Jack and Susan in 1933

by Michael McDowell

  He came down and stood beside Barbara. “I’ve taken care of everything,” she said. “Father is in the sitting room. I’m afraid it wasn’t possible to keep the casket open.”

  Jack shook hands with a cadaverous man in a blue suit who Jack knew in his soul was a shyster lawyer, and tried to make sense of the soft words the shyster lawyer’s wife was saying to him in condolence.

  Jack shook other hands, listened to other mumbled words, and finally made his way into the sitting room. The coffin was placed in the embrasure of a wide window that looked out over the Hudson and was surrounded by wicker baskets of flowers that stank of refrigeration.

  “Those baskets are so peculiar,” said Susan, standing suddenly beside him. “Why does a basket that’s six feet high need a handle?”

  “For the evil giant’s young daughters, of course,” said Harmon, appearing on his other side. “That’s obviously whom these baskets were made for. Old Jackie, I really am very sorry.”

  “I couldn’t find you in New York,” said Jack.

  “Susan’s messages found me,” said Harmon, “and I took the first train up. Didn’t trust myself to drive, even though I never heard anything that shoved me so quick to sobriety. Poor old Marcellus,” he said, glancing at the coffin and shaking his head. “Missed seeing Repeal by a matter of days.”

  “Barbara seems to be bearing up,” said Susan, on the other side of Jack again.

  Jack looked at her sharply, fearing irony or sarcasm in her voice. She returned his gaze steadily. “I’m glad,” she said. “Barbara, for all her faults, is a strong woman, and I was certain she’d come through at a time like this.”

  “Barbara is strong,” Jack agreed, and smiled a smile of thanks.

  He startled when the telephone rang on the small table beside him. Everyone in the room turned and looked at Jack as if he’d just done something to precipitate this mundane intrusion. While Jack hesitated, trying to break down the blush that seemed an admission of that accusation, Harmon answered the phone quietly. He spoke a moment, then handed the receiver to Jack.

  “It’s for you. Someone named MacIsaac.”

  Susan glanced at Jack worriedly as he took the receiver.

  “MacIsaac,” Jack said, “I can’t talk to you now.” He listened, though, for a couple of minutes. His face paled. Harmon and Susan moved politely away. At the end of the conversation Jack said, “Thank you, MacIsaac,” and hung up.

  “Didn’t we once hire a fellow named MacIsaac?” Harmon asked. “Toady sort of fellow? Made you think you could get warts just to look at him?” He took a glass of sherry from a tray Grace Grace was taking about the room.

  Jack nodded. He looked at Susan. “He called to say that the police had examined Marcellus’s car. Someone had tampered with the brakes. Marcellus didn’t die accidentally, he was murdered.”

  Though Jack had spoken softly, Grace Grace had evidently heard him. For she dropped the tray, the glasses shattered, and the odor of the fine sherry mingled with that of the refrigerated blooms in the giant’s baskets.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EVENTUALLY, THOSE WHO had come to pay their condolences departed with mumbled words, and slightly bowed heads, and airs of something’s not quite right here. Jack had said nothing, and neither had Susan or Harmon. Maybe it was just the way Grace Grace had dropped a tray with seven sherry glasses on it, and what everyone had heard of Marcellus’s commerce with Harmon’s new young wife, or just the brooding irregularity of a closed coffin. But however all these respectful guests divined it, they all left with the impression that there was something untoward in the circumstances of Marcellus Rhinelander’s accident.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” you could almost hear Mr. Chan saying, bowing slightly and smiling to these curious mourners as they departed, “it was murder.”

  Grace Grace closed the doors of the dining room to muffle the noise of the clearing away of the funeral meats. Her embalmed fowl had never been more appropriate than on this afternoon.

  Jack drew the doors of the drawing room closed with a final uneasy glance at his father-in-law’s coffin.

  Harmon and Susan were the last to take their leaves. Susan had fetched Scotty and Zelda from the kitchen, where they’d remained invisible and unheard the entire afternoon. She now carried them tenderly in her arms. The dogs looked with wary eyes at Harmon Dodge, and Harmon Dodge looked back at them in a way that suggested their wariness was justified.

  “Barbara,” said Susan, “I really am—”

  “I know you are,” returned Barbara with a smile that, for her, was positively fiery with warmth. “And you two, please, I’d beg you on my knees, if my knees bent after standing about so long like this in these positively déclassé pumps, please don’t leave Jack and me alone. Stay with us for dinner.”

  “Of course,” said Harmon. “Let me just run down to the cellar right now and see what Marcellus left in the way of potables.”

  “Susan,” said Jack, “could I talk to Barbara alone for a few moments?”

  “Certainly,” said Susan, already stepping away, but Barbara stopped her.

  “Oh Jack, what could you possibly have to say to me that you couldn’t say in front of Susan? After all, she’s family. Someone or other keeps pointing that out to me. Especially after today, I suppose one might say. Stay,” she added to Susan with a repetition of that furnacy smile.

  Susan put down the dogs and pointed to the corner by a Chinese umbrella stand. The dogs crept behind it, out of sight.

  “The police called—” Jack began awkwardly. Barbara’s hand was on Susan’s wrist, not letting her go.

  “And?” Barbara prompted.

  “It appears that your father’s death might not have been accidental.”

  “They found something, then?” Barbara asked, not looking surprised.

  “You knew they were looking?” asked Susan.

  “I asked them to,” said Barbara innocently. “Just in case. Father had enemies—all lawyers have. Father even had a few friends who were worse than enemies to him. All rich men have.”

  “Someone tampered with the brakes,” Jack said.

  “But how could anyone know that Marcellus would be driving that car himself?” Susan asked.

  “Probably they didn’t,” suggested Harmon, appearing suddenly with an armful of dusty bottles. “Probably they intended to murder Marcellus and do away with the Bacillus of Bolshevism at the same time. A pair of avians brought down with but a single pebble. And speaking of two animals that want killing…” He looked around for Scotty and Zelda, and Jack now understood why the terriers were hiding behind a large and heavy vase.

  “But do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Marcellus?” Susan asked Barbara.

  “The police asked me that very question earlier today,” said Barbara with a smile for Susan that was positively hellish in its warmth and intensity. “I suggested you.”

  “Ah,” suggested Jack, “could we pursue this conversation in another…another venue? This hall’s a bit drafty.” It was also very easy to be overheard here, by any one—or more likely, all—of the servants.

  “Anywhere there’s a corkscrew,” said Harmon cheerfully. “Help me with these, would you please, Jackie my boy.” The dusty bottles in his arms were rolling and clanking about, in fair danger of smashing themselves on the marble flooring. “The news that my wife has just been accused of murder is rattling my equilibrium. Generally, you know, on occasions when my spouse hasn’t just been accused of a capital crime, I can juggle any number of bottles of fine wine. Perhaps we should adjourn into the dining room if Grace has finished clearing.”

  “I’d prefer the drawing room,” said Susan, still trying to release her hand from the taloned grasp of the woman who’d just accused her of murder.

  “The coffin’s in there,” said Jack in a low, miserable voice. He somehow felt he’d just fallen into a very deep pit.

  “Unmasking a murderer—or murderess—could hardly be construed a
s disrespectful to the corpse of the victim,” said Barbara, pulling wide the double doors. She stood aside with a ravishing smile for Susan to enter. “Don’t worry, dear. The coffin is closed. If Father’s corpse starts to bleed in the presence of his murderer, no one will notice.”

  “Barbara!”

  Barbara smiled a terrible smile and retreated into the hallway again while the others entered the drawing room.

  “Jack,” said Susan, falling into a corner of the sofa, “please don’t bother defending me to Barbara. I didn’t murder Marcellus. You know that. Harmon knows that. The police would know that. Barbara is very upset right now, and I have no intention of taking offense at anything she might say.”

  “Well, just in case you do feel a little threatened,” said Barbara, who had evidently heard at least the last of this little speech, “I’ve brought you a couple of defenders.” Barbara brought in Scotty and Zelda— holding them at arm’s length, with a jeweled hand clasped around each gasping throat, very much the way cops on the beat push delinquent children along the sidewalk. She dropped the dogs onto the sofa next to Susan. “They’ll love you no matter what you’ve done.”

  “Yes,” said Susan, picking up Scotty and smiling quietly at him in reassurance that she did not intend to continue the throttling, “dogs do have several charming qualities. They’re loyal and trusting, for one thing. For another thing,” she said, putting Scotty down and picking up Zelda, “I have never run into a bitch who was overdressed for every occasion. So, say on, Barbara. Now that the police have told us how I killed Marcellus, do we have any idea why I might have done this terrible thing?”

  “Should I open this Gevrey Chambertin?” asked Harmon.

  “You murdered my father for his money, silly,” laughed Barbara gaily.

  “Is there any whiskey?” asked Jack, heading for the sideboard.

  That stopped Harmon in the act of twisting the corkscrew into the cork of the Gevrey Chambertin. Jack fumbled the stopper of the decanter and sloshed the finest pre-Prohibition whiskey on his soft wool jacket.

  “Barbara,” said Susan after a few moments, “that makes no sense whatsoever. I’m not to inherit his money, you are.”

  “Do I look it?” cried Barbara to her husband.

  “Like an heiress?” Jack returned, wondering.

  “No! Like a babe in the woods. Because that is what you obviously all take me for. A babe in the woods, crawling under the leaves to keep warm and freezing to death anyway. Well, let me tell you all something, I am not a babe in the woods.”

  “I never supposed it for a minute,” remarked Harmon. He had joined Jack at the sideboard.

  “Let me tell you two subtle, sophisticated lawyers a thing or five. Let me tell you about my father, and about this hard-boiled babe sitting here so neat and pretty in the corner of the couch as if she were the canary who had just swallowed the mouse.”

  “Ought I to defend you manfully?” Harmon asked his wife as he slid down easily beside her on the sofa. “Give her a smart slap to bring her to her senses? With Jack’s permission, of course.”

  “Thank you,” said Susan. “I’d like to reserve that option for myself. But for now, I, the canary who has just swallowed the mouse, would like to hear what Barbara has to say.”

  “I’m not sure I would,” said Jack, dropping into a chair as clumsily as Harmon had suavely dropped onto the sofa. This time Jack spilled the finest pre-Prohibition whiskey on his soft wool trousers.

  Barbara swept dramatically out of her chair and placed herself next to her father’s casket, framed herself against a six-foot basket of white carnations, and grasped a silver handle of the ebony coffin with a hand that crackled with diamonds. As she raised her black veil, she looked like the apotheosis of grief—Medea in some dreadful modernistic Russian production.

  “Harmon,” Barbara said, “it kills me to tell you this. Jack, it breaks my heart to admit something like this aloud.” They waited for the thunderbolt.

  Barbara took a deep breath. “Father was senile.”

  Jack, Harmon, and Susan blinked.

  “Senile?” Jack echoed.

  “He must have been,” said Barbara. “Otherwise, why would he have succumbed to the wiles of that viperess?” She pointed at Susan as if there might have been a dozen other viperesses in the drawing room and she wanted to make sure Jack and Harmon understood exactly which reptile was guilty.

  Susan shook her head and sighed. “Jack,” she said, getting up, “I hope you didn’t spill all of that whiskey on your suit.”

  “There’s a little left, I think,” Jack said.

  “What wiles?” asked Harmon curiously when Susan returned to the sofa.

  Susan stared at her husband. “Harmon,” she said quietly, “you know very well you should not feel that you have to ask me that question.”

  “Hmm,” said Harmon, which could probably not be construed as an apology. “Well, if I can’t ask you, I’ll ask Barbara. What wiles, Barbara?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly, having never resorted to a wile in my life,” said Barbara, turning around suddenly from where she’d buried her face in a mound of yellow chrysanthemums. She brushed petals from her bosom and went on. “But whatever wiles she used, they obviously worked, because otherwise why would Father have asked Susan to marry him?”

  Jack spilled the remainder of his whiskey on the arm of the chair, and in attempting to wipe it up with his sleeve, knocked his glass to the floor. It rolled over to Barbara’s feet. She kicked it smartly away.

  “Marcellus asked you to marry him?” Harmon asked his wife in wide-eyed astonishment. Jack didn’t think he had ever seen Harmon Dodge either wide-eyed or genuinely astonished at anything before.

  “Don’t deny it!” cried Barbara.

  “I wasn’t going to deny it,” said Susan.

  “He did?” said Harmon, still astonished. “He actually asked you to marry him?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Did you point out to him that you were already married, and that, in fact, he was acquainted with your husband, and that your husband was his partner in law?”

  “I didn’t have to point it out,” returned Susan rather coldly. “Marcellus was already acquainted with the facts.”

  “But it wasn’t going to be a problem,” Barbara interjected, “because Susan was going to get a divorce.”

  “I see,” said Harmon. “On any particular grounds? Inconvenience, perhaps? Incompatible china patterns?”

  “Infidelity,” said Barbara smugly. “Yours, Harmon.”

  “Mine?”

  “Father, in his senility, hired some dreadful man by the name of MacIsaac—Jack knows him intimately—”

  “I do not!”

  “—and this dreadful man fabricated some photographs that purport to show you in the embrace of some Ninth Avenue sloozy.”

  “What is a sloozy?” Jack inquired, and immediately wondered why, of all the important questions that occurred to him just now, he chose to propound this one.

  “A sloozy is something between a slut and a floozy,” said Barbara. “These fabricated photographs would have proved your infidelity, and Susan could have gotten a divorce. She would have gotten a very fair settlement from you, and then she would have gotten even more money from Father when she married him.”

  “How do you know all this?” Jack asked his wife. “About MacIsaac and the photographs, I mean.” Barbara smiled a secret smile and shredded a white carnation.

  “So,” said Harmon to his wife as he gently eased one leg over another and swiped at one of the dogs which had come an inch or two closer to him on the sofa, “when Marcellus asked you to divorce me, and marry him, what answer did you give him?”

  Susan blinked twice, very slowly. “I find that question insulting.”

  “She said no,” said Jack. “And, I might add, I think that she acted very properly throughout the whole affair.”

  “Oh yes?” said Harmon, putting aside his drink. Jack had never seen hi
m do that either. “So you knew about this little business as well? I suppose Richard Grace and Grace Grace and Louise of the Firing Range knew about it, too. Everyone knew but me.”

  “I saw the photographs MacIsaac obtained,” said Jack quietly. “They didn’t look manufactured. It appeared to me that Susan had quite legitimate grounds for a divorce. In fact, Marcellus asked me to arrange the entire thing. I would have turned it down in any case, but it didn’t come to that. Susan herself declined his proposal, with just and proper indignation.”

  Harmon seemed unmoved by Jack’s defense of his wife. “Where are the photographs now?”

  “I destroyed them,” said Susan.

  “Did you think they were real?”

  “Of course not!” cried Barbara. “She’s the one who paid MacIsaac to fake them! She sold a fur coat to a Jew on Hester Street and paid MacIsaac with the proceeds.”

  Susan stared at Barbara in amazement.

  “I made that part up for effect,” Barbara admitted. “But everything else is true.”

  “Did you believe the photographs were real?” Harmon asked Susan as if this were a matter of no consequence. At the same time, he pulled at Scotty’s ear till the dog whimpered in pain.

  “Whether I did or didn’t doesn’t matter,” returned Susan in quiet dignity. “I tore them up because I didn’t want you to be embarrassed. I didn’t want a divorce from you. I certainly didn’t want to marry Marcellus.”

  “She didn’t need to anymore,” Barbara cried, flinging her arms wide. One of her diamonds scraped across the top of her father’s coffin, gouging out a little ditch in the ebony.

  “I didn’t need to?” Susan echoed.