Wife or Death

by Ellery Queen

  "Two cars." Denton shrugged. "Well, it'll all come out in the wash. Let's get on up there."

  MacPherson pulled ahead to the lane and turned in. The taxi climbed the steep drive and stopped behind Norman Wyatt's convertible. Light shone through the front windows of the lodge.

  Denton said, "Mac, would you come in with me? I'll need you."

  "For what?"

  "As a witness." Denton added, "I'd better warn you it may be dangerous. If you'd rather not, I'll understand."

  The taxi man punched his cigaret out in the dashboard ashtray and reached under his seat. "Always carry a tire iron in case of trouble," he said. He got out of the cab without another word, hiding the iron under his coat. Denton climbed out on the other side, carefully toeing his cigaret out on the ground.

  Norman Wyatt had apparently heard the taxi drive up. He had the door open and was squinting out as they approached. He looked startled when he recognized Denton.

  "Oh, it's you, Jim!" Wyatt said in the overhearty tone he had been using with Denton. "Hi, Mac. Come on in."

  The two men followed him into the living room of the lodge. It was two stories deep, with a pitched ceiling; a staircase led up to a balcony running halfway around the room, where the sleeping quarters were. Everything was magazine-masculine—hand-rubbed white pine paneling, hand-hewn naked cross timbers, a stone fireplace big enough to walk into without stooping, gun racks with a wealth of oil-gleaming Weapons, hide-covered lamps, a great central lighting fixture self-consciously contrived out of old muskets and powder horns, and mounted animal heads and antlers and hide rugs everywhere.

  But Jim Denton had no eyes for the splendors of the decor.

  Gerald Trevor was seated at a heavy rustic table under the big fixture when they came in, a cribbage board before him. He had slued around in his chair, a deck of cards in his hands, to see who they were. Like his son-in-law, he was in hunting pants and boots and plaid open-necked shirt; both men needed shaves.

  Denton thought that the handsome old man paled slightly at sight of him and MacPherson. But he rose at once and greeted them with cordiality.

  "Well, this is an unexpected visit, Jim."

  "Sit down, fellows," Norm Wyatt said.

  "No, thank you," Denton said. "We're not going to be here that long, Norm." He walked directly over to Gerald Trevor and waved Angel's letter under the old man's nose. "Here's a little note intended for you, Trevor, that was never mailed. I thought you'd be interested in reading it."

  The tycoon's face was quite gray by the time he looked up. Somehow he managed to make his voice sound puzzled. "I don't know what you mean, Jim. Why should this interest me?"

  "Because," Denton said, holding the envelope up, just out of the old man's reach, "this was clipped to the unfinished letter. She wasn't very good at remembering things, Trevor. This was so she'd have your address handy when she got ready to mail the letter."

  Gerald Trevor sank back in his chair.

  "Jim." Norman Wyatt's face was gray, too. "What's this all about, for God's sake?"

  Denton held up the letter and envelope. When Wyatt's hand reached, Denton drew his back.

  "Just look, Norm, don't touch. These constitute murder evidence, and I wouldn't want them to have an accident. The handwriting of the note, by the way, is Angel's."

  Wyatt turned even grayer. His eyes went from the unfinished note to the used envelope to Gerald Trevor, widening further at each stage.

  Denton put the letter and envelope carefully back in his breast pocket. "It seems your father-in-law's been more intimately acquainted with my late wife than he's let on, Norm. Or did you know about that?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about." Wyatt was staring at the older man quite without comprehension.

  "Mac, tell Mr. Wyatt what happened in the early hours of that Sunday morning just before Hallowe'en."

  "You mean about Mr. Trevor?" drawled Tim MacPherson. "Why, Mr. Wyatt, Mr. Trevor phoned me around half-past four in the morning to pick him up on the street corner a block from your house in town. So I did, and I drove him up here."

  Wyatt's mouth was slightly ajar.

  "And how was Mr. Trevor dressed, Mac?" Denton said. "For hunting?"

  "Not woods game, he wasn't," the taxi man said dryly. "He was all togged out in a two-hundred dollar suit and he was carrying a suitcase."

  "That," Denton said to Wyatt, "was the night Angel disappeared. The note she left for me on her pillow said she was leaving me and Ridgemore for good. In view of what I've just shown you, Norm, what's your conclusion?"

  Wyatt's expression was one of horrified disbelief. "Good God, Gerald, say something!"

  The cards tumbled to the floor. Trevor looked at his shaking hands. He was suddenly ninety years old. In, a cracked voice he said, "Norman ... Norm. It's not ... Don't believe him."

  His son-in-law said in a climbing voice, "Then tell me, Gerald, why Angel would write you a letter like that. Tell me why you sneaked out of the house like a thief in the middle of the night, carrying a suitcase. Why you took a cab instead of the station wagon. And most of all, Gerald—why instead of the two of you going through with your plan to run off together, you came back and Angel didn't?"

  Trevor stared sightlessly at his daughter's husband for an eternity. Then he fumbled for a handkerchief and began to dab ineffectually at the wreckage of his face.

  "She was dead when I got here," he croaked. "Norman, I swear that. We were going to run away together and she was to meet me at the lodge and I found her dead. Dead, Norman. I wouldn't have killed her. I couldn't have killed her. I was... I was crazy about her. Stupid-wild-crazy."

  They were very quiet now. Wyatt sat down suddenly, shaking and shaking and shaking his head.

  Denton said, "This is my wife we're talking about,»Trevor. With my reputation and livelihood and maybe life in the balance. You'd better spill the whole story."

  A sort of film formed over the old man's eyes.

  "You say you found Angel dead," Denton drove on. "You say. How did it happen? Who shot her in the belly if you didn't?"

  Trevor put up a pained hand, as if in protest at the indelicate image. But then the hand dropped, and he said in uninflected tones, like a schoolboy reciting a poem, "I don't know. I was supposed to be here at half-past four, but I was fifteen minutes late. I found her on the floor with .., with her insides torn out .., and the shotgun beside her. I don't know how it happened. She may have been examining the gun while she was waiting for me—must have been. She must have dropped it and it accidentally went off."

  "Are you in the habit of leaving your guns around loaded," Denton asked politely, "with the safeties off? Angel didn't know one end of a gun from the other."

  "I don't know. I don't know."

  "And if she was shot by accident, why didn't you call the police? If you weren't responsible for her death, why did you go to so much trouble to get rid of her body?"

  "Who would have believed me?" the old man asked in the same cracked singsong. "I would have had to explain what she was doing here at that hour of the morning. Even if I could have convinced them that I didn't shoot her, the whole story of our .., of our affair would have come out. I didn't want to create a scandal. I didn't want to hurt Ardis and Norman . . ."

  "Didn't want to create a scandal?" Denton laughed. "What did you think you were doing when you arranged to run off with another man's wife?" I

  "I wasn't thinking then ..."

  "And you didn't want to hurt Ardis and Norman. But you didn't mind hurting me, did you? Who did you think was going to be the number-one suspect for her murder? Or didn't you think of that, either, Trevor?"

  "No," the old man said. "No, I didn't, Jim. That's God's truth. I was half crazy with grief, and I was also scared to death. At the time all I could think of was what to do with her body .., and get back home as if I'd never been out. Angel had come here in your car. We had planned to drive on up to Buffalo, catch a plane there for California, leave your car at the
airport. We were going to wire you where it was."

  The old man paused. Norman Wyatt was still shaking his head, slumped in the chair. Tim MacPherson was staring at a foxhunt print on the wall, as if he did not know what else to do.

  "Instead of that," Trevor muttered, "I used the car to cart her body far enough from the lodge so that . . ." He stopped to swallow. "I ... I rolled her over the edge of the embankment, and her suitcase. And I drove your car back to your garage and walked the rest of the way home lugging my bag. It was just a quarter of seven when I reached my bedroom. Ardis was still asleep. At that, I almost ran into you, Norman. I heard you roll in from taking Crosby home not five minutes after I closed my bedroom door."

  But it was as if his son-in-law were totally deaf.

  "Good try, old man," Denton said. "But not good enough. My car had only fifteen miles put on it that night, exactly enough for the trip from my garage to the lodge and back. It couldn't have happened the way you tell it. You used some other car to dispose of Angel's body."

  Trevor began to stammer. "You're mistaken. There was no other car here."

  MacPherson turned around. "I saw two cars parked when I brought you here, Mr. Trevor."

  "You're wrong, you're wrong," the old man said excitedly.

  "Sure looked like two cars to me," Mac said. He turned back to the print.

  Norman Wyatt stopped shaking his head. He did not look at his father-in-law. "What difference does it make?" he said hoarsely. "He's admitted he got rid of the body."

  "Yes," Denton said. "And Angel's wasn't the only body he got rid of. George Guest lost his life the other night when, like a fool, he constituted himself a one-man police department and tried to follow up a clue to the murder. Trevor, on the night of the Hallowe'en Ball he'd spotted you in a car on the country club parking lot in a clutch with my wife. I see now why George was reluctant to give me your name. Considering who you are, he wanted to be absolutely sure before he opened up. That was his mistake. He went looking for you to accuse you of Angel's murder, and he found you, and you killed him."

  "No," the old man groaned. "No . . ."

  "I don't see how Gerald could have, Jim," Norm Wyatt said, his head beginning to shake again. "He wasn't out of my sight the night George died. You must be wrong about that. That must have been an accident."

  "It was no accident." And now Denton's cold eyes studied Wyatt. "You wouldn't be covering up for your beloved father-in-law, Norm, would you?"

  "What do you mean?" Wyatt gripped the arms of his chair.

  "I know how fond you are of him. I also know that your career is all tied up with his good will and well-being. How do I know what pressures this old Don Juan brought to bear on you. Norm?"

  "Pressures," Wyatt repeated stiffly.

  "Yes. You admit being here with him the night George died. So if Trevor killed him and rigged that accident, I don't see how to avoid the conclusion that you helped him rig it. George was a big man. The mechanics of disposal goes down a lot easier postulated as a two-man job, Norm."

  Wyatt's mouth opened and remained that way. He seemed dazed.

  "So I think we'd all better go on down to police headquarters," said Denton, "and turn this interrogation over to the experts. Well go in Mac's cab. And just in case you two decide to arrange another accident, I've come better prepared than evidently George did."

  Denton produced the .38. Tim MacPherson turned around; he had the tire iron in his hand. Old Trevor simply sat, like a man who has died in a chair. And Norman Wyatt stared at the automatic pistol in Denton’s hand with a sickly smile.

  Denton walked over to a wall-rack and investigated the pockets of two hunting jackets hanging there. Then he tossed the jackets at Wyatt.

  "Yoicks, gentlemen," he said.

  24

  Denton ordered Norman Wyatt to sit up front beside MacPherson. He had Gerald Trevor get into the back seat and he climbed in after the old man, seating himself well in the corner with the gun held loosely in his lap.

  The taxi man started his cab and they rolled off down the lane.

  "Not too fast, Mac," Denton said. "We don't want to change the status quo with a hard bump or a skidding turn."

  MacPherson said, "Yup," and turned his brights on. He drove carefully.

  The nipping night air seemed to bring Trevor back to a senile-sounding life. "But this is so ridiculous," he said querulously. "Norman and I are not gangsters. Why do you need a gun?"

  "Because two people were careless," Denton said. "I'm making sure that if anyone in this heap fails to make it to the square, it damned well won't be Mac or me."

  After that there was dead silence all the way to town.

  Sergeant Harley was still on the desk. He stared unbelievingly at Trevor and Wyatt as Denton gave him a brief resume", omitting details.

  "Gosh, I don't know," the sergeant said with a worried frown. "The chiefs at his monthly meeting, and I got standing orders not to disturb him—"

  "I know all about those monthly meetings, Bob," Denton said dryly. "Maybe Augie's not plastered yet. Get him."

  "I can't!" Harley said in an agonized undertone. "You know how the chief is when he's hoisted a few. Or maybe you don't. This is his night to howl." He glanced at the wall clock. "Look, Mr. Denton, suppose I call the D.A, instead. He'd have to be told about this right off, anyway."

  "Wait."

  During the drive to town Denton had had time for some second thoughts. There was a wrong feel to his hypothesis that Norman Wyatt had conspired with his father-in-law to dispose of George Guest. And Wyatt's reaction to the revelations and accusations of the night had been uncomfortably convincing. Was it possible that he was telling the truth in alibiing Trevor for the night of George's death? Was there some other explanation altogether?

  And then Denton saw that, whether Wyatt was telling the truth or not, if he stuck to his story Trevor's alibi would probably stand up.

  He began to think that he had been too hasty.

  Suddenly Denton remembered something. A look on old Trevor's face. He had seen it during his last visit to the Wyatt house, when he had told the Wyatts and Trevor about his belief that on the night of his death George Guest must have driven up to the lodge. Gerald Trevor had seemed—no, had been, had really been—stunned. By something. What could it have been?

  "Wait, Bob, wait," he said to Sergeant Harley; and he went over to a bench and sat down.

  What could it have been? Patiently Denton went back over everything, step by step ...

  He rose and walked back to the desk and said to Harley, "Before you phone Crosby, will you make a call for me?"

  "Call? To who, Mr. Denton?"

  Denton told him.

  Gerald Trevor immediately rose from the other bench. He said in a loud clear voice, "I confess. It was not an accident. I shot Angel Denton."

  Norman Wyatt rose, too, clutching the back of the bench. "Gerald, you must be crazy. Sergeant, he doesn't know what he's saying. Gerald, shut up. Sergeant, I demand to be allowed to call my lawyer."

  Sergeant Harley was bewildered.

  Denton said, "Go ahead and make that call, Bob."

  "But what do I say, Mr. Denton?"

  "I said I killed her!" the old man shouted. "Aren't you going to arrest me? What kind of police officer are you?"

  "Don't listen to him!" Wyatt cried. "Gerald, for God's sake!"

  Denton said again to Sergeant Harley, "Make the call."

  25

  Officer Pete Draves drove the patrol car. His passengers were Sergeant Harley and Jim Denton. Back at headquarters Ned Bradshaw had rolled in late for his relief trick and had not even been chewed out; District Attorney Ralph Crosby had been summoned. While Crosby was en route to headquarters, Denton and Harley had slipped away.

  At the Wyatt house Denton and Harley got out, and the sergeant said to Draves, "You wait here, Pete," and he and Denton went to the front door and Harley pressed the bell.

  Ardis Wyatt opened the door. She was still dres
sed, and there was a copy of Vogue in her hand.

  "Jim." She glanced from Denton to the sergeant, and her breath caught. "What is it? Has something happened to Norm or my father?"

  "May we come in, Mrs. Wyatt?" Sergeant Harley asked.

  "Of course." She stepped back, frowning at Denton; they went in, and she shut the door, and then hurried around them into the living room. "Please sit down. You haven't answered my question. Are Norm and daddy all right?"

  "They're all right, Ardis," said Denton.

  "Well! That's a relief, Jim. Seeing you with a policeman— How about a drink?"

  "No, ma'am," Sergeant Harley said. "I'm Sergeant Robert Harley of police headquarters, and I guess you could say I'm here on official business."

  "That sounds ominous, Sergeant," Ardis said, smiling. She sank into an armchair and began to roll the magazine into a cylinder; it kept getting tighter and tighter. "Did I overpark somewhere?"

  "You better tell her, Mr. Denton," the sergeant said.

  The slightest crease appeared between her fine brows.

  "Ardis," Denton said quietly. "The last time I was in this house we were discussing George Guest's movements on the night of his death, and whether he had stopped in here. You told me that he had not. You told me that you had been home all evening, except for a quarter of an hour or so when you ran over to a neighbor's house—Janice Smith's—to see the new dress she'd told you about."

  "Yes, Jim?" She sounded puzzled.

  "A few minutes ago I asked Sergeant Harley to phone Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith told Sergeant Harley that she had not mentioned a new dress to you or asked you to see one. Mrs. Smith told Sergeant Harley that you haven't set foot in her house since you got back to town on this visit, and that you certainly didn't set foot in it last Friday night, for fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds."

  "Did she say that?" The frown had now deepened. But she shrugged. "I'm not sure I understand the point of all this, Jim. Why should the question of whether I did or did not run over to Janice Smith's Friday night interest the police?"

  "Because, Ardis, your father is in the town lockup. He's just confessed to the murder of Angel. And Norman is being held for questioning by the district attorney as a possible accessory in the murder of George Guest."