My Son, the Murderer

by Patrick Quentin

  He merely said: “Then I’d better see Mrs. Sheldon first.”

  Iris said: “I’ll go with you. The poor kid’s been there in suspense for hours. It’s better if one of us breaks the news.”

  I crossed to them. I said: “I’ll tell Jean.”

  Peter glanced at me uneasily. “Barnes, this is my brother, Jake.”

  Barnes’s clever, unrevealing eyes shifted to me for a moment. “Mr. Duluth.”

  “Let’s all go,” said Iris.

  Barnes called one of the detectives over and we all went upstairs. I was the only one who knew where Jean’s room was. It wasn’t Jean’s, of course. It was Ronnie’s. The door was locked and the key was in the lock. It was an old-fashioned lock with a brass door-handle and a brass plate behind it. The detective had a camera. It seemed to take him hours. He photographed the lock with a flashbulb; dusted it with powder; photographed it again and then dismantled it. When we finally got inside, I broke the news to Jean. I didn’t do it very well. I just blurted out that Ronnie was dead. But I was glad I was there. She clung to me as if I were her only human contact in the world.

  I didn’t say anything about Bill, of course, but she must have guessed. God knew what she was thinking. It was impossible to tell. She had withdrawn into herself. She looked the way she had looked that first day at Idlewild, about twelve, with her lips pressed in a grim, thin line. Lieutenant Barnes was surprisingly gentle with her. He asked her practically nothing.

  “I’ll be back later, Mrs. Sheldon.”

  Iris stayed with her. The rest of us—Peter and Barnes and the detective and I—went back down the stairs. As we descended towards the living-room, the front door in the hall below opened and Angie came in. She was wearing her mink coat over the black sequined dress whose skirt swept the floor. She hadn’t seen us, but she couldn’t have failed to see the police cars outside and to know that something was wrong.

  She came lumbering up the stairs. She was twisting her white kid gloves. She was almost up to us before she noticed us. Then she gave a little gasp.

  Looking at her from above, as she gaped at me, she was like a fish, I thought, a pale, clumsy, harmless fish.

  “Jake—those cars outside. Jake, what is it?”

  I went down the few steps to her side. I said: “It’s Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie. But what…? What’s happened to Ronnie? What…?”

  Angie had never really seemed real to me. She didn’t seem real then. But she was, of course. She was Ronnie’s sister. This was her horror as much as it was mine. More, in a way, for Ronnie was the entire foundation of her life. I felt a great pity for her and, at the same time, my anger against Bill flared even more ferociously. It wasn’t just Jean and Iris and Peter and me that he had victimized. It was Angie too.

  I put my hand on her heavy arm. I said: “I’m sorry, Angie. I’m terribly sorry. He’s dead. He’s been shot.”

  She stumbled as if suddenly she didn’t know what stair she was on. She grabbed at my arm. Her gloves fell to the floor.

  I said: “Angie, I’m sorry.” Barnes was hovering close to me. I began: “Angie, this is Lieutenant…”

  But he said: “No. Not now. Let her go upstairs with the others.”

  Angie blinked at him. I was sure she hadn’t the faintest idea who he was or what he was talking about.

  I said: “Come on, Angie. Jean’s upstairs.”

  I put my arm round her waist. The mink made it hard to get a grip. I started to guide her up the stairs.

  She said: “My gloves. Jake, I think I’ve dropped my gloves.”

  I took her into the bedroom and left her with Iris. I went back to the living-room. Peter and Barnes were standing by Ronnie with the doctor. The cops were still by the door and two detectives were moving silently about. They had some purpose, I supposed.

  The doctor, straightening a shirt cuff, said: “Dead between nine and nine-thirty, I’d say, Barnes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was nine-twenty when Mrs. Sheldon heard the shots and called me.”

  Barnes knew about that. We’d told him upstairs. He glanced at me.

  “Mr. Duluth, since you were the one Mrs. Sheldon called, I think you’d better tell me what happened.”

  Peter was still hovering round me like a male nurse. I wished he’d leave me alone. I would be all right.

  I said: “Sure, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” Barnes took me to a couch at the far end of the room. I couldn’t remember anybody ever having sat on it. I thought policemen had little books and pencils. But Barnes didn’t use anything. Did he think he was so bright that he didn’t even have to make notes? It would have been easier if I’d liked him, if he hadn’t seemed so immaculate and undisturbed and inhuman.

  “Your name is Jacob Duluth?”

  “No,” I said. “Jonathan. I’ve always been called Jake.”

  “You and Mr. Sheldon are the publishers—-Sheldon and Duluth, aren’t you? The firm that publishes Gwendolyn Sneighley?”

  My God, I thought, he reads Gwendolyn Sneighley.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “You’re married?”

  “My wife’s dead.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember. You have a son too. He must be about nineteen.”

  He remembered! What did he do—take the police suicide records home every night for a little light reading? Suddenly, the fact that he knew about Felicia crippled me. I took out a cigarette. I tried to light it. My hand was shaking. He held his own lighter out to me. He was being gentle with me the way he had been gentle with Jean. It didn’t fool me. He was just about as gentle as a panther.

  He said: “How long ago did Mr. Sheldon marry?”

  “About a month. He met her in England. Her father’s an author who interested him. He brought the whole family over.

  The rest of them live upstairs in the penthouse apartment.”

  “I see,” said Lieutenant Barnes. “He’d been married before?”

  “No.”

  “That lady who just came in?”

  “That’s his sister. She lives here.”

  He said: “Perhaps you’d tell me why Mrs. Sheldon was locked in that room.”

  “Ronnie locked her in.”

  “But—why?”

  “They’d quarreled.”

  “Why had they quarreled, Mr. Duluth?”

  Peter had sat down in a chair near us. He was looking like a man who had seen a ghost. What was he suffering about? Couldn’t he let me do my own suffering?

  I said: “They quarreled about my son.”

  Suddenly, now I had said it, now there was no turning back, all my anger against Bill was gone. I felt only a kind of resigned anguish as if I were standing by his grave.

  “Why did they quarrel about your son, Mr. Duluth?”

  “Because Bill had fallen in love with Mrs. Sheldon.”

  “I see.” said Lieutenant Barnes.

  That was the second time he had said “I see” in that godlike, all-understanding way. If he saw everything, why the hell did he have to ask questions?

  I said: “I did what I could. Ronnie went away to Georgia. I did what I could to stop it. But, this evening, when Ronnie came back, Bill was here in this room, kissing her.”

  “Yes, Mr. Duluth.”

  “Ronnie made a terrible scene. He threw Bill out. You see, Ronnie’s very easily hurt. He’s always been that way. When he gets mad, he isn’t…”

  I seemed to be losing my track. I felt Lieutenant Barnes’s hand on my arm. It was light and dry. He said:

  “Just tell me the facts, Mr. Duluth. Mr. Sheldon made a scene and threw your son out. Then what?”

  “Then he called me. I came here. Jean was with him. He made another scene, accusing me of not being able to control my son, threatening to break up our partnership. God knows —he threatened everything. Then he turned on Jean again. Then he threw me out.”

  “He threatened to break up Sheldon and Duluth?”

  “Yes.�
��

  “What do you mean by—he threatened everything?”

  “He just lashed out at everyone. He was mad. He wanted to hit back. He…”

  “He was mad because his wife was in love with your son?” He said that so quietly that it almost tricked me. But only— almost.

  I said: “I never said Mrs. Sheldon was in love with Bill.”

  “But you implied it.”

  “I didn’t imply it.”

  “You said they were kissing. You said you did all you could to stop it. If Mrs. Sheldon wasn’t in love with him, why did she let him kiss her, why did she need you to help her ‘stop it’?” The soft, unassuming manner hadn’t altered at all. But now he was showing himself in his true colors. The quiet, tricky one! The clever one who couldn’t be outwitted by “crafty” witnesses. He bored me; he made me tired.

  “Well, Mr. Duluth, do you admit it?”

  “Who cares what I admit? I didn’t say it.”

  “Was Mrs. Sheldon in love with your son?”

  “I don’t know. She never told me. Why ask me anyway? I’m not a walking psychology primer like you.”

  Peter said: “Jake!”

  I said: “What the hell? What difference does it make?” Lieutenant Barnes said: “A man’s been murdered, Mr. Duluth. It makes a difference whether or not his wife was in love with another man. I understand your position. You’re a father. Obviously you want to minimize this thing, make it sound like an innocent, one-sided calf-love. But if Mrs. Sheldon…”

  “Minimize!” I said. “My God, you think I’m trying to minimize? Didn’t they teach you anything in detective school? Didn’t they teach you, for example, to wait for the end of a statement before you start your ingenious analyses?”

  I got up. My head was aching again. Peter got up too. He came to me.

  “Jake, you’d better rest awhile.”

  “Shut up,” I said. I stood there, glaring at Barnes. “Go on asking things. Find out first before you decide whether I’m trying to minimize or not.”

  Barnes hadn’t got up. He sat there with his neat dark-grey legs crossed, looking up at me without any visible hostility.

  He said: “All right, Mr. Duluth. I’ll go on asking things. Do you, for example, think your son shot Mr. Sheldon?”

  “Do I think it? Of course I think it.”

  The muscles around his jaw relaxed. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but it seemed to me that he was smiling inside. This, he thought, was his great moment of triumph. He’d got me mad. He’d forced my hand.

  I said: “And don’t look so smug about it. No one was going to try to keep it from you. Ask Peter, ask him how he comes in on this deal, ask him about the gun.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “I guess I take over from here.”

  He started telling Barnes about Bill’s visit to their apartment and the missing gun. I didn’t really listen. I knew he didn’t want to tell it, but I knew he had enough sense to realize that it all had to be told. I didn’t sit down again. I didn’t want to be that close to Lieutenant Barnes. The detectives were still browsing about. Each had a cigarette drooping from his lips. The doctor seemed to be gone. They still hadn’t come for Ronnie. A chair was between me and him but I could just see one shoe. Were they going to leave him there forever? Weren’t the police even efficient enough to get an ambulance?

  In spite of myself, Barnes’s soft, insistent voice came through to me.

  “So after you’d found the gun was missing, you called your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you went round to his apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was when Mrs. Sheldon telephoned?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re sure the revolver beside Mr. Sheldon is yours?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Lieutenant Barnes got up then. He moved round Peter until he was standing in front of me.

  He said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Duluth.”

  “Sorry about what? ”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “You realize now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I realize now.” His eyes were intently on my face. I’d thought they were blue. They were grey. “You understand, of course, that unless the picture violently changes. I shall have to hold your son?”

  “I didn’t think you’d give him an award.”

  His tongue came out to moisten his lips. His Christian magnanimity almost made me ashamed of myself.

  “Where is your son, Mr. Duluth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He lives with you?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Then where does he live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked slightly tired then as if, for the first time, he was losing his patience with me.

  “You don’t know?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “Because we quarreled.”

  “There’s a lot of quarrelling around your son.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You quarreled?”

  “We quarreled. He wanted a place of his own. I gave him an allowance. He got himself an apartment.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Village.”

  “But where?”

  “He didn’t tell me. He didn’t want me to know.”

  I did know the telephone number. From the telephone number anyone could find the address. But I wasn’t going to tell him. I’d done enough. How public-spirited can you be? Let him find his own murderer.

  “I see,” said Lieutenant Barnes again.

  It was ironic, I thought. The only time I’d lied to him he didn’t question my statement at all.

  He said: “Then I’ll have to find him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You will.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Sheldon will know.”

  That was when the Laceys came in—all three of them. My head was aching so badly that I wasn’t paying much attention to anything. But there they were. There was Basil with his beard, Phyllis Brent, Norah, soft-voiced and gentle and British and as out of place in this mess as a vicar’s wife.

  Barnes and Peter went over to them. I dropped down on the couch again. I heard little snatches of their conversation. It was dialogue from some other novel.

  “We saw the constable at the door … we’ve been to a play … it isn’t … oh, Basil, Basil, don’t look.”

  Oh, Basil, Basil, don’t look! I must have blacked out then from the headache. Peter and Barnes were bending over me.

  Peter said: “He’s all in. It’s all right for him to leave, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Barnes, “it’s all right.”

  “I’ll take him to my apartment. You’ll need me later, I imagine, but…”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll go home alone.”

  “But Jake…”

  I got up. “Lay off me, will you?”

  “But you can’t be alone tonight of all nights! ”

  I swung round to Barnes. “Is there a law against it? Is there a law against being alone tonight of all nights?”

  Barnes said: “You can do whatever you want to, naturally, Mr. Duluth. But I’d like you to come to the station house tomorrow morning and make a formal statement. I’ll call you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Peter said: “If I get Iris…”

  “Lay off me.”

  I brushed past him and walked down the long, interminable room. Basil and Phyllis and Norah were all huddled together by the door. Norah took a step towards me. Her face was stricken. I knew it was mostly for Ronnie but it seemed to me that part of it was pity for me. She put out her hand.

  “Mr. Duluth…”

  I tried to smile at her. My lips didn’t work properly. “I’m all right, Mrs. Lacey. Go to Jean. She needs you.”

  Suddenly Basil was blocking my way through the door. He looked pompous and personally outraged as if he was going to write a letter t
o The Times.

  “This is shocking. It’s disgraceful. How could it have happened? Mr. Duluth, who did it?”

  “Who did it?” I repeated. Of course it was shocking. Of course it was disgraceful. Probably it would ruin his morning’s work tomorrow. “Don’t tell anyone, Mr. Lacey,” I said, “but the killer is Gwendolyn Sneighley.”

  I almost ran out of the room and down the stairs to the street because I could feel tears pricking at my eyes.

  10

  I went home. I took some aspirin. I poured myself a drink but, after I’d poured it, I couldn’t drink it. I had thought that once I’d got away from everyone, it would be better. It wasn’t. I sat down on a couch. Opposite me on the wall was a Dufy-esque watercolor of the Zaccharia in Venice. I’d bought it on a trip to Paris. It made me think of Rome. My mind drifted off to the fountain outside the Palazzo Medici. Sunlight slanted down through the live-oaks. I heard the little babble of the water in the stone basin and the toot of Vespa horns. I saw the domes, the obelisks, the red-tiled roofs stretching below me.

  Suddenly I thought Bill will never go to Rome. A vision of his future life swept through me—the shuffle of men in line, the clang of the cell doors closing, the Saturday movie, the tiny, morbid gossip of the prison yard. That was the best that could happen!

  I felt sick. I got up. Lieutenant Barnes seemed to be in the room with his clever eyes, his prick-eared quietness. The Hound of Justice.

  I went to the phone. I called Bill’s number. It didn’t answer. Sylvia! What was her name? Sylvia—what? Sylvia Rymer. I pulled the telephone book out from under the bar. My fingers were like sticks. Rymer. Reimer. Riemer. I found it on my second trip through the Rymers. Sylvia Rymer. The address was Perry Street. That would be right.

  I called the number. It rang interminably. I felt my precarious energy ebbing away. Then, when I’d given up hope, J heard the receiver picked up.

  “Yes?” It was a girl’s voice.

  “Sylvia Rymer?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Jake Duluth. Bill Duluth’s father. Is Bill there?”

  She paused. Then she said: “Why?”

  “If he’s there, I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It does. You want to talk to him. How do I know he wants to talk to you? ”