Stranger Than Truth

by Vera Caspary

  Eleanor’s necklace broke. Pearls rolled on the floor. There was a lot of talk and moving about. Officials, witnesses and attendants got down on their knees.

  I kept my seat. So did Eleanor.

  Barclay went on with his testimony. He was the only one in the office, he intimated, who had not been fooled by the lovers’ ruses. We others, the wise and cynical, had let the wool be pulled over our eyes, had believed that affection was enmity, had been too blind to perceive that bitterness and slander were a disguise for shameful love.

  It was a good, quick, glib explanation. Barclay’s style was editorial with a strong Truth and Love flavor. I could almost see the titles: Mystery Death of Secret Lovers—Was It a Suicide Pact?

  The alleged lovers were dead. Nobody came into the courtroom to deny Barclay’s statements. Who would doubt a man of his reputation? His facts were as orderly as the alphabet. And Munn could not now be indicted and tried for murder. The case was closed.

  At the end the crowd gathered around Barclay. Men waited in line to shake his hand. Ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizens felt it a privilege to meet the author of My Life Is Truth. Everyone was surprised and delighted to find the great man so humble and so sincere.

  Down the block was a dirty bar. I chose a booth in the darkest corner. Sitting alone, I ordered two double brandies. Eleanor had gone off with her father and the lawyer in the Barclay limousine. It was long and black and looked to me like a funeral car.

  “Two double brandies?” asked the bartender.

  “I’m expecting someone,” I said. This was a lie, but I am not one of those sturdy souls who can share the truth with strange bartenders.

  He brought the drinks. I had him set one before me, place the other across the table. He guessed that I was not expecting anyone, and as he returned to the bar I noticed that he was looking at my reflection in the mirror.

  I raised my glass and drank a toast to Lola Manfred. This was more appropriate, I thought, than a wreath for her coffin.

  The bartender was worried. I signaled and he came back to the booth. “I’m afraid my friend’s not coming. Would you like it?” I pointed to the untouched glass. Lola would not have wanted good brandy wasted.

  “Don’t mind if I do. Though I’d rather’ve had bourbon.”

  “Have a bourbon on me, too.” I threw five bucks on the table, saluted the bartender and left. He tapped his head.

  Ten minutes later I walked into the office. It was 4 p.m., and the place should have been humming. Hardly a typewriter clicked. In the private offices, editors and sub-editors gossiped. In the Ladies’ and the Gents’ Rooms were gathered delegations of writers, readers, typists, office boys, and members of the Board of Religious Co-ordination. No one wanted to work. Too much had happened.

  My fellow-workers crowded around as if I were Public Hero Number One. They asked confidentially if it was true that the late E. E. Munn and the late Miss Manfred had been that way about each other. It was ridiculous. Anyone with eyes and ears should have known that these two were enemies. But Barclay had seen the reporters on Saturday and stories had been printed in the Sunday papers. That made it authentic. Barclay employees who lived by the printed word believed in the printed word.

  The human mind, as Barclay had informed Captain Riordan, is the greatest natural phenomenon of all time, the eighth wonder of the world. Henry Roe confided that he had always known there was something between Lola and Munn, and Tony Shaw rushed into my office to whisper that he was sure he had once seen them in a hotel in Atlantic City.

  Presently Miss Eccles paid me a visit. Her chest heaved, her hands fluttered, her dry painted lips pouted girlishly. “Tell me, Mr. Ansell, aren’t you just overwhelmed?”

  “Overwhelmed is the word for it, Miss Eccles.”

  Beside my office door stood Miss Kaufman. Through rimless glasses she glared at Barclay’s secretary. “He’s busy, Grace. Don’t bother him now. If you have any questions regarding business, send us a memo.”

  Miss Eccles turned her bony, indignant back upon the enemy. “This is business, Mr. Ansell. Tell me, have you seen him today?”

  “Barclay? Of course. At the inquest.”

  “Did he say he was coming in?”

  “He didn’t honor me with his confidences. Nor make a statement to the press.”

  “Please, Mr. Ansell,” lily-white hands were clasped in supplication beneath the sharp chin, “don’t be whimsical. You know I have no sense of humor. There are vital questions to be answered. Office policy, you understand. Is Eleanor coming in?”

  “She didn’t confide in me either.”

  “But what are we to do about Truth and Love? With Miss Manfred passed on and Eleanor neglecting her responsibilities, how can the magazine ever go to press?”

  “Who cares if Truth and Love never goes to press?”

  Miss Kaufman laughed.

  Miss Eccles gave me a stricken look. “I know it’s not as important as life and death, Mr. Ansell, but the first rule in this business is that the magazine has to go to press on time.”

  “Perhaps they’ll make you editor.”

  “Oh! Mr. Ansell! That’s very flattering, but I haven’t the editorial mind.”

  “You’ve been loyal,” I said. “So loyal that you ought to be Supervising Editor. Maybe Mr. Barclay’ll give you Munn’s job. Shall I suggest it?”

  “I doubt that I’m worthy,” she sighed. But the look in her pale eyes showed that Miss Grace Eccles dwelt in a prophetic dream.

  Miss Kaufman’s voice disturbed the vision. “Quit bothering him now. He’s got work to do.”

  Miss Eccles gave Miss Kaufman a glance which promised dismissal on the day that Barclay’s secretary achieved new power.

  When she had left. Miss Kaufman closed the office door, moved toward my desk and said, “It doesn’t sound kosher to me. Does it sound kosher to you, Mr. Ansell?”

  “Good for you, Kaufman. It cheers me to discover there’s still some honest skepticism left in the world.” I kissed her.

  “None of that. I’m a respectable married woman. If it hadn’t been for that bichloride of mercury, I wouldn’t have believed it. But since I read that the ten thousand dollars he had on him was claimed by his sister who runs a beauty shop, I couldn’t help putting two and two together.”

  “You sound like a manuscript that Truth and Crime would reject, Miss K. Which two and two and what’s the sum?”

  “Beauty shop operators use bichloride. They get it in tablet form and dissolve the tablets to use as antiseptics. Why couldn’t he have got some bichloride tablets out of his sister’s shop?”

  “That doesn’t tell us why he did it.”

  “Do you remember,” Miss Kaufman asked as she cleaned my glasses with the square of pink cotton, “what Miss Manfred always answered when people asked how she dared say all those fresh things about Mr. Barclay? She used to say she knew where the body was buried.”

  “Whose body?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” replied Miss Kaufman. She gave me back my glasses and marched out of the office.

  For the rest of the afternoon she posted herself outside my door and told visitors that I was too busy to be disturbed. I spent an active hour drumming on the wood of my desk. Secured to the wall opposite my desk by four thumb tacks hung a picture cut from a woman’s magazine. Miss Kaufman had put it there as a gag. The lettuce was green, the mayonnaise yellow, the shrimps pink … can’t be sure until we’ve got the analysis but I had another case that looked just life it. Bichloride of mercury. Or had the ambulance doctor never said it? Had my imagination, stimulated by too many crime stories, conceived the whole thing? According to hospital records, to Noble Barclay, to I. G. Smith of the Barclay Building Grille, I had eaten deteriorated shellfish. Can such authority be contradicted? What proof had I, three weeks later, that I had not eaten shrimps?

  The darkness thickened. A gong sounded. Miss Kaufman popped in to ask whether I would need her anymore that day. I told her to hurry home to th
e wallpaper salesman. People passed, laughing and talking, on their way to the elevators. Girls giggled. My fingertips were numb and I quit beating rhythms on my desk.

  Hinges creaked as my office door opened. I swung around in my swivel chair. It creaked, too.

  “Johnnie, are you still here?” asked Eleanor.

  “What do you think?”

  “Please don’t be sarcastic. I’ve got to see you.”

  “You had plenty of opportunity over the week-end. I’d begun to wonder if you weren’t avoiding me on purpose.”

  She came a couple of steps into the office. I switched on the desk lamp. The sudden light struck me between the eyes. I scowled.

  “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable,” I said.

  She took the straight chair designed for new writers who come to ask if the editor would be interested in an unusual story. She was still pale but she had made an effort to liven her appearance with rouge and lipstick. The purplish color made her skin seem frailer. She had evidently stopped at the apartment, for she had changed the black sweater for a frilled blouse.

  I remembered the long week-end and grew angry. “What’s wrong? Why are you looking so tragic? Everything’s turned out all right for you, hasn’t it?”

  Eleanor raised her hand to her neck, gripped her throat as if she meant to choke herself. Then her hand dropped.

  “That was a wonderful performance your old man put on,” I said. “I’d have liked to congratulate him, but his admirers didn’t give me a chance. Let me congratulate you, though. You did pretty well yourself.”

  Her underlip trembled. “Johnnie…”

  “Yeah?”

  After a short silence she said, “I’m going away.”

  “Yeah? Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere. I’ve got to get away from here.”

  “Why?”

  She did not answer. Her hands, still in the white gloves, tightened on her pocketbook. The pupils were so large that her eyes looked black. I remembered then what her father had told me about his first wife, Eleanor’s mother. She had been tense, oversensitive, secretive. I thought of the chapter in the Introduction wherein Barclay described his young wife’s suicide.

  Eleanor sighed. “Don’t make fun of me, Johnnie. I need help.”

  “I’d like to help you, but you make it tough.” I wanted to show sympathy, but, at the same time, let her know that I was not going to stand for anymore lies or evasions. “The time for kidding’s past. Either we’ve got to be completely honest with each other, or else.”

  In a muffled voice she said, “I didn’t lie to you, Johnnie. I can’t remember a single thing I said that wasn’t true.”

  “You know more than you’ve told me. Maybe you didn’t lie deliberately but you’ve deliberately withheld the truth. Isn’t that so?”

  She raised her head. Her stricken eyes asked for mercy. I fought off the urge to take her in my arms. Evasion and appeasement would only lead us around the same old circle, back to the point from which we had started. “Perhaps I oughn’t to hold you responsible,” I said coldly. “Perhaps you’ve never learned what honesty is. Your education seems to have been deficient. You’ve been taught to mold and twist your idea of truth to fit every convenient attitude. Apparently you’ve never learned that half-truths are worse than lies, more misleading. There’s only one truth, and that’s the whole truth, and unless we start with that, we’ll never have a chance.”

  I heard muffled footsteps in the corridor. Someone sneezed. I jumped up, flung open the door. There was no eavesdropper, just a tired accountant who had stayed overtime to balance his books. He wished me a wan good night and trudged toward the elevator.

  I closed the office door again. “It’s okay. No one’s there. You can talk now,” I told Eleanor.

  Her lips quivered. The effort at frankness made her tense and cautious. I waited. Impatience acted as an irritant and I felt my temper rising. On the stand beside my desk was a Thermos jug of green plastic and a glass exactly like the blue jug and glass from which I had taken a drink flavored with bichloride. The blue color had kept me from seeing that the water was tinted. Had that been considered when the mercury tablets were dropped into my Thermos carafe?

  “Look,” I shouted, standing above Eleanor and resting my hands on her shoulders, “you say you love me; you’ve promised to marry me, but you’re either too scared or too stubborn to tell me what you know about Wilson’s death and Lola’s death and Edward Everett Munn. You’ve always been like that, stubborn and secretive. Maybe I’m a sucker, maybe I’m being used for something I don’t understand. But I’m not going to let anyone try to poison me a second time.”

  “Poison you!” Her lips formed the words, but she did not speak them aloud. She pulled herself free of my hands and looked up at me. There was nothing false about her amazement.

  I realized then that she was not the only guilty one. Mine was also a sin of omission. Along with the rest of the office, Eleanor had swallowed the shrimp story. I had not let her know the facts in the case, nor my suspicions. In my effort to keep it clean and pretty between us I had cheated her of the truth.

  I told the story briefly, but gave her a complete picture of the argument over the Wilson story, the blue-carafe business and the ambulance doctor’s first diagnosis. Then I described my interview with Noble Barclay, his promises and hints, and our conversation about the shrimp cocktail.

  After I had finished there was a long pause.

  She breathed heavily. Suddenly she said, “If I’d known, I’d have killed him.”

  “Your father?” I asked. The bitterness was intentional. I wanted to hurt her.

  The look she threw at me was a challenge. Her jaw shot forward. Her eyes were narrow and pale in color. With her gloved hands she pounded softly on the desk.

  Impatience burned in me like a fever. “Well, say it!” I shouted. “Don’t be afraid. You can tell me. I don’t run to the police with information. Say it, Eleanor. I know anyway.”

  “My father doesn’t commit murder.” The sudden dignity shocked me. She was an indignant lady who had been shoved by rude hands during a subway rush.

  I sat back so suddenly that my chair almost tipped over. “Then why did he tell me that he suspected you? I thought it was to protect himself.”

  “Do you think I did it?” Her poise survived. She was still the aggrieved gentlewoman.

  “No. I never did believe it.”

  This is what she had been waiting for. The society manner which she had used as a brake on her temper disappeared as completely as the fever and the tension. Black clouds were defeated by the sun; everything became normal again. She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Now that you’ve said that, Johnnie, I can tell you that I’m not entirely without blame. In a way I’m responsible for Mr. Wilson’s death.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I brought the gun to Father’s office. We’d been posing pictures at the Studio, and when I was sent for suddenly, I picked up the gun and carried it with me.”

  “What was in your mind?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked down at her hands as if she wanted to avoid the question in my glance. “Perhaps it was unconscious. My wish to kill…”

  “Don’t go Freudian on me. You didn’t know then, did you, that your father was calling you to talk about your date with Wilson?”

  She shook her head. “But I knew it was urgent, that I was to leave my work and rush up there immediately. I guess I knew I’d be bawled out and that Ed would be there, smirking, waiting like an animal to pounce.” She shuddered and held her arms around herself.

  “Did you hate him so much that you carried a gun to a conference?”

  “Were you ever afraid of anyone, Johnnie? Not sanely and consciously afraid but terrorized down deep in your bones? I didn’t know I had the gun. I thought I was carrying my pocketbook. It seemed just an absent-minded mistake. I didn’t even think about it until I heard th
at Mr. Wilson had been shot with the same kind of gun.”

  “And you thought your father did it?”

  She nodded humbly. “I didn’t know what to think. I was frightened dumb. Father had been so illogically angry about Mr. Wilson, it just didn’t make sense. Honestly, Johnnie, I didn’t know until that night, last Friday, that it was Ed.”

  “Why did Munn kill Wilson?” I asked.

  “He thought my father wanted him to. He thought Father had asked me to bring the gun to the office. Believe me, my father didn’t know anything about it until afterward. Ed Munn was crazy.”

  “Crazy like a fox.”

  “You didn’t know him. He was…” she paused, groping for words. “He was like a dog that attacks people who seem to threaten his master. Father says it’s partly his fault. He’d raised Ed too high, had given him too much power and responsibility for a man of his intelligence.”

  “A nice theory,” I commented.

  “He was scared,” Eleanor said. “Afraid of everyone, of everything. Now that you’ve told me about being poisoned while you were working on the Wilson story, I’m beginning to understand. Ed probably thought you had something on him. He might even have thought you were working for the police. You came here after the Wilson murder, you know. Don’t you see how it is?”

  I saw, but my vision was blurred. Physical facts were clear but they had no meaning. So far as simple outward evidence was concerned, the Wilson mystery was solved. But the solution was too simple. The thing I dislike about detective stories is that in the end they tell you who did it and then try to brush you off with some sort of surface motivation. Even if I believed that seven million dollars had been hidden in the hollow leg of an antique chair or that the Siamese emeralds were worth twelve deaths, I’d want to know more about the things that went on in the murderer’s mind when he dipped the arrow into that rare East Indian poison.

  “You may be right about Munn’s suspicions,” I said irritably. “Guilt can drive a man crazy. But suppose I’d died that night, suppose the scrubwoman hadn’t arrived in time? An autopsy would have shown the presence of bichloride in my body. There’d have been an investigation around here and somebody might have remembered that I was working on the Wilson story. Who’d your father have bribed then? And where does he fit in anyway?”