Sinful Woman

by James M. Cain

  He laid aside the first slip and picked up the second. He talked for ten minutes, giving names, dates and places, and when he got through he was twisting his face, and occasionally squeezing his mouth with his hand, to keep from sobbing. When he had some sort of control he burst out: “How could you come over to me this morning with all that talk about hating those cheap pictures and tell me you were going to make more like The Glory of Edith Cavell? And how could you pretend to be Edith Cavell?”

  “I didn’t pretend to be Edith Cavell.”

  “You did.”

  “I was an actress playing a part.”

  “You used her name and said her words and died her death and for two hours you pretended to be her. And all that time you were nothing but a common trollop that anybody could have, and if I were to go out of here and leave you dead on the floor right now, it wouldn’t be any more than you deserve, or any different from how women like you generally wind up.”

  She started several times to say something, each time swallowed it back. Then she sat with a fixed, desperate look on her face, staring into the fire. He said: “You told me this morning you killed your husband.”

  “I did kill him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “A jury will, I think.”

  “You want them to?”

  “Dimmy says it was accident, and so will I.”

  “Your sister killed your husband.”

  “No! No!”

  “I say she did. If he said he would marry her and then he wouldn’t do it, that would be enough reason for a whole lot of women. You didn’t have any reason.”

  “I told you it was the only way out.”

  “Except to sign his contract.”

  “I tell you I did it.”

  “Will you sign a confession you did it?”

  “ ... Yes.”

  “Then you better write it. Because I’m telling you, I know who did it.”

  After a long time she got up, went over to the writing desk and wrote:

  May 13

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Today, at approximately 12:30 P.M., at the Galloping Domino Gambling Hall, I shot and killed my husband, Victor Adlerkreutz. My sister, Hazel Shoreham, was not present, but will probably say she did it in order to save me. This will not be true.

  Sylvia Shoreham.

  She got up, handed it to him, and resumed her seat on the sofa. He went over to the desk, put it in an envelope, marked it “Shoreham Confession.” Then he said: “This ends the matter.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Your sister has been found.”

  “She—where is she?”

  “It’s bad news.”

  Briefly, under terrible emotion, he told her what had happened. Then he said: “Sylvia Shoreham, I love you more than any human being on earth. I’d give my right arm to be able to touch you right now. I’d give the other arm if I could be the one that helped you through this sorrow that must be heavy to you, I know how heavy from the way you’ve tried to protect that girl. But I don’t forget that judge, in the picture. He knew that woman hadn’t done what she said she did, but he did what he thought he had to do just the same. That girl can’t ever be tried for her crime now. She’s beyond human justice, and she’s beyond speaking for you, too. I’ve called an inquest at ten o’clock tonight, and at that inquest I’m going to let Spiro and his friends make it accident. I’ll let you bury the dead, and have no more trouble about it. But if you try to go into pictures again, I have this and I’ll use it. And you can tell Spiro that The Glory of Edith Cavell goes back in the can and it stays there. You are not going to pretend to be something you’re not any more, if I’ve got anything to do with it.”

  Her face didn’t move a muscle, and he got up. “Isn’t that funny? At lunch, at that lunch we were going to have, I was going to ask you to start a fund for our tuberculosis hospital. It’s a poor state, and we got no hospital and we ought to have one, and it could be built now, for soldier use, and then turned back to us later. That’s what I was going to ask.”

  “I don’t mind contributing.”

  His face was tortured, and his eyes full of tears. “I can’t take your money. If I did I’d have to tear up your confession, and I swear that stays with me till I die—or you do.”

  He looked at the envelope, put it in his pocket. Then, a blank look on his face, he pulled out the other envelope, the one Dmitri had given him. Identifying it after a moment, he said: “This came for you. Spiro didn’t give it to you because—well, I guess you can guess why.”

  He laid the envelope in her lap. It was Vicki’s Baltic handwriting that did what nothing else had yet done: it brought a torrent of tears. She said: “I can’t face it ... I’ve had all I can stand today! I—”

  He went over, picked up the letter, walked with it to the fireplace, dropped it on the flames. Then, his shoulders shaking, he stumbled out of the room.

  Chapter Ten

  AT NINE, MR. FLYNN closed the Domino down, and for the next hour quite an assortment of people assembled there. More and more officers showed up, until there were a dozen or more. Most of them brought evidential exhibits of one kind and another, which they left with Mr. Flynn in the office, so the desk was piled high with envelopes of various sizes, all neatly labeled. Then there were the correspondents. Some of them had arrived on the afternoon plane, some by train, some by car, but there were a score or more of them. They were reinforced by several local people who corresponded for picture publications, and who got about one item like this a year and made the most of it. Then there were reporters from the local papers, with their photographers. Then there was Mr. Britten, who sat apart and had little to say to his men. Then there was Mr. Pease, the county prosecutor, who did not as a rule attend inquests, believing that his presence embarrassed the coroner, but who had made an exception of tonight, possibly because of the opportunity that would be presented to shake hands with a prominent actress. Tony, with worried, abstracted politeness, found seats for all: big crowds, after all, were not a new event in his life.

  Dmitri arrived around a quarter to ten, with Mr. La Bouche, but not with Benny. Almost on his heels came Mr. Layton, with Mr. Gans and another man who looked like a lawyer. He was a new Mr. Layton, one who had expanded and put on fifty pounds of weight since the afternoon, a commanding, calm figure of a man who dominated his two companions as a general dominates his aides, and waived them to seats with that kindly thoughtfulness that does not owe courtesy but graciously bestows it. Then he went to a corner and beckoned Dmitri over. When Mr. La Bouche came too, he smilingly shook his head, and Mr. La Bouche retired. Dmitri, however, had changed since the afternoon himself. He had stiffened, and reverted to his usual lofty peevishness. He said: “What you want?” in a bellicose way, and then, without waiting for Mr. Layton to speak, added querulously: “Plizze, plizze, my time is waluable.”

  Mr. Layton said: “What’s cooking?”

  “What do you mean, cooking?”

  “Was that a suicide note in that box today?”

  “I don’t know. The Sharf took it. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “You see Ethel?”

  “What were you doing, trying to kid me? Hinting around that she knew something? She’s just a pretty girl that wants little job in pictures. So, I’ve given her a job. Tomorrow she goes to Hollywood, and tonight she won’t come here. So plizze, am busy man.”

  “Getting tough, hey?”

  “Not tough, only busy.”

  “She didn’t like it, how you treated her.”

  “What did you say?”

  “She thought three grand wasn’t much for what she knew. She thought considering how much it’s worth to you, you didn’t take that liberal, friendly attitude she’d been hoping for. She thought you acted in quite a tightwad way, and she’s hurt.”

  “How do you know what she thought?”

  “That’s not her with Benny.”

  “What? They went to the pi
cture show. He called me—”

  “That’s her girl friend. Right now, she’s having a ride in my car. She likes my car. She likes me. And she’ll be right where I want her when the time comes. However, since you’re busy—”

  “What do you want, ha?”

  “I asked you something.”

  “You mean this note?”

  “Yeah. Start talking.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a suicide note. The Sharf, he didn’t open the note, when I gave it to him. He took it to give Sylwia, but it should be suicide note.”

  “Fellow, it better be a suicide note.”

  “Plizze, plizze. It will be.”

  “If you had your policies here, so accidentally on purpose they could get burned, it would end my interest in the case. But since you haven’t, and the verdict at tonight’s inquest is going to determine my liability, I don’t take chances. I’m telling: it better be a suicide note.”

  “Plizze. Wait only.”

  “Then O. K.”

  Mr. Layton returned to Mr. Gans and the lawyer. Dmitri went over and stood looking unhappily into a juke-box. Mr. Pease, the prosecutor, drifted over to Mr. Britten. “Cy, did you notice something just now?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “An objectionable party by the name of Layton was in my office this afternoon, representing an insurance company. He wanted a special autopsy and all but demanded I charge Sylvia Shoreham with murder. Now he just went into a huddle with Dmitri Spiro. You know, these insurance companies go too far. I wouldn’t ask much to rap that bird over the knuckles for obstructing justice.”

  “He was in to see me too.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I had him followed.”

  “ ... What for?”

  “Just a hunch. He had another talk with Spiro, before this one. Out here at the Domino, for a half hour this afternoon. But before that he met a girl that deals blackjack out here, and then later, after he met his boss at the plane and they got a lawyer over to the hotel, he met the girl again, and they went up to his apartment, and you’ll notice she’s not here.”

  “What are you getting at, Cy?”

  “Something funny about this case.”

  “You don’t mean it’s my case?”

  “You heard about the sister?”

  “I didn’t attach much importance to her.”

  “They found her. Dead.”

  “What?”

  “Couple of hours ago.”

  “Say, I think I’ll stick around.”

  Sylvia arrived on the stroke of ten, a fur coat over her black dress, a small black hat with veil giving her face a wan, pale look. With her was Mr. Daly, the lawyer who had obtained her divorce. The Sheriff, who had been in the office with Mr. Flynn, the undertaker, and a deputy now came out. It was the deputy’s question to the undertaker about shipment of the Shoreham body that informed the correspondents of the second fatality in the case, and at once they crowded around him, asking questions. He put up his hand: “I don’t know any more than you do. Shoreham’s been to the mortuary and made formal identification of both bodies. Now the Coroner’s bringing his jury out here for the inquest. Don’t get excited and soon you’ll know all that anybody knows.”

  As he spoke the Coroner arrived, with another deputy shepherding the jury, six unhappy-looking wretches, four men and two women, all middle-aged except one of the men, who looked like a young law student. On their heels came the interne who had responded to the first call and the two orderlies who had come with him, all looking like members of the high school football team. A dozen other men arrived. The Coroner at once took the jury and a number of others into the office, where Mr. Flynn pointed to the spot where the body had been found. The Coroner was evidently hurrying, for he bowed once or twice, in an apologetic sort of way, to Sylvia, and kept saying to his jury: “Just so you get the picture, that’s all. We’ll put it all in evidence in the regular way, under oath when we examine witnesses, but it’ll save time if you look the place over and get it all clear in your minds.”

  He then led the way back to the casino, where a roulette table had been set in the middle of the floor for his convenience, with chairs for the jury and a single chair as a witness stand. He sat down and Mr. Flynn sat beside him, rapping for order with the croupier’s stick and announcing the opening of an inquest into the death of (with a glance at a memorandum he held in his hand) Victor Alexis Olaf Hermann Adlerkreutz, and summoning all who had knowledge of the event to come forward and give their evidence. He then directed witnesses to hold up their right hands, so that they might all be sworn together. Quite a few hands went up, including a number of constabular hands. He then bound them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and the Coroner cleared his throat and called the young interne who had pronounced Vicki dead. He gave his testimony briefly, and the orderlies, on inquiry from the Coroner, said that was how they remembered it. Next was the physician who made the autopsy. He reported with considerable medical verbiage. Then police photographers were called and identified their work. Tony was called. He hadn’t witnessed the shooting itself, he said, but he had supplied the gun on Mr. Spiro’s plea they wanted to rehearse a picture scene. Mr. La Bouche was next, and repeated what he had said earlier in the day, with gruesome details this time, about how he had been manipulating the imaginary camera, as represented by the electric fan, and had seen the handkerchief tighten on the trigger, paying not the least attention to it, and not even realizing the significance of the pistol report for some moments, so accustomed was he to blank cartridges in his work. The Sheriff stared at him, after this glib and wholly convincing tale, in wonderment.

  It must have been an hour before Dmitri was called, and he took his place in the chair with the air of one who had indeed played many tragic roles in his life, not all of them on the stage.

  Prompted by the Coroner, he told once more the harrowing tale he had told in the afternoon. But he filled it with little variations, he noted how odd he had thought it that Vicki should insist on all this pother to understand a scene which was really the director’s business anyway, a point he hadn’t bothered to mention before. He told how he expostulated at the time it was taking, on the ground that he was hungry, a bit of evidence that drew a smile from all, even the Coroner. At one point the Sheriff interrupted sharply: “Are you trying to tell us that this here Adlerkreutz killed himself?”

  “I don’t know, Sharf. I really don’t know. It was all very funny. I tell you, I feel sure I saw Tony take shell from a gun. How did one more shell enter this gun? Did Vicki put it there? I don’t know. I only tell what happened.”

  The Coroner looked at him sharply, and said: “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You didn’t say one word about this today.”

  “I was upset. I don’t know what I said today.”

  “Did Adlerkreutz say anything about killing himself?”

  “To me, no. Don’t know about odder people.”

  Dmitri looked hopefully at Sylvia, but she was staring stonily at her gloved hands. He looked at the Sheriff, but got only a puzzled frown in return. The Coroner said: “I don’t get this. A Coroner’s jury is reluctant to return a verdict of suicide under any circumstances, but here you, without adding any item of evidence, make a lot of mysterious remarks about what you thought, and intimating that the deceased must have put the shell in the gun, and I don’t understand it, that’s all. Are you holding something back?”

  “No, plizze, I hold nothing back.”

  “This is all conjecture?”

  “Con—”

  “Just guesswork?”

  “Absolutely, yes sir, guesswork.”

  Irritated, the Coroner led Dmitri through the rest of his story, encountered much less gabbiness. Dmitri stood down. Then he walked off to one side. Then, to his horror, he heard the Coroner say to his jury: “O. K., then as soon as the Sheriff identifies this other stuff for the record, I’ll instruct you in the law and you can consider your ver
dict.”

  He caught Mr. Layton outside, between the parked cars, where he had followed when that gentleman got up and hurried out of the hearing. But when he grabbed Mr. Layton’s arm, he was flung roughly against the side of the building. “So that’s the kind of a cross you pull on me, hey? Get up there and mumble something about how funny it looks, and then go off in a corner, and that’s supposed to make it a suicide, hey? Where’s that letter she was supposed to get?”

  “Plizze! We wrote the letter! We—”

  “Then where is it?”

  “I gave it to the Sharf! He took it! He—”

  Waiting no longer, Mr. Layton strode off to the rear, no doubt to drag his surprise witness out of his car and parade her in to the Coroner. Dmitri didn’t wait to see. He turned to the open window at his side, dropped his elbows on the sill, and quite unrestrainedly began to weep. He seemed to have his head in some kind of storeroom, and his tears splashed down on big green dice in an open box on the floor.

  He was in a dreadful spot all right. But he had become part of a business that is accustomed to dreadful spots, and has been well-schooled in what to do about them. When a crisis arises, some writer usually bellows: “I got it, I got it, I GOT IT! Cut to those sirens! Cut to those motorcycles coming down to street! Maybe it’s not story, but it’s ACTION!”

  That may have been why Dmitri suddenly straightened up, fished a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and dropped it into the box of celluloid dice.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE SIRENS WERE A success, quite as much of a success as they invariably are in a fast, gangster movie. They came screeching out from town at 80, motorcycles in front, the chief’s car behind that, the salvage truck behind that, the ladder truck behind that, and the pump behind that, a fine, glittering, noisy, 100% American midnight motorcade. Even so, it was tame in comparison with what went on inside the Domino. The inflammable dice, if they had been all, might not have amounted to much, and Dmitri’s desperate scheme might have failed for the simple reason that a fire takes a great deal longer to get going than a theatrical imagination realizes. But the box happened to be sitting within an inch or two of the big intake cable that led from the connection outside to the electric meter at rear. So when the dice flared hotly up they did not ignite the wall, for it was made of some sort of fireproof composition, but they did melt the cable, so that the first result of the cigarette was that the place went completely dark, without so much as a fuse blowing out. For a minute or so, as Americans versed in the idiosyncrasies of power houses, the gathering sat around without saying a word: one or two muttered gags about a blackout were rebuked by the Coroner, who said it was not a frivolous occasion. But when another minute went by and no light came on, the Coroner said: “Well, we got to get on with this. Tony, do you think you could get us a few candles?”