Wife or Death

by Ellery Queen

  A little gavel began to tap on Denton's temple. "Found her? You think? What is this? What do you mean?"

  And now District Attorney Ralph Crosby's lips flattened with a sort of enjoyment, and his nostrils flared brutally. "It's hard to tell, Denton," he snarled. "The animals have been at her. She's been lying out in the woods a week or more."

  9

  Denton's stomach flipped over and something ice-cold touched the bone at the back of his neck and flashed down his spine. For the first time in his life he knew what the word "shudder" meant.

  He shut his eyes, tight.

  I've known this since Augie's visit, he thought. I didn't know I knew it, but I did ... He realized now that a kind of portent had been creeping up on him, a sign of inevitability. Of death. Angel's death.

  He had stopped loving her long ago, if indeed he had ever loved her at all. In the beginning her body, maybe; no, her body surely. But nothing else. There had been nothing else to love. If anything, he had pitied her. Certainly he had never wished her any harm. At her worst she had been too much of a child, too guiltless in her lusts, to arouse hatred.

  Then why had this hit him so hard? Was it her beauty—a beauty unrelated to what she did, to herself, to him, to his feelings about her? That was probably it, Denton told himself dully. It made him ill to think of that face, that body being mutilated and corrupted. Just to imagine what it must look like . . .

  "That was a pretty nasty way to break it to him, Ralph," the police chief was growling. "Jim, you all right?"

  So it was "Jim" again. Good old Augie. Denton opened his eyes. "I'm all right."

  "We got to have a formal identification, Jim. That's going to be rough. You want to sit down for a few minutes first?"

  Denton looked at Crosby. The man was regarding him with intensity; there was a predatory curl to his lips. "Where is she, Augie?"

  "In the hospital morgue."

  He braced himself. "Let's get it over with."

  It was worse, far far worse, than he had imagined. Fortunately the morgue in the hospital basement was equipped for such emergencies. Denton was in the rest room for ten minutes. When he finally came out he was greenish-pale, but his stomach was settled. There was nothing left in it to unsettle.

  He forced himself, he commanded himself, to look for the second time while Chief Spile and a stone-faced Crosby stood by. Except for the hair—that lovely golden hair of which she had been so vain, now mud-streaked and entangled in burrs and bits of leaf and twig and tumbled about her unrecognizable face like an obscene cloud—he saw nothing resembling the Angel he had known.

  He shook his head.

  "Show him her left hand," the district attorney snapped.

  The morgue attendant did something, and Denton opened his eyes and fixed them on a dirty, torn and swollen hand. The wedding band and engagement ring were nearly buried in the livid flesh.

  Denton wet his lips. "They're Angel's rings."

  "Okay, John," said Chief Spile, "put her back and show Mr. Denton her clothing."

  The thing with the blonde hair disappeared in the wall. Denton expelled a tremulous breath. The attendant went over to a wall cabinet and opened a big drawer and pulled out a disorderly heap of clothing. Everything was ripped and filthy and bloodstained. The skirt near the waistband was in bloody shreds.

  "That's her new fall suit, all right," Denton said hoarsely. "She bought it in New York on a shopping trip about a month ago. Isn't there a Saks Fifth Avenue

  label in it? And the fall coat—she got that at the same time. I'm not sure about the shoes, but she wore size five and a half triple A."

  The orderly glanced at the chief of police, and Spile nodded. The man reached into the cabinet again and withdrew a suitcase. It was the one missing from her matched set.

  "That's hers," Denton said. He wet his drawn, dry lips. "Augie. How about the man?"

  "Man?" Chief Spile seemed puzzled. "What man?"

  "Yes," said a voice. It was Crosby's; Denton had forgotten he was there. "What man are you referring to, Denton?"

  "The man who drove her away—the one she ran off with. Wasn't he killed, too?"

  "Killed?" The district attorney cocked his head eagerly. "How do you mean that?"

  "How do I mean it!" Denton cried. "Killed!—don't you understand English? In the automobile accident."

  An unholy light blazed from Crosby's eyes. He opened his mouth—and Chief Spile's meaty hand clamped about his biceps. "Don't, Ralph," Spile said; and for a moment Denton thought the district attorney was going to hit him. But then Crosby relaxed with a secretive smile.

  "That's enough," the chief said gruffly to the morgue attendant. "He won't have to check the contents of the suitcase. Jim, your wife ever been fingerprinted?"

  "Not as far as I know."

  "Well take her prints, anyway. Just in case. All right, Jim, let's get out of here."

  In a daze, Denton walked back to the square between Spile and Crosby. A thought kept gnawing at him; he kept jerking away from it. The chief steered him firmly up the courthouse steps and along the main corridor to the district attorney's office. In the anteroom Crosby curtly told his secretary that he was not to be interrupted and led the way into his sanctum. He sat down at his desk, waving, tense, confident.

  Again the thought nibbled.

  Denton lowered himself into the chair beside the desk. The chief sat down on the bias, so that he could see the faces of both Denton and Crosby.

  "Jim," Chief Spile said at once. "Why did you mention an auto accident?"

  Then Denton let it come through—taking a huge bite through the wall he had thrown up. "Naturally I thought . . . You mean she's been murdered?"

  "It wasn't any auto accident." Augie Spile's face was as expressionless as the balloon it resembled. "You don't know how Mrs. Denton died?"

  Denton heard himself saying in a reasonable way, "If I knew, Augie, would I be asking? Will you stop fiddling around, please? I think I'm entitled to know."

  "You don't know anything about the circumstances, Jim? Just where she was found, how she got there, anything?"

  "I know exactly what I told you. The last time I saw Angel, alive or dead, was when we got home from the Wyatts* that night. She went into her bedroom and shut the door while I was closing the garage, and that was it."

  Spile grunted and took out his big handkerchief and began to swab himself again. "Well, some hunters found her under a bush about ten miles south of town. It's pretty rough mountain country there, as you know. She was a good fifty feet off the road, down a steep embankment. Looked as if she'd been rolled down."

  Denton swallowed. "No car? No sign of an accident?"

  "Jim," the chief said gently. "She stopped a shotgun blast at close range, right smack in the belly. The county pathologist hasn't had time to do the autopsy—she was found around noon—but a blind man could tell it was a shotgun."

  What was there to say? Denton kept swallowing.

  District Attorney Ralph Crosby stirred. "You through now, Chief?"

  Augie Spile blinked. "Sure."

  "Then I’ll get down to business." Crosby turned deliberately. "Denton, do you want to make a statement? If so, I'll call in my stenographer."

  "Statement?" Jim Denton said. "Statement about what?"

  "About what has all the earmarks of the premeditated murder of your wife. What do you think I want a statement about? Your editorial opinion on the proposed new sewage plant?"

  The triumphant edge to Crosby's cold-chisel tone sheared through the punk in Denton's head. AH at once he was sharp all over, ready to cut and countercut in defense—it was ridiculous, it was ridiculous—in defense of his life.

  "Let me understand you, Crosby. Are you accusing me of murdering Angel?"

  "I'll put it this way," the district attorney said, baring his teeth. "We've got the makings of a hell of a good case against you."

  "You're out of your mind, Crosby."

  "For instance, you told a lot of people
that Angel was off visiting her parents—you even announced it in that rag of yours. You've admitted to Chief Spile that that was a lie. If the lie wasn't to cover up her murder, it certainly helped, didn't it? Those men out hunting just happened to stumble over her body. If not for that, it might have lain out there for years. It might never have been found! And that's just for openers, Denton—"

  "Before you go on rhapsodizing, Mr. District Attorney," said Jim Denton softly, "how do you like this for a case? There isn't a soul in this town who doesn't know that you were head over heels in love with my wife, and that until a short while ago she was letting you bang her with a voom every time your little old libido desired. There isn't a soul in this town, Mr. D.A., who by now doesn't know that on or about the night of the Hallowe'en Ball she'd given you the heave-ho in favor of a new boy, identity unknown; that that night—the night, let me remind you, that she disappeared— you were drunker than a skunk; that you kept chasing her and she kept dodging you; that at the Wyatts' afterward you made a nasty scene in full view and hearing of a couple of dozen top-echelon witnesses; that you were so foully insulting to her that I had to knock you down, and Norm Wyatt took you home. Now let me ask you, Mr. District Attorney: how's that for the makings of a case against you?"

  Crosby was a dirty yellow color. "Chief Spile," he said thickly, "put this man under arrest."

  "Whoa," said the chief. "Seems to me you two have a personal thing going here. How about settling down so we can discuss this sort of calmly?"

  "I won't discuss anything with the sonofabitch," Denton said flatly. "If you want to arrest me for homicide, Augie, go ahead. But I'm swearing out the same charge against Crosby. You take it from there."

  The district attorney was beyond speech. His mouth kept opening and shutting and opening again. Nothing came out but a few gargly sounds.

  "Jim," Chief Spile said. "Step into the anteroom a minute, will you? You just wait there."

  Crosby managed to squeak, "You'd allow him to go out there unguarded? You'd . . ." His voice failed him again.

  "If he took off it would be like confessing, wouldn't it?" the police chief said mildly. "And where would he go, anyway? We'd have him back in an hour. Get out of here. Jim."

  Denton went into the anteroom. The secretary was typing away as if nothing had happened. Well, Denton thought, to her nothing has. He sat down stiffly and waited.

  He waited almost an hour. Once Augie Spile opened the door for a quick look. By the time the door opened again, the district attorney's girl had long since covered her typewriter and gone home.

  "Okay, Jim," the chief said.

  Denton went back in. Crosby was still sitting at his desk. He looked up and said in the coldest voice Denton had ever heard, "The chief has spelled out to me the yarn you told him the other day, Denton. I will be frank with you. I don't personally believe a syllable of your story about Angel's running off in the middle of the night with some man. And I don't believe you were just marking time or trying to avoid gossip when you told and printed that self-confessed lie about her having gone off to visit her parents."

  He leaned forward, and with a glare as steadily cold as his voice he went on, "It is true, however, that we don't have enough evidence yet to hold you, and that if we did hold you you'd be out on a writ of habeas corpus ten minutes after we threw you into jail. So I'm temporarily releasing you in your own custody. You are not—I repeat, not—to leave the jurisdiction of this county. Do you understand?"

  "Is that all?" Denton said.

  "For now."

  Denton walked out.

  10

  Denton's car was parked across the square outside the Clarion office. He made a beeline for it, angry with himself for walking so fast. He sat in the car for a while, thankfully.

  The thought of going home to a frozen-food dinner had no appeal for him. A moment's reflection, and he knew it was not the food. It was her bedroom. Not now, he thought; not just yet.

  Dinner in a local restaurant was out of the question. He was bound to run into people he knew. By now the discovery of Angel's body would be common knowledge; the last thing he felt like facing was sympathetic looks—or questioning ones, the question being: Did you kill her?

  So he started the car and drove out of town. Twenty miles away, on the outskirts of Loch City, he stopped at a roadside restaurant. He limited his empty stomach to one martini, then ordered and consumed a steak. There were only about a dozen other diners, all strangers. He had a leisurely brandy with his coffee; it tasted good, and he ordered another. It was well past 8 P.M, when he started for home.

  It was not until he passed a road sign saying LEAVING CATTARAUGUS COUNTY— ENTERING ALLEGANY COUNTY that he realized he had violated Crosby's order not to leave the county. He had very nearly left the state, he thought with wry amusement; Loch City was almost on the Pennsylvania line.

  For the first time, as he drove at the legal speed along the winding mountain road, Denton allowed himself to wonder why his wife had been murdered, and by whom.

  She had run off that night with her latest lover. No trace of the man—whoever he was—or of his car had been found at or near the scene of the crime, or surely Augie Spile would have mentioned it. If this had been a crime of jealousy, wouldn't the thrown-over lover have murdered the new lover, too? Such crimes were almost always double killings. Of course, a body might still turn up somewhere. But crimes of jealousy were crimes of passion, and Denton could not see such a criminal murdering the two offenders in separate places —not when they were together to begin with. There was a wrong feel to the theory. No, the new lover was still alive.

  There was a much simpler answer. Since Angel had driven away with her latest conquest and her body had been found a mere ten miles out of town, it was the new man who had killed her. But why? That was not simple at all. Why should a man make plans to run off with a desirable woman and, in the very act of doing so, murder her? It seemed to make no sense. But then Denton saw that it might make all sorts of sense. Suppose the man had assumed that his affair with Angel would follow her usual pattern, a few weeks or months and then goodbye—and found, to his consternation, that this time Angel intended it to be permanent? That he had fallen in with her elopement plan unwillingly, in other words, and taken the first safe opportunity to rid himself of her?

  Denton soon concluded that such speculations would get him nowhere. He didn't have enough facts. He turned his thoughts to the identity of the killer.

  He saw at once that his former conclusions about Angel's new lover no longer stood up. The fact that none of the males attending the Wyatts' party after the Hallowe'en Ball had left Ridgemore coincidentally with Angel's disappearance now meant nothing. Of course Angel's lover was still in town. He had not left town because Angel had not left town, so to speak, either. He had had to take her no further than ten miles away.

  So the men he had diligently eliminated were all back in the running .., the four unattached males—Ralph Crosby, old Gerald Trevor, young Arnold Long and the cartoonist, Matthew Fallon.

  Or was it necessary now to re-examine the possibility that she had run off with a married man? Denton re-examined it briefly and again dismissed the theory. Angel cared too much for status to run away with a man who could not marry her. (It's too bad, Denton thought; if the man were married he'd have had a powerful motive for using the shotgun—fear of scandal, perhaps; perhaps even love for his wife.)

  Crosby. Trevor. Long. Fallon.

  Old Trevor? In Angel's eyes, the disadvantage of Trevor's age might well have been counterbalanced by his Hollywood connections. He could make her a "star"—or promise to. And the old fellow was handsome and in pretty good shape physically. Still... Denton shook his head.

  Ralph Crosby? On the jealousy theory the district attorney was certainly at the top of the list—he had been the unknown's immediate predecessor and he had given a convincing demonstration of his feelings on the night of Angel's decampment. But hadn't Crosby been too drunk that n
ight to have driven a car without being picked up by a state trooper or ditching somewhere, or to have left no clues in murdering and disposing of his victim? Unless it had all been an act .., continued today, Denton thought, in that convincing display of grief over Angel and vindictiveness toward me?

  Then there was Arnold Long and his spanking new Avanti. And Matt Fallon . . .

  Denton grimaced. Nothing but ifs, buts and unlesses. I'd make one hell of a detective, he thought.

  And suddenly he remembered what George Guest had said about seeing Angel on the night of the ball, necking in a car on the country club parking lot. That had to be the man. And old George knew who he was.

  When Denton rolled into Ridgemore he drove directly to the home of Augie Spile. The car clock said the time was 9:02.

  Chief Spile and his wife lived in a small brick house on Oak Street

  , only a few blocks from the square. Mrs. Spile, as ponderous and slow-moving as her husband, came to the door.

  "Evening, Emma," Denton said. "Augie around?"

  "Sure, Jim. Come in, come in. I was real sorry to hear about your wife."

  Denton mumbled something. He followed Emma Spile into the front room and found the chief overflowing an easy chair, watching television, drinking beer from the bottle. Two overweight children, a boy of six and a girl of eight, sat side by side on the sofa, their eyes glued to the screen.

  The chief heaved himself to his feet. "Let's go in the kitchen, Jim. These hellions'll yell their heads off if I turn off the set."

  He carried his bottle with him. He set it down on the kitchen table and said, "Beer? I ain't got anything stronger."

  "No, thanks," Denton said. "Augie—"

  Spile seated himself carefully at the table. "No sense talking on your feet, Jim. Have a chair."

  Denton sat down. The kitchen smelled of fish; there was a blower going. "I guess I sounded off to our respected D.A, today, didn't I?"

  The chief chuckled. "You make a different kind of suspect, Jim, I'll hand you that. Took me fifteen minutes to quiet Crosby down enough to get his voice back and a half hour after that to talk him out of frying you without a trial."