“I’m glad to hear that you are both citizens in good standing. And I’m glad to hear your point of view toward truth, Mr. Duluth. I will bear it in mind.”
He took a Manila envelope from his pocket. Out of it, holding it by one corner, he brought Nanny Ordway’s last sketch.
“You’ve seen this?”
“I have.”
“Does it seem to you to be a suicide note?”
“I don’t know what it seems to me to be. She always left me a note every day with a drawing on it, and some kind of a crack.”
“You have the other notes?”
I tried to remember. “No. I don’t think so. I think I always tore them up.” I thought of the first note of all—the girl sitting at the telephone with the phone number floating above. I had taken it to the office. I had put it in my wallet. I took out my wallet. The drawing was there. I handed it to Lieutenant Trant.
“This is the first one. I kept it for the phone number.”
“The phone number?” Lieutenant Trant took it and put it down on his knee. He glanced at it and then back to the other one in his hand.
“A hanging girl. ‘The secret of love is greater than the secret of death.’ A query has been added after the word ‘death.’ Doesn’t that suggest suicide, Mr. Duluth?”
“‘The secret of love’—that’s a quote from Salomé. She was writing a story with that as its theme.”
“Nevertheless, doesn’t it suggest suicide?”
“I don’t know what it suggests.”
“The secret of love—the secret of death. If it does suggest suicide—doesn’t it also suggest that there was more than nothing between you?”
“It may look like that to you, but I swear—”
“There’s no need to swear, Mr. Duluth. We know you are telling the truth. You’ve made that plain. Can you suggest any motive for suicide other than an unsuccessful affair with a married man?”
“I hardly knew her. I told you that. There was her writing. Maybe she was discouraged about her writing. Don’t writers get discouraged about writing?”
“But she’s dead in your apartment, Mr. Duluth. If she’d had some motive for committing suicide which did not concern you, would she have embarrassed you by using your apartment to hang herself in? Or are the conditions in the Village as little convenient for hanging as for writing?”
I looked back at him, wondering dimly where he came from. This wasn’t at all type-casting for a police detective. His face was quite secular and modern really, but I couldn’t escape that medieval priestly impression. A young Inquisitor, maybe? I thought, dimly, too, about truth. I knew the truth. He was trying to get to the truth. All he had to do was to believe me, but I could talk till I was blue in the face and he wouldn’t be convinced. I didn’t envy anyone whose job was to find the truth.
Maybe, if Nanny Ordway had never existed, I would have liked Lieutenant Trant.
“Mr. Duluth, did Miss Ordway seem to you like a neurotic girl?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“Quite normal?”
“That’s how she seemed to me.”
I got the straight gray gaze then. Yes, it was an Inquisitor. He had a fanaticism about something—justice, possibly, or the protection of young girls from vile seducers?
“Then you’re not surprised that I should be interested in discovering why a normal young girl committed suicide in your apartment?”
“I’m not surprised at all.”
“But the whole thing is a complete mystery to you?”
“A complete mystery.”
Dr. Norris came out of the bedroom then. He gave me his cold, cheerful smile as he hurried toward the door.
“So long, Peter. If there’s anything the wife or I can do—just give us a buzz.” He waved at Iris. “Good night. Good luck.”
I felt frustrated and ferocious. I wanted to vent it on someone. I called after him, “Give my love to Madge and Billy at the cocktail party.”
He turned. “I didn’t know you knew them, Peter. I—oh, yes.”
He scuttled out of the door like the White Rabbit. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I shall be late.
Lieutenant Trant got up and went back to the bedroom. Two white-coated attendants with a stretcher came in the front door and disappeared into the bedroom, too. The apartment didn’t seem ours any more. It had lost all identity. It was impersonal as the morgue.
I lit a cigarette. Iris smiled at me. It was meant to be a reassuring smile.
“At least you let him have it.”
“For all the good it did.”
Soon Lieutenant Trant came out of the bedroom again. This time he didn’t sit down. His manner was obscurely more official.
“Mr. Duluth, I wondered if you’d tell me where you were this afternoon.”
“I left the office about five to go to the airport.”
“And before that?”
“I went to a movie.”
“A movie?”
“I’m casting a play. There’s a Hollywood actor I’m interested in. He was playing in a movie in one of those Forty-Second Street houses. I went there to see him.”
“Which movie house?”
“I didn’t notice which one, but it’s easy to find out.”
“What was this movie?”
“Happy Ending. That was its improbable title.”
“You went alone?”
“That’s right—alone.”
Lieutenant Trant was shifting his balance from one foot to the other. “I suppose you won’t object to coming around to the station house to make a statement?”
“Of course not.”
Iris got up. “I’ll come, too.”
Every now and then reality broke through to me. I turned to her, remembering that she had just come off a plane, that it was after nine, that she hadn’t eaten anything, that she hadn’t even washed up or opened her suitcases.
“Baby, don’t come. Please. You’ll knock yourself out.”
“You don’t have to come, Mrs. Duluth,” said Lieutenant Trant. “You can make a brief corroborative statement of the discovery here.”
“Of course I’m coming. There’s no regulation against it, is there, Lieutenant?”
“I’m afraid you can’t sit in on your husband’s statement.” Lieutenant Trant smiled at her. Maybe it was my overworked imagination, but it seemed to me a pitying smile. “But you can come to the station house if you want to. And, if you’re hungry, the boys can bring you in something to eat. You’ll find a lot of fans down there.”
Fans! That was going to make it even worse, of course. Iris was a celebrity. That was going to dog us all the way through.
She picked up the coat she had dropped in a chair by the door when we came in from the airport. She slung it over her shoulders. “Do you mind if I ask you one thing, Lieutenant?”
“Of course not. Go ahead.”
Iris started putting on her gloves, working the leather down over each finger methodically, not the way she ever did it in real life but the way directors go in for in the movies.
“Why do you want to know where my husband was this afternoon? What difference does it make?”
“I’m afraid we’re nosy, Mrs. Duluth.”
“But if it’s suicide—” She paused and added very quietly, “It is suicide, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Trant’s answering voice was just as quiet and just as casual. “Oh, I expect so, Mrs. Duluth. The M.E.’s office will have to decide that. It’s much too early to be sure yet. The pressure marks around the neck look normal enough, but both the assistant M. E. and Doctor Norris noticed certain discrepancies. But I imagine the boys up at Bellevue will be able to figure out a satisfactory explanation. Meanwhile, however—”
He broke off. He looked suddenly tired as if he was disgusted with us, disgusted with Nanny Ordway, disgusted with everything that made life complicated.
“We always keep an open mind until we’re sure, Mrs. Duluth. An open mind. Suicide
—murder—”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WE DROVE with Lieutenant Trant to the station house. I’d never been there before and I hadn’t realized it was so near. It was hard to grasp the fact that all the time we had been living with reasonable peacefulness in our apartment, other people’s difficulties, sufferings, tragedies had been reaching some sort of climax only a stone’s throw away. A sorting house for anger, frayed nerves, and despair—and I had passed it indifferently almost every day.
We went into a reception office where a sergeant was seated behind a high desk and a few vague people waited on wooden benches. We climbed some stairs to the Detectives’ Room. It was large, high-ceilinged, and bleak with rusty-white walls and geometrically spaced desks. There was an austere, barrackish atmosphere which reminded me of navy boot camp. Four or five detectives were lounging around with the bored indolence of a slack period. A radio was playing a commercial.
Lieutenant Trant took us over to a young man sitting at a desk in a corner.
“Jim, take a statement from Mrs. Duluth. Discovery of body, presumed suicide.”
The young man’s eyes widened as he looked at Iris. “Gee, Iris Duluth.”
“That’s right. Go get her something to eat if she wants it. She’s going to wait for her husband.” He smiled again at Iris. “When you’re through—maybe she’ll give you her autograph.”
He beckoned to another detective. We left Iris at the desk and the three of us went into an office. It was hardly a real office, just a compartment cut off the squad room with beaverboard partitions. Somehow I had expected something more impressive for Lieutenant Trant, but as he took the wooden swivel chair behind the neat desk, I saw it was the right set for him—the ascetic in his cell.
The detective had a shorthand machine. He was sitting unobtrusively by the door. Lieutenant Trant glanced at him.
“All right, Mr. Duluth. Now the statement. I won’t interrupt you. First a simple statement covering the discovery of the body. Then a second statement giving in detail the whole history of your relationship with Miss Ordway. Mention any people, and their addresses, who can corroborate it.” He paused, watching me with that polite gaze which wasn’t actually hostile but suggested hostility. “Needless to say, you’re not under arrest. There’s nothing to arrest you for and there’s no reason in the world why you should give the second statement at the present time if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
I gave both statements. I no longer bothered about how it all sounded. I just detailed everything which had happened between Nanny Ordway and myself as accurately as I could.
To begin with, I found the clicking of the shorthand machine discomforting. But soon I forgot it. There was a sort of anesthetic quality about that gaunt little office—or rather, an insulating quality. I could hear the radio in the squad room. I could even hear snatches of voices, including Iris’s voice. But I seemed shut off from the rest of life. I didn’t think about being tired or afraid or angry. I didn’t even worry much about what was going to happen in the future. I just gave the statement. Already it seemed stale and meaningless, like a playscript I’d been doctoring for weeks and was all set to abandon. Nanny Ordway, Nanny Ordway, Nanny Ordway. The only corroborative witnesses I could think of were Lottie and Brian, Miss Mills, who had seen Nanny once at the office, and Lucia, the maid, who presumably had been seeing her every day working in the apartment. I knew Miss Mills’s address, and I happened to have Lucia’s in my pocket address book. The whole thing took about an hour.
When I had finished, Lieutenant Trant dismissed the detective. “Start getting them typed up, Sam. Mr. Duluth can read them through and sign them tomorrow.”
The detective went away. Lieutenant Trant and I continued to sit face to face. It had all seemed deceptively tranquil. Surely, I thought, there should have been some sort of bustle—telephone calls, policemen reporting. I was coming out of the ether a bit. It would have been easier if things had been going on. At least, it would have given a feeling of stature as if I were implicated in something that had some importance to someone.
I said, “Well—what now?”
Surprisingly Lieutenant Trant smiled. It was quite a wonderful face when he smiled. He could have been in the movies. Only in the movies he wouldn’t have been playing a cop. He’d have been a doctor, maybe, or a young scientist dedicated to the pursuit of some noble end.
“There’s nothing now, Mr. Duluth. Nothing—at present. I’d like you to come in tomorrow at ten. We may know a little more then.”
I looked at him, trying to gauge what impression my full-length statement had had on him. He wasn’t revealing anything.
I said, “Just exactly what is my status?”
“Your status? At the moment, Mr. Duluth, your status with the police is virtually nothing, too. You are just a man implicated in the suicide of a girl and, as you pointed out yourself, it is not a criminal offense to have been acquainted with a suicide. Once the M.E.’s office has established the fact of suicide, you will merely be a witness. On the other hand, of course, if the M.E.’s office is not satisfied with the evidence—”
He let the sentence drop there. His smile was exasperating now. I think he meant it to be.
I said, “Why do you keep on hinting that it may not be suicide?”
“As I told your wife, we have to keep our minds open. In any case, the idea that she might not have killed herself was originated by you.”
“By me?”
“Over and over again you have denied the fact that Miss Ordway had any reason to kill herself because of you. There’s usually a motive for suicide. And if there is no motive—”
He broke off again. I felt tired and intimidated by his unflagging, hopelessly misguided cleverness.
“You’re smart, aren’t you?” I said.
He shrugged. “If I was smart I’d be out making a fortune producing plays on Broadway. I wouldn’t be a homicide detective.”
“Why are you one, anyway?” I was interested.
“That’s a long story, Mr. Duluth, of very little concern to anyone but myself.” He got up and held out his hand. “You’d better go rescue your wife from her fans. Tomorrow? At ten?”
I took his hand. I realized that the possibility of murder had to be considered at this stage. I knew that it would soon evaporate. But I also knew that, if Lieutenant Trant ever thought I was guilty of any crime punishable by law, he would track me to the ends of the earth. It was a peculiar sensation shaking his hand.
I said, “I’d hate to be your mouse, Lieutenant.”
“My mouse?” He took his hand away. “Oh, I don’t suppose you will be, Mr. Duluth. Good night.”
I walked out into the squad room. Iris was sitting at one of the desks with a paper coffee cup in her hand. A couple of detectives were standing around her—and three other men. When they saw me, the three men hurried toward me. Iris got up, looking at me anxiously. I knew what the men were, of course, and I was as ready as I would ever be for them. The second phase was beginning, the phase that didn’t involve the police but would probably be worse.
I didn’t know any of the reporters. They must have been legmen who’d dropped into the station house on a routine checkup. They bombarded me with questions. “Was she an actress?”
“No.”
“A personal friend—a close personal friend?”
“Just a girl.” I pushed past them to Iris. I was feeling dead-beat now.
“How’d she come to be strung up in your bedroom? Mr. Duluth, give us a break, will you?”
“Skip it. For God’s sake, skip it. You can get it all from the cops, anyway.”
I took Iris’s arm and hurried down the stairs and out past the sergeant at the night desk. The reporters started to follow; then they gave up. But they’d left their feeling with me—that feeling of exposure. I was going to be a seven days’ wonder. Of course I was. It had everything as a moron’s news story—movie-star wife, theatrical producer, young gi
rl dead, sex—
I felt old and disgusted and unclean.
We didn’t take a taxi. There wasn’t any point. We only lived around the corner. It was still quite early. People were passing us on the monotonous cross-town street, going about their ordinary evening affairs.
Iris put her arm through mine.
I said, “Did you get anything to eat, baby?”
“Just a cup of coffee. I wasn’t hungry.”
“The reporters bother you?”
“Just about what you’d expect.”
“It’ll be slapped over the headlines tomorrow.”
“Yes.” She glanced at me. “How did the statement go?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“How was Lieutenant Trant?”
“Quiet and polite and professionally sinister.”
“I don’t like him,” said Iris.
Did I? I didn’t know. But there was going to be plenty of time for me to make up my mind whether I liked Lieutenant Trant or not.
We reached our apartment house. It was about eleven-thirty. The night porter knew; the night elevator man knew, too. Neither of them said anything, but you could tell. There was a whole new feeling. I was a goldfish in a bowl. They were peering in through the glass.
I opened the apartment door with my key. God knows, I never wanted to set foot in the place again, but that’s what people have to do. You have a lease. You don’t just walk out because a girl hanged herself from your chandelier.
The lights were all on in the living-room. There weren’t any visible policemen. I heard someone in the bedroom, though. Then Miss Mills emerged into the living-room.
Miss Mills was no beauty. She was plump and rather pig-faced and she wore a pair of rimless pince-nez on a gold chain which emphasized the snout effect of her nose. But it never occurred to you to want her changed. That was the way Miss Mills always had been and always would be.
She came to us with her usual integrated smile. She was the most comforting thing I’d seen that evening.
“Hello. I was in the box office tonight, and dear Lottie told me the news. I came right around. There was right smart of cops messing about, but I talked them into letting me stay. They’ve just left, thank God, and I’ve straightened up a bit.”
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