Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  Suddenly, as I studied the faded record of that remote Danubian picnic, everything became clear. The whole intricate and sordid plot was as plain as if it were printed in block letters across the album page. My heart was pounding. I could hardly trust my voice as I looked up to the Baroness and said, “Could I borrow this photograph?”

  “You want?” The Baroness was smiling indulgently. “You like? You wish to bring it to your oh-so-grand friends—to remember?”

  “Can I have it?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Always we share when it is memories. If Natasha Eleanovna …”

  I wasn’t listening any longer. With a hand clumsy in its unsteadiness, I fumbled the photograph out of its slots. I got up and started for the door.

  The Baroness’s voice came back into my consciousness.

  “Young man … But, young man … the tea! The samovar is there. The tea—and the little sugared violets …”

  Princess Natasha opened the door of the Lerchikovs’ suite. She was wearing an evening dress of delicate robin’s-egg blue. On her feet were a pair of little white rabbit-fur slippers, the first step, presumably, to bed.

  “Ah, Lewis. Dear, dear Lewis.” All the pretty smiles, all the little clutches. “You come. How late but how charming!” She started to draw me into the foyer. “Poor Vladimir. He sleeps already. Always in New York so fatigué. Is the American dinners. Such heaps on the plate. What do they think one is, for so much eating? Perhaps a cow?”

  We were in the sitting room now. There was a game of solitaire spread out on a table by the window. Princess Natasha was addicted to solitaire. In the taxi my anger and disgust at what had been done to Virginia had grown to a point where it was almost out of control. I grabbed her arm. She gave a little startled whimper. The cry merely heightened in me the impulse to violence.

  “You’ll be glad to know your diamond ring paid off,” I said. “Esmeralda told the police what you wanted her to tell them. It couldn’t have been better timed either—just when they were ready for it.”

  All she could think of was to slip into her little-girl bewilderment. “Esmeralda? The police?”

  “That was the deal, wasn’t it? Pretend Virginia was her sister, pretend Virginia was in on the murder in Grasse?”

  “But, Lewis.” I could feel her arm quivering in my grip like the wing of a trapped bird. “What is this? What has come to you?”

  “The truth,” I said.

  “But—but the truth about what?”

  “About you and Olsen. He came to you in Lausanne, didn’t he? Olsen, Michaels, whatever he was calling himself—he came to you with a proposition. How much did he pay you? Or maybe he didn’t give you a cent. Maybe he just talked you into it for the loot that would be there for you.”

  “Lewis.” The voice was a bird’s voice too, a thin piping “Lewis.”

  I let go of her arm then, partly because I was afraid of the murderous pleasure the contact gave me. I brought the photograph out of my pocket.

  “Remember the Baroness Kornikov? That canaille you were too high and mighty to meet? As you probably know, she was a great friend of your son and his wife. She had a special name for your granddaughter too. La fille aux cheveux de lin. The girl with the flaxen hair. Suitable, isn’t it? Look.” I held the photograph up in front of the blue, darting, terrified eyes. “That’s the prettiest golden hair anyone could want to see. Where is this golden-haired granddaughter of yours? Was she shot with her parents? Or is she maybe tucked away in some convent?”

  It was rather frightening to find that I could look at a totally destroyed woman without so much as a flicker of sympathy. Princess Natasha had dropped down on the chair behind her solitaire game. Tiny as she always was, she seemed to have shrivelled into a little child’s mummy. She lowered her face until it rested on the table, scattering the cards. For a long moment she was silent. Then, not even raising her head, she whispered, “Tanya died in Davos. She came to us from Hungary, but oh so frail, so sick from the journey, the horrors. She fought for her life in the sanitarium, fought so hard, but … It was the will of God.”

  There it was at last—the one clue that had been missing the clue which accident had unearthed in an old album, in the faded photograph of a plump little golden-haired girl who could never, by any stretch of imagination, have turned into the dark, high-cheekboned Tanya who had married Hugo.

  It was all so easy to reconstruct now. Olsen and his “wife” fleeing from the villa in Grasse, jettisoning Esmeralda, the “poor little nothing of a Polish sister” who was picked up or abandoned as necessity demanded. Olsen and his “wife” seeking sanctuary in nearby Switzerland, on the lookout—always on the lookout—for a fast buck. I thought of Hugo’s familiar anecdote of his first encounter with love—that tale which had always been so boring but which now was merely pathetic. The gallant Hugo raising his hat on the pleasure steamer to the girl in white—the beautiful girl in white who happened to be Olsen’s “wife”. “There’s no need to ask who you are. You’re a princess.” The pompous rich young American—the perfect fall guy.

  But how do you hook a snobbish millionaire who wants a princess for a bride when you happen to be a whore and the “wife” of a crook? Why, what could be easier? Turn yourself into a princess. Switzerland is crawling with blue-blooded, penniless émigrés. Find a suitable one—one who happened, in this case, to have a conveniently dead granddaughter.

  Slowly the Princess was raising her head. She was gazing at me with the ghost of that pretty earnestness which had never fooled me in the past but which now that it had grown so threadbare, oddly enough, seemed real.

  “To be so poor!” she said. “If you knew! The little rat-hole apartment, the tiny supper from perhaps a bowl of soup, the fat, sweaty landlord all the time shouting: Where is my rent? To us! Us who in the good days have fifty servants, servants for the servants. Olsen does not seem bad. Help this poor girl, he says, and you will help yourselves. Oh, but we do not know how it was a trap, how he would follow us here, to Antigua, everywhere, always pressing: You think I give you the rich life for free? Find out le scandale. There must be scandale.Find it out for me and my chantage. You think I wish to tell him of Sheila and Eugene? You think, when they are so kind, it is pleasure to tell to this man? Oh, Lewis, if you knew—the shame.”

  Perhaps if it hadn’t been for the rage, I might have felt some pity for the Lerchikovs whose easy-won American paradise had turned out to be so serpent-ridden, but my heart was utterly unaffected because Princess Natasha had now become as unsubstantial to me as the faded photographs in the Baroness Kornikov’s album. She hadn’t killed Olsen. She might have wanted him dead, just as she had wanted, by bribing Esmeralda, to steer the police to Virginia and thus save her own skin. But Princess Natasha luring Olsen to my apartment? Princess Natasha letting him in with a key she could not possibly have obtained? Princess Natasha shooting him with a gun from the bedside drawer of whose existence she couldn’t possibly have been aware? In this sordid intrigue which had ended in murder, just as in life itself the Lerchikovs had been extras—charming, corruptible, ineffectual small-part players. Before I’d even reached the Pierre, I had known who the real enemy was. How wide of the mark I had been with my fantasies of Sheila, Uncle Gene—Beth. Beth, who had died a natural death but who, because I had wanted to clear myself of the guilt and neglect, I had tried to turn into the victim of someone—anyone else. Yes, even in the taxi, the enemy had been as obvious as the motive was simple. All I had needed was confirmation.

  Well, it had come. “Tanya Denham,” whose first name wasn’t Tanya and whose second name probably wasn’t Denham, since the chances were she had always been Olsen’s wife and that the marriage to Virginia for her pathetic little inheritance had been as phony as everything else about him. “Tanya Denham,” the whore who had struck it rich through a man who had helped her to wealth but who later had become a constant threat, for one word to Hugo or Uncle Gene and the whole Denham coterie would have recoiled from
her as from a leper. “Tanya Denham,” longing to get rid of him, biding her time, laying her plans until the ideal opportunity presented itself in Virginia Harwood, Olsen’s other “wife,” the perfect scapegoat waiting to be exploited in an apartment to which Tanya had a key and which, as she well knew, provided its own gun.

  At last, by accident, by persistence—mostly by accident—it had come. The struggle which had endured so long and in which I had so frequently blundered and stumbled was over. I had, if such things were redeemable, redeemed my betrayal of Virginia. All that was left to be done was to call Trant and, yes, to go to Hugo.

  I was ashamed of the faintly malicious satisfaction which the prospect brought me. After his persistent effort to save me from an “unfortunate” wife, this turning of the tables seemed almost too pat a revenge.

  I started for the door. I had almost forgotten Princess Natasha until I heard the little shuffling footsteps behind me.

  “Lewis, Lewis, where do you go?”

  She came running around me and stopped in front of me between me and the door—a blue, fluttering, faded butterfly.

  “You do not go to the police? You do not say we kill Olsen! Kill him, Me? Vladimir? The girl Tanya? Lewis, you do not think bad things of the girl Tanya? Please, please, you must believe me. She is a good girl. Always she hates this Olsen, who has taken her so young, who has made her do his evil things. She is sweet, she is kind, she is to us like a daughter and she loves the Hugo. Always she loves the Hugo. I swear to you, Lewis. She is a good girl.”

  Her hand was clutching my arm. Incredibly, this impassioned championship of Tanya seemed quite sincere. Is that what happened, I thought, to grandmothers who lose their only granddaughter? Do they blindly embrace any substitute?

  “Listen, please, please, you must listen. You do not think Tanya kill him? You do not think he say: All right, now I tell Hugo—and she kill him? Lewis, this is not so. I know. She was here with us when Olsen comes with the flowers. Yes, she is here. And he says: Okay, now I go but you give me all you have. And she did—money, jewels, everything. Only I—I hide my pretty diamond ring. And Olsen says: Okay. I go now. Good-bye. This is true, I swear it.”

  The other hand had perched now on my arm. “Lewis listen, I say. What is this you speak of sisters? You say I give my ring to that woman to speak of sisters—of murders in Grasse? What is this? It is not so. She come this afternoon, yes. She come and she say: I am friend of Olsen, I know of you. And I give my ring to stop her from telling of us. That is all. I know nothing of sisters, of murders. Does this Esmeralda then say that Virginia is her sister? Does she say that Virginia was of this murder in Grasse? If she does, it is not from me. Maybe then it is true. Oh, Lewis, you will hate me, I know. But think … before you do this to Tanya. Are the police idiots? Do they go after the innocent? Does even this Esmeralda speak of sisters if it is not so? Cannot love of a man for a woman so blind him, so confuse him, so deceive him? Think, Lewis. Be true. What do you know of Virginia?”

  It was only in dreams, surely, that a snake, slashed to death with a thousand blows, suddenly stirs and is alive again. And yet here it was once more—the Denham snake, the Sheila snake, the Uncle Gene snake, the Hugo snake, hissing its poisonous message of temptation: Not us, not us, not one of us. Virginia.

  The poison no longer had any power over me. Of course it didn’t. Tanya hadn’t killed him? Tanya had given him everything she owned and he’d consented to leave them alone? Tanya a “good girl”? Tanya not Esmeralda’s sister? It was so preposterous, that Princess Natasha with her ridiculous child’s lies was less bothersome to me than a midge. And yet, as if the venom were indeed still potent, fury came rushing in as an antidote.

  It was this fury that made me turn back from the door and hurry to the phone. I had been planning to call Trant from the lobby. But why? Let the Princess know exactly what I thought of her and her contemptible insinuations. I had Trant’s card in my pocket. I dialled the number.

  “Lieutenant Trant, please.”

  “Lewis!” cried the Princess.

  A man’s voice on the phone said, “Trant’s not here.”

  “Where can I reach him? This is terribly important.”

  “Sorry. He’s not available right now.”

  “But I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Lewis!” said the Princess. “Oh, Lewis, please.”

  The man said again, “Sorry. Trant’s unavailable. Can I take a message?”

  “Yes,” I said, fighting frustration. “Tell him it’s Lewis Denham. Tell him I know who killed Olsen. Tell him to meet me at my cousin Hugo Denham’s just as soon as possible.”

  I slammed down the phone. The Princess was gazing at me with that expression which had so often undermined me in the past, that maddening Denham look of exasperation mingled with affectionate pity.

  “Poor Lewis,” she said. “Poor, poor Lewis.”

  I made a decision then. After Tanya was arrested and Virginia was restored to me, I would never see a Denham again. The exhilaration which came with the decision was extraordinary. It had taken me thirty-two years but at last it had happened. I had grown up.

  In the taxi on my way to Turtle Bay, I felt as calm as if the whole thing were over. There was nothing to worry me except the awkwardness of breaking it to Hugo. Every move both Tanya and Olsen had made was clear. Tanya hadn’t been with the Lerchikovs when Olsen went there. That was just the Princess’s pathetic, pseudo-grandmotherly improvisation. Olsen had gone to her. He had made a final, impossible demand, and Tanya, who had Virginia on ice as the ideal scapegoat, had everything ready. What could have been simpler than to promise payment and arrange a meeting at my apartment? A call from “Sheila” to get Virginia out of the way—and it was done.

  The taxi stopped outside Hugo’s house. As I got out, I saw the lights in the upstairs sitting room were on. Would Trant be there already?

  I rang the doorbell. Until then I hadn’t really thought of Tanya as the Tanya I knew. In my mind she had merely been Olsen’s “wife,” Esmeralda’s sister, the girl in Grasse, the murderess. Suddenly, as I waited for the door to open, she became once more the poised fashionable hostess, the Denhams’ crowning glory. What would I say when Tanya opened the door?

  She didn’t. It was Hugo. He had his pipe in his mouth. He looked more than ever like the advertising agencies’ ideal of Young Executive America. At least he did until he saw that his caller was me. Then, instantly, the worried, governessy frown came.

  “Lew, what is it? Not Virginia? They haven’t …”

  I knew then that Lieutenant Trant hadn’t arrived. Hugo was shepherding me into the hall.

  “Here … here … let me take your coat.”

  Somehow I couldn’t bear to have him go through his compulsively courteous little hat-check-girl routine—not under the circumstances.

  I said, “No, it’s okay. I’ll only be staying a minute. Is Tanya here?”

  “No,” he said, “no. As a matter of fact, she’s not. She’s gone to the opera with the Gardiners. Thank God I got out of it. Traviata or some such braying. But she should be back any minute. Come up, come on up. I hope it’s nothing bad. I mean, for your sake, I hope …”

  He had his hand on my elbow leading me towards the stairs. Tanya was out. Did that make it better or worse?

  “I’ve been worried, Lew. So worried. So has Tanya. We almost called a dozen times, but since you didn’t call

  We were going up the stairs past the Dufy water colours (bought by Tanya), across the upstairs hallway with its Venetian mirrors (bought by Tanya) into the living room which was totally her creation. It occurred to me that until he had married Tanya, Hugo had been hardly a personality at all. He had only come into his own as Tanya’s husband. That thought didn’t help.

  He was hovering around the bar. “What’s it to be? Scotch, as usual? Scotch on the rocks?”

  I’d refused to take off my coat. Surely I couldn’t refuse a drink too. It would be too much.

&nb
sp; “All right,” I said.

  “Twenty-five years old. Direct from Scotland. It always pays off. Never trust the importers over here.”

  Importers, I thought, who imported twenty-five-year-old bonded wives from Switzerland?

  He brought me the drink. “Now. What is it? I can tell it’s bad from your face.”

  “They’ve arrested Virginia,” I said.

  “Oh no! Why, Lew …”

  “She’s innocent,” I said.

  “Why sure. I mean, of course, if you say so.”

  “She’s been framed.”

  “Framed?” he echoed.

  In spite of the furrow of anxiety on his forehead, there was a faintly quizzical look. Poor old Lew. There he goes again. It irritated me just enough to get me over the hump.

  “I know who killed Olsen,” I said. “It was someone he’d been blackmailing, someone who knew Virginia used to be his wife—and framed her.”

  Hugo blinked. “Then—then where’s your trouble? If you know—go to the police.”

  “I’m going to, I said. “In fact, I’ve asked the lieutenant to meet me here. I just thought I ought to tell you first.”

  “Me?” Hitching up his trousers—the old crease-preserving gimmick—he perched himself on the arm of a chair. “Why me? I don’t know this—this mysterious blackmailer, do I? My God, you’re not back on Sheila again?”

  “No,” I said. “Not Sheila. It’s a woman who married Olsen, or, if she didn’t actually marry him, lived with him. It’s a woman who was involved with him in a murder in the South of France.” Say it!“A woman who wanted a rich husband and who, with Olsen’s assistance, bribed the Lerchikovs into letting her pose as their granddaughter. The real granddaughter died after escaping from Hungary.”

  “Lew!” Hugo’s voice had soared into his choirboy alto. “Lew—now listen to me. Let’s get this straight. Are you saying that Tanya is—is an imposter? That she and this Olsen …?”

  “That’s right,” I said.