by Q. Patrick
It was only five forty-five when Kate stood outside the door of Angelica’s apartment. Early. The letter was in her pocketbook. In spite of Toby’s shrewd advice, she had no plan. When she came face to face with Angelica, the right words would come.
She pressed the buzzer. The door was opened, not by Angelica, but by her husband. His dark eyes appraised her with friendly admiration.
“Well, well, the stranger! How smart you look.”
She should have prepared herself for the fact that Francis Mills might be at home. He almost always was. In the war, when he had met and married Angelica, Francis had been a reckless young B29 pilot. He had crashed over Japan and had come back from a prison camp very changed—with an almost completely paralyzed right arm hunched in front of him, and a neurotic fear of competing again in a civilian world.
It had been for Francis that Kate had persuaded Toby to take on Angelica as his secretary. One member of the family had to earn a living while Francis had a chance to readjust himself.
Kate, who had been rather shy of the old dashing Francis, had grown fond of the man who had come home. Suffering had fined down and given character to his once rather flashy good looks, and his own fear of being hurt had made him gentle.
“Is Angelica back yet, Francis?” she said in a tight voice that sounded strange to her.
“Any minute now.” He drew her inside the hall with his left hand and closed the door. “She just called from the office. Wants to run me downtown and pick up some shoes. New career for me. Errand boy. I’m getting pretty good at it. How about a quick one before I leave?”
Kate’s own unhappiness made her abnormally conscious of the bitterness in his voice. Poor Francis! He was still too insecure to stand on his own feet, and yet he hated being supported by a woman. Kate hadn’t intended to take a drink or anything in Angelica’s house, but she didn’t want to refuse Francis. She said: “Fine.”
“Manhattans okay? Come and entertain me while I mix.” She followed him into the kitchenette and sat on a stool while he fiddled with ice, bottles and a cocktail shaker. It was painful to see his clumsiness, but she knew better than to offer help. She had done so once, and it had been as if she had whipped him across the face.
As she watched, she thought suddenly of him rather than herself. Francis, who loved Angelica and was pitifully dependent upon her, was being betrayed, too.
Anger bit more deeply into her.
Francis was keeping up a light, noncommittal banter. During the night a rat had gnawed through the floor under the couch, leaving a neat circular hole in the carpet. He was being amusing about his battle with the management to have the building fumigated.
His lightness seemed strained and Kate began to wonder whether he suspected anything. You could never tell with Francis. Like herself, he had learned to keep his feelings hidden. She tried to guess what he would do if he did know. Shrivel up as she might have done without Toby? Or fight?
He had the Manhattans fixed. He put everything on a tray and carried it, propped precariously on the crippled arm, into the other room. Kate followed.
* * *
In the past, the untidiness of this living room had been part of its charm to Kate because untidiness was such a basic characteristic of Angelica. But today the general messiness, the chrysanthemum petals scattered under the vase by the window, the used shorthand pads and office papers sticking out of the desk drawer, and the open albums of phonograph records brought Angelica so close that it was disturbing.
Francis sat down on the couch. Kate joined him. He poured two drinks and handed her one. She took it and put it down untouched next to the shaker.
He grinned at her, a quick, unexpected grin that made his dark, worried face suddenly boyish again.
“To the bride. May she—”
A key rattled in the lock. Francis put his drink down next to Kate’s and jumped up.
“Gee, I promised Gel I’d get those shoes half an hour ago!”
He started for the hall. The door opened. Kate caught a glimpse of Angelica’s tall figure and the shining golden hair.
Francis grabbed his hat, saying: “Kate’s here, Gel. Should have started earlier. Guess I can make it before they close.” Angelica began: “Francis, dear, you don’t have to worry.
If the place is closed it won’t kill—”
But he had hurried out, slamming the door behind him, as if by lingering with Kate he had jeopardized the security of the world. Kate felt a stab of pity for him. Then Angelica came into the room and Kate forgot all about Francis.
Angelica was wearing a flared gray suit, which Kate had bought for her last birthday. She carried a brief case under her arm. Kate was amazed how different Angelica looked now that she suspected her deceit. The blue eyes which had always seemed so frank were obviously wary, and the insincerity of the smiling, generous mouth was as plain as the slight thickening around the nose and the heavy look that showed her annual hay-fever was back.
Toby’s dramatic sense had exulted at the idea of Angelica’s hay-fever. It had tickled him to think of a sneezing Other Woman. Oddly enough, it helped Kate too. By coarsening Angelica’s beauty, it made it easier not to be dazzled.
Angelica came toward her, tossing back her gleaming hair.
“I do wish Francis wouldn’t worry so much. Who cares if I get those wretched shoes today? Hello, Kate.”
Before she reached the couch, Kate got up and crossed awkwardly to the window. The little clock on the mantel was chiming six.
This was the moment when the right words should have come. They didn’t. Kate’s anger wasn’t like Toby’s. It brought no theatrical flourish with it. It went inward, hurting her, undermining her. A longing came for the Martin who had talked to her only an hour or so ago on the phone, a Martin who had probably never existed outside her own mind.
Martin was Angelica’s.
Angelica dropped onto the couch. Her voluptuous beauty was almost repulsive to Kate now.
“What a day at the office!” Angelica stretched her arms lazily. “Sneezing my head off, sniffing my dreary inhaler every hour on the hour like the trains to Philadelphia. Kate, dearest, whatever you do or don’t do, always keep your sinuses open.”
She unzippered the brief case and pulled out a piece of cleaning tissue. She blew her nose theatrically.
“She’s putting on an act,” thought Kate. “She’s trying terribly hard to be casual, but she’s all keyed-up.”
Could Toby have said something? No. He had promised. Toby didn’t break promises. Perhaps Angelica had realized her mistake with the envelopes. Perhaps she had guessed why Kate was there, and was stalling for time.
Don’t give her time!
Kate’s anger blazed up. “I got a letter from you this afternoon.”
Angelica was fiddling with an inhaler, unscrewing its cap and sniffing at it. “Oh, yes, dear, I know.”
She saw the two Manhattans. She picked one up and held it out to Kate.
“Here, Kate, don’t you want your drink?”
Kate shook her head. “I understand you’re again willing to be matron of honor.”
Angelica put down the drink Kate had refused and
picked up the other one. She took a large gulp.
“Ah, that’s what I need. Of course I’ll be matron of honor, darling. It’s so sweet of you to forgive me after that appalling exhibition I made of myself. I’m a fool. That’s my trouble. Thinking that Martin—”
“Only wanted my money? Yes, that was foolish, wasn’t it?” Kate laughed. “Too bad he isn’t going to get my money or me.”
Angelica looked up. “Kate, dear, what in the world?”
“There isn’t going to be any wedding. You’re not surprised, are you? You put your letters in the wrong envelopes. I got your letter to Martin.” She flung out the words that had been eating their way into her. “Poor little Kate, be kind to her—for my sake?”
This wasn’t the way Toby had planned it. Toby had said: “Be smart. Find
out whether there’s really anything between them or whether it’s a bluff.” But Kate knew now that she could never have done it like that. It could only have come this way, blurted out when the hurt became unendurable.
She wasn’t seeing Angelica now. All that golden, heavy beauty was just a blur somewhere beyond her own bitterness and anger.
“I hate you, Angelica! I want to say it, to get it out of me. I hate you!”
She heard a tinkle of glass. It brought her back to a physical consciousness of Angelica. The other girl had dropped her cocktail. She was staring straight in front of her, not at Kate. Her face was gray and fixed in a stupid, unseeing smile.
Something was terribly wrong. Torn out of herself, Kate exclaimed:
“Angelica, what’s the matter?” Angelica had half risen.
“I was wrong.” Her words were blurred foggily together. “Kate, I know now. When Martin comes, I—”
While Kate watched, numb, she swayed forward. The cocktail shaker and the other glass toppled over as she blundered against the coffee table and knocked it sideward. She fell to the floor. She lay there on her face, her golden hair tumbling loose, her legs curled under her.
Kate ran to her. She knelt at her side, feeling the round cold pressure of the dropped inhaler against her shin. She jerked it away. Angelica’s brief case had dropped off the couch and its contents had sprawled over the splintered glass. Kate watched the dampness from the spilled cocktail seep into the front page of a shorthand pad, staining it brown, curling it up.
“Angelica!”
She felt horror surging up in her. She put out her hand to touch the golden hair. Everything had gone now except this new terror and the old deep-rooted affection. Angelica, lying there …
Shivering, she slid her hand down to Angelica’s wrist.
She circled it with her fingers, feeling for the pulse.
There was no pulse.
It couldn’t have happened like that. So quickly. One moment alive. One moment …
“She’s dead!” The words formed, huge as billboard words, in her mind.
She knelt there struggling with the enormity of it. “I said I hated her. And suddenly she was dead!”
Kate got up. Without a plan. Angelica had been like a sister. Kate knew her every trip to the doctor as well as she knew her own. There had never been anything seriously wrong with her. Nothing. Healthy as a cow, Angelica used to say.
How could she possibly be dead?
Kate looked down at the wet carpet and the confusion of broken glass which had been the cocktails. Angelica had been all right. She had drunk half a Manhattan. Then it had happened.
She thought confusedly of Francis, with his crippled arm, mixing the drinks. Had Francis clumsily spilled something poisonous into the shaker? Accidents like that did happen, utterly unexpected tragedies in the home.
Panic was uncoiling in Kate like a snake. Keep thinking about little things. Don’t think of Angelica dead.
The door buzzer rang. She couldn’t think beyond Francis. Francis had forgotten something. He didn’t have a key. She ran to the door, half for the comfort of someone else, half to protect Francis.
She tugged it open. It wasn’t Francis standing there. It was Martin. Martin with his dark summer tan, his fair hair almost white from the sun, his straight soldier’s stance which still hadn’t yielded to civilian clothes.
His blond Saxon face was bright with the surprised pleasure of seeing her.
“Kate, baby!” He put his hands under her elbows, grinning at her. “And the hairdo. Look at the hairdo. It isn’t a hairdo, sweetheart. It’s alive. A fur-bearing mammal.”
The big issues were too much for her. She could only cope with the small things of the moment.
“What are you doing here, Martin?”
“Got an earlier plane. Stopped by at the office. Angelica’s gone batty. She sent her acceptance about matron of honor to me instead of you. I kidded her about it. She said to drop in for a drink on my way to see you. So I dropped. Where is she? Making drinks, I hope.”
She looked at him and knew that she loved him. The suspicion, the horror, nothing could change that. She longed to rely on him. She knew she couldn’t. He was false. As false as Angelica. He was only someone who happened to be there, someone to tell:
“Angelica’s dead, Martin. Angelica’s lying there—dead.” The sudden shocked drop of his jaw told her she had said that out loud. He pushed her aside and strode into the room. She followed, saw him look down at the thing on the floor, drop to his knees, feel the pulse and bend down to peer at the half-concealed face.
He got up. He was at her side again. She looked for the stricken grief on his face that would tell her once and for all of his falseness to her. Incredibly, it wasn’t there. His dark blue eyes were full of shock. His arms went around her.
“Kate, baby. My poor, sweet Kate.” His first thought had been for her. Surprise left her without armor. She felt the pent tears coming.
“Martin, Martin, she was all right! She was sitting there.
She took up a cocktail, drank some of it. And then—”
“Steady, baby. Steady.” The door to the bedroom was behind her, away from Angelica. Martin lifted her, carried her into the other room and eased her onto the bed.
He sat on a chair next to her and held her hand.
“Tell me, Kate. Try and tell me.” She was crying hopelessly now, crying, for so many things, for Angelica being dead, for Angelica having cheated her, for the enigma of Martin, and for herself.
“Kate, try from the beginning.”
She gripped the comforting solidity of his hand. “I—I came because of the letter.”
“The letter?”
“Her letter to you. The wrong envelope.”
“Her letter to me?” he echoed blankly. “Why should Angelica write to me?”
“Martin, is it true?” He’d put her pocketbook beside her. She opened it shakily and brought out the letter for him. “Tell me. I’ve got to know.”
She watched him read it and saw his broad, big-boned face darken with astonishment and indignation. “It’s a fake.”
“It’s Angelica’s writing.”
“Then she’s crazy. We never liked each other. I’ve never even been alone with her.”
She forgot that he had been coming then to be alone with Angelica. She forgot everything in this utterly unexpected chance of bringing back her happiness.
“Martin, is that true?”
“Kate, do I have to tell you I love you? You and only you? I don’t understand this. But there’s some explanation. There must be. Believe me.”
She wanted to believe in him so much that she turned away for fear that his face would give him the lie.
“That’s what Toby said.”
“Toby?”
“I showed him the letter. He said it was all some plot of Angelica’s. He advised me to come here and make her explain.”
She remembered then that Angelica was lying dead in the next room. She stopped. Martin’s jaw was grim, but the tenderness was still in his eyes. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
“We’ll skip this for the moment. Go on, baby. Tell me.”
* * *
Kate told Martin the rest of the story fairly coherently, her arrival, Francis mixing the drinks, Francis leaving, Angelica drinking the Manhattan.
When she finished, he said gravely: “We’d better call Toby.”
“Toby?”
“Your lawyer.”
A fear that was quite new began to stir in her. “Martin …”
His hand rested reassuringly on hers for a moment. Then he dialed a number on the phone by the bed. He was talking to Toby, telling him sketchily what had happened. He put down the receiver.
“He’ll be right over. Better him than me with the police.” She had known they would have to call the police, of course. The knowledge had been in the back of her mind.
That was what you did. Call the police. But t
he implications of what Martin had said were ominous. Your lawyer!
“You don’t mean—”
“Don’t worry, Kate.”
“But explain, Martin. I’m so confused. Why do I need a lawyer?”
“Angelica’s dead.” He was talking with gentle patience as you might talk to a child. “She’s probably been poisoned. The poison was probably in one of those drinks. No one could have put the poison in the drinks except Francis—or you.”
It was that way, of course. Fear came again like something cold inside her.
“An accident,” she said desperately. “Something got into the drinks by mistake.”
“Yes, Kate.”
“You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.” Under the bleached hair, his eyes were serious. “Kate, about the letter.”
“The letter?”
“If the police see the letter and know you came here because of it, they may think—”
She saw it then. For the first time since the terrible moment of Angelica’s falling forward, she saw herself as she would appear to the outside world. Kate Laurence, on the eve of her wedding, had found a letter that proved her best friend was deceiving her with her fiancé. Kate Laurence, full of hatred and bitterness, had gone to her friend and confronted her with the truth. Her friend had died when they were alone together in the apartment. Had died—poisoned.
Dizziness came. “Martin, I didn’t do it.”
“I know you didn’t, Kate. But you do understand about the letter?”
“Yes.”
“You came because Angelica was your friend, was to be your matron of honor. You dropped in to discuss details of the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“Then we know what to do with this.”
He had pulled the folded letter out of his pocket. He brought out matches. He set fire to one corner of the paper watched it curl upward and then carried it through the open door of the bathroom and flushed it away.
He came out of the bathroom with a little smile of satisfaction playing around his mouth. Suspicion of him flared up again. Martin had destroyed the letter. For her? Or for himself?
She sat huddled on the bed. Would it always be this way with these dreadful doubts? Coming, going. Never being sure.