I Was Jack Mortimer (Pushkin Collection)

by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

  They stood in the doorway and looked into the room, which was in semi-darkness and appeared extraordinarily large and bare. He felt for her hands and began to squeeze them. He lifted up her hands and buried his face in them.

  She leant against the wall and looked at him. She opened her mouth a couple of times as if to say something.

  “Why,” she finally asked, “did you do it?”

  He pretended not to hear and smothered the palms of her hands with kisses.

  “Why did you do it?” she repeated.

  He looked up.

  “Do what?” he asked.

  In the dim yellow light of the shrouded chandelier her face shimmered like pale, translucent alabaster illuminated from within, and her eyes, unnaturally large, stared out from under her long, glinting eyelashes.

  “What?” he asked once more. “What have I done?” And he slowly lowered his face and kissed her on the mouth.

  She did not return his kiss. She waited until he had withdrawn his lips from hers, and then said, “Why did you kill that man?”

  He didn’t understand at first what she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Why did you kill him?” she repeated.

  “Me?” he asked. “Who?”

  “Jack Mortimer.”

  “Jack Mortimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe I did it?”

  “Yes.”

  He straightened up.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he yelled.

  “Why?” she asked, and contracted her eyebrows.

  “Do you think I’d have come to you if I’d actually done it, and what’s more would have told you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “You said you loved me,” she murmured. “Why wouldn’t you have come to me even if you’d actually…”

  “You think I’m capable of such a thing?” he cried out.

  She looked at him.

  “I don’t know,” she finally mumbled, and her eyes assumed a look of uncertainty. “Or,” she continued after a moment, “would you have rather not come to me if you’d done it?”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “What do you think I’d have done,” she said, “if you’d come to me to say you had killed? Do you think I’d have screamed, woken up the house, reported you?”

  “I wouldn’t have come at all,” he stammered.

  “No?”

  He was silent.

  “I told you yesterday,” she said, “that you don’t really love me.”

  “Why not?”

  She straightened up, went into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Because otherwise,” she said, and brushed her hair back, “you’d have had to come, even if you’d done it. If you loved me, you’d have had to tell me you had done it. If you were prepared to do such a thing, you should have believed I’d be prepared to listen to you.”

  There was silence. They looked at each other. Then he slowly went over to her.

  As he advanced, she shrank back almost imperceptibly.

  He was now no longer the man who’d spoken to her on the street because he’d fallen in love with her, and who could be dismissed because it would be too awkward to exchange more than a few words just because he happened to have a lovely pair of eyes. He was no longer the driver to whom one could say, “I don’t need your car now. Please stop pestering me, especially in front of my house.” He was no longer someone one wouldn’t want to meet again because he was a nonentity from heaven knows where. He was now the one who’d be arrested the next day, and all her reserve, upbringing, status and sense of decorum crumbled into dust before the one who came to her, surrounded with the dreadful halo of crime. She had never imagined that she would actually listen to him, but now that he had come—in the middle of the night, agitated, harassed, pursued, lost—all her inhibitions vanished into thin air and she felt attracted to him.

  He came close to her, drew her close and kissed her. Their lips merged. They sank back on the bed, and the darkness threw a veil over their closed eyelids, their fate, and their desperate love for each other.

  10

  HE WOKE AS THE GREY DAWN was creeping in through the curtainless windows. Marisabelle was still sleeping. He withdrew his left arm from under her without waking her. Then he got out of bed noiselessly. The windows looked out onto a garden. The early light revealed clumps of grey, denuded trees shrouded in mist against a background of damp tiles and dirty chimneys that appeared to protrude from a muddy sea of foam; the stark outlines of polished furniture, mirrors and fittings only emphasized the general gloom of the interior. Stretched out on the bed lay Marisabelle, her pale, mildly resplendent face framed by a mass of dishevelled hair.

  It must have been about six o’clock.

  He carefully groped around for his things and gathered them up. Then he tried to look Marisabelle in the face. In her sleep she had drawn her eyebrows together as if she were not sleeping at all, but reflecting on something anxiously, though for the rest her face showed that she was indeed asleep. Like all people in the land of Nod she looked remote and indifferent, as if she were dreaming of something intangible and short-lived that she would not recollect on waking.

  He wanted to kiss her on the mouth, but decided not to, in case he woke her. Anyway, what would he have said to her if she woke? That the morning had broken, and all was at an end? Everyday thousands of people get up and say, “Adieu, that’s the end.” There’s no need for it. It’s a complete platitude.

  He bent over and brought his face close to hers until he could feel her breath. He waited a little, quite motionless. That was their last kiss. Then he left.

  He closed the door silently behind him and crossed the entrance hall; the keys were still in the door to the apartment. He opened it, stepped out, and closed the door behind him.

  The light was on in the staircase. He had walked down one flight when it suddenly went out. The pale dawn was already trickling in.

  Down in the entrance hall the porter had just unlocked the front door, and it was he who had switched off the light. As Sponer approached, the man looked at him in amazement that he was still in the house. Sponer walked past, but suddenly turned round and said, “Is something the matter? Maybe you think I’ve stolen something? Why don’t you report me to the police? Go on, report me. We’ll go together. But just imagine what they’d say if you were to report me simply for spending the night here.” Then his thoughts wandered back to Marisabelle again. He swung around and walked away. In the meantime he had resolved not to go to a police station, give himself up and expose himself to all the bureaucracy. Instead he decided he would return to the Bristol, go up to Mortimer’s room, call the police and await his arrest with a certain degree of dignity. He walked down Alleegasse and came to the municipal gardens where he had spoken to Marisabelle, disturbing, as he approached, a flock of crows which rose cawing from the lawn. Noisy, fast city traffic was at its peak. All the slow-moving carts from the country were gone.

  A tram came rattling round a bend. He crossed the Ring and walked into the Bristol.

  No one stopped him when he entered. Surprisingly, there weren’t any porters in the lobby either. No one was standing by the lift, though a couple of staff came out of a side corridor and scurried up the stairs.

  He followed them slowly. He turned left at the first floor. There was the shimmering marble corridor again, brightly lit, windowless, claustrophobic and hermetic, as in a dream. Or like the passageway between the cabins of a sunken liner, he thought. The lights were on because the electricity generator still hadn’t stopped working. The water couldn’t get to it. The compressed air kept it out. It’s a wonder the floor wasn’t sloping, he thought.

  The air really felt as though it were actually under pressure, overheated by the central heating, dry and dusty as last night. He was breathing heavily. Farther on, he saw a group of people standing in front of a door, some entering, others leaving.

&n
bsp; It was Mortimer’s room.

  Ah, he thought, of course! I quite forgot. The police are already here. No doubt going through Mortimer’s luggage. Why though, if he’s dead, as they must know by now, do they still want to rummage through his belongings? And then he remembered that he had locked the door when he fled, and the Montemayors had been left locked inside for some time; he couldn’t help smiling at the thought.

  He still had the key in his coat pocket. He’d hand it in before he was sent to prison, so the hotel wouldn’t be the loser. No one, of course, would pay the bill.

  However, he realized the Montemayors would have been able to ring the bell or phone for the doorman, and someone would have come and unlocked the door. How in fact did they get out?

  He was wrong, they were still there.

  When he reached the door, he glanced into the entrance hall and saw Winifred. There she is again! he thought. She was making a statement which was being recorded by several people who were standing about; some hotel staff were also present, though not the night staff, who had been relieved. It was now already day, though the light was still on in the entrance hall. The door to the salon was shut.

  Winifred was still in her evening gown, her brocade coat slung over it. In her left hand, hanging down by her side, she held her handbag, and rested her right hand on her hip. Funny, the way she stands there like that, Sponer thought, erect as if giving a speech. She seemed really proud of the fact that she had exposed the false Mortimer. She could at least have changed her clothes instead of parading around in her red and gold finery. She was being questioned, and replied in the way that prominent people do when answering several interviewers at once; everything that she said was being taken down. However, the men stood there with their hats on, not even bothering to remove them in the presence of a lady.

  Now, Sponer thought, how embarrassing! She’s putting on airs, insisting on playing the prima donna, even though Montemayor may in the meantime have already woken a lawyer and started divorce proceedings. However, I’m number one here now.

  He stepped into the hallway. Winifred looked up, while the others wrote down something she had said, and caught sight of Sponer. He could see from the expression in her eyes that she recognized him immediately, but surprisingly she ignored him as if he didn’t exist. Instead of shouting out, “That’s him!” she just looked at him for a couple of seconds and then turned away.

  Sponer was, he had to admit, more than surprised. Had he simply imagined that she’d looked at him? But the others, too, ignored him completely. One of those taking notes, and another person who had just dictated the last statement verbatim in German, appeared to be from the police. And the others, Sponer wondered, who were also writing things down? Presumably reporters. There was also another man there, obviously someone from the hotel management to judge by his formal suit. The hotel staff stood there as if they were just doing their job, their hands by their sides, listening attentively to what was being said. They all looked at Winifred, and no one paid any attention to Sponer. One of the detectives was dictating, the others were writing, and the staff looked on.

  He wanted to go up to them and say that here he was, that he’d come voluntarily, but a strange sense of unreality suddenly overcame him. None of the people bothered about him. It was also true that no one had bothered about Mortimer either when he lay dead in the car and the passers-by hurried past as if nothing had happened. But they had looked for him, Sponer; Marie Fiala hadn’t returned, she’d been detained… Or, he thought, maybe there was some other reason why she… What? It was conceivable, of course, that they still didn’t know that I… But Winifred knew, of course! Why was she behaving as if he weren’t there? He was overcome by the bizarre fancy that he actually wasn’t there, that he’d simply imagined that he had checked in at the Bristol…

  Just then, the detective who had been dictating asked Winifred another question.

  “When,” he asked in passable English, “did Montemayor leave you yesterday evening and when did he return?”

  “He returned from the rehearsal at about five-thirty,” Winifred said. “We had tea in the lounge, but he left after a few minutes and said that he still had to attend to something. He took the lift to his room, but came down after a short while. I was still sitting there and saw him come out of the lift, walk past the office and the porter, and the leave the hotel. He returned just before seven o’clock. I was already in my room…”

  “From where you had already called the Bristol in the meantime?”

  “Yes. I then heard my husband enter the salon and go to his room.”

  Every word was noted down. Sponer looked from one to the other. Winifred glanced at him again. She couldn’t have failed to notice him this time! However, after a brief moment’s reflection she glanced away. The detective asked her another question.

  “When was it,” he asked, “that you entered the Bristol?”

  “About one o’clock in the morning,” she said.

  “And when did your husband come?”

  “He came immediately after me.”

  “I mean when did he enter here?”

  “A quarter of an hour, half an hour later; I can’t remember that exactly anymore.”

  The detective continued his questioning while all this was being written down, “Did you know Mortimer was a gangster?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “But your husband did.”

  “He said he did.”

  “And you? Did you think it was possible?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “It was possible. My husband said it was even common knowledge over there.”

  “How then do you explain the fact then that the police didn’t take any action against him?”

  “Against Mortimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which police? The American?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed dismissively. “You don’t understand, here,” she said. “The police over there don’t take any action against gangsters. Against a petty band of crooks, maybe. But certainly not against people of Mortimer’s standing. The police are far too powerless for that. They can’t afford to expose public prosecutors, senators and possibly even their own people who may be gangsters. Besides, at any time Mortimer could have come up with the excuse that he was being protected.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean he’d have claimed the gangs had put pressure on him and he had been obliged to do what he did. Protection means that business people, bankers and industrialists are left in peace as long as they give a certain proportion of their income to the gangs. Mortimer could simply have come up with the excuse that his own bank was under protection, and the police would have had to accept this since they were in no a position to shield him against such protection.”

  The detective gave a sign to indicate that these comments were off the record.

  “So,” he said, “Montemayor claimed, therefore, that Mortimer had been the victim of bandits?”

  “Yes. These people are always fighting one another for control. It’s a case of open gang warfare. Don’t you know that? Doesn’t it happen here?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Our police,” the detective observed curtly, “appear to be more efficient than the American.”

  “Or your bandits,” Winifred retorted, “appear to be less ruthless than theirs.”

  “We don’t wish to go into that!”

  Winifred shrugged her shoulders.

  “All the same,” she added, “my husband had a better opinion of your police than I have. Otherwise he wouldn’t have wanted to prevent me reporting the crime. He assumed, however, that even if I’d reported the driver, it wouldn’t have misled the police, and they’d have tracked down the real murderer all the same.”

  “No doubt,” the detective said.

  So, Sponer thought, the driver—that was him.

  “Do you think so?” Winifred sai
d. “Of course, as has already been said, José was also of the same opinion, though he still maintained for a long time that I’d only cover the tracks of the real murderer if I reported the driver, with the result that he’d never be found. He prevented me using the phone, and after the driver had gone, José kept on and on about it until almost morning, and only then did he give up.”

  The detective began translating this into German and dictating it. Sponer took this opportunity, stepped forward and touched the detective’s arm.

  “Could I have a word with you, please?” he said.

  “Yes, what’s the matter?” the detective asked.

  “Here I am,” Sponer said.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Ferdinand Sponer.”

  “Oh?” the detective said.

  “Yes. Ferdinand Sponer.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “What do I want?”

  “Yes. Were you told to come?”

  “Told to come?”

  “Yes, told to come!”

  “No, I came of my own free will!”

  “Then please be kind enough to wait,” the detective said, “until you are called. Please don’t interrupt the proceedings.” And with that, he brushed past him and continued dictating.

  Sponer, bewildered, stared at Winifred, but she ignored him completely. She opened her handbag and looked inside, then closed it again. The others just stood still and looked straight ahead. Sponer asked himself whether he was going mad.

  “Montemayor,” the detective continued, “wanted to leave with you this morning?”

  “Yes,” Winifred replied.

  “After the driver had gone, your husband must have said to himself that both Mortimer’s and the driver’s disappearance would be noticed immediately. Didn’t he want you to report the matter after all?”

  “No,” Winifred said. “He tried to silence me right up to the end. And it was only when he finally realized that I’d report the matter as soon as I could that he told me the truth. He even believed that the police, once they’d got the driver, would also be sure to find the murderer. I didn’t agree. I thought that they’d suspect the driver and no one else. My husband would have denied everything he ever said to me and he would have talked himself out of it. That’s why I shot him.”