My Son, the Murderer

by Patrick Quentin

  I went to 58th Street. Johnson answered the door. Jean was in the living-room, he said. Lieutenant Barnes had just been questioning her. I hurried past him and up the stairs. Jean was sitting by the window. She got up quickly. Her face still wore that set, dedicated expression.

  “Lieutenant Barnes’s been here. But it’s all right. I told him about the person coming in at nine, but I didn’t say anything about Bill and my key.”

  The key! It seemed infinitely remote now.

  I said: “Bill brought you the letter from my wife, didn’t he?”

  She looked at me blankly. “The letter?”

  “He brought it to you, to let you see what Ronnie was really like.”

  “I don’t know anything about a letter, Mr. Duluth. Bill didn’t bring me any letter.”

  She was gazing at me with an anxiety, a bewilderment which surely were genuine.

  Suddenly, Bill was talking to me again, squatting there on Sylvia Rymer’s bed. “I knew I had to make her see. … I tried to make her understand, but that’s when Ronnie came in.” Of course! He had only been with Jean a few minutes before Ronnie had broken in on them. There hadn’t been time to give the letter to Jean. In the scene of Ronnie’s fury that followed, Bill had ignominiously been forced to leave, still with the letter in his pocket. Then—what?

  It came to me. When Barnes, questioning Bill in front of Arthur in Sylvia’s bedroom, had said: “You know Johnson, the Sheldon’s butler, don’t you?” Bill had looked as if he’d been going to collapse. But afterwards, when Barnes had accused him of telling Johnson he wanted to kill Ronnie, Bill had surprisingly recovered. It hadn’t, of course, been the thought of that remark which had terrified him. He’d almost collapsed because he had thought Barnes was going to mention the letter.

  He hadn’t had time to show Jean the letter, but he had been determined she should see it. So, on his way out, he had left it with Johnson to give to her.

  Jean was still watching me urgently. I said: “It’s all right, Jean. I’m sorry. I see now.”

  I started for the door. She called:

  “But, Mr. Duluth…”

  “Later,” I said.

  “I’m going upstairs to Mummy. Come to me there. Please, Mr. Duluth.”

  I left the room and went down to the hall. Johnson was still there.

  I said: “What did you do with the letter my son gave you for Mrs. Sheldon?”

  He started and swung around to me. I’d never seen a man look guiltier.

  “Letter? Letter?”

  I pressed him. “You read it yourself, didn’t you? And once you’d found out about Mr. Sheldon, you killed him.”

  It was an absurd accusation, but it worked. His old face was grey and mottled with fear.

  “I never read it. I …”

  I saw suddenly what must have happened. Johnson, whose whole life was service, had had no reason to keep the letter back from Jean. There was only one person who could swerve him from his butlerial duty, only one person for whom he would do anything without question. Angie had been hovering outside the living-room, listening to Ronnie’s onslaught on Bill. Angie, only that morning, had said to me: You hate Felicia, don’t you? If only you could see! See what? See that Felicia had not been an enemy, but a victim.

  It was Angie who had taken the letter. Angie who had had it delivered at my apartment.

  I said to Johnson: “You gave the letter to Miss Sheldon, didn’t you?”

  He was staring at me, stupid with terror.

  I went on: “Miss Sheldon had been listening to what was going on in the living-room. After Bill left, she came down to the hall. She saw you with the letter. She asked you what it was. She took it … Where is she?”

  He echoed: “Where is she?”

  “Where’s Miss Sheldon?”

  “Miss Angie’s up in her room. She …”

  I started up the stairs.

  His voice trailed after me. “But, Mr. Duluth, she didn’t do anything. Miss Angie didn’t … And I never told Lieutenant Barnes. That was for Master Bill’s sake. That was. …”

  As I hurried up the stairs, I was thinking furiously. Angie, who like me had thought Ronnie was a god, had read Felicia’s letter. Angie had had a key. Angie had had an alibi, yes. But—with whom? With Gwendolyn Sneighley, who had just learned that Ronnie Sheldon had tricked and humiliated and betrayed her.

  What sort of an alibi was that any more, with no one to support it but Gwendolyn Sneighley?

  22

  I knocked on the door. Angie called “Come in.” She wasn’t in bed. She was sitting in a chair, wearing one of her elaborate inappropriate dresses that must have looked fine on the girl in the shop who had modelled it for her. She didn’t get up, but she turned her head.

  “Jake.”

  My thoughts had run so quickly ahead that my feelings hadn’t yet caught up with them.

  I blurted: “You sent me Felicia’s letter.”

  I had, I suppose, expected her to show surprise, even guilt. But she was looking at me, as she had looked that morning, with the resignation of a very sick person beyond the reach of astonishment or fear.

  “So you see now,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault—or Felicia’s, not really. You can’t hate her any more, can you? And you can’t hate yourself.”

  Once again her kindness and concern for me were throwing me off. Maybe she was right. Maybe, when I had more time to feel, I would discover that Felicia’s letter had rescued me from the morass of self-doubt in which I had been submerged. But I hadn’t come here for psychological aid. I had come … Why? To accuse her? At least to challenge her, for Bill’s sake. I said: “You took the letter from Johnson, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. And I had him deliver it at your apartment this afternoon. When I saw you this morning, still so mixed up, still hating Felicia, still thinking Ronnie had been such a wonderful friend … She was looking down at her hands. There was a large, ugly diamond on her ring finger. “I couldn’t leave you with such illusions. It was too cruel.”

  “But you took the letter. You knew about Felicia before Ronnie was dead. And you claimed you went to Gwendolyn Sneighley.”

  Her eyes moved up again to my face. Their serene kindliness was undisturbed. “Claimed? Jake, dear, you don’t have to be like Lieutenant Barnes. There’s no need to force me—or trick me. I’ll tell you everything. I didn’t this morning because you were suffering enough already and because, I imagine, I do have some sort of self-preservative instinct left. At least, I did then. But now I’ve been thinking and I see that there isn’t enough left to make what little there is worth saving.” The hand with the diamond on it gestured. “Sit down, dear. You’re probably tired.”

  I sat down. On the bed. Was this to be Sylvia Rymer all over again? Was I to come in, once again, like a lion only to be transformed into a lamb? This time I must cling to what I had. Angie had taken the letter; Angie had had a key; Angie could have come back and killed Ronnie. Those were my weapons. I mustn’t, this time, let sympathy blunt them.

  She let her plump hands rest in her lap. With the skirt of her absurd dress billowing around her, she looked as if she were sitting for a formal, old-fashioned portrait.

  “For over twenty-five years,” she said, “ever since the news came of Luis’s death, my whole life has been Ronnie. You know that, Jake.”

  Luis had been her South American fiancé, the photograph that was no longer by her bed—her single romance.

  “There’s been no one really except Ronnie. Oh, Johnson, a little, perhaps. And Felicia, of course—and you. I loved Felicia because I always felt she needed my love, and I loved you for making her happy. But I didn’t let myself love you too much. You had your own lives. I couldn’t grab. So it was just Ronnie. And, for all his faults, I managed to make him do. When you decide to love, you can decide to be a little blind. Ronnie was Ronnie, but Ronnie was enough. You probably understand. It was probably like that with you, wasn’t it? I mean, after Felicia was dead an
d things had become so impossible with Bill, you needed someone, too, and because Ronnie was there …”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. “It was like that with me.”

  “So that’s how it was, Jake. That was my life. Until yesterday. I hadn’t thought much about Ronnie’s marriage. Presumably he’d wanted Jean and he’d got her. That was all right so far as I was concerned. And I never, of course, dreamed about Bill. So yesterday when it all blew up, when I was there in the hall and I heard Ronnie screaming at them, like a maniac, I was frightened, I couldn’t believe he could behave like that; but, at first, well, I was still on his side. I thought: Of course, he should be angry. But—but when it went on so far, so horribly far, Jake! I stood there; I heard him call Bill every conceivable name; I heard the threats; I heard him swear to destroy you and Sheldon and Duluth. And I stood there and I thought: Ronnie, Ronnie, please, don’t do this to yourself. And then I heard Jean begging Bill to leave and I knew he was going to leave and I didn’t want to be caught there listening, so I slipped up the stairs and I saw Bill go down to the hall. I saw him give Johnson something. Later, after he’d gone, I went down. Johnson had the letter in his hand. As I glanced at it, I couldn’t believe it—because there on the envelope was Felicia’s writing.”

  She hesitated. “I asked Johnson what it was. He said Bill had left it for Jean. I told Johnson I’d give it to Jean and took it. I meant to give it to her. At least, I thought I did, but I knew I’d have to wait for a better moment when she wasn’t with Ronnie. So I came up here to my room. Gwendolyn had asked me to dinner. I started to change. But all the time I was thinking about the letter. Then I couldn’t stand my curiosity, my anxiety, any longer. I read it.”

  She got up. There was a cigarette box on the mantelpiece. She took out a cigarette and lit it, puffing at it awkwardly, like a club lady in a cartoon.

  “And then, you see, just in those few minutes, everything was taken from me. Oh, I’d known Ronnie had that apartment. There were nights when he didn’t come home. I never asked questions. Why shouldn’t there be nights like that? He was a man—he was unmarried. I never gave that much attention either. But … that Ronnie could be-capable of such a monstrous thing—and that it should have been with Felicia! And all those years, I’d thought … You see, Jake. Of course you see.”

  I saw. I saw only too well.

  She turned to me sharply. “I went downstairs again. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I went downstairs. And that was when you arrived. Perhaps I should have told you then. I don’t know. All I know is that I was too shocked, too hurt, too frightened to have any reasonable thoughts. But I followed you up the stairs and it started all over again, Ronnie screaming at you, threatening to dissolve Sheldon and Duluth. And I stood there outside the door, thinking : How can he dare? When he did that to Felicia, how can he dare treat Jake this way? Jake, whose life he’s already destroyed once. I felt sick, as if the evil in him was infecting the whole house. I knew I should do something, but I didn’t know what. And then you left. And Ronnie and Jean were there alone together and Johnson went in and I heard Ronnie tell him to take the evening off—and he went. And then I heard Ronnie phoning. I heard him ask Arthur Freedland to come over because he was going to dissolve Sheldon and Duluth and I thought: So he does mean it. He is going to ruin Jake.”

  She still held the cigarette in her hand, but it had gone out. I looked at her, wishing I could harden my heart against her, wishing I hadn’t known her so long, wishing there wasn’t an indestructible sediment of affection for her.

  “I hadn’t been outside the door all the time. I didn’t want people to see me. I’d gone into the little washroom across the landing. I could hear just as clearly from there. And I heard Jean, after Ronnie had called Arthur, I heard her turn on him. She was wonderful. So young and so courageous. And she said: ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving for good.’ And she ran up the stairs. And I saw then what I had to do. If Jean could be brave, I could be brave. Someone had to stop him doing that to you. Jean had failed. But I didn’t have to fail because I had the letter as a weapon. I went right into the living-room before I had time to think any more and lose my courage. I said: ‘Call Arthur back, Ronnie, and tell him not to come.’ He swung round on me, his face horrible with astonishment and contempt. He said: ‘Are you out of your mind?’ And I said: ‘Call Arthur and tell him not to come or I’ll let everyone know what you did to Felicia. You killed her just as positively as if you’d pushed her out of that window. You disgust me,’ I said. ‘I’m going to leave this house and never come back. But before I go, at least, I’m going to stop you doing this second, abominable thing! ’ ”

  She sat down again wearily, passing a hand across her face. “It was horrible,” she said. “He was too angry, too carried away with spite and malice and fury to wonder how I knew or to see any danger for himself. All he saw was me, Angie, the poor fat old mouse, Angie, daring to stand up against him. And he laughed and he said: ‘You, too! This is getting vastly entertaining, I must say. I lose my wife and then I lose my housekeeper in deliriously swift succession. Well, I suppose one doesn’t keep one’s housekeepers indefinitely. At least I managed to squeeze an extra twenty-five years’ service out of you.’ And I could see from his face that there was something unspeakable he was going to fling at me like vitriol. And I think I almost knew because it’s been twenty-five years this year since—since Luis died. And I said: ‘Twenty-five years?’ And he said: ‘Yes, isn’t it twenty-five years since I paid off that dago gigolo? When you ran the house so well, it seemed a shame to lose you to domestic bliss in Peru—or was it Ecuador? It was worth a few thousand dollars to me and it was well worth a few thousand dollars to him. I’d never seen a man so delighted at the prospect of “dying.” I wonder what happened to him. He’s probably got seventeen strapping sons, all wallowing in minor luxuries on carefully invested Sheldon dough.’ ”

  The last words were torn out of her harshly like sobs. Her face was half turned from me, but I could glimpse its plump kindliness distorted with grief and shame. And I saw, of course, why the photograph wasn’t by the bed any more.

  “It wasn’t true.” she breathed. “I know it wasn’t true. Luis wasn’t a gigolo. He loved me. He wanted to marry me. I know he did. But Ronnie—with his cleverness—Ronnie could have corrupted anyone. He corrupted Felicia, didn’t he? He … he …”

  So it was to be worse even than I had suspected. Now that, finally, I had trapped my scapegoat, pity was in me like dry-rot in a beam. There had been no bottom to the stinking, stagnant pond of Ronnie’s evil. Twenty-five years ago, when he’d been only twenty-seven, without turning a hair, he’d blighted his sister’s life for his own comfort; and then yesterday he’d delighted in flinging the truth in her face as a punishment for trying to defend me. That, of course, had been it with Ronnie. Everyone—his sister, his best friend, his best friend’s wife—everyone had had to be punished so that Ronnie could be assured and reassured of his power. Poor Angie, I thought. I wanted to put my arms round her, to try, although it was far too late, to comfort her. But I knew I must kill my pity. I couldn’t be on everyone’s side. I made myself think of Bill —in the cell, sitting on the bench, staring down at his feet.

  Angie was looking at me again. Her eyes were red and the skin under them pouchy and damp with tears.

  “Jake, I’m a coward. If I’d been brave, I shouldn’t have let him stand there and laugh and gloat over me. I—oh, I’d have done something. But I felt as if I’d been kicked. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t look at him. I—I couldn’t even think about you anymore. I just ran away. I ran upstairs. I put on my coat and shoes. I went out and, because I was expected at Gwendolyn’s, because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, I went to Gwendolyn. And when I got there …”

  She broke off. but the pattern, of course, was forming now. I said softly: “When you got to Gwendolyn, you found her in a fury against Ronnie, too. She’d just discovered he was married and …”<
br />
  “You know that?” She looked at me in surprise.

  “Yes, and she told you everything that Ronnie had done to her and you told her everything you’d found out.”

  The two elderly hoodwinked ladies, banded together in humiliation and wrath!

  “Yes,” she said. “It helped a bit, talking to Gwendolyn, knowing that—that the same thing had happened to her. I showed her the letter. I told her everything. And Gwendolyn’s much stronger than I am. She made me see what a coward I’d been. She made me see that it was my moral duty at least to save you—save Sheldon and Duluth. I must go back, she said. I must stand up to Ronnie and convince him that I really meant it. So …”

  Now that I had reached my destination, I should have felt some sort of glow of achievement. But I didn’t—even though it was as clear as a problem solved in mathematics. Angie, goaded by Gwendolyn Sneighley, utterly disillusioned in her brother, loathing him, going back to do her “moral duty” … !

  Hating myself, the room, the very air in the house, hating beyond everything Ronnie, I said: “So you went back.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I went back.”

  “You let yourself in with your key? ”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ronnie was there.”

  She looked me straight in the eyes.

  “Ronnie was lying there,” she said. “He was lying on the floor, dead … with the gun by his side.”

  I had been so sure that the confession would come then that I was momentarily at a loss. But, as I watched her pale, earnest, indestructibly kindly face, I managed to resist its seeming candor. Jean had heard the murderer let himself in at nine.

  I said:

  “That was about nine, wasn’t it?”

  “Nine? Oh, no, it was later. Nearly nine-thirty. It was after nine when I left Gwendolyn.”

  Had she seen the trap and cunningly side-stepped it? Or— was it possible that … ?