Jack and Susan in 1933

by McDowell, Michael

  “Because you’d already got what you wanted,” said Barbara, slowly advancing toward the sofa.

  “What was that?” Susan asked curiously.

  Barbara reached deep into her bosom and pulled out several sheets of paper folded in thirds. She dropped it into Harmon’s lap.

  “Father changed his will. He left everything he had to you.”

  “Oh no…” said Susan, clapping a hand to her mouth. She looked at Jack in wide-eyed astonishment. Jack was perfectly certain that his own eyes were wide in astonishment, and he had a pretty good idea that he was Harmon was quickly reading through the pages. Susan reached for them. He turned smoothly out of her way.

  “Well, Barbara,” Harmon remarked, “it’s a good thing you have a trust fund, because you certainly won’t get anything out of this little document.”

  He turned over to the last page. “Oh, what an extraordinary coincidence. It’s dated the day before yesterday. The day before yesterday Marcellus made his will, leaving everything to Susan, my wife. Yesterday he made a proposal of marriage to Susan, my wife. Today he’s in his coffin, being decorously mourned by Susan, my wife. Who would have thought the world could move along so quickly?”

  Harmon handed the will out for Jack to take, but Susan was quicker. She reached across the sofa and grabbed the papers out of her husband’s hands.

  “Everything you wanted,” sighed Barbara, leaning over the back of the sofa and idly trying to poke out Zelda’s eye with the stem of a chrysanthemum. “I suppose it’s what you’d call a happy ending.”

  Susan looked up into Barbara’s face. She was silent a moment. Jack wondered what she’d say. Something nasty, and then to spit in Barbara’s eye seemed an appropriate response.

  “Say thank you” is all she said, however.

  “‘Thank you’? For what, pray tell?”

  “For this,” said Susan, and with that she ripped the will in half.

  Then in quarters.

  Then Jack recovered from the surprise of the thing and leapt up from his chair to grab at the document.

  Susan ripped the will up into eighths and flung the bits into Barbara’s face.

  “Thank you,” said Barbara, brushing the foolscap fragments from her dress. “Well, Jack, it appears that I’m an heiress again.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Jack said miserably to Susan.

  “No,” said Harmon, “you certainly shouldn’t have, Susan. Because when I file for divorce on grounds of adultery, you may end up with nothing at all.”

  Yes, definitely Jack had fallen into a very deep pit. Now, there at the bottom, he thought he heard the hiss of snakes.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BARBARA FLUNG DIRT onto the top of her father’s coffin with a silver trowel.

  “It really is the most unfortunate thing,” grumbled Harmon Dodge as they turned away from the grave leaving five burly men to finish what Barbara had only begun.

  “What?” Barbara asked. “Death?”

  “No. This bank moratorium. The papers say the banks will be closed for two weeks at the least—which means a month—which means that I’ve got to live on what I’ve got in my pocket, which is about twenty dollars, I think.”

  “There are more important things to think about just now,” said Jack quietly, nodding to the clergymen who had performed the burial service for his father-in-law.

  “There certainly are,” said Barbara vehemently, “such as the fact that Harmon’s soon-to-be-ex wife and murderer of my father is standing right there in plain sight of everybody here, in the company of a Communist chauffeur and an incompetent cook, holding two extremely ugly dogs with crudely clever names.” Barbara pointed vehemently off to the side, where Susan and the Graces were standing in the shade of an overgrown yew. “The audacity!”

  “She hasn’t been convicted of the murder,” said Jack, glancing uneasily in Susan’s direction and noting that all three of that small party were quietly weeping. Barbara seemingly hadn’t wept since learning of Marcellus’s death. And she certainly wasn’t quiet.

  “The gall! I’m certain it’s only a matter of time before she’s arrested, and if I were she, I wouldn’t be flaunting myself at the graveside of my victim waiting for a pair of handcuffs to be slapped on my wrists. Harmon, it was bad enough for you to fall for a gold digger, but I don’t think I can ever forgive you for making me go out to dinner continually with the woman who has made me a homeless orphan.”

  “Oh, you’ve forgiven me worse,” shrugged Harmon, and climbed into the back of the limousine. Then he remembered his manners, got out, and let Barbara precede him in. “Besides,” he pointed out, “you’re hardly homeless, with the Cliffs, the apartment in New York, and that fourteen-room cabin in Maine.”

  “I hate that place in Maine,” said Barbara as she climbed in. “You know how I feel about trees.”

  While this little bit of business was being transacted, Jack looked over to Susan and wondered.

  She returned his gaze steadily, and he knew she knew what he was wondering, and he blushed and got into the limousine.

  He was wondering whether she had in fact murdered his father-in-law for his money.

  “If she did murder him for his money,” Jack remarked in the back of the limousine, “then why did she tear up the will?”

  “Once it was established that Father had been murdered, the will became the evidence of her motive,” said Barbara, sounding more and more like Mr. Chan of the Honolulu police. “You simpleton,” she added just to mar the resemblance, “she had to tear the damned thing up.”

  “You’ll handle the divorce for me, won’t you, Jackie my boy?” said Harmon easily. “I don’t think I have the heart for it, funerals and bank holidays and all.”

  Jack didn’t answer Harmon. He didn’t want to handle the case. On the other hand, he didn’t want to let this one get into the hands of anyone else. Anyone else would doubtless make it more sensational than it already was if such an increment were possible. With a tiny jolt of surprise Jack realized he was more concerned here with Susan than with Harmon.

  “Of course Jack will handle everything. Harmon will take me back to the city,” said Barbara. “You stay on and deal with the viper.”

  “Give her enough money to keep her quiet and send her to Nevada to get Reno-vated,” said Harmon. “Get rid of Louise. I can’t stand servants with guns, never could. Then close up the Quarry and kill the dogs.”

  “Don’t you think you might wait just a little while?” asked Jack. “Just till there’s some sort of proof—”

  “Proof! ” shrieked Barbara. “Why are you defending her? She murdered my father, for God’s sake. The only reason she took all those driving lessons was so she could learn how to tamper with the brakes. That seems perfectly obvious to me. And the will, Jack, you saw the will. She got half his fortune, and she didn’t even have to marry him. Let the damn dogs live, kill her!”

  Jack was silent under this barrage. Barbara leaned forward over the seat and peered into the rearview mirror to rearrange her hat, which had come askew in her tirade.

  “Besides,” she added quietly, “the people we know don’t get divorces because one or another of them is a murderer. You divorce them because their hair is the wrong color, or they pack their luggage improperly, or something. Better to divorce the reptile now than wait till they’re strapping on the electrodes.”

  Jack still said nothing.

  Harmon’s eyes were closed and he looked asleep, slumped in the corner against the door. But he wasn’t asleep. “You’ll take care of everything then?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” said Jack. “Of course.”

  Jack dreaded the meeting with Susan. She would think that he suspected her of murder. He didn’t at all. He knew that Susan Dodge would no more have set out to kill Marcellus Rhinelander for his money than Jack himself would have followed Harmon’s instructions to do away with Scotty and Zelda. But circumstances pointed toward Susan’s at least having a moti
ve, and the issue was confused.

  He put the meeting off a night.

  He learned from Richard Grace that Susan had returned to the Quarry. The chauffeur turned away, halted, came back, stammered, and finally said he hoped that Jack did not believe that he had murdered his employer “on account of any little difference we might have had on certain political questions, none of them of any real importance, of course.”

  “No,” said Jack gently. “Neither I, nor the police, nor anyone else I venture to say, could believe that you would destroy the brakes of the automobile that you drove every day.”

  “Have you ever thought,” said Grace Grace, sidling up out of the darkness of the dining room, “that Richard might be the object of a plot on the part of the new administration to do away with Socialist domestics?”

  “Mr. Roosevelt’s been in office for only a few weeks,” Jack pointed out, “and there’s hardly been time to set such a plot into motion.”

  “He closed the banks quick enough,” Grace pointed out. “And where am I to get my fowl, I want to know!”

  Jack had often wondered where Grace got her fowl. A medical research facility providing small animals for classes in dissection seemed more likely a source than a poulterer’s.

  “And who are you to serve your fowl to?” sighed Richard Grace mournfully, and trudged away into the darkness of the masterless house.

  Jack put it off the next morning, too.

  He visited the police in Albany instead, and inquired into the progress of the investigation.

  There was no progress. The wires on the brakes had been cut. That was all that was known, and all that was likely to be known.

  Jack shifted uncomfortably in an uncomfortable straight chair and tried to look the detective in the eye. He couldn’t, and looked instead into the eyes of Franklin Roosevelt, whose patrician smiling likeness now hung on the wall.

  “You haven’t seen the will?” the detective asked. He was balding and fat and probably not as bright as he thought he appeared—just the sort of detective who picked the obvious suspect.

  “Ah, no, not really,” said Jack. “I haven’t seen my father-in-law’s will.” It was the absolute truth, in that he hadn’t actually seen Marcellus Rhinelander’s final will, because Susan had torn it up before he had had the chance to look it over. Jack may have spoken the absolute truth, but it wasn’t quite the real truth.

  “Everything’s left to your wife, which is right and proper,” said the detective. Jack thought he should probably be relieved, but he couldn’t manage it. The chair was too uncomfortable, perhaps, for that.

  “Except for one very strange bequest. A legacy for Mr. Richard Grace, his chauffeur,” said the detective, consulting notes. “Mr. Grace may take any amount of money from the estate from one dollar to fifty thousand dollars, with the proviso that an equal amount be sent to Generalissimo Franco in Spain to help in his war against the Communists.”

  This time Jack was genuinely relieved.

  No peculiar bequests involving Susan Dodge, nor himself for that matter.

  “What do you think of that?” the detective asked.

  “I think that last wills and testaments are no place for practical jokes,” said Jack in a huffy, lawyerly manner.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer.

  It was Grace Grace’s last embalmed chicken from the larder. Who knew when there’d be cash in the country again and she could buy more?

  “I couldn’t,” said Jack with truth both absolute and real. “Please, you and Richard have it. To yourselves. Please. I must see Mrs. Dodge down at the Quarry.”

  “I’ll telephone and tell her you’re on your way,” said Richard Grace, and added with little enthusiasm, “unless of course you’d like me to drive you—”

  “Oh no,” said Jack. “Stay. Enjoy the chicken.”

  He hurried out and into his car.

  Susan awaited him at the door of the Quarry, flanked by Scotty and Zelda.

  She was quiet, sober, but not unfriendly.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “You’re welcome to share what we have,” she said, leading him inside. Scotty and Zelda retreated, as if expecting a kick. He smiled at the dogs. The terriers still didn’t come any nearer him.

  They didn’t sit at either end of the long table. Susan set places for herself and Jack directly across from each other, and even moved the centerpiece entirely away. “I’ll take care of everything, Louise,” she said to the servant, invisible in the kitchen. “You go out and practice.” She came back into the dining room with a tray of food, but called out as an afterthought, “Leave the dogs here with me.”

  “Her aim is better all the time,” Susan confided to Jack in a low voice, “but I’d rather not take chances. If Mr. Beaumont says it’s all right, you may come in,” she said to Scotty and Zelda, sitting on their haunches beside each other in the doorway.

  “Of course,” said Jack. The dogs trotted in.

  “Zelda,” said Susan, “you keep Mr. Beaumont company, and Scotty, you can stay with me today.” The dogs took up their positions.

  This was getting more and more difficult for Jack. Since Susan didn’t ask why he’d come, he put it off a bit longer. The lunch was the best he’d had in a long while. A simple casserole of meat and vegetables, exactly the way it was served in Parisian brasseries. A salad of watercress and romaine, and then to finish, Camembert and apples. Simple, elegant, and more continental a repast than was ever provided by the most expensive of New York restaurants sporting French names.

  “Did you spend time in France?” he asked as she was bringing in coffee.

  “Yes,” she replied without elaborating, “but now it’s time for you to tell me why you’re here.”

  Jack hesitated. He thought he’d delay till he’d at least tasted the coffee. He was certain it would be good. He spilled it on the tablecloth, his tie, and his shirt, and shrieked with the scalding.

  Susan sighed, and shook her head. “We have to talk about it sometime.”

  Jack plucked at his shirt, pulling it away from his skin. “Talk about what?”

  “Oh please,” said Susan, closing her eyes in pain. “Don’t you know how difficult this is for me as well? I like you, Jack, I like you very much.”

  “You do?” He looked up in surprise and overturned what was left of the scalding coffee in his cup. It poured down on top of Zelda, who yelped once and then at once dropped down on her belly, all four legs outspread in submission.

  “It wasn’t a punishment, darling,” said Susan to the quavering dog. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a stupid clumsy accident on Mr. Beaumont’s part and it won’t happen again. I hope.” She threw a napkin down on the stained cloth and poured Jack another cup of coffee. “I don’t mind about the linen, but I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t maim the pets. I’ve grown fond of them, even if it was Barbara who gave them to me. Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “This is difficult for me, too.”

  Susan smiled a sad smile. “You don’t believe I killed Marcellus, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. But how did you know I don’t?”

  “If you did think I’d killed your father-in-law, you wouldn’t have sat through lunch and eaten absolutely everything I put in front of you, and you certainly wouldn’t be so eager to spare my feelings that you spilled your coffee twice.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be charged,” said Jack. “There’s no record of the last will—the one you tore up—so as far as the police are concerned, you have no motive. The only evidence remains the brake cables that were cut.”

  Susan laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You may not have believed I killed Marcellus, but you did believe that I was worried I’d be arrested, and tried, and convicted, and hanged.”

  “Electrocuted, actually, in this state. Yes, I suppose I did believe you were afraid.”

  Susan shook her he
ad. “I’ve been mourning, that’s all. I was quite fond of Marcellus, and I’m very very sorry that he’s dead, and it’s quite terrible to think that I had anything to do with his death. If I hadn’t run out of the Cliffs, and he hadn’t followed me…”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t think that !” cried Jack, actually in anguish that she should be so troubled. Especially when Barbara took her father’s death so much in stride and seemed to want Susan convicted of the crime less because Susan might be guilty than because Susan was Susan. “After all, if it was murder, then it certainly wasn’t your fault, and if he hadn’t died that way, then the real murderer would have gotten him in another way.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Charlie Chan,” said Susan.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JACK COULDN’T put it off any longer.

  “I came to talk to you about the divorce,” he said. Crack.

  Jack startled and hadn’t recovered before there was another, even louder crack.

  “It’s Louise,” said Susan. “And you needn’t worry. She never fires toward the house.”

  “Ah—” Jack said, forgetting where he was.

  “Of course you came about the divorce,” said Susan, taking it up for him. “I expected you yesterday.”

  Jack blushed. “I tried to put it off for as long as possible. I hate this.”

  “The divorce isn’t necessary, you know,” she remarked, but added quickly, “though of course you understand I have no intention of protesting. If Harmon doesn’t want to be married to me, then I’m not going to force my continued presence on him. Of course, if he truly believes I’m a murderer…” she mused.

  Even though the reason for his visit had been broached and acknowledged, Jack was no more comfortable. If anything, this was rather worse, having to take Harmon’s side when he was very much on Susan’s and considered that Harmon was a pickled idiot.

  “I don’t know if you can believe this,” said Jack, “but I really am interested in making this as painless as possible for you.”

  “I do believe it,” said Susan. “I told you, I like you. And I don’t like people I don’t trust. I do trust you. Harmon is your employer and I don’t see very well how you can have refused to handle this for him.”