The Man with Two Wives

by Patrick Quentin

  She threw one of her starchy white arms up to hide her face.

  Trant said, “All right, Miss Hodgkins. That’ll be all for the moment.”

  “But, Lieutenant…” I began.

  “That will be all.”

  He left the nursery. I hurried after him into the living room, furious and frustrated.

  I said, “You can’t believe her. You can’t be such a fool.”

  He sat down on the arm of a chair and said quite impassively, “It isn’t a question of whether I believe her or not, Mr. Harding. The point is she hasn’t corroborated your story. If you want me to act on it, you’d better find some other corroboration.”

  “You’ve got Angelica’s corroboration.”

  “I wouldn’t call that very satisfactory. Miss Roberts denied it all at first. She only confirmed it after she’d been alone with you and had plenty of time to be coached. And after all, it’s obviously to her advantage to confirm it, isn’t it?”

  It was absurd. It couldn’t be happening this way. I fought against the feeling of returning nightmare.

  Trant said, “I gather you haven’t told any of this to your wife.”

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  “Then you’ll have to find something else.” He sat there watching me. His face showed a faint curiosity, nothing more. “What about the elevator man? You say Miss Roberts came here carrying a suitcase. This apartment is four flights up. She must have taken the elevator.”

  I remembered what Angelica had said when she came into the apartment that night. I walked up. I thought I’d keep the elevator man out of this. “No,” I said. “She walked up.”

  “Four flights? Why?”

  “She thought it would be more discreet at that time of night not to be seen.”

  “I see,” said Trant.

  It was only then, when the nightmare feeling was gaining ground, that I thought of Paul. And suddenly it was all right again. Paul knew everything.

  “I told Paul Fowler the whole story the day after the murder.”

  “You did?”

  “If I get him over and he tells you exactly the same story without any prompting from me, that’ll be corroboration, won’t it?”

  Trant blinked. “Call him.”

  I called Paul and asked him to come right over. He was amenable, as always.

  “Sure, Butch. Nothing wrong, I trust?”

  “Just come,” I said.

  He arrived in about twenty minutes, cheerful, grinning, breezing in. My exaggerated pleasure at seeing him made me fully conscious of the fantastic reversal of this new situation in which I was having to fight every inch of the way, not to save my life but to wreck it.

  “Paul, this is Lieutenant Trant. They’ve indicted Angelica. She’s coming up for trial and…”

  “Please.” Trant’s voice cut in crisply. “Sit down, Mr. Fowler.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Mr. Fowler, Mr. Harding has made a certain statement about the night of Mr. Lumb’s murder. He claims he made the same statement to you on the day after the crime. I’d like you to repeat it to me.”

  Paul darted a quick glance at me.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Tell him everything.”

  “Everything?” He turned back to Trant and made a little rueful gesture. “I adore telling everything, Lieutenant. It’s one of my favorite pursuits. But just what do you want me to tell everything about?”

  “Didn’t Mr. Harding come to you on the day after the crime?”

  “Probably. He’s always dropping in at the office.”

  “And didn’t he tell you something about himself and Miss Roberts?”

  “Gee whiz!” With a comedy-ape grimace, Paul scratched the top of his head. “Can I be as dumb as I think I am? Bill—and Angelica? Did Bill ever see Angelica when she came to New York?”

  I’d accepted Ellen’s betrayal. The moment she’d denied me, I’d realized that that was all I could ever have expected from her venality and her servile respect for C. J. But this was beyond my comprehension. I looked in complete confusion at Paul’s frank, baffled face.

  “Paul, for God’s sake, tell the truth. Don’t you see it’s the only way to save Angelica?”

  The blue, wise, affectionate eyes turned to mine. “Gosh, Bill, why didn’t you warn me? Of course I’d do anything I could to help. You know that. But I’m not a mind reader and I left the crystal ball at home. I…”

  Trant broke in, “You haven’t any idea what Mr. Harding’s talking about, have you?”

  “Gosh, he might have told me something, Lieutenant. I don’t know. People are always telling me things and half the time it’s in one ear and out the other.” He leaned forward earnestly. “But he’s right if he’s telling you that Angelica didn’t do it. Of course she didn’t do it. She’s the last person in the world to do a thing like that. You police make me mad. Why are you always doing things the wrong way around? Lumb was a louse, wasn’t he? He’d been living off Angelica; he’d been planning to live off the Callinghams. Creeps like that have scores of people who want to murder them. Probably he was blackmailing someone; probably he was blackmailing dozens of people. All you’ve got to do is…”

  “Paul,” I broke in. “Tell him.”

  He stopped dead, threw me one sheepish glance and then looked away. There was a long flat silence. At length Trant got up from the arm of the chair.

  “Okay, Mr. Fowler. Sorry to have troubled you. That’ll be all right now.”

  Looking crushed and miserable Paul got up too. I’d never seen anyone appear more innocently bewildered, unless it had been Ellen. I was deep in the nightmare now.

  I said, “Don’t go, Paul. I want you to stay and explain.”

  “If Mr. Harding wants you to stay,” said Trant, “that’s okay with me. But I’d like to talk to him alone for a moment. Perhaps you’d wait somewhere else.”

  “Sure. Sure I’ll stay, Bill, if you want me to.” Paul started for the door and then turned. “Gee, I’m sorry. And I’m just as sorry for Angelica as you are. But—what’s a guy to do?”

  He went out, closing the door behind him.

  I said to Trant, “Just let me talk to him a couple of minutes. I’ll make him tell you it all.”

  “Of course you would. He’s obviously a good friend. I’m sure he’d confirm anything you wanted him to confirm—once you’d told him what it was.”

  “But he’s lying.”

  “So you’ve said. Miss Hodgkins was lying because she’d been bribed by Mr. Callingham. What is Mr. Fowler lying for?”

  “He—he must have some crazy notion of protecting me. He knows what all this will mean for me with Mr. Callingham and my wife. He must figure it’s better for me to let Angelica take the rap. If only you’d let me…”

  “Your friends seem very fond of protecting you, Mr. Harding.”

  There had been no derision whatsoever in his voice as he said that. He had merely made the flat statement. But his impassivity and his stubborn refusal to be impressed by anything except facts maddened me. At last I made myself admit what had to be admitted.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I haven’t said that, Mr. Harding. In fact, I’m sure you’re telling the truth about Miss Callingham’s real relations with Lumb and I’m even prepared to believe you’re telling the truth when you say she wasn’t here on the night of the murder—if only because I find it hard to conceive that you’d discredit her alibi if it had been a real one. It’s perfectly possible that Miss Hodgkins might, as you claim, have been bribed up to that point. But as for Miss Roberts…”

  I broke in. “But just tell me one thing. Why the hell would I be lying? Why would I bring witnesses to you if I’d known beforehand that they would deny everything? Why would I willfully discredit Daphne’s’ alibi and admit to something as tawdry as trying to deceive my wife with another woman unless…”

  “When a murder’s committed in Manhattan, Mr. Harding, do you know how many
innocent people come to us and make confessions? Usually it’s about four confessions to every homicide. Only last week, a girl was killed in Bronxville. A bank manager from a Madison Avenue bank confessed to having killed her. He’d never even seen her in his life.”

  His eyes, watching me, were patient—quiet, unhostile as ever, and patient.

  I said, “But for God’s sake, they’re nuts.”

  “I wouldn’t say all of them were nuts, Mr. Harding. And, in any case, you’re not confessing to murder.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Why would you be lying?” He finished the sentence for me. “There is a very simple reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’re in love with her.”

  That was the worst moment of all. Until then, although I’d known what was happening, I’d never really believed, in spite of Ellen and Paul, that this preposterous misunderstanding could go on for more than a short while. I knew the truth and because I knew the truth, it had seemed inevitable to me that once it had been told it must be obvious to everyone else. But now, as Trant stood there, as the faintly smug look of a man “understanding all” showed in his eyes, I could see it from his point of view. I had thought him farcically naïve. He wasn’t naïve, of course. He was far too subtle and sophisticated. That was his trouble. He wouldn’t accept my version of the truth because his was much more ingenious. And why should he, when everything pointed to Angelica’s guilt, when I, who could have come forward days before, had left it as late as this and when—to crown it all—he, like Angelica, had hit upon this terrifyingly plausible and wrongest of all reasons to explain me away? I loved her!

  I had to face what had happened. The edifice of lies which I had built had been so firmly erected that now I couldn’t demolish it, and all that my great gesture had achieved was to cast doubt on C. J.’s alibi for Daphne. It left Angelica exactly where she had been before.

  I glared at him, my anger undermined by this new crippling sensation of helplessness.

  “You think she’s guilty, don’t you?”

  “The D. A. thinks she’s guilty. So does the Commissioner. And, in spite of what you tell me about Miss Callingham, all the evidence still points to it—except, of course, this last-minute evidence of yours.”

  Exasperated beyond endurance, I said, “Don’t you policemen have any flexibility of mind? Why should last-minute evidence be false evidence. Why do you have to tidy it up with the absurd idea that I’m in love with Angelica? I love my wife. Angelica’s just a goddam nuisance. I’m telling the truth not because I want to but because it’s the truth, and I’m telling it at the last minute because I’ve been too cowardly to come forward earlier. Why don’t you make an effort to believe me? Is my story so improbable? Go after Daphne. I don’t think she did it, but at least you may get something out of her. Angelica’s innocent. It doesn’t give you any satisfaction to indict an innocent woman, does it?”

  He was watching me as patiently as ever. If only he’d get mad once in a while! “Aren’t you expecting rather a lot of me, Mr. Harding? You say: Go after Miss Callingham. And yet you produce no evidence against her or against anyone else. In fact, you yourself say you don’t think she’s guilty, and there’s no shred of a motive anyway. She just made a fool of herself and her father, reasonably enough, wants to keep it as quiet as he can. I’m not a super-sleuth, you know. I’m just a guy with a job and a boss like you. My boss happens to be the Commissioner and the Commissioner happens to be a friend of Mr. Callingham. Already I’ve had one call from the Commissioner asking me to do all I can to keep it out of the papers that Miss Roberts had any connection with the Callingham family at all. That’s how eager Mr. Callingham is to avoid scandal and that’s how influential he is. What do you think would happen to my job if, to serve no purpose at all, with no evidence whatsoever except your uncorroborated statement which both Miss Callingham and Miss Hodgkins would deny, I started accusing Mr. Callingham of bribing witnesses and let the press boys scream out in their headlines: C. J. CALLINGHAM SHIELDS DAUGHTER IN MURDER RAP, CLAIMS SON-IN-LAW? Do you seriously expect me to do all that just because you want me to believe that a woman, with all the evidence against her, happens to be innocent?”

  He gave a shrug. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harding. I try to treat people in homicide cases like human beings. They kid me about it at Headquarters. But I’ve only got so much milk of human kindness to go around. I’ll do all I can as tactfully as I can to investigate Miss Callingham. Of course I will. I investigate everything so long as there’s anything to investigate. I do have, oddly enough, a certain flexibility of mind. But I wish you’d take my advice. If you’re telling the truth, that’s another matter. That’s up to you. But if you’re just having a Knight-on-a-White-Horse jag, give it up before you make yourself a pest to everyone and get into serious trouble. I may be the long-suffering sucker. But the D. A. isn’t and the Commissioner isn’t. If you go ahead with this, it’ll come out that you denied knowledge of the ring, that you shielded a suspect, even helped her to get out of town and, unless your father-in-law goes to bat for you which I very much doubt, you may find yourself picked up as an accessory. So—before you go on, just think a little and think about your son and that fine wife of yours, too.” He was lecturing me like a grave, white-bearded elder. I could have killed him.

  “And one thing more, Mr. Harding. You know now just what I can do and what I can’t do. If you are telling the truth about Miss Roberts, please remember that, even so, it’s quite useless coming to me unless you’ve got some proof. But if you do get any proof, I will be delighted because—oddly enough again—I like to see justice done.”

  He held out his hand. The friendly smile looked a little frayed around the edges.

  “Well, that’s all, I guess, for the moment.”

  I took his hand. What difference did it make? Quietly, as if to him this was a perfectly routine end of a perfectly routine chore, he went out of the room.

  chapter 18

  Anger was a futile weapon against Lieutenant Trant. It just didn’t work. But there was still Paul on whom to vent my frustrated indignation. I raged out of the living room and found him in Betsy’s and my bedroom, sitting on the bed. He jumped up when he saw me, the picture of contrition. Even before I could attack him, he was pouring out his apologia. He’d only been thinking of me. I’d got carried away. He’d realized it and seen it was up to him to try to rescue me from myself. It was madness to infuriate C. J., to humiliate Betsy at this stage of the game. Angelica wasn’t guilty. The trial was in the indefinite future. She’d brought it all on herself anyway and a little unpleasantness wasn’t going to hurt her. Later, perhaps…

  There they were, rehashed once more, all the old tired arguments which I’d made, which Angelica had made, which once had seemed so plausible but which I now knew weren’t arguments at all.

  I said, “And why the hell do you think you have any right to regulate my life?”

  He smiled his broad, disarming smile. “Because I’m fond of you, you lug. You think I could sit there watching you cut your throat and then jump in to help you thrust the blade into your jugular vein?” He paused, watching me unhappily. “There’s me to think of too, you know. I’m as dependent on Betsy and C. J. as you are, and the Callinghams, God bless them, are not long on sweet reasonableness. If I’d joined your crusade and swept through the streets of Manhattan, shouting: C. J. Callingham is a wicked liar, what do you think would happen to my job? Do you want the Prop selling apples at the corner of 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas?”

  “But you don’t have to depend on that job.” Although he’d never actually told me, I’d always assumed that Paul, being the last Fowler of the Fowler clan, had an ample private income.

  He stared at me in unfeigned astonishment. “My poor deluded boy, you think the Fowler fortune is still extant? That little hunk of gold was alchemized into mink years ago. I’m old Mother Fund for the sheer altruistic joy of the cash involved. Ex
cept for my salary, I don’t have one small smooth dime to my name.”

  I saw his real motive then. He’d basically only been thinking of saving his own skin. He was just another collateral serf in the Callingham empire like Ellen. My anger was tinged by disgust, although I realized what little right I had to be disgusted at him. How long had I been the noble one? Only about five minutes.

  Paul’s face was touchingly miserable now. I felt unfair as well as hypocritical in having blamed him. He’d never made any pretense at being a hero. And he was genuinely fond of me. Of course he was.

  “Bill,” he blurted, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it meant so much to you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’d forgotten what feeling like a heel feels like. I’m not given to it at all. Call the cop, Bill. Tell him we’ll be right over. To hell with it. I’ll back you up. Good old purge-yourself-with-pity-and-terror Paul. That’s me.”

  I knew he meant it and all my old affection for him returned, but once again I was made conscious of the irony of my predicament.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “So far as Trant’s concerned, you’re loused up for good as a witness. If you told him word for word what I’d told him, he wouldn’t believe you now. He’d just write you off as a soft-hearted guy backing up a crazy friend. And I’m not just interpreting him. He said that himself. I’ve got to find some other way.”

  A look of undisguised relief passed over his face. “Well, in that case…” He grinned ruefully. “Guess I’ll be running along back under the Slave Driver’s yoke.”

  “Sure.”

  “’Bye, Bill. Happy suicide.”

  He went out of the room. I heard him going away down the passage.

  I sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. I wasn’t angry with Paul or with Trant or even with myself any more. The incredible thing that had happened, now I was used to it, seemed to have given me a cold detachment. With frightening vividness, I saw my life as I’d been living it, as Paul was living it, as Dave Manners was living it, as everyone in the C. J. despotism was living it, and I knew—just like that—that I didn’t want any part of it.