hamburger bar. Exhilaration had made me ravenous. I went in and ate, thinking: Sheila! Now that I knew, it all seemed obvious. Hadn’t Sheila met Callender in Antigua—Oslen’s stamping ground? Hadn’t even I suspected there was something between the two of them? What could have been simpler for a practised blackmailer like Olsen than to have found out something embarrassing about them, something which in less special circles might have been dismissed as harmless enough, but something which to Sheila, the Queen of the Denham clan, would have seemed disastrously scandalous. Sheila Potter sleeping with a boy young enough to be her son? I could imagine the appalled expression on Uncle Gene’s face and the even more agonised curve of Hugo’s mouth, the teeth clenching around the Dunhill pipe. Yes, Sheila would have paid any amount of money to keep that from coming out.

  So—Sheila and Callender! Then that brought the telephone call back into the picture, didn’t it? Sheila had called Virginia after all in spite of her denials. She had called her to lure her out of the apartment so that she or Callender could inveigle Olsen there, kill him and make Virginia their scapegoat?

  I was out of the restaurant now in a taxi, going back to the office. Suddenly the exhilaration petered out. Perhaps it was the unreconstructed Denham in me, but the idea of my ex-mother-in-law as a murderess seemed almost too unlikely to be possible. Could a woman who travelled with her own sheets and still thought of a dinner without finger-bowls as a snack conceivably …? But there was Callender, wasn’t there? With him to egg her on and possibly to do the actual killing, why not? But … but … How could they have known that Virginia had been Olsen’s wife and was therefore a suitable scapegoat? There again—why not? They could have found out from Olsen. My spirits were rising once more only to be dashed when I thought of the key. How could Sheila or anyone else have got into the apartment? From the dim recesses of my mind, a memory came to rescue me. Maisie. Beth and I used to spend an occasional week-end with some cousins in Rhode Island who had had a Great Dane. “Darling, we can’t take Maisie. She’d be scared out of her poor little doggy wits.” Beth had left keys to the apartment around for various Denham hirelings to dog-sit in our absence.

  I was in the elevator going up to my office now, feeling triumphant. To hell with Lieutenant Trant. It didn’t matter how tricky he had been with Virginia or how much he might eventually discover about her. We were no longer the only suspects. We didn’t even have to be the principal suspects.

  The loophole in the net had been found.

  I had a client coming to see me at two-fifteen. It was just after ten past two. Mary said, “Your wife called. We had a nice long chat. She wants you to call her back.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  When she left, I called Virginia. I was almost light-hearted. So was she.

  “Lew, I can hardly believe it. It went like a dream. He just asked me to confirm your alibi. That’s all. That’s absolutely all.”

  “He didn’t ask you about Olsen?”

  “Not a word. Not a word about the cigarette-case either. Oh, darling, you had me so terrified. I was expecting the Ogpu at least, but he was sweet, simply angelic.”

  Lieutenant Trant—angelic? Was it possible I had totally misinterpreted him? It was very doubtful indeed.

  “And do you know what he said when he left? He said Quentin was half owner of the Club Marocain. That his partner was a gangster. That almost certainly it would turn out to be just another underworld killing.”

  In spite of myself, her euphoria infected me. Maybe that was the solution. Maybe even my lurid suppositions about Sheila Potter had been nothing more than hysteria.

  My client arrived. He wanted an oatmeal factory to be constructed in Wisconsin. As I discussed possibilities with him, I found myself forgetting Quentin Olsen for minutes on end.

  It was just after five when I got through with my work and took a taxi home. As I nodded to the doorman and walked into the lobby, I was still in my fool’s paradise. One of the elevators descended. I got in. Just as the door was about to close, another man hurried in after me.

  “Hello, Mr. Denham,” said Lieutenant Trant.

  The elevator started to rise. He was wearing the same coat and the same smile. This time he was carrying a very new light-leather brief-case. There was absolutely nothing in his appearance or in his manner to indicate a threat. Once again he could have been some crony of Hugo’s from the Club, dropping in on a friend perhaps for a cocktail. And yet the little box of the elevator seemed suffocatingly impregnated with danger.

  “I suppose you’re just coming home from work, Mr. Denham?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Quite a coincidence. I was hoping to have a few minutes with your wife. It’s not going to interfere with your evening plans, is it?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  The elevator reached our floor. With Lieutenant Trant a few modest steps behind me, I went to my front door and opened it.

  “Lew, is that you?”

  Virginia was hurrying out of the living-room.

  “Oh, Lew, I …”

  She saw Trant then. Her control was admirable. The vague social smile couldn’t have been better done.

  “Oh, Lieutenant, you’re here again. Come in. You will have a drink, won’t you? I’ve got everything out ready for Lew.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Denham,” said Trant. “A drink’s an excellent idea.”

  He was standing in the hall, taking off his coat with the familiar maddening nonchalance. He threw it on a chair. He picked up the brief-case again and hovered.

  “Come in,” s
aid Virginia. “Both of you.”

  She made us drinks, chattering, I thought, in just the right way, not adopting a false personality but presenting her own at its most relaxed. Was I doing it as well? Or was the tension in me showing?

  Lieutenant Trant took his martini and sat down on the arm of a chair only a few feet from the patch on the carpet which we’d scrubbed the night before.

  “I apologise, Mrs Denham. I’m sure you didn’t expect me back so soon.”

  “That’s perfectly all right, Lieutenant. What is it you want?”

  Virginia came over and sat down on the couch with me. Was that a mistake? Did it make us too openly in alliance against him?

  Lieutenant Trant took a sip of his martini. He looked around for a place to put down the glass. As he did so, I noticed to my horror that the neat little pile of black buttons which Virginia had cut off Olsen’s coat was still lying there beside his chair. I didn’t dare look at my wife, but I could tell from the stiffening of her body at my side that she had seen them too.

  For the fraction of a second, Trant hesitated, then he put the glass down on the table. His hand, brushing against the pile of buttons, sent them scattering.

  “Oops.”

  He glanced down and then very casually gathered the buttons up, rearranging them into their original neat pile.

  “Now, Mrs Denham …”

  He broke the sentence off. Had the buttons given anything away? Surely not. Surely no one could have deduced anything sinister from a little pile of buttons. It was all right. It …

  Lieutenant Trant had picked up the brief-case from his lap. He flicked open the zipper.

  “You’ll think this rather peculiar, I’m sure, Mrs Denham, but policemen always pride themselves on their hunches. Usually, of course, with no justification at all.”

  His hand went into the brief-case. I knew what was coming if only because by then I knew that I had been fatuous even for a moment to have underestimated Lieutenant Trant. As his hand came out of the brief-case, there was a gleam of metal. Then Virginia’s cigarette-case with its octagonally cut central ruby was lying in his palm.

  “I was wondering, Mrs. Denham, if you’d ever seen this before.”

  It was his trickiness almost more than the danger that shook me. He’d had the case all along. He’d come both to me and to Virginia, blandly concealing the fact, producing it only at the moment that in his devious mind must have seemed the most effective. He was holding the case out to Virginia. Don’t worry, I told myself. We had planned for this. Virginia knew what to say. She took the case in a perfectly steady hand. She was examining it with perfectly natural curiosity.

  “Why, no, Lieutenant, I don’t think …”

  “Open it, Mrs. Denham. Read the inscription on the inside of the lid.

  Virginia opened the lid. She held the case quite far away and then almost up to her nose, bringing a vivid memory of that other time when she’d taken from me the photograph I’d found in Olsen’s wallet.

  “To V.,” she said. “Gibraltar may tumble, but, Oh, my dear … Q. That’s what it says.”

  “I know what it says.”

  Virginia closed the case. She dropped it in her lap, smiling in mild bewilderment at Trant.

  “No, Lieutenant. I’m very sorry but it means nothing to me at all.”

  “V., Mrs. Denham. Q. is for Quentin Olsen, the pianist from the Club Marocain who was killed. But V.?” Trant gave a little shrug. “I know this is a wild shot in the dark, but your name’s Virginia, isn’t it?”

  Until that moment Lieutenant Trant had managed to give me the uncanny impression of omniscience. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid of him any longer because there’d been a definite smugness in his voice when he’d come out with that. So that was all he had to go on. And that was the extent of his cleverness—a trite deduction which anyone, even the flattest-footed cop, could have made.

  “Why, yes,” said Virginia, “my name’s Virginia. But … well, it’s a fairly common name, isn’t it? And then what about the Violas, the Veras, the Veronicas, the Violets?”

  “Of course. I’m perfectly aware of all that.” Lieutenant Trant looked almost exaggeratedly crestfallen. “So you can’t help me about this case in any way?”

  “No,” said Virginia, “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  She handed the case back to him. He took it and sat passing it meditatively from one hand to the other.

  “Really, Mrs. Denham, this is rather odd. You see, I’ve just been checking on your little pleasure jaunt to the Club Marocain two nights ago. I showed this case—which incidentally was found in the dead man’s pocket—to Mrs. Potter. She claims it belongs to you. She says she actually had it in her hand at the Club Marocain. She particularly remembers admiring the way the central ruby was cut. How is it, Mrs. Denham, that Mrs. Potter could be so completely mistaken?”

  The sound of his voice hadn’t changed at all. There was nothing except the actual words themselves to indicate that he had completely outwitted us. As always, it seemed, the blow had come from the least expected direction. Of course Sheila had handled the case at the Club Marocain. Why, oh why, hadn’t I remembered that damning fact last night when there had still been a chance to retrieve it? Well, it had happened now and, even in my despair, I felt the faintest hint of relief that the terrifying game of double bluff was over. We had lost, but at least we had been freed from the excruciating nervous tension of evasions, lies and counter-lies. At last Lieutenant Trant would come out into the open. He would accuse Virginia, and I, thanks to Esmeralda, could force him to deflect at least some suspicion to Sheila.

  It was at Virginia that I looked, not the lieutenant. To my astonishment, as she returned his gaze, she was revealing no visible signs of discomposure. Then, very slowly, her mouth moved in a small, rueful smile.

  “Oh dear, Lieutenant, I didn’t get away with that, did I?”

  “I’m glad you admit it, Mrs. Denham.”

  “Of course I admit it.” Virginia turned from him, putting her hand lightly on my arm. “Lew darling, you must have thought I was mad when you saw me brazenly denying my own cigarette-case. It was awfully sweet of you not to give me away. Heaven knows what you must have been thinking.” She turned back to Trant. “And heaven knows, Lieutenant, what you’re thinking now.”

  “Heaven probably does know, Mrs. Denham. But I also suspect you know too.”

  “Oh yes. I see now how idiotic I was this morning. I should have come out with everything then. In fact, I almost did, but … well, it seemed so dreadfully embarrassing that I’m afraid I shirked it. Not so much because of you as because of my husband.”

  Her hand moved down my arm and her fingers curled around mine. “Lew darling, please don’t say anything for a moment. Just listen and try to understand. I don’t blame you if you don’t, but try.”

  I hadn’t the slightest idea of what was in her mind. I only knew that, unlike me, she wasn’t resigned to defeat yet. I sat watching her, very taut, hardly daring to hope.

  “Well, Lieutenant, there’s no need to tell you I was less than frank this morning, is there? Of course I knew Quentin Olsen. But when you told me he’d been murdered, it was far more awkward for me than you probably realise even now. You see, at one time I was married to him and I’d never told my husband.”

  Once again the quick, contrite smile had shifted to me. I was beginning to see.

  “Lew, I meant to tell you dozens of times. Honestly I did, but …” She turned to Trant. “I believe you know we’ve only been married a week and it’s less than a month since we met. It may seem odd to you that I’ve told Lew practically nothing about my life, but when you’re in love, when everything seems almost too good to be true, you’re terrified of breaking the spell. I had every intention of letting him know about Quentin, but somehow the moment never came.”

  Her hand slipped out of mine. She took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it.

  And then, Lieutenant, once we were married, it seeme
d so easy not to mention Quentin, not even to think about him. Certainly I never dreamed I’d run into him in America. But I was wrong. On our second day in New York, there he was on stage of the Club Marocain. You can imagine my embarrassment. I knew he’d come straight to the table the moment he saw me and I knew I’d have to blurt everything out not only to Lew but in front of his first wife’s mother, too. I suppose I should have faced it, but I didn’t. I just jumped up from the table and hurried to the ladies’ room. I stayed there until I knew it would seem dreadfully odd if I didn’t go back. Then I came out. I ran straight into Quentin at the bar.”

  She put her half-smoked cigarette down on an ashtray. She was lying so smoothly now that as I listened, I was both fascinated and, in spite of myself, plagued once again by a disturbing twinge of doubt. I ran straight into Quentin at the bar. That’s what she’d said, and the timing had been such that it could have been perfectly possible. But it was just part of her act, wasn’t it? When she’d sworn to me that she hadn’t spoken to Olsen, she’d been telling the truth, hadn’t she? This was just improvised for Trant, wasn’t it?

  The lieutenant was watching from bright, absolutely expressionless eyes as her voice ran on.

  “He was delighted to see me, Lieutenant, because there’d never been any hard feelings between us when we separated. Naturally he wanted to hear my news and naturally when I told him about Lew he was thrilled, because apparently he knew Mrs. Potter and had just been chatting with them at the table. He was crazy to go back with me and buy us all a drink. And … well, this is the embarrassing part. This is what must make me seem like a terrible snob …”

  She was smiling at Trant again, exactly the right candid smile at exactly the right time.

  “Probably, Lieutenant, you know that the Denhams and Mrs. Potter are very proper and socially exalted. As it happens, the whole business of introducing me into the family was being a little delicate because I’m—well, I’m just a rather dubious British girl Lew found in Mexico. So perhaps you can see how I felt about Quentin joining us at the table. It wasn’t just the embarrassment of never having mentioned him to Lew. It was Quentin himself. He was everything the Denhams would disapprove of most. He’d come from a poor family, he’d never made much of his life, drifting from one thing to another. Our marriage in Paris had been, to put it mildly, Bohemian, and I knew he was bound to come out with some joking references to it and so … Well, to be frank, I absolutely dreaded that drink.”