As the lieutenant’s voice sounded, Andrew could feel the veins in his temples pulsing. He knew. But what good was knowing without proof? Unless he could prove …
He glanced down at the letter in his lap, the letter which was dated the day before Bill Stanton’s party.
… I took it with me to the office. When I got home I had to change in a hurry and I forgot about the letter in my pocket. Later I remembered and ran to the closet. The suit I’d been wearing to the office wasn’t there. It had been sent to the cleaner’s and all the contents of the pockets were on my dressing table—except the letter. I don’t want to be an alarmist. It’s possible that I left it at the office or even that I automatically hid it somewhere safe when I got home, but if I didn’t …
The tension in him was growing tauter and tauter. All right. Try it, improvise, take the gamble. There was nothing else to do.
He got up. He handed the letter to the lieutenant. “Read this, Lieutenant. Mr. Thatcher wrote it to Maureen the day before Bill Stanton’s party.”
As the lieutenant read, it seemed to Andrew that his legs had no substance whatsoever. It was a paranoiac sensation, as if he were floating on air.
“Okay, Mr. Jordan, I’ve read it.”
“It proves Mr. Thatcher was scared one of Maureen’s letters had been intercepted, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Then don’t you see? That explains the telephone call my wife made from Bill Stanton’s, that call which wasn’t to Gloria Leyden. I told you what I heard her say. You’ve found it? Thank God, I was going out of my mind that she … She, Lieutenant. Maureen was calling Mr. Thatcher because she was scared someone might have found that letter. I realize that the other part—Thank God you’ve found it—implies that Mr. Thatcher had found the letter, but that doesn’t prove it hadn’t been read, does it? And of course it was read.”
The insane, disembodied feeling was still there.
“Okay, Lieutenant, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about this case. It’s largely my fault and Ned’s. We’ve been keeping most of it back from you. But there’s one thing that’s common knowledge. Mr. Thatcher had always been desperately eager to have an heir. That makes it unlikely that he’d have killed Maureen because she was pregnant by him. But what about his wife? What about a woman who was happy with her husband and her respectable, luxurious way of life, a woman who suddenly discovered not only that her husband was having an affair with a much younger woman, her own niece, her own protégée, but that the protégée was bearing him an heir? Wouldn’t she realize that her whole life was falling apart around her? Wouldn’t she see that the only possible way of removing Maureen as a threat was to kill her?”
He swung around to Mrs. Thatcher. She was sitting beside her husband, her face quite expressionless, her lips pulled into a thin, tight line.
He said, “Just now you merely invented Rodney Miller, didn’t you? You picked the one person you could think of who was safely out of the picture, who was dead. Maureen never had an affair with Rodney Miller. Her lover in Pasadena was your husband. The wife who was your best friend was you. You sent her away, but it didn’t work. The moment you were here in New York, there was Maureen. The fuse was lit. It was just a question of time before the explosion came.”
He’d done it now. He’d really gone out on a limb. But proof … where was the proof? The intercepted letter, the telephone call? They weren’t proof, of course they weren’t. But go on. To turn back now would be disastrous.
“Sure,” he said, and his voice sounded quite unfamiliar to him, remote and distorted. “Mrs. Thatcher killed Maureen, and I can tell you exactly what happened. Everything came to a head through Rosemary and Ned. There was Maureen determined to get Mrs. Thatcher’s husband but wildly eager to keep her from suspecting a thing until she could be absolutely sure about the pregnancy which was bound to land him. Then, quite incidentally, Rosemary fell in love with Ned. You can imagine how Maureen felt about that. In the first place, stopping the wedding was a magnificent revenge on Rosemary. But, far more important, it gave Maureen a wonderful opportunity to convince Mrs. Thatcher once and for all of how loyal she was, the sweet, dutiful niece appalled for their sake at the idea of Rosemary making such an unfortunate match.
“So she knew exactly what she had to do. After her lunch with Rosemary yesterday she called Mrs. Thatcher and invited her over to the apartment. What she didn’t know, of course, was that Mrs. Thatcher had intercepted the letter after all and had decided that this was the moment for a showdown. Mrs. Thatcher came to the apartment. Maureen, all sweetness and light, started to prove her loyalty by warning her against Ned as a son-in-law. Then, to her astonishment, Mrs. Thatcher counterattacked. ‘I’ve discovered you’re having my husband’s baby and I’ll … I’ll … ’ ”
His sentence dribbled off into silence and he felt panic invading him. How could Mrs. Thatcher at that time have learned Maureen was pregnant? Certainly not from the intercepted letter and certainly not from Mr. Thatcher himself, who hadn’t known anyway. Then … then she couldn’t have known? She’d gone to Maureen knowing nothing more than that she was having an affair with her husband? She had gone there to kill her just for that? No, he couldn’t conceive of Mrs. Thatcher actually driven to murder unless she’d known about the baby. Then … she had merely gone there to force Maureen into giving up her husband? But how had she hoped to do it, knowing Mr. Thatcher was besottedly in love with Maureen, unless she had something against Maureen, some terribly powerful counterweapon?
Suddenly, when all seemed lost, it came to him. Of course Mrs. Thatcher had had a counterweapon. And he realized what it was. Maureen hadn’t been sure of the address of Rosemary’s school in Lausanne. To make certain Rosemary would receive her letter, she’d mailed it to her at the Thatchers’ Pasadena address. Mrs. Thatcher, naturally suspicious of anything concerning Maureen, had opened it. Once she’d read it, she’d decided not to send it on, she’d scribbled Maureen’s New York address on the back and kept it—just in case she would ever need it. And she’d needed it all right. When she went to Maureen, she’d taken the letter with her. You give up my husband or I’ll show this to your husband.
That was it. That was when Maureen had seen everything tumbling around her. That was when she realized the time had come when she would have to use her trump card. That was when she said, “There’s nothing you can do because I’m pregnant. I’m bearing his child.” And then … the gun … a struggle … the shots …
It had to be that way. It was the only possible solution. And, my God, yes, there might be proof after all. There might—there just might, for he had remembered the memorandum sheet on which Mrs. Thatcher had scribbled the Thatchers’ unlisted telephone number for him that morning. He had in his possession a copy of Mrs. Thatcher’s handwriting. If it matched up with the address penciled on the letter to Rosemary …
His hand quivering, he brought out of his pocket the letter Maureen had written to Rosemary. He also brought out the scribbled telephone number which Mrs. Thatcher had given him.
Immensely conscious of the silence, of the oppressive barrage of eyes on him, he looked at the telephone number Mrs. Thatcher had scribbled. It was Templeton 7-8077. Three sevens! And all of them had on their uprights the identical little European ticks which figured in the address on the letter to Rosemary.
Proof!
He was feeling a sort of crazy triumph now. He turned back to the lieutenant.
“I know what you’re going to say. There’s no proof, no proof at all. Well, there is. One of the things we’ve been keeping from you is that it was Ned who faked the burglary. He went to the apartment and found Maureen dead and he faked the burglary for my sake because lying beside the body he found this letter.”
He handed the letter to the lieutenant. “You don’t have to read it now. You just have to know it was lying beside the body. And it’s not just me who’s saying that. Ned found it. Ned will testify. It was left b
eside the body, it was left there by the murderer, and I can prove that the only person who could have left it there was Mrs. Thatcher. Look.” He handed the lieutenant the scrap of memorandum paper. “Here’s Mrs. Thatcher’s handwriting. Compare it with the address penciled on the back of the letter. Look at the sevens. There’s no doubt. That’s Mrs. Thatcher’s writing.”
Mrs. Thatcher’s writing! Even then when, the almost drunken excitement was seething in him, he saw how pitifully thin that was. Mrs. Thatcher’s writing? Yes, he could prove Mrs. Thatcher had written on the letter. But … what had he just said? I can prove that the only person who could have left it by the body was Mrs. Thatcher. Could he? Of course he couldn’t. It was evidence of a kind, but as for holding up in a court of law …
He glanced at Mrs. Thatcher. She had removed her hand from her husband’s. She was gazing straight at Andrew, her eyes icily steady. Mrs. Thatcher, who had been so “sweet” to him that morning, who had urged him so warmly to believe in Maureen’s love. Maureen was a good girl with a lot of love to give when she found the right man … He felt a huge, frustrated rage swelling up in him. She’d said that, of course, because it had been desperately important for her to allay any doubts he might have about his marriage. Once he started to suspect that Maureen had a lover, he might have taken the next step of suspecting Mr. Thatcher. That was why she had been so “kind” as to warn him about his arrest too. Was he suspecting her? Beyond anything, that’s what she’d had to find out.
The rage was there—and the panic. He glanced back at Lieutenant Mooney, who was comparing the two pieces of paper, his face stonily impassive. No, this wasn’t going to do. There had to be more proof, real proof. Somehow he must unearth …
Once again, when everything seemed to be collapsing around him, he was rescued. One thing was absolutely certain. The initiative for the meeting between the two women must have come from Maureen. Yesterday, after her lunch with Rosemary, she wouldn’t have been able to wait to get in touch with Mrs. Thatcher and play her little devious comedy about Ned. So, at some time during the afternoon, she must have called Mrs. Thatcher.
He turned to Rosemary. “When you came to my office yesterday, you said Maureen would have to wait a few hours before talking to your mother because Mrs. Thatcher was at her bridge club, didn’t you?”
Rosemary gave a bleak little nod. “That’s right.”
“As it happens, her bridge club is in the same block as my apartment. It never occurred to you that Maureen would know where it was, did it, but she did and so do I. Your mother mentioned it that day she came to our place to pick you up. So Maureen knew exactly where your mother would be—at the Royale Club. That’s its name, isn’t it? That’s the only bridge club in our neighborhood.”
He glanced back at the lieutenant. This was the wildest gamble of them all. But there was one thing about bridge clubs. They stayed open late. One-thirty would be quite early for the Royale Club.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “if I could prove that Maureen called Mrs. Thatcher yesterday afternoon…!”
Mrs. Thatcher gave a quick, muted gasp. The lieutenant glanced up from his study of the two handwriting samples, but said nothing.
All the others were watching in stunned silence. Andrew went to the phone. There was a telephone book on a shelf beneath it. He found the number of the Royale Club and dialed.
A woman’s voice said, “Royale Bridge Club.”
Andrew said, “This is Homicide. I want some information. Did a Mrs. Thatcher play bridge at your club yesterday afternoon?”
“Homicide!” The voice repeated the word with the faintest tinge of skepticism. Then the woman seemed to be satisfied. “I’ll check.”
In a few moments she was back. “Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Thatcher was down to play in the weekly duplicate match at two-thirty yesterday afternoon.”
“Is there any way of telling whether she received a phone call while she was there?”
“Why, certainly. We keep a record of all incoming calls. We write the name and number of the calling party on two slips and send one of them in to the players in the bridge room so they can decide whether they want to take them then or have the party call back. The copies are kept several days. It’s our protection in case a member complains that a call was never received. One moment, please.”
Transfixed with suspense, Andrew stood holding the receiver.
Finally the woman’s voice came again. “Yes, sir, there was a call. I have the slip here. It came in at three forty-five P.M. It was from a Mrs. Andrew Jordan.”
“From Mrs. Andrew Jordan?” repeated Andrew. “A call from Mrs. Andrew Jordan at three forty-five yesterday afternoon?”
He heard a little gasp behind him.
Then Rosemary’s voice cried in angry attack, “But what does that prove? Of course Maureen called her. Of course she was going to tell her about Neddy and me. That’s nothing. That doesn’t prove that she …”
The woman’s voice on the phone was saying, “And there’s another thing, sir. One of the ladies who’s playing here tonight happened to be Mrs. Thatcher’s partner in yesterday’s duplicate. She tells me that when Mrs. Thatcher came back from answering her call, she stayed just long enough to finish the hand and then left. Luckily her partner was able to get a fill-in.”
“Thank you,” said Andrew. “Thank you very much. Would you mind repeating that information to Lieutenant Mooney?”
He held the receiver out to the lieutenant. “Mrs. Thatcher was in the middle of a duplicate match, but the moment she received the call from Maureen, she abandoned her partner and left the club. The woman will tell you everything for yourself, but I think this is going to be all you need.”
“But—but she brought out the gun …”
The words, high, hysterical, split the air as the lieutenant took the receiver from him.
Hating it, Andrew turned to look at Mrs. Thatcher. She was standing between her husband and her daughter. Her eyes were wild, her face horribly contorted.
“She … she said … give me that letter or I’ll shoot you. She said … She started it. There was the gun. I didn’t know … I didn’t mean …”
The words choked off into a sob. She made a little incoherent gesture toward her husband, then she ran blindly out of the room.
“Mummy, Mummy.”
Rosemary ran after her. For a moment Mr. Thatcher stood quite still, his shoulders sagged. Then he sat down in a chair and put his hands over his eyes.
Andrew could hear the lieutenant’s authoritative voice on the phone. Dimly he knew that Ned had moved to join him and had put his hand on his arm. The truth, he thought. All through this day of bewilderment and pain, he had stumbled on in his pursuit of the truth, forcing himself to believe that once the truth was known, the nightmare would be over. Well, the truth was known now, not only the truth about Maureen and her death, but the truth about himself and Ned and the Thatchers and, yes, his mother too. Everything had been exposed. All of them had been revealed for what they were. And he, Andrew Jordan, had been tested as he had never been tested before.
To what purpose? Had the insecurity which had made him so easy a dupe for Maureen been burned out of him? Perhaps there was that. Perhaps in time he would find that something of value had taken place. But at the moment he felt nothing but exhaustion and corroding pity for Mrs. Thatcher. This wasn’t the villain unmasked, the classic end of the drama of murder. This was Maureen reaching up from the grave to destroy the last of her victims. Yes, the roles were reversed. The victim had been the killer, the killer just another victim.
On the phone, Lieutenant Mooney was saying, “Okay. Thank you. I’ll be around in the morning to check.”
He put down the phone and turned implacably to Mr. Thatcher. “Perhaps you’d go to your wife, Mr. Thatcher, and ask her to come back here.”
Very slowly, Mr. Thatcher started to rise.
It was then that Andrew faced one thing which had happened, one realization which would in
deed change his life forever. If he had known what Mrs. Thatcher had known about Maureen, he would have killed her himself. He was quite sure of it. Mrs. Thatcher had committed his murder for him. Whatever ordeal lay ahead for her could, but for the grace of God, have been his ordeal.
He said, “Stay there, Mr. Thatcher. I’ll go to her. I think I should be the one …”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1960 by Patrick Quentin
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5145-3
This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
MysteriousPress.com
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PATRICK QUENTIN
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
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MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
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