Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  Because thinking that way was quite intolerable, I managed to censor it out. The song had been a coincidence. Of course. Obviously it had been merely the standard number with which he opened his act. That was it. It had to be.

  Virginia was standing watching me, waiting—for what? For me to say something?

  I said, “He gave it to you?”

  “Yes. And it’s gone. Don’t you see? If he’d noticed it lying there by the phone! It’s valuable. If he’d picked it up! And he wouldn’t think twice about it. We never searched his pockets. Lew, how could we have been such fools?”

  I remembered then, and this new, totally unanticipated blow pushed everything else out of my mind. Of course he’d taken her cigarette-case. When I felt in his pocket for the wallet, I had touched the hard edge of a cigarette-case. I had felt it again when I’d put the wallet back.

  So there was to be no end. You struggled, you hid this, you destroyed that, you took impossible chances and somehow you pulled them off—and then you overlooked something as screamingly obvious as searching the body.

  I said, “There was a case in his pocket. I didn’t look at it, but it was there.”

  “My God!” she said again.

  I could feel a dry, crawling sensation on the surface of my skin. I started like an automaton towards the hall.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get it.”

  “Back down to Wall Street again?”

  “It’s yours, isn’t it? If the police find it in his pocket …”

  “But, Lew.” She was running after me. “Lew, it’s hours ago. The police have almost certainly discovered him by now.”

  “If they have, they have. But I’ve got to try.”

  She was clinging to my arm.

  “No, Lew. Think. How can you do it? Take the car out again? Not possibly. Get a taxi? When it comes out in the papers, do you think the driver wouldn’t remember that he took a fare down there in the middle of the night?”

  Vaguely her words penetrated the denseness of my exhaustion. The car? No. A taxi? No. The subway? I had a vision of myself emerging alone from the deserted subway station, walking along the deserted streets in that cavernous skyscraper solitude. I saw myself moving up the alley, heard the sound of police sirens screaming behind me. But if I didn’t go, if I gave up now, mightn’t that invalidate everything we’d fought so hard to establish?

  “Lew, listen to me. Please listen. He gave it to me in Paris. I only kept it all this time because it was the one valuable thing I owned to fall back on. God knows where he got it from. Probably it was stolen. How can they trace it? They may not even get around to finding out I was married to him. But even if they do, I can say I gave it back to him when I left him. I can say I haven’t seen it for years. Please, Lew. Nobody will know. You must see. It’s safer to leave it, I swear. There’s much less risk.”

  I heard her voice. I even realised its logic. A cigarette-case given to her in Paris by a crook who’d almost certainly stolen it? Q. to V.? All right. What did that prove? Trust then to luck? Don’t take the final and most precarious gamble? Yes, that was the better way.

  Better? Or easier? Never mind. Never mind now.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll leave it. We’ll take the chance …”

  Later, as we lay together in the narrow bed, our arms around each other, against all reason and beyond my exhaustion, peace of mind came to me. Virginia was right. The cigarette-case didn’t matter. But it wasn’t just that. Above all, there was the knowledge that I had been able to cling on to my belief in her innocence. In the gruelling challenge which had been thrust on me, I had betrayed neither myself nor my love.

  Virginia was already asleep. Her head was resting on my shoulder. Her breathing came softly, almost contentedly. Yes. it would be all right. Maybe, in spite of the cigarette-case, in spite of all that shrouded, unknown past of hers that was, in a way, my greatest enemy, the police would never get on to us at all. Maybe, just maybe, we’d had our share of horror and my life, the life which had nothing to do with the Denhams, had been saved.

  In the last flicker of consciousness, I kissed my wife’s cheek. We’d been tested in the furnace and we hadn’t cracked …

  The morning seemed almost ordinary. There was nothing in the papers. At breakfast we went over and over again our version of how we had spent the night before, but somehow there was no sense of urgency about it. It seemed as overscrupulous as reading the disaster instructions on an ocean liner. I went to the office feeling hardly tired at all.

  It was eleven-thirty when Virginia telephoned.

  In a tight little voice, she said, “Lew, the police just called.”

  The instant my illusion of safety was challenged I knew that it had no substance at all.

  “It was a Lieutenant Trant from Homicide. And, Lew, it’s you he wants to see.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I told him your office address. He said he’d be there in half an hour. Lew, what is it? What can have happened?”

  PART THREE

  Mary Lindsay came into the office.

  “There’s a Lieutenant Trant from Police Headquarters to see you.”

  Quite unreasonably, the look of concern on her face annoyed me.

  “Not to arrest me, I hope.”

  That just slipped out. It was exactly the corny sort of boss-secretary bit which Mary and I had never gone in for. Was I already behaving self-consciously?

  “Then shall I send him in?”

  “Right away.”

  I lit a cigarette, testing my hand. It was steady enough, though God knew why. Every second that had passed since Virginia’s call had been increasing the pressure of tension. How could this be happening so quickly? Surely not the cigarette-case. They couldn’t have traced its ownership yet, could they? And even if they had, it would be Virginia they’d be interviewing, not me. What could they want from me? Wildly—not believing myself at all—I thought: Perhaps it’s nothing at all. Merely a coincidence. Why not? Coincidences happen, don’t they?

  Mary was there again.

  “Lieutenant Trant.”

  A man was walking into the office. He was tall and quite young, with a face which made no immediate impact. He didn’t look like a policeman at all. That was my first impression. Neither his clothes nor his way of moving, nor the almost affected casualness of his manner was right. He could have been—what? A Madison Avenue hot-shot? Not quite. A fashionable young Episcopalian minister? That was more like it. A top-brass churchman in charge of upper-crust souls who might, at that very moment, have been coming, impeccably showered, from a brisk set of squash with Hugo at the Club.

  “Good morning, Mr. Denham. I’m Lieutenant Trant from Homicide. I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”

  “Not at all, Lieutenant,” I said. “Sit down.”

  He took off his coat, put it on a chair and seated himself across the desk from me.

  I said, “Well, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?”

  He sat looking at me. The very indefiniteness of his features—were his eyes blue or grey?—was oddly intimidating. He was smiling, but the smile, revealing very white teeth, suggested neither friendliness nor hostility. It was merely a smile, conveying whatever I chose to make it convey.

  “Just a few questions, Mr. Denham. I think we should be able to clear this up fairly easily.”

  If that remark was meant to put me at my ease, it failed.

  “Mind if I smoke, Mr. Denham?”

  “Of course not.”

  As his hand moved to his pocket I had the chilling notion that he was going to produce Virginia’s case. He didn’t. He merely took out a packet and lit a cigarette.

  “Mr. Denham, I believe I’m right in saying you know a night-club called the Club Marocain?”

  There it was. In spite of all the painstaking preparations I’d made for this moment, I felt completely unarmed. Should I know the Club Marocain? Or shouldn’t I? Know it, of course. Whatever else he had
up his sleeve he’d obviously found some connection between me and the club.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know the Club Marocain. But what’s the Club Marocain got to do with me?”

  Wasn’t that right? Wasn’t it the sort of question that someone ignorant of his mission would make? That, I was beginning to see, was the crippling difficulty of having something to conceal. You forgot your normal reactions.

  In a voice of excessive politeness, the lieutenant was saying, “I apologise, Mr. Denham, if I sound a little mysterious. But I’m sure you’ll realise in due course that I am wasting neither your time nor mine.” He paused. “It’s true, isn’t it, that you were at the Club Marocain two nights ago?”

  Before I had a chance to answer, the blank smile came. “That’s really an unnecessary question because I’ve already checked on the reservations. A table for two was ordered by a Mr. Lewis Denham and picked up at a quarter to twelve. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me who you went there with?”

  “Of course. I went with my wife.”

  “Your wife?” One of the eyebrows made a faint upward curve. “There seems to be a little confusion here, Mr. Denham. While I was waiting I had a casual chat with your secretary. She happened to mention that you were a widower.”

  Goddamn it, I thought. That goes to show.

  “It’s not as confusing as it sounds,” I said. “Virginia and I were married in Mexico last week. I haven’t made the news public yet because I wanted to let my family be the first to know.”

  “I see,” said Lieuteant Trant. He was gazing now not at me but at a large glass ashtray on the desk in front of him. It gave the ashtray an importance which was almost hypnotic. “Then I assume that the lady with the British accent who answered the phone at your apartment was your new wife, Virginia?”

  Had it been my imagination or had he very slightly stressed the word “Virginia”? The cigarette-case. To V. from Q. Had it been a blunder mentioning her name at all?

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, well, I should be congratulating you, shouldn’t I?” He did look at me then. The ambiguous eyes were faintly quizzical. “Now, Mr. Denham, I’d be grateful if you’d tell me just what purpose you and your wife had in going to the Club Marocain?”

  “Purpose?” I said. “What purpose does anyone have in going to a night-club?”

  “You just went there to be entertained?”

  “Of course.”

  “I see,” said Lieutenant Trant and he paused again as if I’d said something very important which had to be pondered. All this, I imagined, was part of his technique. I found it both intimidating and annoying. “However, it’s true, isn’t it, that a short time after you’d arrived, you were joined by two other people, an older woman and a younger man?”

  He must have talked to the waiter who served us. Even as tiny a deduction as that steadied me. At least I knew something.

  “Yes,” I said, “although I wouldn’t say they joined us. They just happened to sit at the next table and they happened to be friends of mine.”

  “You’d made no previous arrangement to meet them there?”

  “None whatever.”

  “And I imagine you’d have no objection to giving me their names? Merely to corroborate all this, of course.

  Once again the need to appear a normal, innocent citizen presented excruciating problems. Wasn’t this oblique approach, which veiled his intentions in a mist, completely illegitimate? Could the police interrogate private individuals without letting them know what they were being interrogated about? Didn’t I, at this point, have to register exasperation, even belligerence?

  As if he had uncannily read my thoughts, he said, “I apologise once again, Mr. Denham. I know how odd all this must seem to you and I’m sure you realise you’re under no obligation to co-operate whatsoever. I’m only hoping that you’ll be patient with me for just a little while longer.”

  There was the smile again—the white, disarming smile which I was beginning to distrust. What could I do to pretend to be disarmed?

  I said, “Naturally I’m curious to know what it’s all about, but if you don’t want to tell me, that’s perfectly all right.”

  “I’m extremely grateful, Mr. Denham. Then will you be good enough to give me the names of your friends at the next table?”

  “Gladly. The woman was Mrs. Sheila Potter, my former wife’s stepmother. The young man was a writer called Ray Callender.”

  He took out a notebook. It was an old, beat-up notebook. It didn’t at all go with his elegance.

  “And the addresses, Mr. Denham?”

  I gave him Sheila’s address. He wrote it in the book and put the book back in his pocket.

  “Now, Mr. Denham, wasn’t there someone else who at least for a brief period of time visited your table?”

  I’d known for several seconds that this was bound to come. All that had gone before had been his devious method of leading up to this moment. He’d talked to the waiter. Remember that.

  “Someone else?” Did my voice sound all right? “No, I don’t think there was anyone else.”

  “No one at all? No one who perhaps just paused a moment to talk to you?”

  “No, Lieutenant, I’m almost certain there wasn’t anyone. That is, you wouldn’t mean the pianist, would you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Denham. I would mean the pianist.”

  “A big man with reddish hair?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then all this is something to do with the pianist at the Club Marocain?”

  “Yes, Mr. Denham.”

  It was amazing, I thought, how well I could do it now. “Then I’m sorry, Lieutenant, you’ve come to the wrong person. I’d never seen him before in my life.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. If you want to find out anything about him, Mrs. Potter’s the one to talk to. Not that she’d be much help either. He came over and introduced himself to her and she remembered having seen him playing at the Beach Club in St. John, Antigua.”

  “And you had nothing to do with him at all?”

  “Listen, Lieutenant, isn’t this getting a little monotonous?”

  “Nothing whatsoever?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nor your wife either?”

  Watch it. “My wife? Now I come to think of it, she wasn’t even at the table when he came over. He talked to Sheila Potter for two minutes. No more, just passing the time of day. I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but that patience you’re so fond of talking about isn’t going to last for ever. What the hell is all this about?”

  “All right, Mr. Denham. I’ll tell you what all this is about.” His eyes were watching me with the flat, unwinking intentness of a cat. “The pianist at the Club Marocain—whose name was Quentin Olsen—was murdered last night.”

  “Murdered!”

  “He was found just after two A.M. in an alleyway downtown without an overcoat on. It was obvious he hadn’t been killed there. The body had been brought from somewhere else and dumped. He had been shot, Mr. Denham, two times.”

  I returned his stare, hoping that my dissembling blandness was still as effective as his.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Lieutenant. But what possible connection could this have with me?”

  I had absolutely no idea what was going to come. Not the cigarette-case. I was almost sure of that now. If he did have it, he wasn’t connecting it with me. Then what? It was the total ignorance of the direction from which the blow would strike that made it so hard.

  Casually—with the same studied nonchalance which had struck me from the first moment when he’d come into the room—Lieutenant Trant put his hand in his pocket and brought out an envelope. He opened the envelope. He was holding out to me a small, irregular piece of paper torn, it seemed, from the edge of a tabloid.

  “Mr. Denham, since you say you only met Quentin Olsen once for a few moments at the club and since you say you had no dealings with him whatsoever, perhaps you can explain why this was i
n his breast pocket.”

  I took the piece of paper. Written on it in large clumsy print were my address and my telephone number.

  Of all my conflicting emotions, it was rage at my failure to have searched the body that predominated. I had only the vaguest notion of why Olsen should have my address in his pocket. But now, thanks to that one fatal slip on my part, everything that Virginia and I had done could go for nothing, for our plan had been based on the assumption that there would be nothing—not even the cigarette-case—to connect us immediately and directly with the murder. So long as that had been true, the fact that Virginia had been Olsen’s wife had represented only a vague and remote threat. Now all that was changed. Because of this little bit of paper, we were already at the head of Trant’s list of suspects. Unless I could make him lose interest in us—and how could I possibly do that?—wasn’t he bound to investigate until eventually he unearthed the marriage in Paris or—much easier—the Mexican divorce? Once he’d found out about either of them and about Olsen’s career as a blackmailing crook, Virginia’s position would be almost as hopeless as if we’d called the police in the first place. There would be nothing but our elaborate and perilous alibi to shield her.

  Fighting this new anxiety, I forced on myself an even greater control. I handed the piece of paper back to him.

  “Well, Lieutenant, I understand now.”

  “Understand—what?”

  “Why you’ve been questioning me.”

  “I was hoping you meant you understood what your address was doing in his pocket.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but as to that I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Dimly I realized that was the first actual lie I had told, starting me irrevocably on a path from which there could be no turning back. The lieutenant was restoring the piece of paper to the envelope with nerve-racking caution.

  “I have an idea, Mr. Denham.”

  “I’d be glad to hear it.”

  “When he stopped at the table to talk to Mrs. Potter, did she introduce you?”

  “As a matter of fact, she did.”