The Man Who Loved His Wife

by Vera Caspary

Death had come between the lovers. In the silence Elaine grew restless. She was worn out but not sleepy after her long, drugged nap. She recalled those conversations she had planned but never held, confessions of her fears, and she wondered, looking at Ralph’s somber, bony face, if his knowing could have prevented the final act. “I meant to tell you,” she began. Her lips twitched and a nerve jumped on the left side below the eye. She wanted her face concealed from his pale and searching eyes. Once more at the window with her back to him, “I was afraid, I guess. It was on my mind all the time,” she confessed.

  “I knew.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “I didn’t want you to be frightened.”

  “I was. Terribly. All the time.” Passionate hands were clasped before her breast as in prayer. “I used to go to his room nights”—she breathed in spasms between the phrases—“to listen and know that he was alive.”

  “If you’d gone to him last night, you might have been in time to save him.”

  She had no answer. Beyond the window there was no world. The sky had no color, the stars were hidden. Fog shut out the ocean and the lighted streets below the hill. Elaine did not know that she was crying. There were no sobs. Tears jetted out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. They brought no relief.

  THERE IS AN acute moment between sleep and thought when every sense becomes aware and the mind, free of daytime clutter, finds reality in illusion. Elaine heard Fletcher at her door again. She knew he was dead, yet felt the living presence. Waiting as she had waited last night (and on so many nights when he had come to her bed for consolation), her ear tuned itself for the whine of hinges, the weight of footsteps, the rhythm of his breathing. Every nerve and cell anticipated the touch of his flesh, her heart raced, temperature rose, and all the excitable muscles of loins and pelvis became clamorously alive. For an instant, only the slightest sliver of a second, she let the past return, the good past, the times that had been crazy with love and consummation. “Hi, lovable!” Through all of this she knew and accepted reality. “You’re dead.”

  Time became infinity as she lay in passionate silence waiting for the nightmare, if it had been nightmare, to come to its crisis. “Oh Fletch, Fletch,” she moaned, “why did it have to be like this?” She heard the answer as clearly as if he were in the room, heard the voice, mechanical, irate, the crippled ringmaster crying out his bitter commands to the mocking, stubborn animals. Over and over, like a faulty phonograph record, those sickening belches and cackles. She turned on the light, rejecting sleep. Sleep had become the enemy, admitting terror, distorting memory, revealing truth.

  In the light he was there, too, inescapable in every object she looked at, touched, and felt against her body. All of her trinkets, her jewelry, many of her garments, had been chosen by him. “I like you in those colors, lovable.” The robe she wrapped about her on chilly nights was one he had enjoyed. She could feel the big hand on the soft fabric.

  She forced herself to enter his room. Scents of intimacy remained. She smelled toilet water, sniffed his shirts, touched his hairbrushes. Last night he had left his things upon the dresser—wallet, fountain pen, key ring, a scattering of small change. Jacket and trousers had been hung neatly upon the silent valet, socks and shirts and shorts placed upon the bench below the window. Everything as usual, except the man who had died in that bed. His head had left a hollow in the pillow, the sheets were wrinkled, the covers thrown back. She stood a few feet from the bed, frowning at the emptiness as though she sought some answer there. Vigorously then, she jerked off the sheets. The ease with which she handled the dead man’s linens was astonishing.

  “What are you doing at this hour?”

  She whirled about, faced Don, and said, “I thought I’d clean up a bit. It’s all such a mess.” She jerked off the bedclothes and automatically, like a good housewife, folded them.

  “It’s quarter to three.”

  “What difference does it make? I couldn’t sleep. It’s better to keep busy.” She went on with the tasks. A passion for tidiness had seized her. “If people come here, we’ll want it to look nice.” With the same energy she gave to the folding of sheets, she offered excuses. “Cindy expects people to call. You and she have made so many friends.”

  “Plenty of time tomorrow. No one knows about it yet.”

  “I suppose I do look silly in the middle of the night.” She swept out of the room, carrying the linens to the hamper.

  Don hurried ahead to switch on the lights. In the narrow corridor he turned and faced her. When she had got rid of the sheets and pillowcases, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, Don.”

  He had not seen her alone since he had read the entire diary. “Let me help you through this. Ask anything of me, tell me anything you want, trust me, beauty.”

  She was glad he was there because she had to keep busy, to move around, use her hands, occupy herself with small tasks. She made a pot of cocoa. Fletcher had always taken cocoa on sleepless nights. He said it soothed him.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m nosy asking you this, but how are you fixed for money?”

  The milk in the pan required full attention. She had to watch carefully so that she could snatch it off the flame when it started to bubble. “That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.”

  “At the moment, I mean. Cash on hand. The estate will be tied up. In probate for quite a while.”

  The milk began to boil. Elaine slid the pot off the burner. “We haven’t a lot, Cindy and I, but if you need anything right away, just ask me. I’ll be happy to do what I can.” The offer was reckless. Don had little more than two hundred dollars of borrowed money in his bank account, and was at the end of his resources. But he felt the risk worthwhile if Elaine had confidence in him.

  “You’re sweet, Don. Will you hand me two cups? The big yellow ones. I don’t need money, thank you. I’ve got two accounts, a checking and a savings, in my own name, Elaine Guardino Strode. In case anything ever happened to him, he said.” She stirred the cocoa with the wooden spoon. “He probably planned this for a long time.” She went on and on about Fletcher’s desperate unhappiness and the suicide impulse, repeating everything she had told Don that afternoon in the pavilion.

  Don listened attentively. No matter what tomorrow should bring, today’s assets depended upon Elaine’s goodwill. His offer of a loan had primed the pump. “And remember, if you need advice, I’m a lawyer. I want you to come to me with all your problems.”

  She thanked him absently. There were other things on her mind, “Do you feel any twinges of guilt?”

  “Me?”

  Elaine sat moodily over the steaming cocoa, her head bent above the cup like a gypsy brooding over tea leaves. A shadow had fallen across her face. “We tormented him.”

  “That’s nonsense, ridiculous, an exaggeration. No one tortured him, he was the one who caused all the trouble.”

  “He thought we were lovers.”

  “He thought. Suspicion haunts the guilty mind.” This was a direct quotation. Fletcher had used the old saw as though it had been an original, striking thought. Don had made notes on several items before he locked the book back into the desk. “It was his jealousy. Not only of me, of every man. You told me so yourself.”

  As Elaine raised her head the mysterious shadow vanished. She held her cup in both hands like a child. “It’ll be strange without him. There’s a kind of emptiness already. These past few years, every day, every hour, has been with him and for him, trying to keep him interested in living. Not that I was very successful.”

  “You’re free now. It’s all over, your life’s your own, you can do what you like.”

  Fletcher had known that she dreamed of freedom; there had been mention of it in the diary.

  “What do I want?” She set down the cup and held out both hands for freedom to be delivered into them. “Perhaps later I’ll know. It’s funny, I used to think about it, when I was bored sometimes and lon
ely for New York, I’d imagine . . .” She stopped, hugging her body, lowering her shoulders under the weight of freedom too suddenly achieved. “Sometimes I thought he knew. Once he heard me on the phone, I was talking to an old friend who’d just got a divorce. I said to her that she was free, her life was her own. He thought I was speaking of him and me and ever since I’ve felt so . . . so . . .” She raised dark lids, letting Don look into her eyes, letting him know she was not afraid of a word, “guilty.”

  “You take things too hard, you’re too sensitive.” It was to show his faith in her that Don spoke this way.

  “It was wicked of me, with him so sick and unhappy and dependent. But I suppose one oughtn’t to feel too responsible for every foolish and meaningless word. Or daydream. Perhaps I am too sensitive.” This was accompanied by a flutter of self-conscious laughter. “Daydreams can be dangerous, can’t they?”

  “Not if they stay just dreams.”

  “I suppose.”

  “But dreams are the source of action.” Don remembered some professor—of law, psychology, logic?—who had advised students to seek criminal motives in man’s reveries. With every word Elaine made herself more vulnerable and more helpful to Don Hustings. He added quickly, “You need someone to look after you. I’m the man of the family now. Leave your problems to me, dear.”

  “You are a help, Don. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad, too.” Sympathy shone out of his dark eyes. A family pet could have shown no greater devotion.

  “Perhaps it’s better this way. For Fletcher. He was too proud, he couldn’t ever be resigned. There was no real compensation for him, ever. Not one of your cheerful cripples.” She wore a delicate, faraway expression that her husband might have called devious.

  Such a woman, mused Don, unaware that expedience shaped his thinking, might well be judged as her husband had foreseen. She had changed in Don’s eyes; her flesh had a different color. She had become dark, brooding, tragic, Italian, with black hair falling about her shoulders like a shawl. The electric clock ticked, the refrigerator rumbled, and below the hill, fire sirens shrieked. The very air seemed nervous.

  Later, when Elaine had gone back to her room, Don reread an item copied from the diary:

  When it is over and I am gone she will say she loved me and wanted me to live. She might even believe this is true because I have noticed that most people believe what they need to believe. Especially when desperate and trying to hide from the killer side of our souls. Believing is convenient when it helps us forget that our minds are like beasts in the jungle.

  In the locked desk drawer Don had also found lists of properties, stock holdings, bonds, and investments. Although not yet a member of the bar there, he knew that in California, as in most states, a person convicted of murder cannot inherit the victim’s property.

  He returned to the bedroom quietly. Cindy heard him, turned toward the wall, and pretended to be asleep. She had been restless too, had got up twice, first to take a crumpled plastic bag from a hiding place behind the luggage in the closet, to fold it and place in her hatbox; then to remove it, shake it out, and place it over the beige organza dress she had worn to the party.

  10

  “SORRY,” SAID CINDY, POKING HER HEAD IN, “but Don told me to wake you up. Those detectives are here again and a new man. He’ll want to talk to you. Don’s been with him for ages.” She came into the room, watching herself in the mirror, arranging a lock of hair, smoothing her lip rouge with a caressing finger. She was correctly dressed for mourning, but wore too much eye makeup.

  Elaine noted the time with horror. It was after eleven. “I didn’t get to sleep until after five.” She pushed herself up in the bed. “More detectives?”

  “Sticking their noses into everything. People in mourning ought to be allowed some privacy.” In the mirror Cindy saw drama. “Don’s made breakfast for you. Everything’s ready but the toast. Who do you think killed Daddy?”

  She could not have asked more blandly about a yard of silk or a recipe for salad dressing.

  “Cindy!”

  “Well somebody did.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We all know it was suicide.”

  “I never thought so. And the detectives don’t either.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Cindy came to the bed and bent over Elaine triumphantly. Superior because the police agreed with her, that it had not been suicide, she whispered, “I heard him tell Don, that new detective, he’s from the Homicide Department, more important than those two from yesterday, and cute, too.”

  “What did he tell Don?”

  “That it wasn’t sleeping pills that killed him.”

  “Are you sure he said that?”

  “I happened to be in the hall and I heard it with my own ears.”

  Elaine slid to the far side of the bed. She did not like the heat of Cindy’s breath upon her face. “Did he have any idea what it was?”

  “He’ll talk to us when he’s through with Don. Was that another car?” Cindy darted to the window. More men were coming toward the house. One carried a camera, the other a metal box. Off Cindy whirled to learn the newest developments.

  Elaine chose a black dress for her interview with the detectives. Her mirror showed a wan face with deeply ringed eyes and skin as sallow as old soap. In the mirror she found another face behind her own.

  The detective, Juarez, called through the screen, “Sorry, Mrs. Strode. We’re just looking around. I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

  Elaine was shaken. Her house had become possessed by strangers. Juarez retreated to the shed where the gardener kept his tools, seedlings, fertilizers, and insecticides. Defiant, Elaine clattered down the hall, tapping high heels firmly upon the floor as she passed the living room. A man who had been talking to Cindy sprang to greet her. “Good morning, Mrs. Strode. I deeply regret that I’m forced to intrude myself at this sad time, but I’m afraid it’s necessary. We must get to know each other. I’m Curtis Knight.”

  “How do you do?”

  “I’m having a chat with your charming stepdaughter. You won’t mind if I finish with her first?” he asked archly, like a child’s nurse withholding a treat. “Why don’t you have a bite of breakfast before we talk?”

  “Thank you.”

  She clattered on down the hall, Sergeant Curtis Knight popped back to Cindy. He had barely seated himself when the girl began looking about, frantically as always, for a cigarette. “May I?” Knight sprang up with an unopened pack from which he deftly tore the cellophane.

  He was not at all like a detective. Agile movements, gallant manners, winning tones were exaggerated almost to a point of absurdity. The miming was deliberate. It diverted the attention of those he questioned so that, while playing cavalier, he watched and listened scrupulously. His admirers were disarmed by his tricks, his subordinates irritated, while those subjected to his interrogation became self-conscious. No one enjoyed his theatrics so much as Knight himself. He was thirty-eight years old, a bachelor, devoted to his mother, and said to have extraordinary ambitions.

  Cindy was impressed. Despite protests against the presence of the detectives in a house of mourning, she respected an officer of the law and hoped her answers pleased him. Movies and TV had given her an exaggerated idea of intelligence and deductive powers of such men. With an air of girlish restraint and few well-timed tears, she hid her fear of certain questions. Everything she has said to Redding yesterday was said again.

  Knight noted every inflection and gesture. “And what did you do when you went in the bedroom and saw you father lying there?”

  Involuntarily Cindy’s hand reached out. “I . . . I . . .”

  The hand was pulled back.

  “Felt to see if he was alive?”

  She nodded gratefully. “I was scared. I began to shake. I forgot the phone call and everything.”

  “And then?”

  “I called Elaine and told her.”

  “How did she
take it?”

  “Cold as ice. And not too terribly shocked.” Lest the detective think her prejudiced, Cindy went on, “Of course she’s a lot older and has terrific self-control. And she did expect him”—her voice took on an uncalculated note of harshness—“to take his own life, she says.”

  Knight did not subject her to any more questions about the discovery of her father’s body. He was more interested in the events of the evening before the tragedy, particularly the scene at the dinner table. “Daddy wasn’t in a good mood at all,” Cindy did not think it necessary to add that she had contributed to her father’s ill humor, “and when Elaine admired my husband,” this with a wife’s emphasis, “Daddy was terribly, terribly angry.”

  “Why? Was he jealous of your husband?”

  All earnestness and inflection, “He has no real reason to be,” Cindy said. “Don hasn’t the slightest interest in a woman of her age, but when a girl like Elaine, married to a man years older than herself, and a young man as attractive as my husband is staying in the house, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Riding high on a tandem of prejudice and conviction she prattled on. This had not been the only time her father had exploded in jealous rage, insulted his wife, made life unbearable for Elaine. There had been dozens of things, incidents too trivial to remember, like the time Daddy threw the chocolate mousse at Elaine’s new dress. “And you know what she did? Oh, she took things meekly, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth when Daddy was around, but,” Cindy drew a breath of anticipation, “she broke all the lunch dishes. Haviland. Daddy teased her about it later but,” gravely Cindy stated, “still waters run deep you know. She tried to show us how brave and patient she was, but after all, with a sick husband. I mean . . . she’d made her bed, she had to lie on it.”

  “You said that she, Mrs. Strode, expected your father to,” Knight chose his words with care, “take his own life. Did she ever mention this to you?”

  “Not to me directly. I heard her say it afterward. Yesterday when those detectives were here. But she’d told Don before. If she expected poor Daddy to kill himself, why didn’t she do something? She told Don last week.”