“Darling, don’t be mad at Lew. Think what it must be like for him with the police trying to implicate Virginia.” She turned her head to look at me. “But why, Lewis? That’s what I don’t understand. Why on earth should they think Virginia had anything to do with it?”
In the black depression which was engulfing me, it seemed quite meaningless to keep them in the dark any longer. In a few days—tomorrow perhaps—it would all be splashed across the headlines anyway. What difference did it make?
“He was her husband,” I said.
Hugo got up again. “Who was her husband? Olsen?”
“Yes,” I said.
They both came to me. Tanya put her hand on my sleeve. Their faces were identical—identical with Sheila’s too—desolate for me, full of embarrassed affection for the not-quite-right Denham who, after all, might be expected to get himself into just this sort of a predicament.
“Oh, darling,” said Tanya.
“You poor guy,” said Hugo. “Why, Lewis, you poor guy.”
It was their condescending pity that did it. It was exactly the same as my reaction to Sheila. At a moment when I thought I had given up, resentment came to my rescue. Why the hell should I believe Hugo? Hadn’t Virginia been right? Wasn’t it axiomatic that the Denhams stood up for each other? If Hugo had actually seen Sheila push Beth overboard, he would never dream of admitting it—certainly not to bring aid and comfort to the Byword of Rome. In fact, if he had seen it, he would probably have put it right out of his mind by now as one of those realities which just didn’t happen to Denhams and therefore had to be ignored out of existence. Of course his alibi for Sheila could be just as phony as—what? My own alibi for Virginia?
I longed to challenge him and, through him, everything that the Denhams represented. But I knew that to antagonize them further could only do me more harm than good. Instead I let Tanya give me a sisterly kiss on the cheek and Hugo squeeze my arm with man-to-man sympathy as they ushered me out into the street.
But in the taxi going home, I stubbornly rejected defeat. Of course Sheila could have killed Beth. Of course she could have killed Olsen. Of course she could have planned to frame Virginia. All I needed was proof. Well, that would come. I would make it come.
When I let myself into the hall, Virginia hurried out of the living-room with a piece of paper in her hand.
“He called—from Antigua.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s all right. At least I think it is. Here are the dates when Olsen was there.”
I took the piece of paper. She had written: Olsen hired for whole season from December 1 until April 1. Only absence, a two-week engagement in St. Thomas, January 12 to January 26.
There was the proof for which I had been so eagerly waiting. And this wasn’t merely hearsay from Hugo, these were cold, hard facts. Olsen had left the island three days before Beth had arrived. Whatever he may have found out about Sheila, he couldn’t possibly have told it to Beth. The telephone call to me had indeed been a wifely sentimental impulse—nothing more. Once and for all my theory of murder on the Arabella had been revealed for what it was—a fantasy.
“Well.” asked Virginia. “Those two weeks don’t matter, do they?” She must have seen my expression, for she broke off. “Oh, no!”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then it doesn’t work? And you didn’t get anything from Hugo and Tanya?”
There was absolutely nothing I could tell her to comfort her then. The whole day of continuous struggle had got me nowhere. We were back without any defences at all—sitting ducks for Lieutenant Trant again.
We went to bed soon. Even that wasn’t successful. Hours later, when Virginia was twisting and murmuring in her sleep, I climbed out of the bed and into the second bed, Beth’s bed. I was still wide awake. What to do? Cling on to something Trant had said to Virginia? That in a world of gangsters Olsen’s murder could have been just another underworld killing? An underworld killing in my apartment by an underworld killer who just happened to have a key and who happened to know he needn’t bring a gun because there was one in the bedside drawer?
Trant didn’t know that, of course. Not yet. But he would. In the uneasy watches of the night it seemed quite incredible that he hadn’t already traced the corpse to our apartment. Think of the evidence that was waiting here for the police laboratories—the luggage compartment of the car, the stain on the carpet, the absence of a gun that should have been there, a gun of the same calibre as the gun that killed Olsen.
Somehow I forced my brain out of its rotating squirrel wheel. Somehow I fell asleep.
I woke with a jolt. It was almost dawn. What was this? Why was my heart thumping with excitement? It came to me then, not a dream but something from my unconscious just welling up at the moment of awakening.
Esmeralda! The flowers!
I jumped out of bed and shook Virginia. She stirred. In the faint silver-grey light I could see her eyes opening, looking up at me almost in panic.
“Lew.”
“The flowers!” I said. “The twenty-dollar flowers that Esmeralda bought at Constance Spry. The flowers for the important people Olsen was going to visit.”
She sat up, pushing the hair back from her eyes, trying to understand and share my excitement.
“Maybe,” I said, “just maybe they’ll remember Esmeralda at Constance Spry. Maybe they’ll be able to trace who the flowers were sent to.”
“But … but … you never said she had the flowers sent. You said she bought them and took them back to Olsen at the hotel.”
Of course! That wonderful slap-happy excitement collapsed like a straw hut in a hurricane. So much for the inspirations that come with the dawn.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “I guess I don’t have my wits about me.”
“Sleep, darling,” she said. “Just try to get some sleep.”
I climbed into bed with her. That was the worst moment of my life. I dreamed that I was my father and that Mary Lindsay, of all people, was my mother. We were burning to death in a bus accident.
PART FIVE
I had to go to work the next day. There were appointments all morning. And yet I dreaded leaving Virginia. It was overanxious, I knew, to worry about Trant. If he did show up, she could handle any disastrous situation at least as effectively as I. Hadn’t she already proved that point? But it was more personal than that. It was myself of whom I was really afraid. When I was with her, it was all right. Her closeness, the sight of her, the ability to put out my hand and touch her kept my trust intact. It was only when I was away from her that the insidious doubts were apt to nag. She could have spoken to Olsen at the Club Marocain. She could have made a date to meet him at the apartment. She could have invented that call from Sheila. The front-door key … the gun …
She came with me into the hall. Her face was pale and peaked from our horrible night but she was trying her best to be cheerful.
“Don’t worry, darling. If he comes, I can lie myself blue in the face. At least that’s something I’ve become quite expert at.”
I wished she hadn’t said that. I kissed her and went to the elevator.
I was actually flagging a cab on 61st Street when I changed my mind and decided to walk. There was no conscious reason for this. I merely started down Madison Avenue on foot. It was only when I was passing Constance Spry that I realised it had, from the beginning, been my destination.
For a moment, having no plan because there was no reasonable plan to have, I paused, looking in the window at huge unseasonable chrysanthemums, azaleas foaming pink, white and purple, and sprays of orchids delicate as clusters of sleeping butterflies. Three days ago Esmeralda had come here with Olsen’s twenty-dollar bill. Where? Stuck in the top of her stocking? They might remember her. But what if they did? What possibility …?
A large woman in lumpy tweeds who could well have been a classmate of Aunt Peggy’s at Miss Something or Other’s Academy had emerged from a chauffeur-driven limousine and
pushed past me into the store. On impulse, I followed.
The air inside was moist and pleasant with the perfume of flowers and the indefinable freshness that growing plants exhale. The woman was clearly a treasured customer, for she was greeted by two assistants and taken off to inspect an enormous rubber plant. “We hope you’ll find it large enough, Mrs. Carmichael.” Large enough, I wondered, for what?
A third assistant came to me. As he stood awaiting my order I felt ridiculous embarrassment.
I said, “This is rather complicated. A friend of mine bought some flowers here three days ago. I want to reduplicate the order but I forgot to ask her what the flowers actually were. All I know is they cost twenty-dollars and my friend …”
I described Esmeralda as well as I knew how. The description seemed totally inadequate. It could have applied to any one of a million women, but to my astonishment the clerk said, “With three rings on her right hand? Diamond—er—diamond rings? A foreign lady, dark—with an accent?”
I had forgotten the er-diamond rings.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s it. You remember her?”
“Of course, sir.” I was given a man-to-man smirk which indicated that we shared a mutual enthusiasm for pseudo-Arabian stomach dancers direct from the Soukhs of Meknes. “I waited on your friend myself.”
“So maybe you could look up your records and check on the order,” I said.
“There’s no need, sir.” The smile now was the self-satisfied smile of the trained observer. “I always remember my customers’ orders. You’re right. The price was twenty dollars. She bought a large bunch of strelitzia. That is, sir—bird-of-paradise flowers.”
In the first moments that meant nothing at all. Okay. I had learned what Esmeralda had bought. Strelitzia—exactly the sort of flamboyant flowers which she would have thought suitable for “important” people. To have learned that was to have learned nothing.
It came then, hitting me with a staggering impact. But could it…? Of course it could. The days when I had believed in coincidences were way in the past. I was back in the suite at the Pierre. Princess Natasha, tiny, exquisite, was leaning towards me on the French Provincial-type couch.
“Now, Lewis, you tell me all that is latest of the chic Américain.”
And behind her, on the grand piano, thrusting up from an hotel vase—the large bunch of bird-of-paradise flowers!
In my excitement I forgot the clerk. I started for the door. His voice trailed after me.
“Oh, sir, excuse me, sir. Didn’t you say you wished the order reduplicated?”
When I left Constance Spry, I was carrying a long white box of strelitza. It enhanced what was already a festive mood. And I knew exactly what I was going to do with them. What could be a more effective weapon with which to launch my attack on the Prince and the Princess? I had started for the Pierre before I remembered that the Lerchikov’s never arose before ten-thirty. That didn’t matter anyway. It would be better to go to the office first and call Virginia—to let her know that for once, at the most unlikely moment, chance had come over to our side.
When I reached the office, Mary, looking very cool and pretty in a cucumber-green dress, came up to me.
“The police lieutenant’s here again. I asked him to wait in your office.”
I went into the office, carrying the flowers. Lieutenant Trant was sitting in my chair behind my desk. He got up. I thought: If he makes a crack about the florist’s box, I’ll kill him. He didn’t. He didn’t even smile that amiable smile which I had learned to loathe. He merely walked over to another chair on which he had put his coat. He picked up the coat and sat down, holding the coat over his knees as if he were at the theatre.
He said nothing at all. So that was to be the tactics for today, was it? He sat looking at me without any discernible expression at all as I walked past him and sat down behind the desk. I knew he was more than conscious of the intimidating effect of his silence, and if it hadn’t been for my success at Constance Spry, I would have been intimidated all right. Now there was only caution, caution reinforced by a wonderful feeling of hope. Whatever he was going to say, I was one up on him. Olsen had gone to the Prince and Princess. They too had been somehow tangled in his web. Not only Sheila—the Lerchikovs.
Vaguely it came to me that I was thinking of my family now as if they were as much my enemies as Lieutenant Trant. Well, all right. I was ready to fight them, just as I was ready to fight Trant.
The silence had become so grotesque that it had to be broken.
I said, “Well, Lieutenant, did the cat get your tongue?”
I found I could look at him without the slightest trace of anxiety. How extraordinary, I thought, that such a little thing as the flowers could have brought so much confidence. I even tried to trace in the deceptive eyes, the bland, ministerial face some clues as to what it was going to be this time.
He said, “I thought it would be better, Mr. Denham, to speak to you here—rather than at your apartment.”
So that was it. This was to be something new against Virginia, and the current approach was to work on me alone, to try in a devious way to play on any suspicions I might have, to try to separate us. Divide and conquer.
I was, of course, wrong. Or at least it seemed so, for he said, “Quentin Olsen was shot by a Colt .32 revolver.”
“He was?” I said.
It occurred to me how subtly our relationship was changing. I still hadn’t admitted the slightest involvement in the murder, nor had he ever actually put any accusation into words. And yet now here we were—almost out in the open.
“I’ve just been speaking to your uncle, Mr. Denham. Your uncle—Mr. Eugene Denham.”
Of course. I had known he would check with everyone involved in our alibi.
“You have?” I said.
“Yes, Mr. Denham, and he tells me you own a Colt .32.”
That had always had to come. Now that it was here, it didn’t seem too bad. How typical, though, that it was from Uncle Gene he had learned about the gun. To Uncle Gene, in the infinitude of his removal from the sordid side of life, the police force was a sacrosanct institution for the protection of property rights. If the police—yes, sir, New York’s finest-wanted any information from him, it would be conscientiously and precisely forthcoming.
“I was wondering, Mr. Denham, if you’d be kind enough to let me look at this gun of yours.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice sounded perfectly unruffled to me. “I don’t have it any more.”
“You don’t?”
“No. As my uncle probably told you, he gave it to my first wife as a measure of protection when she was alone in the apartment. After she died, I had no use for it. I…” Suddenly panic came. What had I done with it? “I threw it away.”
“You threw it away?”
“Yes. I’ve got a thing about guns. They make me nervous. A couple of months after my wife’s death, I came upon it in a drawer. I threw it out with the garbage.”
I had always thought Trant incapable of any emotion as human as exasperation, but now exasperation showed quite clearly in his eyes.
“So it’s quite a coincidence that Mr. Olsen was shot by the same type of gun?”
“I think,” I said, “if you have your research staff go into it, you’ll find there are quite a few Colt .32s in New York City.”
He smiled then as if even he had realised the inanity of his remark. The smile became almost friendly. Watch out, I thought.
This time I was right.
He said, “Your uncle told me something else, Mr. Denham. And it’s this that made me feel it was more sensible, more tactful, in fact, to speak to you here in the office.”
He paused. His hand, resting on the desk top, beat a little soft pattering tattoo. That was something new from the bag of theatrical tricks which had once seemed so unnerving.
“This isn’t easy to say, Mr. Denham. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing one would choose to ask a newly married man, but �
��”
“The Byword of Rome?” I was smiling a smile which I hoped was just as synthetically friendly as his. “Were those the actual words Uncle Gene used? He rather likes to stick with a phrase once he’s got it.”
It was good to see him disconcerted. He tried to cover it by his own brand of sarcasm.
“So your wife has finally decided to catch you up on her past, Mr. Denham.”
The anger I felt was the first healthy anger I’d experienced since I’d known him. Did I have Constance Spry to thank for that, too?
I said, “I’ve been remarkably patient with you, Lieutenant. I’ve let you come here and to the apartment. I’ve let you drop a snide hint here, a dirty little insinuation there. I’ve put up with you because, after all, you do have a job to do, and if this is the way you think you should go about it, okay, that’s your business. But let’s get one thing straight. I don’t need my Uncle Gene or you or anyone else to tell me about my wife. She told me everything I have the slightest interest in hearing herself. I don’t give a damn whether some old half-assed buddy of Unde Gene’s saw her on a South American’s yacht. I don’t give a damn whether Confidential magazine or whatever those things are called gives over an entire issue to an exposé of her past. This isn’t the Middle Ages. I didn’t marry my wife with a built-in chastity-belt guarantee. And if all you want to do is to try to poison my mind against her, you can consider yourself kicked out of this office. Does that message get across?”
“Yes, Mr. Denham,” he said, “it does.”
And he did then the one and only thing that he could have done to undermine me. His face became exactly the same as the faces of Hugo and Tanya and Sheila. He was looking at me with sadness—that was the only word for it—with an almost tender sympathy for a poor infatuated booby who wouldn’t have had the sense to come in out of a snowstorm.
My rage surged up in me and I heard myself saying, “Okay, you’ve got a murder to investigate. Investigate it. Since you keep on creeping back to us, I can only suppose you have nothing better to do—no evidence, no imagination enough to try to look for it where it might reasonably be found. Oh, no. You’re stuck on us like a stylus on a beat-up old phonograph record. Okay. If that’s the best you can do as a cop, all right. Stay with it. But for God’s sake, give up this corny cat-and-mouse bit which might, just might, intimidate a housewife in Red Bank, New Jersey, although I doubt it. If you think my wife killed Olsen, say so. If you think I’m protecting her, say so. But don’t say it until you’ve got at least some vestige of evidence to back you up, because, as you’re so fond of saying, I don’t believe in wasting time and I happen to be a working man who just happens to have a morning’s work ahead of me.”
Family Skeletons Page 15
