It was the speed with which it happened to me that was so humiliating. I had been utterly convinced that at least I had insulated myself from any kind of shock to which Trant or anyone else could subject me. And for one fleeting moment I did manage to tell myself: This is a trick. With despicable cunning, Trant has thought out the most effective lie to suborn me. But it was only for a moment. Then it was worse, far worse than it had been with Uncle Gene. I struggled to keep intact what, only a few seconds ago, had seemed my impregnable faith, but I was like a man with a handful of feathers in a windstorm. Gradually the realisation came that there was, after all, a point beyond which the most burning desire to deny reality no longer operated. With it came despair.
I knew Trant was looking at me, but I couldn’t look back. I knew if I did, he would see how completely he had defeated me. Instead, with an effort, I made myself turn to Virginia in the hope that some miracle would happen, that there would be something in the way she looked, something she might say, which could save me from seeing myself as Trant had seen me all along—the booby, the pathetic sucker who had let himself be taken for the longest ride in history.
But the moment I looked at her, I knew it was no good. She was sitting completely still on the couch. She seemed to have no awareness of either of us. She was just sitting, cold and dazed, her shoulders sagging. And as my eyes, against my will, remained as if hypnotized on her, I saw the slow disintegration of her face.
Suddenly she became conscious of me. She spun around to me, her eyes quite wild.
“No,” she said. “No, Lew, no. Please, please believe me.”
If there had been anything I could offer her, I would have offered it. But there was nothing now except the despair. Her hand came up to her mouth. She was biting her knuckles. She knew I was abandoning her. I could tell that in the second before she turned away from me and threw up her hands to cover her face.
Trant had risen. He was standing directly in front of me, ignoring Virginia, concentrating all his steeliness on me.
“Well, Mr. Denham, don’t you think we’ve had enough? You can’t believe I’ve enjoyed this so-called cat-and-mouse game any more than you, but I’ve let it go on because I believe that a policeman must be patient. So I’ve given you every chance in the world to come clean with me—every chance to get yourself off the hook. But enough’s enough. Your wife killed Quentin Olsen because he knew what she was and what she was up to. You came back and found the body here. God knows what lies she fed you, but you were infatuated enough to swallow them.”
He grabbed my arm. The physical contact was shocking.
“That alibi of yours! Did you really expect it to fool anyone? Olsen was killed at five-thirty. What do you claim to have been doing at five-thirty? Shopping with your wife? Where were you shopping? Nobody saw you. And what about the car you took out of the garage to go to a movie and then not go to a movie? By eight o’clock you’d got the body into the car. And then—a slight mishap! Your uncle borrowed the car. Never mind. Go to your cousins’ and pick up the car again. Drive it to Wall Street, dump the body. And the gun? That gun you threw away because you have a thing about guns? Probably you tossed it into the river. And all this time you pretend you were sitting together in some crowded nightclub where no one could possibly prove when you came in or how late you stayed.”
His face, so close to mine, seemed to blur as if it were some phantom face I had conjured up in my misery.
“This morning, Mr. Denham, you defied me not to come back until I had evidence. Well, I haven’t done so badly. That button was a French button. What happened? Did you forget to take Olsen’s overcoat to the car and then, just before you disposed of it down the incinerator, did one of you remember that metal doesn’t burn? And by the way, did Olsen bleed a lot? Was that why you threw out the rubber floor matting from the luggage compartment of the car? Needless to say, I’ve inspected the car. Another case of the flagrant abuse of personal privacy for which the New York police are world-famous. And, oh yes, if Olsen did a lot of bleeding, I wonder how much of it spilled on the floor or the carpet. Well, it won’t be long before we find out. The boys from the police lab will. be here any minute.”
He stopped then. He sat down on the arm of his chair.
“Well, Mr. Denham, let’s get organised. There are two alternatives. The official procedure would be to wait until bloodstains have been found in this apartment. Once that’s done, I can get two warrants—one charging your wife with the murder of Quentin Olsen, the other charging you as an accessory after the fact. I don’t have to tell you your rights as citizens. If you want me to wait, I’ll wait. But if you’re willing to skip the technicalities, we can all go to Headquarters right away and you can both make your statements.”
I had always known, I suppose, that this moment would come. Even in my most optimistic periods, I’d never really believed that our gimcrack alibi could stand up for long or that the inevitable killing pounce from Trant could be put off indefinitely. And yet, when I had anticipated it, when I had lain in bed goaded by visions of the day on which the corpse would become a real corpse again and our nightmare ordeal of getting rid of it would be exposed for the real and flagrantly antisocial act it had been, I had never dreamed it would be like this.
Because of Virginia. The one thing I had been certain of was that my love would remain intact. Even if the evidence against her mounted until it was irrefutable, even if it was proved over and over again that to save herself she had been forced to lie to me, surely my love …
Trant was speaking again.
“Of course, Mr. Denham, there’s a third possibility. Perhaps you’d prefer to get it over with right now. Admit that you helped to remove the body, admit that your wife’s guilty, and you have my word that, under the circumstances, there’s a very good chance no charge will be made against you at all.”
There was, of course, no magnanimity in that offer. He needed a certain conviction. What did or didn’t happen to me was utterly unimportant to him. As he watched me almost derisively—knowing so well that it was the role of gulled husband that humiliated me the most—I knew this was the test of tests. The rest of my life would depend on what I said. I could become a Denham again, indulgently admitted back into the Fold, forgiven for my pathetic attempts at self-assertion, even pampered—with Virginia, like all the other Denham unpleasantnesses, obliterated by a conspiracy of silence. Or …
I turned to look at Virginia. Her hands had dropped to her sides. She was looking directly in front of her. If she knew what was going on inside me or if indeed she cared at all, there was no sign of it on the cold set face.
“Well, Mr. Denham?” Trant’s voice was very quiet. “I don’t want to press you, but the men from the police lab will be here any minute, and once we have the evidence of the bloodstains, an admission from you won’t be quite as valuable, will it?”
There now was the threat. I was still looking at Virginia in a last hope that somehow I could believe again that I had been loved by the woman I loved, not exploited by a cynical murderess. But all that happened was—the Byword of Rome! For the first time Uncle Gene’s ridiculous phrase meant exactly what it said to me. Visions came crowding in—Virginia and Olsen lying in each other’s arms in the Parisian hotel bed, Virginia in a prison cell in Livorno, Virginia in a bikini lounging on the deck of the Fuentes yacht, “laid on for the other guests.” It was all excruciatingly vivid now, as erotic, obscene as the fantasies of some desert anchorite. And I could feel the temptation stirring. Give up. Why not? Who but an infatuated fool would reject an opportunity to escape the rewards of his folly?
“Just admit she killed him, Mr. Denham. That’s all I ask. Just admit it.”
I turned back to Trant then. That’s why I didn’t see Virginia get up. I wasn’t even aware she had moved until I heard her voice.
“Why bother to ask him, Lieutenant? I’m sure he’s ready to tell you, but after all it’ll be a little more official coming from me. All right, Lieut
enant. You win. Do you want me to come to Headquarters and sign a statement?”
Suddenly, perched on his chair arm, Lieutenant Trant smiled. It was a bright, blinding smile of victory. I saw it before I turned back to my wife.
“Virginia!”
The word came from me with no particular meaning. It was merely a reflex—like the quivering of a muscle in a dead frog.
She seemed perfectly calm again. She even turned back to the couch and picked up her bag, sliding it down over her wrist.
“Do you have a car, Lieutenant?”
“Yes. I have a car.”
“Then,” said Virginia, “we might as well leave, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Trant, “I think we might as well.”
He half turned towards the door. She had to pass in front of me to join him but she never even cast me a glance.
They started for the door, the two of them—ignoring me. It was preposterous. It couldn’t end like this.
I said, “Wait. I’m coming.”
Virginia did turn then. She stood looking at me, her eyes hard as bronze.
“Why you?” she said. “Didn’t you hear the lieutenant? They don’t want you. They’re not pressing charges against you.”
Trant said, “She’s right, Mr. Denham. There’s no need for you at the moment. In fact, you’d be much more helpful waiting here to let in the men from the lab. And, incidentally, you might pack a few things, toilet articles, etcetera, for your wife. She’ll be needing them, and the boys can bring them over.”
He turned to Virginia, putting his hand on her elbow. For a second she still stood there, looking at me. There was no plea in her eyes, no sign of regret, nothing but that hard, bright gaze.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing in the house for dinner,” she said. “But that shouldn’t matter too much. If you call Sheila or Hugo or your Uncle Gene, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to have you take potluck.”
She started for the door. Trant went after her.
As the door closed behind them, I felt, with no justification at all, as if I were the criminal.
I was far too dazed to have any coherent thoughts. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a drink. Then, automatically, I went into the bedroom and, moving back and forth from the bathroom, put things in a suitcase for Virginia. Dimly, through the partial anaesthesia of shock, I knew what was going to happen to me later on. But now the suitcase was just a suitcase, lying brown and impersonal on the white spread of Beth’s bed, and I was just a man with a drink in his hand walking from a bedroom to a living-room.
It was the sound of Virginia’s voice that stayed with me. “If you call Sheila or Hugo or your Uncle Gene …” What right had she to stand in judgment of me? Because that’s what she’d been doing. I knew it. She had despised me for abandoning her. It was that moment when she’d turned to me on the couch and I … But for God’s sake, what did she expect? I hadn’t betrayed her. Was it betrayal to have been forced to believe evidence which only a moron could have ignored, evidence which exposed her as the Byword of Rome, the convict of Livorno, the accomplice of a squalid murderer—and, of course, the most heartless of liars?
Oh, Lew, believe me. Sheila Potter did call me to go to the Waldorf … Oh, Lew, I swear it, I never spoke to Quentin at the club. I haven’t the slightest idea how he got into the apartment … Oh no, she didn’t have a sister. Oh no, that wasn’t it, that wasn’t true, nothing was true. Believe me. Please, Lew, believe me …
I had started to feel again and what I felt was rage, rage at her for playing on my emotions, on my vulnerability, on my openly offered love. How dared she imply that I had betrayed her, when ever since that disastrous meeting in Puerta Vallarta she had been consistently manipulating and humiliating me?
I thought of the men from the police lab then. The prospect of them streaming into the apartment, glancing sidelong at me as “that sucker whose wife conned him into removing the body” was unendurable. I finished my drink. I pulled a topcoat out of the hall closet. Leaving the door open … Let them come. Let them all come … I ran out of the apartment to the elevator.
I was in the street, with no plan. I wandered aimlessly down the block, headed east. It was cold even for April. The normal evening activities were beginning. A couple were getting into a taxi. A woman was walking a basset hound. A boy and girl passed me, arm in arm. Nothing had happened for them, had it? Perhaps the man in the taxi had bawled his wife out for making them late for a party. Perhaps the basset hound was off its feed. Perhaps the girl on the arm of the boy was worried whether her deodorant was giving her “full protection”. But that was all. There was nothing for them to separate this day from any other.
The anger was still there. I needed it too much to let it dissipate, but the other thing was coming—the thing I had been dreading—the terrible, deadening sense of loss. But how could you lose something you’d never had? What was this insanity that made me long for a wife who had never existed and to feel bitter hatred against Lieutenant Trant as the enemy who had destroyed the only genuine happiness I had known? The guilt had come back, too, the corroding illogical conviction that there had been a final crucial test which I had disastrously failed.
I was passing a phone booth. An almost overwhelming impulse came to call Mary Lindsay. Of all the people who were supposed to be my friends, she was the only one who seemed to have any reality to me. She would understand, she would sympathise, she … would let me weep on her shoulder? To hell with it. I hadn’t sunk so low as to exploit her friendship to that extent.
I had reached Third Avenue now. There was a bar. A bar was the obvious, the only place in which to nurse my despair and ignoble self-pity. I have no idea what the name of the bar was; it was a neutral, featureless establishment with a normal quota of anonymous, solitary people standing at the bar. There were booths, too, I think, and a television with the sound cut off, enigmatically conveying some indecipherable message.
I stood at the bar and drank. The liquor didn’t help. It only obsessively heightened the images of Virginia that haunted me: Virginia on the couch turning to me, the knuckles of her hand at her mouth. “No, no. It isn’t true. Believe me, please, please believe me.”
Somebody started the juke box. A woman, brushing past me, joggled my glass. Oh, pardon me! Believe her? I thought, deliberately fanning my indignation. Believe in the innocent little provincial girl tricked into marriage for her inheritance by a crook? Believe in the unfortunate victim of a degenerate South American’s spite? Believe in the girl who denied that her Polish half sister was alive, who therefore could not have been the wife brought by Olsen to the villa in Grasse?
Anyone who could believe all that could believe that the world was rectangular.
I was on my third drink when suddenly it happened. It came without warning, blowing everything else to hell and gone like a gale—a memory of Virginia the night before in the living-room, just as I’d left to go to Sheila. I could see her far more clearly than the barflies around me as she’d turned her face up to mine, her eyes so close to my cheek that I could feel the flutter of her lashes.
“It’s you that makes it possible. If I ever thought you’d stop believing in me, I’d die.”
My sense of guilt was overwhelming then because I saw or seemed to see everything. That was why she had given in to Trant. That was the reason for her bitter last words to me. I had stopped believing in her. Because of Trant, because of Uncle Gene, because of all of them, I had failed her, and because I had failed her, there was no point for her to go on, for if even I could no longer trust her, what was the value of fighting? For what? What worth could she have found in life after what it had done to her in the past, once I had turned out to be just another disenchantment?
“If I ever thought you’d stopped believing in me, I’d die.”
Wasn’t that it? Wasn’t I, indeed, the guilty one? Weren’t there times in life when the only test of love and trust was to believe what was seemingly unbelie
vable?
There was still a part of me which could derisively dismiss this as the most maudlin and drunken of sentimentality. But the hope welling up in me was powerful enough to ignore it. Why couldn’t the improbable be true? Why couldn’t Virginia’s Polish half sister have died? Why couldn’t she have been telling the truth when she’d said Olsen had left her eight months before the murder in Grasse? What did Trant have against her but the vague testimony of an old servant, relayed at second-hand through the French police? For … yes … Why couldn’t Olsen have acquired another “wife” by that time? A man with two aliases was not above acquiring two wives. Mrs. Oliver Michaels. Why couldn’t one coincidence just for once have actually happened? Mrs. Oliver Michaels, a Polish Mrs. Oliver Michaels—who had had a sister?
Once again at the extermity of need, an answer came. Mrs. Oliver Michaels? A Polish Mrs. Oliver Michaels? What about the “genuine stomach dancer direct from the Soukhs of Meknes”? Hadn’t I placed her, the moment I saw her, as an Eastern European? What could make a more logical fit? A moment of doubt came. Could Trant have been so idiotic? … Why not? Hadn’t I summed up Lieutenant Trant’s weakness? For all his cleverness, he was a man who could be defeated by the very brilliance of his ability to detect a lie, pursue it and expose it. Virginia and I had presented him with more than enough lies to distract him from somebody who to anyone less complex could have presented all along an obvious target. Esmeralda.
Family Skeletons Page 20
