Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  “No, said Sheila. “No, Ray dear. It’s only a waste of time. The girl did see us. I noticed her.”

  She turned to me then. No vestige of the resemblance to Beth remained. She was herself again, handsome, unruffled, with a smile that was not only gracious but affectionate too.

  “Dearest Lewis, how very unfortunate this all is. I’m sure you don’t blame us for having tried to wriggle out of it. But even so I must admit I feel quite ashamed. Oh well, no damage done. You obviously have us—as my late husband used to say in his skittish moments—over a barrel. So you just ask us anything you want to know, anything at all, and we will gladly, with relief, I might add, tell you the truth.”

  The smile was deflected now to the smouldering Ray Callender. She gave his hand a playful pat.

  “Ray darling, get poor Lewis a drink. We’ve been neglecting him shamefully. A martini. He always wants a martini.”

  The smile was back with me again. Watch out, I thought. Anyone who could recover their poise as rapidly as that was an antagonist to be bargained with.

  “Well, Lewis, I’m ready for the inquisition. Or if it embarrasses you to quiz your ancient ex-mother-in-law, I am more than prepared to make a statement. Let me see. Where shall I start? With the Club Marocain, I suppose. Yes. Ray and I did go there to meet Mr. Olsen. As you may imagine, it was quite embarrassing running into you, particularly when Mr. Olsen came to the table and chose to play what I suppose he thought of as a subtle game of cat and mouse with us. But we did go there to meet him, and we did meet him. And twenty minutes later, our business brought to a satisfactory conclusion, we left him—very much alive. And we never saw him again. How’s that for a beginning?”

  While she talked, Ray Callender had brought me my martini. Sheila patted the couch coquettishly. He sat down next to her. With a radiant smile, she took his hand in hers.

  The mixture of candour and frivolity had been most effective. She had admitted what she had been forced to admit; she had indicated that her business with Olsen, whatever it was, had been quite unimportant, and she had also in so many words denied the murder. Yes, that was a pretty good beginning.

  I said, “Are you trying to pretend that Olsen wasn’t blackmailing you?”

  “Oh no, dear, on the contrary. Mr. Olsen had been blackmailing me for—how long? For fifteen months, to be exact.”

  “Fifteen months?” I glanced in bewilderment at Ray Callender. “But I thought you two had just met.”

  “And so we have,” said Sheila. “Oh, Lewis dear, you’re always such a flatterer, but surely even for you it’s a little too flattering to suppose a handsome young man like Ray would have nothing better to do than to embark on a liaison with a woman old enough to be—shall we say?—his aunt.”

  Ray Callender looked embarrassed.

  She was both laughing at me and confusing me and she knew it.

  I said, “So Olsen had been blackmailing you about something else?”

  “That would seem fairly obvious, wouldn’t it?” she said. “And it wasn’t at all enjoyable, I assure you. On one occasion I tried to call his bluff. It wasn’t a good idea. In fact, the results were disastrous.”

  “What was it then?” I asked. “What was he blackmailing you about?”

  Sheila’s eyes widened, showing a milky-blue white around the blue irises. “Now, Lewis dear, please don’t be unrealistic. I’ve been paying Mr. Olsen large sums of money over a period of fifteen months simply so that no one, including you, should find out that particular piece of information. You can hardly expect me to throw all that good money away, can you? But, you poor dear, that isn’t the point that seems to be interesting you, is it? You want to know what we were doing lurking around the Club Marocain. And it couldn’t be more simple. We didn’t go there to be blackmailed; we went there to be unblackmailed.” Once again she turned to Ray. “Darling, why don’t you explain to Lewis. After all, it was your brilliant doing.” She turned back to me. “He’s a wonderful boy, just wonderful. I bless the day I ran into him, on a lilo, as it happens, in the ocean just off your father’s jetty in Antigua.”

  There had been, it seemed to me, just the shadow of a warning in the glance she had thrown at Callender. It brought home to me the irony of my situation. Only a little time ago Virginia and I had been banded together in a life-and-death struggle to keep the truth from Lieutenant Trant. Now, for me, the roles were reversed. I was in Lieutenant Trant’s shoes. Was there any reason why I should believe them any more than Trant should have believed us?

  Lies, I thought. Before this thing had happened to me, I had always ingenuously assumed that if you asked someone something, you by and large got the true answer. All that was changed now. This was a quite unfamiliar world where even the simplest statement was suspect, and where the failure to interpret the slightest shift of expression could mean disaster.

  Ray Callender’s personality had entirely altered. All the bristly hostility was gone. He looked boyish and open and one hundred per cent American. He was even putting down his drink, as if, at so delicate a moment, the frivolity of a cocktail in his hand might mar the image he was clearly determined to present.

  He said, “Well, gee, where shall I start? With Sheila, I guess. I mean, Sheila in Antigua last month. She was wonderful to me, just wonderful. She read my manuscript, really read it, you know. Not just that Society thing. She really appreciated the guts of it, and it isn’t often you meet someone like that, someone you know can be a friend, a real intellectual equal. And then, when she heard I was due in New York, looking for the right publisher as a matter of fact … Well, you don’t have to put on a front with Sheila. I didn’t mind admitting to her I was pretty low in cash. Christ, it’s taken more than five years to get this book wrapped up … I mean who else would have offered to put me up, to save the old pocket-book? Who else could do it with such grace, such a feeling of: Okay, we’re friends. We help each other out? That’s what I’m trying to say. Sheila’s a wonderful lady, just wonderful.”

  I had listened to all this with some bewilderment and also with grave misgivings as to the quality of his novel if he wrote the way he talked. What was all this about? Was he merely trying to give Sheila a build-up?

  I glanced at Sheila. She was smiling benignly at his profile. For women, I imagined, Ray Callender’s profile would have been one of his major virtues.

  “So that’s the picture,” he was saying. “Sheila invited me here and, needless to say, the one thing I wanted was a chance to repay all she’d done for me. Well, I was lucky. That’s all I can say. Just goddamn lucky. For, a couple of days ago—the day we met you at the club—Sheila was out. It was about noon. I was just going out too when the doorbell rang, and when the butler opened the door, there was this big, red-headed character asking for Sheila. Now I looked at him and I couldn’t believe it. That bum? I thought. Calling on Sheila? When the butler told him she wasn’t in, he went away, but after lunch, when Sheila got home, I said, What the hell was Oliver Michaels doing calling on you?”

  “Oliver Michaels?” I said.

  “That’s what Sheila said too. Then when I described him, she said, Oh, Quentin Olsen. And I said, Okay, maybe that’s his name, but the name he was using when I knew him was Oliver Michaels. And boy, I said, was he an unsavoury character!”

  The boyish brown eyes, watching me, were so naïve in their efforts to seem sophisticated that, in spite of myself, I found myself believing him. At least, that is, believing this part of his story.

  “Not that I actually knew him personally, I mean. But this book has kept me bumming around Europe for the past four years and I don’t mind admitting I poked my nose into quite a few pretty blue setups. The book’s about the International Crowd, you see. And this Oliver Michaels, this Olsen … I was always running across his tracks. And what a reputation! Dope peddlar? Blackmailer? Brother, you name it! But that isn’t what I’m talking about. Gee, it must have been a couple of years ago. It happened in a little town on the Riviera just out
side Grasse. And it happened just a couple of weeks before I hit the town to visit some friends. Fine people, from Ohio, with a helluva big villa, huge pool and everything. And water’s almost like champagne there. I mean it’s so scarce, so valuable. Reiser’s the name. And were the Reisers full of it!”

  “Full of what?” I asked. Visions of Trant had returned, reminding me of the passage of vital time. Ray Callender’s name-dropping discursions were driving me frantic.

  “The murder,” said Ray Callender. “There was this American dame, rich as Rockefeller but kind of a nympho, I guess. She’d got in with Oliver Michaels. He’d been visiting her with a couple of babes and … well, she was found drowned in her pool and Oliver Michaels and his floosies had skipped. It all came out. He’d got this woman on to dope and he’d been blackmailing her and she’d had guts enough to threaten to expose him. The police, everyone, knew he’d bumped her off, but he’d vanished. And that was the last I heard of Oliver Michaels until there he was—Quentin Olsen—at Sheila’s front door.”

  As I listened, a new anxiety that was almost panic overtook me. So Olsen had been as sinister as that? Virginia’s husband …! Don’t think about that. Not now. Remember what I was there for. Go on hoping desperately that I could trace a clue, anything that, somehow, could deflect the danger from us.

  Ray Callender had picked up his martini again. As he took a sip of it, his suntanned hand was, I noticed, perfectly steady.

  “So, Lew.” I was “Lew” now. “That’s it. That’s what I told Sheila. The whole story. And when I said, Christ, don’t you see? Associating with Oliver Michaels is like stroking a green mambo … she told me. She came right out with it, how the bastard had something on her, how he’d show up regularly either here or in Antigua for his payments, how he’d been driving her almost out of her mind. So I said, Well, look here. Is this your lucky day! Where do you say this guy hangs out? The Club Marocain? Nothing to it. You just take me there. A word in his ear and is that bum going to pee his pants, if you’ll pardon me, and get out of your life so fast you’ll think he’s a guided missile.”

  “And it worked.” Sheila’s voice, quiet and serenely musical, broke in. “We called to tell him we were coming. We met him after the show. Ray, dear wonderful Ray, just said to him, Oliver Michaels, if you’re not out of the country in twenty-four hours, I’ll see the police extradite you for that murder in Grasse. Just like the movies! And he crumpled, Lewis. He literally crumpled. I could hardly believe it. My bogeyman—the man who had been tormenting me for months—just collapsed. There was some evidence he had against me. A photograph, among other things. He gave it all back to me there and then. He swore he’d never come near me any more. He swore, also, that he’d be out of the country the next day.”

  Ray Callender, looking smug, said, “Boy, was I lucky! I was able to do something for her after all—something to make up for all she’s done for me.”

  Sheila’s eyes, watching me, were very bright. Bright with triumph because she knew that between them they had managed most effectively to neutralise any accusations I might be planning to make.

  “So, dear Lewis, as far as I was concerned, Mr. Olsen, Mr. Michaels, call him what you will, was completely vanquished. Thanks to Ray, I had nothing of any sort to fear from him any more. I’m terribly sorry, my dear boy, if for reasons of your own you were hoping we had—well, taken violent action against him. But you do see, don’t you? There was no need, no kind of motive, no motive at all in the world.”

  I did indeed see. If they had told the truth—that immensely important “if”—this trail had led me exactly no place. I was back to where I had been before I had gone to Esmeralda. No. It was worse than that—much worse, because not only was there no one else for Trant to suspect but Virginia, there was also this murder in Grasse. In investigating the past of Virginia’s ex-husband, Trant would not merely be investigating a dope peddlar and a blackmailer, he would be investigating a murderer too.

  A black depression settled on me. It almost defeated me, but not quite, because once again anger came to my support. Why the hell should I believe them? Hadn’t I already decided that if I could lie myself black in the face so could they?

  I said, “I only have your word for it.”

  Sheila said, “I beg your pardon.”

  I said, “You told me that story. Okay, okay. But why in God’s name should I believe you?”

  “Why, Lewis!” Sheila’s lips pursed together. “Because it’s true, of course.”

  “Sure, Lew,” cut in Ray Callender. “It’s true. Every word of it is true.”

  I said, “That’s something Lieutenant Trant can decide for himself.”

  Very quickly Sheila stood up, the skirts of her evening dress making a luxurious swishing sound. “You’re not going to tell this to that policeman!”

  “Why not?” I said. “Olsen was blackmailing you, wasn’t he? Even you don’t deny that. If you’d killed him, would you have admitted it? My God, I’m not that much of a dope. If you’d killed him, you’d have invented some story. Why not this one?”

  For a moment I had Sheila rattled, but only for a moment. Now she came to me, her eyes suddenly understanding and solicitous.

  “Lewis, you poor dear man, your wife is in trouble, isn’t she?”

  Pity, real or factitious, was the last thing I wanted from her.

  I said, “Why do you think I came here? Do you think I’d accuse you of murder just for the hell of it? Trant’s going to think Virginia did it. She didn’t. She’s absolutely innocent. But if there’s nothing else to deflect him …”

  “So for that,” said Sheila, “just to prevent that, you’d throw me to the wolves?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  I was so angry then that I could have hit her. Ray Callender must have sensed some of my mounting fury because he came over, belligerent again, putting himself between the two of us.

  “Listen,” he said, “if you try to do anything against Sheila …!”

  “No, Ray,” said Sheila. “No.” Once again the eyes, so maddeningly full of affection for me, scanned my face. “Lewis, Lewis dear, I think there’s something you should be told. I don’t know anything about your wife’s connection with Mr. Olsen and I don’t intend to ask, but I do think you should know that when we went to the Club Marocain, he mentioned her.”

  That brought me up with a jolt.

  “Yes,” said Sheila. “He saw her as you were leaving the club, saw her going through the tables when he came onstage to play his first number. When we met him backstage, he said, even before we’d let him know why we were there … Virginia Harwood? Can I believe my eyes? You sitting at a table with Virginia Harwood? Haven’t you any idea what that girl’s like? She’s notorious all over Europe.”

  “Notorious!”

  “The Byword of Rome.” For a second my knees were like Jello.

  “Of course, my dear.” Sheila’s voice seeped through to me. “We don’t necessarily have to believe him. Mercifully, I know enough to disbelieve almost everything Mr. Olsen ever said. But he did know her. There must be some connection … So my darling, before you decide to tell that lieutenant about me, I do believe you should do a little pondering.”

  She paused. “And now I come to think of it, it seems to be very important to you that the lieutenant shouldn’t find out that Virginia offered me her case after she came back to the table. That’s something else I don’t understand, something else I won’t embarrass you by asking about. But if you do decide to repeat to this policeman what we have told you in confidence, I see no reason why I should hold back the truth about the cigarette-case, do you?”

  She had done it again. With this gentle but most effective threat, she had tied my hands. All hope of diverting Trant to her and Callender was gone. But that was only part of the blow she had dealt me.

  Olsen had seen Virginia leave the club. Then “Our Love Is Here to Stay” had been played for her. To warn her? To let her know she hadn’t seen the last o
f him? That he would call her (at the number he had scribbled down)? That he would come to visit her at five-thirty the next day?

  Did I have to go back to that?

  Sheila was still talking. Ray Callender was still standing beside her with his boyish upper lip pushed slightly outward, indicating that he was more than the man to protect that “wonderful lady,” Sheila Potter.

  Sheila was saying, “Lewis, I hate to say this. I’m sure you’re in love—very much more in love than you were with Beth, who after all—even I can admit it—was a very cold fish. But, Lewis dear, for your own sake, think, just think what you may have got yourself into. I mean, a girl of that sort, a girl from so very different a milieu.”

  At that moment the butler appeared in the doorway.

  “Dinner is served, madam.”

  The sound of his voice once again floated me back to the past when I had been the little “wrong” Denham, trying with adolescent fervour to belong in the world of wealth and prestige and Chinese Chippendale into which I had so unexpectedly been thrust. That was the world which lately I had been trying so hard to escape—Sheila’s world, Beth’s world—for Virginia’s world, Virginia’s “milieu”.

  “And, madam,” said the butler, “may I ask if Mr. Lewis is planning to stay for dinner?”

  Sheila’s hand was on my arm. If only there had been malice instead of affection in her smile. If only her pose hadn’t been one of obvious and genuine concern for my well-being.

  “No, Charles,” she said, “I’m afraid Mr. Lewis can’t stay for dinner. He’s got a new wife now, you know. And she’ll be expecting him at home …”

  When I let myself into the apartment, the living-room was empty. With an absurd twinge of panic, I thought: She’s gone. I found her in the kitchen. She was wearing slacks and a sweater and she was muddling around with pots and pans on the stove. She was still so exotic to me, a creature of tropical beaches and moonlit, jasmine-scented terraces, that the sight of her cooking dinner seemed quite unreal.

  She turned, and her smile, so simple in its happiness at seeing me, made me feel guilty as if, even by listening to Sheila, I had betrayed her.