Jealous Woman

by James M. Cain

“I don’t quite understand you.”

  “In this country, what do we call it?”

  “Suicide, I suppose you mean.”

  “In England, only the insane commit suicide.”

  “I’m not following you at all.”

  “Others, and my husband was as sane as you are, commit felo de se, which under English law is a criminal act.”

  “Mrs. Sperry, we’re holding this inquest in America.”

  “The estate, however, will be settled in Bermuda.”

  “Is the estate involved, Mr. Lynch?”

  “I would say, yes.”

  “You mean the insurance, on a suicide clause?”

  “I’m not talking about insurance. There is no insurance, payable to Mrs. Sperry at any rate, that we know of. I’m not prepared to give an opinion at the drop of a hat as to how much the estate is involved under English law in a case where the deceased took his own life. All I know is, if the verdict here tonight is rendered that way, it is possible the estate will automatically become the estate of a criminal, which may be, for all I know, administered differently in England from the estate of other persons. And in the case of Mr. Richard Sperry, part of the estate will be copyrights on valuable technical works, which may be forfeited, as it is highly possible a criminal in England is not entitled to copyright. This is a field too tricky for an American attorney to make any impromptu assumptions about. I should like to say that as her counsel I have advised Mrs. Sperry she is not required to give, and in my opinion shouldn’t give, any evidence in regard to this, of any kind, for a wife cannot be compelled to testify to her husband’s crime—”

  “In this country it’s not a crime.”

  “Pardon me, it may be held, in the property jurisdiction, to be a crime.”

  “She is not compelled, naturally, to testify.”

  “But I’m going to testify.”

  “What is it you have to tell, Mrs. Sperry?”

  “I saw my husband leap to his death.”

  They’d been having it back and forth, not too hot, more or less friendly, and everybody was kind of interested, because all that English stuff was new to them, but now if a nest of hornets had been kicked over in the middle of the floor they couldn’t have set up a louder buzz than went around when she said that. The sergeant banged with his hand again, and they got quiet, but the quick way one of the reporters slipped out of the room, showed what a sensation it was. The coroner stared at her and said: “You were with him at the time? Contrary to what you told the police?”

  “I was where I told them I was. In my suite.”

  “Please continue, Mrs. Sperry.”

  “I was sitting by my window, very depressed.”

  “At—anything relevant to this case?”

  “At my husband’s talk about ending his life.”

  “He’d been talking that way?”

  “Often.”

  “Yes, but lately?”

  “That night.”

  “Did he have some reason?”

  “None, none at all.”

  “But there must have been something.”

  “He said, when we came upstairs after dinner, ‘It is a very curious thing. Here I am, a man to be envied. I am successful, I have been recognized generously by the country I claim as my own, I have a beautiful wife, I love her, I am loved in return. I have everything to live for. But your true suicide type finds his own reasons. The time will come when I’ll do this thing ... His reasons never made sense, at least to me. And yet, perhaps all the more for that reason, I felt he was warning me.”

  She took out her black handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and went on: “I don’t know how long I sat there. He had gone out some time before. A little before nine, as I recall. Then I noticed something above me. Above me and across from me, on the street side of the hotel. A man appeared at a window and leaned out. I couldn’t see who it was, but it seemed to me he was acting most peculiarly. Then he climbed out and sat there, with his feet dangling outside, and stared down at the street—”

  “Wait a minute. At Mrs. Delavan’s window?”

  “I don’t know her window.”

  “You’re in the south wing?”

  “Yes, on the seventh floor.”

  “Facing the setback?”

  “My sitting room does.”

  “Then your suite, on that side, looks across to hers!”

  “I suppose so. How long this took, I don’t know. It seemed ages, but I imagine it was no more than a few seconds. I had some horrible premonition who it was, and jumped up to open the window and call. I have some recollection of the window sticking, but I can’t be sure. The man jumped. He braced his hands against the sill, and jumped. From then on, I have no recollection of anything until I woke up on the floor, deathly sick. How long I had been there I don’t know. I got up, went to the bathroom to bathe my face in cold water, then went to the bedroom. Then the phone rang. It was the police, asking if they could come up.”

  “And then you withheld what you knew?”

  “Not intentionally, at first.”

  “What actually did you tell them?”

  “What they asked of me: Who I was, how long I had been in Reno, where I had spent the evening. It wasn’t until they had been there some little time that it dawned on me they hadn’t any idea of what had happened—except, of course, conjecturally. I mean, they still didn’t know which suite he had jumped from —or ‘fallen,’ as they always added, I think to spare my feelings. And then it occurred to me that perhaps nobody except myself had seen him. People don’t as a rule go about staring at the top floor of a hotel at that hour of night. Then it was, and then only, that I decided to say nothing to them until I had engaged counsel.”

  “They told you he’d been in the bar?”

  “I believe they did.”

  “You didn’t think it funny he’d gone up there?”

  “Up where? I didn’t know whose room it was.”

  “You have no idea what he was doing there?”

  “I’m content to believe he had his reasons.”

  “I guess that’s about all.”

  “One other thing, Doctor.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lynch?”

  “I think you owe it to her, as she seems to want full weight and credence given to her evidence here, and in no way regards it as a subjective matter, I mean she wouldn’t be satisfied with merely getting it off her chest, as they say—to instruct this jury, before it considers its verdict, that her delay in disclosing what she saw in no way impeaches her credibility. She was not required to testify, or tell the police anything.”

  “Mr. Lynch, why don’t you tell them?”

  “Then by me, the jury is so informed.”

  “Mrs. Sperry, may I raise a point that you could clear up, but that would have more to do with the question of credence than all the law Mr. Lynch knows, though I don’t doubt he knows a lot. Why do you disregard him and tell it anyway?”

  “Out of respect for the truth.”

  “Even if the estate is involved?”

  “A clear conscience comes first.”

  You could tell by the looks on their faces after they came out of the back room that the jury was going to give her a break on all that legal stuff. The verdict was that he died from the effects of a fall, caused “in a manner unknown to this jury.”

  9

  I WAS OUT ON the street, waiting for Jane, while she stood by with the maid on some stuff the cops had to wind up, and I had taken quite a few turns up and down the block before I noticed Keyes around the corner, staring at the river with that same look in his eyes he’d had that night in the car, before Sperry was killed. I strolled over, and it was a minute or two before he said: “Ed, when somebody dies, you deliver the indemnity check in person?”

  “Oh, always.”

  “On a suicide case, how does the woman act?”

  “The widow?”

  “How does she take it?”

  “Well, she’s generally upset. Natu
rally.”

  “They just hate it.”

  “Well, who does love an undertaker?”

  “That’s not quite it. What they feel is not grief. It’s resentment. Maybe they keep quiet about it, as a matter of pride. But they’ve got that look in their eye. They regard it as an insult, a reflection on the marriage, and especially a reflection on themselves. ... Did you get anything like that in there?”

  “I thought she behaved with great dignity.”

  “But how much bitterness did she show?”

  “I didn’t notice any.”

  “Nor I either. I’ve been with her now for a considerable part of two whole days, and I’ve been struck by her complete freedom from rancor. She’s cracked up a few times, but there have been no hard feelings, and in fact when I’ve called her attention to one or two peculiar things about it she’s always come back with something that showed she preferred to regard it as an accident. Now tonight she says she saw it happen, and kept it concealed for legal reasons—but they were exactly the kind of reasons she would have placed before me, if it all took place as she says it did. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be possible for a woman to live a week or more in the same hotel as her husband’s former wife, and not know where her room was. Furthermore, even without law, or possible insurance angles, no member of a family ever admits anything that spells suicide. That’s one thing they’ll do anything to keep under cover, to pretend didn’t happen. And in my experience, I’ve never known an exception: if they do seem to come out in the open, it’s to cover something up.”

  “... Such as?”

  “Whatever she really saw.”

  “Spit it out, Keyes. What are you getting at?”

  “Ed, Lynch said there was no insurance angle, but we know there is, from the investigators that attended this inquest. But we don’t know what those investigators, if they were to stay on the case, might turn up. The quickest way to get rid of them, if there’s a suicide clause in effect somewhere, would be to place sworn testimony on the record of a public inquest that establishes an eye-witness. That closes the case—for the cops, who are concerned only with violations of the law, and for these buzzards, that are concerned with everything, up and down the line, that affects a claim ... Ed, I confess this disturbs me.”

  “Your lady love fibbing on you, you mean?”

  “It’s shifty. And I’ve been—”

  “Kind of stuck on her?”

  “I may as well admit it. ... And yet—if she’s covering up for his good name, to conceal some sort of scandal she knew had to come out, if this thing were really investigated—”

  “She’d still be your perfect lady.”

  “That’s it. And she is a thoroughbred, we know that.”

  “At least, if she was a horse, we’d know it.”

  “And that girl, that Mrs. Delavan—”

  “Oh, so she’s the scandal!”

  “Well, after all, it was her room, and she was his former wife.”

  I didn’t clip him on the jaw, you’ll probably be surprised to learn, but later that night I was to hear about insurance again. It was in Jane’s suite, and she had her head on my shoulder, and was relaxed and friendly, because, as she said, “I could never bring myself to take pleasure in the death of another human being, but I can’t forget either that this writes finis to one of the most ghastly chapters of my life. I had nothing to do with Dick’s decision, have no idea of the reason for it. Just the same, he’s gone. It’s the end. I’m not glad, but for the first time in a long, long while, I’m at peace.”

  Then the phone rang.

  I paid no attention, lit a cigarette while she went in the bedroom to answer. But she was gone some little time, and when she came back she said: “What could he have meant? ‘Do something about the insurance?’”

  “Who was he?”

  “Ireland, I think he said.”

  “... He’s a go-between. For insurance companies.”

  “But—there is no insurance.”

  “There has to be, if he rang you.”

  “There was, but the policies lapsed.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  “They’re in Kennebunkport.”

  “Maine?”

  “My family was there when I came back from Bermuda. We have a summer place there. It had been years since I had banking connections in New York, so I put them in a safe deposit box there. Then we came back on Labor Day and I couldn’t get them, or my other stuff that was with them. It didn’t seem to make much difference, as we expected to be back in the fall, for skiing. But various things came up. And then there began this wrangle with Dick, by mail, over the policies. He wanted to change the beneficiary, to this woman, I suppose, but to do it he had to have the policies. But I simply was not going to take a special trip to Maine for some insurance policies to be made out to a woman reeking with money already, and one that I owed not one bit of consideration to, believe me. Then the last letter I got from him said most curtly that he was going to have the policies cancelled. Or let them lapse, I guess that was it.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “Well, did he? I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “He was a fool if he did.”

  “Why?”

  “You got insurance, you’ve got it. You lose it you don’t know where you stand. You’ve got to pass another medical examination, you’ll pay a higher premium, as you’ve got older all the time, and there’s always the risk you can’t pass the examination. He probably kept them up. You’ll cash in—that is, unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “The suicide clause touches you out.”

  “On that they could refuse to pay?”

  “If it’s still in effect. When were these policies written? Before your marriage with Sperry broke up, I would assume.”

  “There were several. The smaller ones, totaling twenty-eight hundred dollars, I think, were written about five years ago. But the big one, for twenty-five thousand, was taken out a little less than two years ago.”

  “Those clauses generally run for two or three years.”

  “Ed, I suddenly have a horrible suspicion. That’s why she said what she did. Just now, at the inquest. Ed, did it strike you that was a most unlikely tale? Possibly not, as you didn’t know him. Of all things you could believe about him, that would be the last. ... And yet why would she lie about it just to keep me out of money? Is she that vindictive about me?”

  “Taking an awful risk, too.”

  “I would think so. ... What do I do now?”

  “Get the policies.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’ll have to.”

  “I’ll have to go to Maine in person, and I can’t leave Reno. I’ll lose my residence if I do, and have to begin all over again.”

  “O.K., begin over again, but get them.”

  “But it’ll be six more weeks, and—”

  “And the rest of your life. What do you care?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “O.K., think about it.”

  “With you, is that the idea?”

  “Something like that.”

  I went down around twelve, and in the lobby Keyes was waiting for me. I started by, because he’d got under my skin with what he had said, but then I thought oh well, he makes everybody hate him so why act like he knew any better. I wasn’t any too agreeable about it, though, when I asked him what he wanted, and I took my time about it when he asked me to sit down. He took out a fountain pen and held it out for me to look at. “You’d be surprised where that came from.”

  “I never saw it before.”

  “Nor I, Ed. The bartender gave it to me.”

  “He never gave me a gold pen.”

  “To give Mrs. Sperry.”

  “Likes her?”

  “It was turned in. It belongs to Sperry, and as I’d been seen with her quite a lot, they thought I wouldn’t mind seeing that she got it. He had lent it to somebody that wanted to writ
e down the title of one of his books and neglected to give it back before he went upstairs. It seems there was a call that night from Mrs. Sperry, to the bartender. Asking him to remind Sperry not to forget his engagement with the little lady that was waiting upstairs.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “She didn’t say. The bartender reminded Sperry and he went.”

  “O.K., Keyes, but why hasn’t the bartender told it?”

  “Why should he? It ties in with what he’s seen in the papers, and who would get mixed up with something unless he had a reason to? So far as he knows, it means nothing. We know that it does. Something went on that night that she wants bottled up, and so far she’s got it her way.”

  “At Jane’s expense, you might say.”

  “How so?”

  “How do you think? The suicide clause naturally.”

  “Oh, so there is insurance?”

  “Turns out there is.”

  “Now it makes sense.”

  “Hey, you! On a bartender’s say-so—”

  “But, Ed, why would he make this up? Besides, I’ve already checked on it. The girl on the switchboard, when I said I was trying to trace ownership of a pen, and asked if she remembered any call to the cocktail bar around eleven night before last, had it right away: Mrs. Sperry wanted to speak with Alec, and she got him for her. Alec is the bartender and it was he who handed me the pen.”

  “Is this your case?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “I didn’t know we were on the risk.”

  “Ed, I’ve told you, there’s something I’ve got to know. If she’s covering something she’s involved in, it would be a blow, I admit it. It would—make a difference. But if she’s covering for somebody else, frankly I’d consider it magnificent.”

  “Covering what, for instance?”

  “Murder, perhaps.”

  “But nothing serious?”

  “Scandal, pretty definitely.”

  I think I’ve told you, he kind of gets on people’s nerves. You’d like to knock his block off, but for some reason you don’t. He got this dreamy look in his eyes, and said: “We know now, pretty definitely, what the scandal was and who it was. The phone call proves Mrs. Sperry knew about it. It’s beginning to tie up.”