I backed away. I sat down on the arm of a chair. He looked enormous lying there, enormous and monstrous like a whale stranded on a beach.
Something was gleaming on the carpet a few feet away from the humped, obscene left leg.
It was a gun, the gun from the drawer of the bedside table, the revolver Uncle Gene had bought for Beth.
“Virginia.”
I ran into the bedroom, into the bathroom, into the kitchen. She wasn’t there. I went back to the body. Very frightened I knelt down beside it and put my hand into his breast pocket. I could feel the hard metal edge of a cigarette-case and then a wallet. I pulled out the wallet. That’s what you did. You got some sort of identification. You … It was a black leather wallet with gold corners. I opened it. There was some money. That was all except for a photograph of a girl slipped under a transparent plastic flap.
I looked at the girl. She was very young and she was quite naked. She was lying on a rock on a beach, her head thrown back, mockingly imitating a mermaid or a siren.
There was no doubt about it at all. The girl in the photograph was Virginia …
I stood looking at the photograph through the plastic shield, having absolutely no idea what to do. Making everything disastrously worse, memories of Hugo swirled in my mind. “My God, in Rome, it seems, she was a byword … You can’t possibly marry a woman like that.”
I took the photograph out of the flap. Almost by instinct, I wiped the wallet carefully with my handkerchief and, still holding it in the handkerchief, slipped it back beside the cigarette-case in the dead man’s pocket. It had been a tiny decision—hardly a decision at all—but the fact of having performed some definite act helped to steady me.
There was some explanation which had nothing to do with Virginia. There had to be. The man must have had a key to the apartment. But where would he have got a key from? Then he’d come with someone who had a key? Yes, that was it. But who? And who, except Virginia, knew that there was a gun in the drawer of the bedside table? Panic leaped on me. I leaned back against the arm of the couch looking not at the photograph any more but at the, body, which now, of the two, was the less terrible.
Sometime later—I had only the vaguest impression of time—I heard the front door open. My wife’s voice called from the hall.
“Lew, are you back?”
I stood up straight. I put the photograph in my pocket. She came across the threshold, smart and gay in a green wool coat.
“Hello, darling, I …”
The sentence trailed off into a gasp. The package, wrapped in brown paper, which she’d been carrying under her arm dropped to the carpet. Her gaze was riveted to the thing on the floor.
I made myself watch her, realizing that this was the most crucial moment of all. Now, if ever, was the time when I might trace the marks of innocence or guilt on her face. If only I knew her better! That was the crippling obstacle. She was almost a stranger, a loved stranger, but a stranger.
Gradually she raised her eyes to mine. They were dazed and horrified. Authentically so?
“Lew,” she said, “My God, Lew, you didn’t …?”
Against every probability, my spirits soared then because the agonised concern for me was surely genuine. She thought I had killed him. Wasn’t that it? Couldn’t that be it?
I said, “I just came in five minutes ago. He’s exactly the way I found him.”
“Then … then … Thank God.” She ran to me. “When I saw you, when I saw the gun, everything, I thought …”
“That I’d shot him?”
“Yes,” she said wildly, “yes.”
Cling to that. Believe her.
Her arms were around my neck, her head was pressed against my shoulder. “Lew, oh, Lew.”
No, don’t believe her. Don’t believe anything yet. Find out the truth.
I said, “Why should I have shot him?”
“Because … How could I know? I just thought …”
“He was a housebreaker?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t a housebreaker. Either he had a key or he was let in. He didn’t bring the gun either. It’s Beth’s gun, the one from the bedside drawer.”
She was shivering in my arms.
“And the blood’s still wet,” I said. “He must have been killed just a few minutes before I got in, shot by someone who knew where the gun was kept.”
She lifted her face from my shoulder and, actually before my eyes, I saw her expression changing. It was as if the flesh were receding, leaving nothing but skin stretched tautly over bone. It was no longer me she was afraid for, it was for herself. I was certain of it. Surely that proved her innocence, because it had been then and only then that she’d realised how damning the situation was for her.
I held her close to me, love rushing in to support hope. Then I thought of the photograph in my pocket and hope shrivelled again.
Forcing myself, I said, “You knew him, didn’t you?”
For a moment she stayed motionless. Then she half-turned so she could look down at him over her shoulder. I waited in excruciating suspense. She said absolutely nothing. Finally I could stand it no longer.
“It’s the pianist from the Club Marocain,” I said.
“The man who played for that girl?”
“Yes.”
I took the photograph out of my pocket and handed it to her. “This was in his wallet.”
She took the snapshot. She held it quite far away and then brought it closer until it was almost touching her nose. It was the first time I’d noticed she was short-sighted and that small, intimate discovery, coming then, brought an almost unbearable stab of tenderness.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, it seems to be me. But he could have got it somewhere.”
“A naked photograph?”
“Well, yes, why not? Anyone can pick up a photograph. That is …”
It’s dreadful seeing someone you love floundering for the right lie. She twisted away from me, dropping the photograph on a table. She stood with her back to me, leaning against the table for support.
I said, “If we lie to each other now, we’re sunk.”
Very slowly she turned back to me. There was a meaningless set smile as if her features, knowing some expression was necessary, had produced one at random.
“Of course,” she said. “You’re right. The only thing to do is to tell the truth—and this is the truth, I swear it. Until last night at the Club Marocain, I hadn’t seen him for two years. I have no idea why he came here or how he got in or how he came to be killed.”
“But you do know him?” I said.
“Yes.”
“So that’s why you wanted to go to the Club Marocain last night?”
“No, no. That is, in a way, yes. Once he mentioned a dancer called Esmeralda. I—I wanted to make sure. I mean, if he was in New York, I wanted to know. But not to see him. Only to know.”
And yet she’d pretended to me that she’d wanted to go to the club merely for frivolous relaxation. That had been a lie. Then …? Don’t think about that. Not now.
“And when you did see him,” I said, “that’s why you wanted to leave the club so quickly?”
“Yes, of course. Before he saw me. That’s what made it so awful just now. You see, when I walked in, when I saw him lying there, I was sure he’d come to threaten us and—and that somehow you’d killed him”
“But why would he come here to threaten us?”
“Because,” she said, “he used to be my husband.”
The silence that came was like a wall of glass between us.
She said, “You don’t have a cigarette, do you? My case is in the hall.”
I lit a cigarette and gave it to her.
“That’s what I’d been doing in Mexico,” she said. “Getting a divorce.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked, did you?” Then, as if she realised the inadequacy of that reply, she added, “I don’t think I
’d have told you anyway. I wanted to forget him. With you I wanted to feel something quite, quite new was starting.”
“Because it had been bad with him?”
“Worse than bad. He was a monster, really, and I knew until I’d finally got rid of him, I could never be—well, I suppose the word is clean.”
“What sort of a monster was he?”
“All sorts. I had no idea when I married him, of course, but then a twenty-year-old simpleton from Birmingham, trying to be an artist in Paris, isn’t much of a judge of people.”
From Birmingham, trying to be an artist in Paris. I hadn’t even known that.
I said, “He was a crook then?”
“Oh yes, procuring, dope-peddling, anything vicious that was not too risky.”
“Including blackmail?”
“Oh yes,” she said.
I had been waiting for that.
“Then he could have come here to blackmail you?”
“Why not?”
“Did he have something specific against you? Not that photograph. No blackmailer would be naïve enough to think he could exploit that. Was there anything else?”
“Anything—anything criminal, you mean? She gave a little shrug. “No. No crime. But although I left him after only a few months, he never lost sight of me. A lot of things I’ve done since then wouldn’t seem too attractive to a Denham. He would have realised that. He would have taken advantage of it.”
We stood looking at each other. The few feet that separated us seemed an infinity of distance. Her eyes moved quite calmly, almost compassionately, to the body in front of us. I thought: She knew him much better than she knows me. I tried to grasp that fact. I couldn’t. Her eyes had come back to mine.
“All right,” she said. “Now you know. Aren’t you going to call the police?”
Call the police? Have them find the body here, shot by my gun? Dimly I’d known from the start that this would have to be faced. Very clearly I knew now what the police verdict would be. And the Denham verdict too. The South American’s mistress! The byword of Rome! The shabby ex-wife of a crook who’d thought she could get away with marrying into the fringes of an American fortune—until her blackmailing first husband showed up.
Call the police?
I said, “If I call the police …”
“They’ll arrest me.”
“But you didn’t kill him?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You weren’t here when he came?”
“No.”
“You’ve never seen him in New York except for last night at the Club Marocain?”
“Never.”
“And last night you didn’t speak to him or make a date?”
“No.”
There was just one hope, a very threadbare hope.
“When did you leave the apartment this afternoon?”
“About five.”
“It was six-thirty when I got home. If it could be proved that he was shot less than an hour …”
“Then I would have an alibi?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, “because I was alone from the time I left till the time I got back.”
“You didn’t see anyone?”
“Absolutely no one.”
“Not even the doorman?”
“Neither time. He was off on the corner getting taxis, I suppose.”
She stood smoking the cigarette, watching me, totally passive, as if she knew there could be no help for her any more.
“So there’s nothing,” I said.
“Nothing.”
It was, I knew, my moment of choice, the most galling choice I had ever had to make in my life. Then, to my faint astonishment, I found that it wasn’t galling at all. It was absolutely simple. She was my wife. I loved her. She’d told me she hadn’t killed him. If I didn’t trust her, what did that make out of me? Just another Denham—and a pseudo-Denham at that—who had to be shown bank ratings and Social Register listings before they could trust anyone.
I said, “You’d better tell me where you went and what you were doing.”
She looked at the end of her cigarette. “You won’t believe me.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Just after five, the phone rang. It was Sheila Potter. She said she had something important to tell me and would I meet her right away in the Park Avenue lobby of the Waldorf. She might be late, she said, but whatever happened I was to wait. I thought … I didn’t know … I was scared that somehow last night she’d found out about Olsen. I got to the Waldorf at twenty past five. I waited until nearly six-thirty. She never came.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
“Because just before six-thirty I called her house. The butler answered. She couldn’t come to the phone, he said, because she was taking a bath.”
“She could have made the date and forgotten it.”
“In half an hour? When there was something important she had to tell me?”
“Then she could have realised she didn’t have the time. She’s got my family coming to dinner, as you know. She could have called you back and you’d left.”
“But she’d have known I’d left. On the phone I’d told her I’d start for the Waldorf right away. Why wouldn’t she have had them page me there?”
“Maybe she did and they missed you.”
Her eyes, still on mine, showed incredulous hope. “You’re trying to believe me, aren’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“When you know I was married to him, that he was a crook, that I could have had dozens of reasons for wanting him dead?”
“I love you, don’t I?”
She gave a little husky cry and came running towards me. He arms were around me.
“Oh, Lew.”
“It’s okay.”
“Oh, it’s true. I swear it’s true. She called me and I went there and she wasn’t there.”
“Yes, darling, yes, baby.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Oh, please, it’s true.”
I drew her towards me, kissing her, knowing that in spite of the horror something wonderful had happened for us.
“I’ll call Sheila.”
“Now?”
“There’s bound to be an explanation. Then she can swear to the police that she asked you to meet her at the Waldorf.”
I moved to the phone. I had picked up the receiver when her hand came urgently on to my arm.
“Wait.”
“Why?”
“What if she says she didn’t call?”
“But you said she called.”
“But what if it wasn’t Sheila, what if it was someone pretending to be Sheila? How could I be sure? I only met her once.”
Someone who wasn’t Sheila? Someone who’d pretended to be Sheila to get her out of the apartment?
“Don’t you see?” she said. “It could have been a trap, a trick to get me out of the apartment, to frame me, to make it look as if I’d invented some feeble, false story.”
“But couldn’t you tell Sheila’s voice? With those distinct r’s.”
“Of course there were the r’s but anyone could imitate them.”
“Yes,” I said.
I was beginning to realise the terrifying importance that from now on even the smallest decision could have. If I called Sheila, we’d be committed to the story. And if she denied it, later she would tell the police that Virginia had been trying to use her for a fake alibi.
I tried to weigh the situation.
“I’ll talk to her anyway,” I said, “but I won’t ask her out-right. I’ll just skirt around it. If she didn’t call you, she’ll never realise what I’m trying to find out. All right?”
Virginia moistened her lips. “Yes,” she said very softly. “Yes, all right.”
Sheila answered the phone herself.
“Hi, Sheila,” I said. “I just thought I’d let you know how pleasant it was running into you last night.”<
br />
“Really, Lewis, that’s very sweet of you.” Sheila’s pretty laugh sounded. “But I do hope you haven’t told our dear ones just where it was we met. They’ll all be here any minute and I don’t want them looking any further down their noses than possible.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be as cagey as a coon. But I’m so glad you were the first member of the family Virginia met. She liked you immensely.”
“And I thought her charming, so the sentiments are entirely mutual. By the way, the butler tells me she called this evening when I was in the tub. I’m so sorry I missed her. Tell her I’m determined to call her very, very soon and we can have a little pre-Denham initiation rite.”
She went rattling on, trying to persuade us to join the party after all. I listened and answered politely, but I’d found out what we had to know. It hadn’t been Sheila who had telephoned Virginia at five.
My wife had been standing beside me, listening too. When I put down the receiver, she said, “It wasn’t Sheila.”
“No.”
“It was a trap.”
“Yes.”
She turned to look at the body, shivering. I looked at it too. In the turmoil of other things, that huge, clumsy corpse sprawled on the carpet had, in some strange way, become almost unreal. Now, as I looked down at it, the full horror of its presence surged in on me again. There it was—a dreadful, malignant monster come out of nowhere to destroy us.
I said, “Someone pretended to be Sheila Potter and called to lure you out of the apartment. That’s the only story we have. The police’ll want you to prove it. You won’t be able to. They’ll find out he was your husband, that he was a crook, a blackmailer …”
I could see the catastrophic sequence as vividly as if the police were already in the room. I knew then exactly what I was going to do. Virginia was my life, the only life I’d ever had which had not been planned or overshadowed by the Denhams. I was going to fight for her—to the death if necessary.
“We won’t call the police,” I said.
“Lew!”
“They can’t find him here. They’ll have to find him some place else. We’ll move him.”
She turned to me. Her face wore the same expression of hope mingled with incredulous gratitude.
‘Move him? But how can we possibly move him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we will because we’ve got to. And when you’ve got to do anything, you do it.”
Family Skeletons Page 4