My Son, the Murderer

by Patrick Quentin

  Looking at her, I felt like an executioner.

  She said: “But I—I can’t just sit here. I can’t just sit and wait for Lieutenant Barnes.”

  “You’ve got to.”

  She threw herself in my arms. “Mr. Duluth. Oh, Mr. Duluth.”

  I felt as sorry for her as I could feel sorry for anyone at that moment. But I wanted to get away from her and her miasmic atmosphere of defeat. I said:

  “You can do it. You can stand up to Barnes.”

  “I’ll try. You know I’ll try.” She turned her face up to mine. “And you? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find out who killed Ronnie.”

  As I spoke, I seemed to see Lieutenant Barnes’s quiet grey eyes, watching me, incredulous, faintly sardonic—and pitying too. Yes. he would pity me if he could see me now. That was why I disliked him so much. And that was why I was determined not to pity myself.

  I drew away from Jean. She stood looking at me as if she were made of ice. Angie, Jean—they had both, in their different ways, turned their backs on me.

  Now there was nothing on Bill’s side but—Jake Duluth.

  16

  As I left Jean’s room, Norah Lacey came round the corner of the passage.

  “Oh, Mr. Duluth, Basil wants very much to speak to you. I wonder if you have a moment.”

  I had a moment for that. I followed her through the living-room, still crowded with floral tributes from Ronnie, and into old Miss Sheldon’s library.

  With a quiet: “Here he is, Basil,” Norah left us.

  Basil was sitting behind a rather small Chippendale desk on which were neatly arranged all the accoutrements of a writer’s trade. He was as meticulously dressed as when I had had tea with him and his face wore an expression of slightly irritated resignation—the expression of the Great Man who sensibly realizes there are times when one has to interrupt the flow of even the most important work.

  I looked at his thin-boned, sensitive face with its bright-blue, clever eyes and its look of immense dedication to himself. He could have done it, I thought. If his new life of ease had been threatened, he could have killed Ronnie without turning a hair of his goatee.

  He didn’t actually smile, as if he realized a smile would be inappropriate, but somehow a smile was indicated.

  “Good morning, Mr. Duluth.”

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He leaned slightly forward across the desk towards me. He reminded me of a headmaster in an English play about to lecture a refractory prefect for his own good. “It isn’t very easy for me, Mr. Duluth, to talk to you at—at such a time.”

  “No,” I said.

  He laid the palms of his delicate hands flat against each other as if in prayer. “You realize, I’m sure, that you have my deepest sympathy. What has happened is a terrible, a tragic thing to have overtaken any father.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The suggestion of a smile, affable and carefully uncondescending, heightened. “And I do hope you will not condemn me as unfeeling if I think a little, also, of myself. As a publisher, I am sure you are aware of the fact that a writer is a rather delicate mechanism, one that cannot afford to be jarred. And, as you probably know too, I am beginning a new book.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  “Then I don’t have to tell you that in such circumstances a relative amount of peace and quiet is essential. Quite essential. And a relative freedom from anxiety, too. Publishers, I believe, are conscious of this somewhat boring truth about authors.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They are.”

  “So! ” Once again he leaned a little closer across the desk, establishing intimacy. “So, Mr. Duluth, you will understand why I very much need your reassurance—even to the extent of trespassing upon your grief at this very trying time.” He cleared his throat. “Ah—contracts for my earlier three works have been signed by Ronnie. I don’t doubt, of course, for a moment, that Ronnie and Sheldon and Duluth are synonymous. But I should like to be made easy in my mind that with—with Ronnie no longer here, Sheldon and Duluth will honor the obligations and publish the books as arranged —at the same terms.”

  I looked at him incredulously. I could hardly believe him, but I did.

  I said: “I imagine so, Mr. Lacey.”

  He visibly relaxed and, with the relaxation, came an expansiveness. “Excellent. And then, the play, Mr. Duluth. Ronnie was very eager, as you know, to produce it himself, but I understand that Miss Sneighley and a gentleman called Givot are equally enthusiastic. You don’t happen to know …?”

  “No,” I said, trying to keep my temper. “I don’t happen to know.”

  “Well, I am sure that will work out, as you Americans say.”

  Basil Lacey moved his hands sharply from the position of prayer. “One more thing. I don’t know whether Ronnie told you, but he arranged for me to have this little flat and a certain monthly allowance for a period of ten years. There is, I believe, a paper signed to that effect. I realize there will be a certain amount of confusion at this time. But I imagine I shall be able to stay on here relatively free from distraction? And, of course, the monthly allowance will be continued, will it not?”

  If this had been anyone else but Basil Lacey, I should have been sure he was deliberately caricaturing himself.

  I said: “I know nothing whatsoever about Ronnie’s private arrangements, Mr. Lacey. This is something you’ll have to take up with Ronnie’s lawyer—Arthur Freedland.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. I see. But …” He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at me. “But you don’t imagine anything will be changed?” His appalling lack of perception, his ignorance of what I was feeling finally got the better of me.

  I said: “It’s quite a change that Ronnie has been murdered and that my son has been arrested and that the police motive is based on the fact that my son and your daughter are in love.” A look of quick, sensitive pain spread over his face, as if for so sensible a soul the thought of having delivered an unintentional wound was excruciating.

  “Of course, of course, Mr. Duluth. I thought I made my deep feeling of sympathy plain. It is truly terrible. If only you had let us into your confidence! I cannot help feeling we could have made Jean, at least, see reason. But you felt it better to keep it to yourself. I understand that, too. But it’s dreadful to think that this senseless tragedy was unavoidable. Could you, perhaps, have exerted a little more parental authority? Couldn’t you have …?”

  I could have hit him. I said: “Bill didn’t do it.”

  He blinked at me.

  I repeated: “Bill didn’t kill Ronnie.”

  His brief moment of incomprehension was followed by an expression of rich, full understanding for the suffering parent. “Of course, Mr. Duluth. I can appreciate only too well your reluctance …”

  “Bill didn’t do it,” I said.

  He was still bland, still convinced he was handling me with the finesse of which only Basil Lacey was capable. He tried to bring me back to reason with a gentle:

  “Somebody killed Ronnie, Mr. Duluth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then who was it?”

  I said: “Ronnie called you last night, didn’t he?”

  Basil Lacey’s face showed nothing but mild perplexity. “Ronnie called me? You mean Ronnie rang me up on the telephone?”

  “Yes. Just after eight. You were alone here working on your book, weren’t you? Your wife and Lady Phyllis were out.”

  “My wife and Lady Phyllis were out, yes. They had been out the whole afternoon. Shopping, I believe, and attending the hairdresser.”

  “And you were here alone—just after eight?”

  “Possibly. If I hadn’t already started for the theater.”

  “Ronnie called you and told you to pack and get back to England. He told you the whole deal was off.”

  His gently furrowed brow, his fluttering hands, made me feel like a bulldozer and an ineffectual one at that.

  “Mr. Duluth, I do
n’t understand.”

  “That’s what Ronnie did, isn’t it?”

  “He may have telephoned to me.” He was looking at me earnestly now, trying to help. “Honestly I am not able to recall whether the bell sounded or not. You see, when I am alone and working, I make it an axiom never to answer the telephone. But, as for your extraordinary assumption that Ronnie, a man of most discriminating taste, of a really great appreciation, would have let a private matter, however painful, between himself and Jean, alter in any way his attitude toward me …”

  I said: “He did call you.”

  “Really, Mr. Duluth! Really!”

  I was so angry now that it wasn’t difficult to throw the gauntlet.

  “And, afterwards, you went downstairs and shot him.” Basil Lacey stood up. His expression was magnificent— astonishment and indignation carefully controlled by an enormous humanity, a fabulous insight into the unhappiness of a grief-tormented father.

  Very quietly, he said “Exactly at what time do you claim that Mr. Sheldon called me on the telephone?”

  “Just after eight.”

  “And the crime of the—the crime itself?”

  “Nine-twenty.”

  Basil Lacey reached across the desk for a little silver bell and rang it—twice. Almost immediately Norah and Phyllis came in. A double ringing, apparently, was an established signal in the household that both handmaidens were required. Norah gave me a quick, uneasy but sympathetic look. Lady Phyllis Brent paid me no attention at all. She was gazing straight at Basil—a clumsy, passionate Ariel alerted for instructions from Prospero.

  In the same quiet, unruffled, perfectly modulated voice, Basil said:

  “Please ask no questions, merely answer what I have to say truthfully—for Mr. Duluth’s information. When I am alone in the flat and the telephone rings, what do I do?”

  Norah said: “Why, you never answer the telephone, Basil. I don’t think you ever have in your life.”

  “Describe your own movements yesterday afternoon.”

  Phyllis said: “About three o’clock Norah and I went out shopping. We were trying to find a more suitable desk for you —one more like your desk at home. And then, at five o’clock, we both went to the hairdresser’s. After that, we went to a restaurant—Longchamps, I believe it is called—for dinner. Norah had left your supper for you in the refrigerator. We were to meet you at the theater at approximately eight-thirty.”

  “And I arrived at the theater at what time?”

  “Just after eight-thirty,” said Phyllis.

  “What was the play?”

  “Something called Town Meeting. Peter Duluth produced it and you wanted to see a sample of his work.”

  “And who obtained the tickets?”

  “I did.”

  “How?”

  “I was told it was very hard to get in so I called this Mr. Duluth”—for the first time Phyllis acknowledged my presence by a curt nod—“at the office in the morning. He wasn’t there, but his secretary kindly said she would get us the house seats and have them left in our name at the box-office to be picked up.”

  “And when I arrived at the theater just after eight-thirty, how long had you and Norah been there?”

  Phyllis glanced at Norah. “About ten minutes, wouldn’t you say? We arrived early to collect the tickets and pay for them.”

  “And, after I had arrived, as we were going into the foyer, did we run into anyone?”

  It was Norah who spoke. “Yes. Miss Staines, Mr. Duluth’s secretary. She and her husband happened to be going to the play too. We spoke to her for a few moments and thanked her for getting the seats.”

  “And did we speak to anyone in the interval?”

  “Yes,” said Norah. “We came across Miss Staines and her husband again. We smoked a cigarette with them and discussed the play.”

  Basil turned from the two women to me, his left eyebrow once again cocked at a quizzical, maddeningly helpful angle.

  “Is there anything else you would care to ask, Mr. Duluth?”

  He’d beaten me, of course. I had realized it almost from the beginning. That serenely, devastatingly established alibi was as effective a weapon against me as a flame-thrower.

  “No,” I said. “That’s all.”

  Without looking at them, Basil waved his hand vaguely toward his two womenfolk.

  “That’s all. Thank you very much.”

  Norah and Phyllis went out. Basil Lacey stood looking at me. His smile was almost tender as if he were desperately wanting me not to feel that I had been rude or that I had, in any way, made a vulgar exhibition of myself. He was no longer the Great Literary Figure: he was the good fellow, the club member whom everyone tried to get to sit at their table.

  I hated him, more even than I hated Lieutenant Barnes.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Duluth. I’m terribly sorry. You must please believe that I suffer for you, that I am enormously ashamed of my daughter's share in this dreadful thing and that I would do anything in my power to help you. But …” He gave a little shrug indicating the unreality of my expecting any help from anyone. Suddenly, he held out his hand. “Since we shall now be so closely associated, don’t you think we should try to be friends? Ronnie had a great respect for you. And I respect Ronnie’s judgment more than that of any man I have ever known.”

  The delicate hand, so pure in line, so conscious of its function in the exquisite act of creation, was held there in front of me.

  I felt nearer the end of my tether than I had felt ever since I saw Ronnie’s body lying under the mantelpiece. All roads, then, ended in a blank wall. Nothing was on my side. Lieutenant Barnes’s triumph was to be as positive as this.

  I took Basil Lacey’s hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Duluth,” he said.

  I let the hand drop and walked out of the room.

  17

  I hoped that Norah would be outside in the passage waiting for me. A moment of her gentle friendliness, even though she as much as Phyllis had cut from under me what little ground had been left, might have brought a lightening of the gloom that now had closed in around me. But she wasn’t there. Why should she be? I let myself out, took the lift down and moved out into the bright, indifferent sunshine of the street.

  A police car was drawing up outside Ronnie’s front door. As I moved towards it, Lieutenant Barnes climbed out. My self-assurance was at its lowest ebb. A craven instinct urged me to avoid him, but it was too late. He had seen me and, in a few seconds, we had met on the pavement. He was not quite as tall as I had remembered him, and his face, by daylight, was younger. It was a good-looking face, in spite of its exceptional awareness; it wasn’t really the right face to hate. It didn’t fit with my antagonistic memory of him, and the difference confused me.

  He said, quite calmly, as if we were casual but friendly acquaintances. “I suppose you’ve been visiting—suspects?”

  Last night that would have seemed a deliberate taunt, an unnecessary twist of the knife, and I should have reacted in instant anger. But somehow—did I have so little vitality left? —there seemed to be a genuine sympathy in his attitude which made it impossible to take offence.

  When I didn’t say anything, he continued;

  “I’m afraid you haven’t had much luck. I have investigated those alibis very carefully. Miss Sheldon was at Gwendolyn Sneighley’s apartment all evening. Mrs. Sheldon was definitely locked into that room by her husband. His fingerprints are clearly identifiable on the lock. And the upstairs faction—they really were at the theater. Your own secretary confirms that, as you probably know.”

  It was worse, not being able to hate him. Standing there, looking at me, with such steady fairness of mind, he seemed more than ever omnipotent. Already he had been to Gwendolyn Sneighley, been even to the office. I thought of him there with Maggie—Maggie who would be so burningly eager to help me and yet who had had to give him the facts which, once and for all, cleared the Laceys from any possibility of suspicion. What had Maggie tho
ught of him? Had he charmed her? Had he charmed even the prickly, impossible Gwendolyn Sneighley? Yes. Probably last night I had been wrong. It wasn’t so much his cleverness that I had to fear, it was his charm. There was charm even for me.

  He said: “Have you seen McGuire?”

  “McGuire?”

  “Your son’s lawyer.”

  I had forgotten the lawyer.

  “No.”

  “He’s very anxious to talk to you. He was going to your apartment.”

  “I must have missed him,” I said.

  And in my new fear of him which had no hate to mitigate it, I thought of Jean upstairs with the damning evidence of the key, Jean who might have stood up against cleverness alone but who might so easily be undermined by charm.

  Lieutenant Barnes glanced at his watch Quite unexpectedly, he asked: “What are you doing now, Mr. Duluth?”

  Why did he want to know? So that he could once again foil me? Healthily, my suspicion of him came back.

  He went on: “I came here to talk to Mrs. Sheldon. But there is something else I have to do, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do it first. I have to see your son.” He paused. “Would you like to come with me?”

  His face hadn’t changed at all. There was the same kindness, the same subtle suggestion that he was on my side. But now, it seemed to me, I could see beyond the surface to the trap behind. If he was inviting me to go to see Bill with him, it was because he had a purpose—his purpose. And, suddenly, the thought of seeing Bill terrified me. To go to him when I had nothing—absolutely nothing—to offer seemed to me almost the worst ordeal there could be. But my returned suspicion of him gave me wariness and I realized that, if I went with him to see Bill, I could keep him that much longer from Jean and give her that much more time to steel herself for the inquisition. If this was a challenge, I would accept it— for my purpose.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to come.”

  He looked faintly surprised and faintly relieved too—as if he hadn’t thought it would be as easy as that.