The Valentine Estate

by Stanley Ellin

  A small slip of the tongue, but enough to indicate she was getting rattled. Which, Chris thought grimly, was what Greenberger aimed at in interviewing a suspect. He had never imagined he shared any of the lieutenant’s talents.

  ‘I met him in Miami yesterday,’ he said. ‘You know, he thinks a lot of you.’

  She made a face.

  ‘So he kept telling me when he was up here. Every day for a week. I actually think he was working right up to the wedding proposal. It was ridiculous.’

  ‘What was so ridiculous about it?’

  ‘He was, the little monster. Always clutching at my hand and whispering passionate, cornball compliments in my ear. I thought Hindus were supposed to be the height of sexual sophistication. He was about as subtle as a landslide. The one thing I can say for him was that at least he was passionate in private; he always made sure no one was around when he cut loose. Thank God for that much. So I guess the phonograph record was a melodramatic Hindu kiss-off, wasn’t it?’

  It would have been more convincing if she hadn’t said it all a little too fast and breathlessly.

  ‘I don’t know about the kiss-off,’ Chris said gravely. ‘He still seems badly smitten.’

  ‘Because he’s probably got a thing for tall girls. A lot of men his size have.’

  ‘Or maybe,’ Chris said, ‘he’s got a thing for surprising girls. Swingers hiding in tweed suits and Back Bay Boston dresses.’

  Beth regarded him steadily, then slowly shook her head.

  ‘I don’t like this game, Chris. This jigsaw puzzle bit. It’s not funny.’

  ‘It might get funnier as it goes along. Just stay with it, baby.’

  ‘And stop calling me baby!’ she said with sudden heat. ‘It’s not Tinpan Alley sweet talk, the way you say it. You better know it, baby. It sounds full of contempt, the way hippies make it sound, no matter how they mean it. And I didn’t look dowdy to you in bed the other night, did I? Or when we met just now?’

  ‘Baby,’ Chris said with cold deliberation, ‘why did you always go around dressed like Little Orphan Annie until now?’

  Her colour heightened.

  ‘How tall are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Six-two. What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘A lot. Because if any boy that tall had offered me a date in high school, I might have had different ideas about the way to dress. I’m five-nine now, and I was five-nine when I was fifteen. And with galloping acne and eyeglasses. And wearing the kind of clothes my father, dear, misguided soul that he was, thought would keep his daughter from having her mother’s problem. So there were no dates. So I thought, okay, you idiots who don’t know what a real keen fun-girl I am way down deep, you stupid adolescents who don’t know what you’re missing, I’ll show you I don’t give a damn. And the same in college. And when I went to work. Does that explain it?’

  ‘There must have been at least one date along the way,’ Chris said pointedly.

  ‘You don’t have to look so sly about it. There was more than a date along the way, there was a man who had sense enough to know I was something special. At least, for a while he had that much sense. But I made no concessions to him either. So you’re the one who changed all that, even if you resent the change. And you do. I mean, these clothes, this hair – you look at them and you get a feeling you can’t put me down so easily any more, and you resent that. That’s why you’re behaving like such a bastard now, isn’t it?’

  Cheeks flaming, eyes too lustrous, she seemed on the verge of tears. Neat, Chris thought uncomfortably. When you can’t talk your way out of a tough spot try tears, sniffles, ad misericordiam.

  He took his time lighting a cigarette.

  ‘What kind of real estate deal were Prendergast and Mookerjee working on?’ he asked.

  Gone was the threat of tears. She looked at him in open-mouthed disbelief.

  ‘Is that all you have on your mind?’ she demanded. ‘Didn’t you hear one word I just said? Weren’t you even listening?’

  ‘Yes. What kind of deal was it?’

  ‘Leave me alone, Chris. I’m not playing your game any more. Not unless I know what it’s all about.’

  He leaned towards her confidingly.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘All I’m trying to do is find out why Joe Prendergast arranged to have your admirer Mookerjee try to kill me yesterday afternoon and your nice Dr Degan try to do it last night. And, for that matter, who he’ll give next crack at me.’

  She cried out, and the convulsive, protesting motion of her arm knocked over her filled glass of water. It was a tribute to her new image, Chris thought as he sprang out of his chair and clear of the dripping table, that where yesterday an irritable waiter would have arrived in due course to clean up the mess, now half the help in the place from maitre d’hotel to busboys seemed to be there in a flash to set things right with enormous solicitude.

  And to wonder, no doubt, why the young lady looked ready to faint because she had upset a glass of water.

  9

  They had it out in their room after he told her, making it short and sweet, what he had been through during the past twenty-four hours.

  In a way, he saw, he had scored the biggest point unfairly, because sure as hell whatever part she was playing in Prendergast’s affairs she had never bargained for her husband’s murder. It was fear for him which had knocked apart her defences where all his cleverness as prosecuting attorney hadn’t. And having seen them knocked apart, he had no intention of letting her rebuild them.

  It reminded him of the lesson he had been taught one day long ago at Palm Beach in his first big tournament. He had served, the service was returned across court like a bullet, and he had futilely come up just short of the ball to see it flick the turf inside the line, safe by inches. And then, with no less astonishment than his opponent, had heard the self-assured bellow of the umpire, ‘Out!’ His dream girl had been in the stands that day, the one who was later to trade him and his gimpy leg for a yacht, so for her sake, feeling like Galahad, he had deliberately double-faulted on his next service and given back the point.

  He had caught it for that from Frenchy afterwards, loud and clear and unforgettable. Some in English, some in French, and a little in Basque, which Frenchy erupted into when he was really wild with rage. And what it came down to was that he had better learn goddam quick that la nature vicieuse – the mean streak, the killer’s instinct – was also part of the queepmen. An essential part. ‘Never again do you do such a thing,’ said Frenchy, and he never again did.

  And he had no intention of doing it now with his wife as she sat huddled in that big armchair. No ad misericordiam for her. Not as long as Prendergast and company were on the loose.

  He said savagely, ‘You mean you worked for him six months, handled his correspondence, his phone calls, his files, even made the entries in the day book, and never once suspected that that real estate business was a stiff? That it didn’t bring in anywhere near enough to pay for those sanatorium bills?’

  ‘I told you no. Oh, all right,’ she said despairingly, ‘maybe it was because I didn’t want to suspect anything. Because I was terrified he might stop being so generous. No matter how I felt about my mother I couldn’t see her going back to that public asylum. I was sick about it every day of my life until I got her out of there. You’d have to see the place to believe what a horror it was. There are even some politicians demanding an investigation of it.’

  ‘That’s beside the point. Didn’t you know Prendergast was borrowing money from a racketeer to pay those sanatorium bills?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Chris –’

  ‘Try again. You were the one who opened his mail every morning. My hunch is that some of McClure’s cheques were in that mail.’

  ‘They were, Chris. But I didn’t know it was borrowed money. I didn’t even know who McClure was or what he was until we were down at Cobia. I read something about him in the paper ther
e. That was the first time I knew.’

  ‘And what did that lead you to think about Prendergast?’

  ‘I suppose it was the same thing all over again. I didn’t let myself think about it. It was before I knew I was coming into money.’

  ‘But after you knew you were, you still didn’t kiss him off, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t see any reason to. He was fantastically generous to me. And you and I were getting married and going away anyhow. What need was there to make an issue of McClure?’

  ‘What about Mookerjee? Weren’t you in on those business talks he had with Prendergast?’

  ‘No. I was told not to come into the room when they were talking.’

  ‘And you were Prendergast’s confidential secretary. Didn’t that strike you as being pretty weird?’

  ‘Maybe it did. Chris, can’t you get it through your head what I’ve been saying over and over? I was dead broke and scared. When you’re like that you don’t want to rock the boat. I’m not a man. I don’t have your kind of courage.’

  His kind of courage for what, he wondered bleakly. To fetch and carry for Frenchy, for McClure, for anybody who’d help him get up next month’s rent and a bottle and a few dollars for bet money? For that matter, to marry for the sake of a jackpot?

  He pushed that question aside. After all, she was on trial, not he.

  ‘So all that leaves is Degan,’ he said relentlessly. ‘What about him? Where did you really stay last night?’

  ‘At his house. Chris, you’ve got the wrong man. I saw him this morning, and he wasn’t lying dead in any cellar. And Mrs Degan was with him, not any gunman named Larry. Where was that place you went to last night?’

  He told her, and she shook her head with conviction.

  ‘That’s not the place at all. That’s in Watertown, and Dr. Degan’s house is out in Dorchester, a block away from the sanatorium. Don’t you see what happened? Prendergast called up those men as soon as you left him, and all they had to do was write the doctor’s name on a card and put it over the doorbell and wait for you. I was telling you the truth. You can call the doctor right now and ask about it.’

  ‘No, I’ll take your word for it,’ he lied.

  ‘I’m glad of that much. Most of all, I wish you’d go to the police right now about Prendergast. And you saw those two men killed. You have to tell the police about it.’

  ‘I’d sound like a lunatic to them, if I just gave them my story without any evidence to back it up. They wouldn’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘But I’d back it up,’ Beth protested.

  ‘There isn’t a cop around who’d believe you either.’

  ‘Because you don’t?’

  ‘Don’t go all wistful on me, baby. The fact is that Prendergast’s been using you to get at me, and you’re not helping me find out why. If you’re holding out on me –’

  ‘I’m not. I swear I’m not.’

  The image of Mookerjee on the deck of Chirica II rose before him. Gosala Mookerjee full of grudging admiration for this girl.

  ‘I badly underestimated her,’ Mookerjee had said. And then with a shrug, ‘But, of course, she is playing for enormous stakes.’

  If not the Valentine estate, which was hers on demand anyhow, what stakes?

  ‘Tell me something,’ Chris said to her without preliminary, without trying to soften it in any way, ‘Were you going to bed with Prendergast?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘You’re putting me on,’ she said scornfully.

  ‘He wasn’t being generous to you out of charity. That money from McClure was being invested in you for a return. But what return? You must have some idea.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my fair white body.’ The colour was rising in her cheeks again, but there was no tears threatening this time, just temper. ‘You don’t trust me at all, do you, Chris? Aside from your brother, you won’t let yourself believe that anybody might love you too much to want to take advantage of you.’

  ‘Let’s keep the record straight. Until Warburton told you about the Valentine estate –’

  ‘I was in love with you before that. Before you even finished giving me my first tennis lesson. When I was a kid I had a very clear picture of just the kind of man I’d like to spend my life with, and no matter what else changed for me that picture never did. And two minutes after you walked out on the court that first morning at Cobia – hangover, needing a shave and all – I knew you were the one. It was as simple as that. Plain old-fashioned biology for the gin, and a few old-fashioned romantic notions for the vermouth. And I proved it to you Saturday night. That wasn’t just a roll in the hay, and you know it. That was a communion.’

  ‘Lady, if you had the least little pride –’

  ‘Oh, the hell with that kind of pride! Who needs it?’

  She flung herself out of the armchair, walked into the bathroom and slammed the door. A moment later he heard her scream at the top of her lungs. A piercing, bloodcurdling scream.

  He had forgotten the trick knee was freshly damaged. When he pivoted on it the pain stabbed him so hard he went off balance and almost fell through the bathroom door. He saw Beth standing at the sink, her hands resting on it, her eyes fixed on the mirror above it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She didn’t turn to face him but calmly addressed his reflection in the mirror. ‘I screamed, that’s all. I’ve been wanting to do it for the last five minutes, so I finally did it.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Shaken, he sat down on the lid of the toilet seat and shook his head at her in wonderment. ‘A prima donna, no less. A real case. Baby, if you ever try that kind of trick again –’

  ‘I might.’ Now she turned to him. ‘I never did anything like that before, but I wasn’t married to you before. Now that I am, I can see myself yelling my head off in the bathroom regularly. It may only be a one-way line between us, but at least you’ll hear the noise at my end.’ She made a megaphone of her hands and aimed it at the open doorway. ‘Hello, out there,’ she called loudly. ‘Is anyone there? Is anyone listening?’

  ‘Knock it off!’ Chris said furiously.

  ‘Why? There’s nobody out there except people trying to kill you. They don’t bother you, do they? Otherwise, you’d want to do something about them.’

  ‘If I don’t, it’s for a good reason.’ Chris struggled to his feet clutching the damaged leg and saw that his wife, changeable as New England weather, was looking at him in. alarm, everything else wiped in an instant from her mind.

  ‘Chris, you’re hurt!’

  ‘It’s nothing. No, scratch that,’ he said as he tested the leg. ‘I’m hurt.’

  She awkwardly tried to support him as he hobbled into the bedroom, and he unwillingly, angrily, had to admit to himself that it wasn’t unpleasant, this arm around him. In fact, it was dangerously pleasant.

  ‘There must be a doctor in the hotel,’ she said. ‘I’ll call him.’

  ‘No, it was just a twinge. It’s all right now.’

  ‘Are you sure. If there’s –’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He shook her off impatiently, and made his way to the rack with his suitcase on it. He flipped it open and took out the packet of Prendergast’s index cards. ‘What do you know about these? Ever seen them before?’

  She went through several cards, reading initials aloud as she squinted nearsightedly at them.

  ‘BOTT. SFR. What do they mean?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

  ‘I don’t know. And I never saw them before. Where did you get them?’

  ‘From that locked drawer in Prendergast’s desk. Ever take a look in it?’

  ‘Yes, but all I saw there was his cheque-book.’

  ‘Because these were in a compartment behind the drawer. A top secret compartment. Take your time with them. See if they match anything at all you know about him.’

  She shook her head in discouragement after a few minutes.

  ‘I’m
pretty sure they’re not people’s initials. I mean, people he’s been dealing with since I’ve been with him. Maybe business firms?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Chris. ‘I’ll tell you what. I have to go out for a little while anyhow, so you can work on these things meanwhile. By the time I get back you might have something.’

  ‘Go out where? Chris, you can’t walk around like that. Let me go instead. If there are any errands –’

  ‘No, thanks.’ He partly opened the door to the hallway and, one hand apparently resting on the outside doorknob, quietly, surreptitiously, slid the room key into the lock there. ‘I won’t be gone more than an hour. I’ll make out all right. Just don’t open the door while I’m gone. Not to anybody.’

  He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door hard behind him. He stood there for a count of ten, then silently turned the key in the lock and eased the door open an inch. She was already at the phone on the night table between the twin beds. The switchboard must have been busy; it took time before she could give the hotel operator the number she wanted.

  It was Prendergast’s number.

  He opened the door another couple of inches to get the full view of her as she stood there, back towards him, phone to her ear, a forefinger nervously flicking through the packet of index cards on the night table. She waited awhile, then apparently convinced she wasn’t going to get an answer, she clapped the phone down on its stand in evident bad temper. She turned away from it, her brow knit in thought, her teeth worrying her lower lip, and saw him standing there.

  For one instant she looked terrified. The next instant, the terror was masked by exaggerated relief.

  ‘Oh, man,’ she said. ‘You almost scared me out of my shoes. Boots, that is.’

  He pushed the door wide open.

  ‘Who were you calling?’

  ‘Oh, that. It was the beauty salon. I wanted to tell them –’

  ‘It’s too bad I know Prendergast’s phone number, isn’t it? What were you calling him about?’

  ‘Chris –’

  ‘What were you calling him about?’