Copyright © 1959 by Patrick Quentin

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Shadow of Guilt

ONE

It was about three in the afternoon when my wife called me at the office to say she had last-minute seats for some benefit at the Met that night. She’d invited the Rysons.

“I know Thursday’s your late day, dear. But I do hope you can manage it.”

I knew I’d have to go, but as I promised to get home early, the all-too-familiar depression engulfed me. Another Thursday had to be sacrificed; once again I’d been done out of the few precious hours alone with Eve which now were the only things that got me through the week.

Eve came in soon with some letters for me to sign, and I told her. She didn’t make any fuss, of course. She was far more patient than I about the whole wretched situation. She had tried even harder than I to keep us from falling in love and, now that we were stuck with it, it was she who insisted that we behave as decently as we could until the time when I could ask Connie for the divorce without causing too much havoc for everybody.

“Oh, well,” she said, “it can’t be helped, can it? It’s not going to be much longer anyway. As soon as Ala’s married…”

She broke off with a resigned little shrug. We had laid it down as an unalterable law never to kiss in the office. But as I looked across the desk at her quiet, ordinary face, which had become as essential to me as air, the need to touch her was suddenly far stronger than any admirable intentions. I went to her and took her in my arms.

“Baby, if you knew how it gets me down, lying, covering up, going home to her every night, acting like the model husband and father…”

“I know,” she said. “Of course I know. But it’s the lesser of the evils. Oh, George darling…”

She too gave up her admirable intentions then, clinging to me, kissing me, managing, as always, to make it bearable again.

The phone rang. It was Lew Parker, my boss at Consolidated Carbide. He wanted me in the Board room. I went…

When I got home to the house on Sixty-Fourth Street, I found my wife sitting in her slip in front of the dressing table in our huge bedroom. Everything in the house was far too big. It had belonged to Connie’s father, who had built up the vast Corliss coal by-products combine, and, when he died seven years before, we moved in, I had wanted no part of it. Although I’d broken away from being just a courtesy son-in-law in the Corliss empire and had started to make it on my own at Consolidated, it was humiliating to me to live in an establishment which was way beyond my income. But Connie hadn’t seen it that way.

“Dad wanted us to take it over, dear. And after all, it seems rather absurd not to when we can so easily afford it.”

She had said “we,” of course. Connie was great on tact.

As I walked in, my wife raised her eyes to the mirror behind the army of cosmetic jars and bottles. She was looking wonderful. Her cool, clean-boned face never aged. At thirty-five, she could have been twenty-seven. She was far more beautiful than Eve could ever be.

“Hello, dear. I do hope this isn’t a bore. We’re meeting Mal and Vivien at the Met. Ala’s out with Chuck but they’re dropping in afterwards. It’s all turned into a sort of thing for the wedding.”

Her face lit up the way it invariably did when she mentioned Ala’s wedding. Chuck Ryson was the son of her beloved older sister who had died in a mental institution when Chuck was a baby, and all her clannish Corliss love was centered on Chuck and his father, Mal. Almost since the first day after my brother and his wife had been killed in a plane crash and my niece had come into our family as a baffled, rebellious little brat of ten, Ala’s wedding to Chuck had been Connie’s passionately pursued goal. And, being Connie, of course she’d pulled it off. My wife was the most dazzlingly competent woman I’d ever met.

“George dear, I’m wearing Mother’s pearl necklace. What else should I slap on? You know Vivien; she’ll be dressed to the teeth.”

“What’s wrong with the baroque pearl bracelet?” I said indifferently. I’d had it made for her at Cartier’s seven years before for our fifth wedding anniversary.

“The baroque pearls?” she said. “You think so? Well, maybe. I’ll figure out something.”

What she finally figured out was a thick armband of big matching pearls, which, like the necklace, was another Corliss heirloom.

It was in Sherry’s Bar, during the first intermission at the Met, that I noticed the young man. Connie and I and the Rysons were having drinks, Mal looking as elaborately unostentatious as only a bigshot banker can manage to look, Vivien blindingly chic in some of the Dior and diamonds which had been cascading her way ever since the long-widowered Mal had discovered her the year before as an obscure Hollywood starlet in some Toronto resort hotel. It was because I was bored and restless that I noticed the young man who seemed somehow quite different from the typical benefit audience around him. He was unusually good-looking, with very black hair, black eyes and blunt black eyebrows emphasizing the ruggedness of a face which might otherwise have been a little too movie-actorish. But it wasn’t his looks that gave him his individual quality. I was trying to figure out what it was—intelligence? animal vitality?—when he caught my eye and smiled. Then he started toward us, and I realized that the smile wasn’t for me, it was for Connie.

“Hello,” he said. “This rather spoils my little gesture. Tomorrow morning you’re going to receive a bouquet of yellow roses from a forgotten admirer. I got a raise today after only a month.”

My wife was looking rather confused. Then, to my astonishment, her face sprang alive with pleasure. I say “astonishment” because I’d never in all the years of our marriage seen Connie show anything but a vague, regal courtesy to young men of any description. On all levels she was Caesar’s wife. That was one of the many reasons why the break was going to be so difficult.

“Well, that is good news,” she said. “Mr. Saxby, I believe you know Mr. Ryson. This is his wife and this is my husband.”

The buzzer buzzed then and we broke up, but in the second interval there was Mr. Saxby again. While we chatted, he watched Connie with unabashed admiration, and Connie responded with an exaggerated vivacity which for her was almost coquettish.

She said, “If you’re not doing anything, Mr. Saxby, why not come back to us for a drink afterwards? You know where we live, don’t you?”

“I’d love to,” said Mr. Saxby, “but does it have to be Mr. Saxby? I thought we were Don and Connie.”

A faint flush came into Connie’s cheeks. “Fine, Don.”

As we went back to our seats, I said, “And who pray is Mr. Saxby, or should I say Don?”

Connie shrugged her normal remote shrug. “Oh, just a young man I was able to get a job for at the Ellerman Galleries. Mr. Ellerman’s on one of my art committees. I arranged an interview.”

“But where did you meet him?”

“Where was it? Oh, yes, at some private view. He’s a Canadian artist and it turned out he’d met Mal on one of Mal’s Toronto trips. He hasn’t been in New York long. I think he may amuse you. He’s very intelligent.”

“He’s very attractive, too,” I said.

“Yes.” Connie shot me a quick glance out of the corner of her eye. “He is attractive, isn’t he?”

As we settled into our seats and Verdi started again, it came to me with a faint shock of surprise that although I slept in the same room with her every night, I had only the haziest notion now of what my wife did with herself during the day.

Then the nag of being without Eve returned, obliterating everything else. What was she doing? Nothing, of course. Just sitting in her little apartment, resigned to the situation the way I would never be resigned, worrying about me, hoping I was being nice to Connie.

My wife was in the seat next to me. Her hand touched mine by accident. Very quickly, she drew it away.

Mr. Saxby was a huge success at Sixty-Fourth Street. He managed to charm us all, and Connie in particular was positively blossoming by the time Ala and Chuck arrived.

Chuck Ryson was a good-looking kid who had inherited all his father’s virtues and none, it seemed, of his mother’s instability. He was doing fine in his father’s bank and had been doggedly in love with Ala since his freshman days. He was as sound a potential son-in-law as any parent could hope for, but that didn’t prevent me from finding him rather a bore.

“Hi, George,” he said. “Can you imagine? They’re sending me to Chicago for two weeks on Monday. How can they do that to a guy who’s being married in less than a month?” I started to say something appropriate, but inevitably he turned away to glance across the room at Ala. My niece had become so pretty these days it was hard for anyone to keep their eyes off her. She’d found Don Saxby and was sitting on the floor with him beside Connie’s chair.

The moment she saw us looking at her she waved us over. “Chuck, you’ve got to meet this perfectly wonderful man. He knows all the big jazz performers and he’s going to a party for Spike Tankerville next Tuesday. Imagine. The greatest trumpeter since Satchmo. There’s going to be a jam session.” Don Saxby’s handsome, indulgent smile moved from Ala to me. “Spike’s an old friend from Toronto, Mr. Hadley. Maybe since Ala’s such a jazz fan, she’d like to come along.”

“You mean it?” Ala jumped up. “Honestly? How wonderful. And Chuck’s off to Chicago, too. I was planning to die of boredom.”

Her face was radiant, but at that moment Connie got up, too. She had on what Ala called her boss-lady look. “It’s very kind of you, Don,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s quite the right sort of thing for Ala.”

I might have known that would happen. For several years now there had been a constant conflict between Ala’s reckless Hadley exuberance and Connie’s rigid Corliss standards of what was and wasn’t suitable for a “well-brought-up” young girl. But as I noticed the faint, almost unattractive pinkness under my wife’s cheekbones, I wasn’t at all sure this was merely another manifestation of her mother-knows-best routine. I felt surprised and exasperated. Was she, like a woman in a “sophisticated” movie, scared that Ala was going to grab her young admirer away from her?

Ala was glaring at her. Then she swung around to Chuck. “Chuck doesn’t mind, do you, Chuck? You’re not so square as to imagine meeting Spike Tankerville’s going to corrupt my youth or something?”

Chuck looked very embarrassed. “Gee, Ala, of course not, but if Connie objects…”

“I’m afraid she does object,” said Connie. “Very definitely. So let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

That broke up the party. Ala marched out of the room leaving behind her an embarrassed silence, and in a few moments they had all gone, and Connie and I were alone together in the huge, feudal Corliss living room.

Connie said, “Well, dear, shall we go on up?”

As usual, whenever I got to be alone with her, I seemed suddenly to feel that neither of us existed. I said, “I guess I’ll have a nightcap first,” and after she’d gone I made myself the drink and sat with the old familiar mixture of emotions—boredom, guilt, and my goading need for Eve. In a few moments Ala came in. She hesitated, hovering by the door, and I could tell she felt as awkward as I. In the past we’d been indissoluble allies, but recently we’d seemed to have lost track of each other.

“George, I’m so sorry I made a fuss. Sometimes, though, I feel if she doesn’t stop bullying me I’ll go out of my mind.”

Impulsively she sat down on the arm of my chair. “What’s the matter with her, anyway? I’m marrying Chuck, aren’t I? I’m doing all the right things. Why does she treat me as if I was a juvenile delinquent? Oh, George dear, I’m mad to go to that party. Couldn’t you fix it with her? Please!”

As her hand moved, shamelessly coaxing, over my hair, I remembered the blossoming look on my wife’s face when Don Saxby had been sitting at her feet, and along with the desire to make Ala happy came a perverse impulse to punish Connie for doing me out of my few priceless hours with Eve.

“I’ll fix it,” I said.

“Oh, George, you are an angel.”

Ala kissed me enthusiastically and was off in a cloud of white taffeta. I turned out the lights and went upstairs to my wife.

Connie was in bed. She’d left the reading light on, and her face under the gleamingly brushed hair looked pale and young. As I took off my jacket, I felt a great disinclination to start a scene but I forced myself to speak.

“I told Ala she could go to that party.”

My wife sat up. She was wearing a sexy black nightgown. It was all wrong for a Corliss. “Oh, George.” Her voice was tight with exasperation. “Won’t you ever learn I’m not an ogre? When I keep her from doing something there’s always a reason.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed and started to take off a shoe. “For heaven’s sake, she’s nineteen. She’ll be married in a month. What possible harm can it do?”

“For one thing there’s Mr. Saxby. I hardly know him.”

“Hardly know him?” I felt the jump of irritation. “When you got him a job? When you appear to have been seeing him day in day out for months?”

“But that isn’t true. I helped him because I always try to help people when I can. But I’ve only seen him three or four times.”

“It didn’t look that way to me. It looked as if you had your head in a gas oven over him.”

Suddenly it had all gone wrong. We weren’t arguing about Ala any more. We had slid onto far more unfamiliar and dangerous ground.

For a moment she sat looking at me. Then in the tight voice she said, “Would it make any difference to you if I did have my head in a gas oven about Mr. Saxby?”

“Well—do you?”

Her hands caught at the edge of the sheets. “You hated the whole evening, didn’t you?”

“Please, for pity’s sake…”

“All you wanted was to be back sitting there in your office reading reports. I saw the whole evening going to pieces. So when Mr. Saxby showed up, I—I thought he might help.”

“Help? Help—how?”

“My God, just by being there. By being somebody new.” Her voice came as a cry from the heart. “What is it, George? I try. You can’t accuse me of not trying. What’s happened to us? I don’t understand.”

I realized I could use that moment as a springboard to talk about incompatibility and lay the groundwork for the divorce. But I knew in the same instant that I couldn’t go through with it. It wasn’t just the feeling of guilt. It wasn’t even cowardice. Almost for the first time in years she’d given me a glimpse of what went on inside and with it a crippling realization of the vacuum of loneliness into which, in spite of all her virtues, efficiencies and good intentions, she had managed to drift. Whether she knew it or not, she was as anchorless as I had been before I met Eve—and she had no one.

I made myself go over to her, and as I sat down on the edge of her bed, an utterly unwelcome memory came of how it had used to feel years ago to be sitting on her bed; the excitement, the pride, the—what? The triumphant astonishment that I, just a hick New England junior-junior executive in the Corliss combine, had been looked upon with favor by the boss’s beautiful daughter?

At that time, she and everything surrounding her had all seemed a dazzle of wonder to me—a dazzle which I had naively, youthfully, misinterpreted as love?

“Connie ...” I put my arms around her and kissed her, trying not to think of Eve. For a moment she let me hold her, then she drew almost briskly away.

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what got into me. It’s terribly late, dear. We’d better get some sleep.” Her hand was pushing me gently off the bed. “And, George, it’s all right about Ala. I’ll tell her in the morning.”

I hated her capitulation to be as total as that. “But if you really think…”

“No, it’ll be all right. I guess I’m too strict with her sometimes. Good night, George.”

Next morning at breakfast a huge box of yellow roses arrived for my wife. When I left for the office, she was arranging them with expert efficiency in a large white vase.

TWO

Ala went to the party. Connie was all graciousness about it but then spoiled everything by waiting up for her and letting me know next morning that she hadn’t got back until after three. “And almost drunk,” she said. Since anyone under twenty who took more than one Dubonnet was “drunk” to Connie, I paid little attention. Besides, everything about my life at Sixty-Fourth Street had become blurred into unreality. All I lived for was the thought of Thursday, and finally it arrived. Around six, after Eve had already left the office, I walked up Madison and across town in the Forties to her little apartment between Lexington and Third.

Eve lived in the shabbiest of brownstones, but she didn’t give a damn about luxury. After a poverty-stricken California childhood, shackled by ailing parents and a delinquent kid brother, followed by an even drearier marriage to a peevish invalid in Bakersfield who had lingered on for four grueling years, it was still an enormous thrill for her to be independent. Oliver Lord, her husband, had left her twenty-five thousand dollars insurance money, and with that safely in the bank and her salary from Consolidated she felt secure, which was all that mattered to her. The difference between her way of life and the Corliss one was as extreme as anything could be. Maybe that was one of the many reasons why, when I found her, I knew I had finally found myself.

Usually, for reasons of discretion, we’d eat a makeshift supper in her little apartment, but that night both of us were seized with a feeling of recklessness and Eve suggested we should go around the comer to a French restaurant. I was feeling an almost drunken exhilaration, and by the time we’d got to coffee a huge contentment had spread through me. As soon as Ala was married, I could ask for the divorce. It would be a tough time for all of us, but it would work. Nothing could stop it now. Improbably, at thirty-seven I had found my love—simple love for a simple woman who had nothing to offer but the astounding fact of herself.

Her hand, very small and pretty, was lying on the table. I put my own hand on it.

“Where shall we go for the honeymoon?” I said.

I knew I was breaking every rule; we were both superstitious about tempting providence. But I didn’t care, and as Eve turned quickly to me, her face warming with her wonderful, unexpected smile, I knew she didn’t care either.

“What’s your mood?” I said. “Europe? Mexico? What about the Caribbean? Jamaica? Tobago?”

“Tobago!” As she repeated the word, Eve’s eyes were sparkling as if Tobago were the Elysian Fields. She looked about two years old. Our faces were almost touching. I leaned toward her and kissed her.

That was when I heard a voice saying, “Good evening, Mr. Hadley.”

For a split second I froze. Then I sprang away from Eve. Don Saxby was standing in front of the table.

Of all the people in the world! I thought. But then I saw that his smile didn’t have a trace of an I’ve-caught-you-out smirk. It was a friendly, even diffident smile.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I was sitting across the room. I wouldn’t have come over, but—well, there’s something I think you ought to know. Ala’ll be here any minute. We’ve got a dinner date.”

I glanced at Eve. I could tell she was wishing the floor would yawn and engulf her.

“Mr. Saxby—er—Don,” I said, “this is Mrs. Lord. She works at my office. I mean, this is most embarrassing. It isn’t… well, I think I ought to explain…”

“Please don’t explain.” Don Saxby shifted his smile from Eve to me. “I’m extremely uninterested in other people’s business. Live and let live. That’s an old Saskatchewan proverb.” As he spoke, Ala came in and at once saw all three of us. She hesitated, obviously surprised, then she hurried toward us.

“Does she know?” asked Don Saxby.

“No,” I said. “For God’s sake, no.”

“Okay.”

Ala reached the table then.

“Hi,” I said. “Mrs. Lord and I have been getting a bite to eat after our labors at the office.”

Ala turned to Don Saxby. “Oh, dear, what a catastrophe. We’ve been caught out.” She looked at me dubiously. “George, you’re not going to tell Connie, are you?”

“I don’t get it,” Saxby said. “What’s a catastrophe and what’s Connie got to do with it?”

Ala gave an exaggerated shrug. “There was a ghastly scene after the party on Tuesday. I’m not supposed to see you again. If you knew the complications! I had to tell Connie I was going out with Rosemary Clark. Oh, dear…”

She was still watching me, her young face half apprehensive, half coaxing. Don Saxby was watching me, too. The smile in his eyes was as friendly as ever.

He said, “I don’t think Mr. Hadley’s going to rat on you, are you, Mr. Hadley?”

His eyes moved from mine after a second, but the second was long enough for me to realize that he was indicating not a threat, which he might well have done, but merely a neutrality pact. It was a plea I could hardly reject.

“Of course I’m not going to rat,” I said. “In fact, let’s have a drink and a little togetherness.”

We ordered drinks, relaxed and talked. Gradually I began to realize something which made the intricate situation more intricate. Ala was crazy about Don Saxby, and I was almost sure he was fascinated with her. He was mature enough, of course, to be able to play it cool, but Ala was far too young to hide anything. It was in her eyes, her voice, even in the line of her neck as she turned to talk to him. She had never looked even remotely like this with Chuck Ryson.

My God, I thought, where do we go from here?

As though on cue Don Saxby said, “It’s too bad Connie’s suddenly turned against me. I can’t really see why she should, but it’s loused up my plan.” He turned to Ala. “Remember that couple you met at the party—Tom and Marian Green? They were very taken with you. They’re giving a big party up at their place in Stockbridge this weekend. They called this morning and wanted to know if I wouldn’t bring you up tomorrow. Now I guess I’ll have to put them off.”

Ala looked at him, stricken. Then she turned to me. “Oh, George, couldn’t I go?”

“Hardly, if Connie objects to me,” Saxby said.

“But George, the Greens, they’re frightfully rich and respectable, with a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the Connie things. I could tell her I was going out to Westport with Rosemary. Her parents are still in California. Rosemary wouldn’t tell. Connie would never know. Oh, George…”

As I looked at her, I realized that in the tangle of my own problems I’d never really come to grips with the great Ryson wedding, never really faced the fact that Ala was only nineteen, that she’d been pushed relentlessly for years toward an engagement which was resolving everything for Connie but perhaps was resolving nothing for her. What was Chuck to her, anyway, when she could look at Don Saxby like this? Just Connie’s choice? The good solid kid who’d worshiped her for years—the obvious future?

Saxby said, “I’d hate to do anything Connie wouldn’t like. She’s been wonderful to me.”

I looked at him, realizing that if he were a smooth operator he could so easily be forcing our hands, but he wasn’t trying at all. What’s more, Don Saxby wasn’t the point. He could have been Joe Doakes or Ted Jones or Sam Smith. I knew the idea of Ala going off to a week-end house party with a man, any man, would horrify Connie, but what the hell was wrong with it? What harm could it possibly do to give her a chance to find herself a little before Connie inexorably slammed the door of the wedding shut on her?

“Okay, Ala,” I said. “If you really want to go…”

THREE

I got back to Sixty-Fourth Street just before eleven. Connie had gone to Carnegie Hall with Milly Taylor, one of her committee secretaries who adored her. They arrived soon after me, Connie very grand and formal, Miss Taylor looking dowdy and, as always, a little too grateful.

“Hello, dear.” Connie crossed to my chair and bent to kiss me. An instinct, born of frayed nerves, warned me she was going to run her hand across my hair, one of her few demonstrative gestures. I was right. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Have you been home for hours?”

“Not too long,” I said.

“I do hope you’re not exhausted. Ala’s out with Rosemary Clark. Thank God she’s got at least one sensible friend. Darling, do fix Milly a nightcap.”

I fixed Miss Taylor her nightcap. Miss Taylor enjoyed her nightcaps. She settled down to it, babbling as usual about how wonderful Connie was. Around midnight, Ala dashed in exuberantly. Soon, with a smoothness which impressed me, she said, “Oh, Connie, Rosemary wants me to go out to Westport with her tomorrow for the weekend. Is that all right?”

“Of course, dear,” said Connie.

Soon Miss Taylor rose to leave, and Connie went out with her into the hall. Instantly Ala swept over to me.

“George darling, come up in about five minutes. Please.” She ran out into the hall, calling, “Good night, Miss Taylor. Good night, Connie.”

Connie came back into the living room.

I said, “I’m beat. I think I’ll go up to bed.”

“All right, dear. I’ll just straighten up down here. I hate leaving a mess for Mary in the morning.”

I went upstairs and tapped on Ala’s door.

Ala was still in the untidy stage. Not only were her jazz records scattered around the floor of the room, but there were all sorts of discarded garments strewn over chairs and tables. The chaos reminded me of how young she was—how absurdly young to be married in a month.

“George.” She jumped up from the bed where she had been sitting next to a dreadful old wool elephant which I’d given her the first year she’d come to us. Her eyes were round and shining with the wonder of everything. “Oh, George, you do like him, don’t you?”

“Don Saxby?”

“He’s the most marvelous man I’ve ever met. George… I think I’m in love with him.”

Although I’d had every warning, I felt an unaccountable stirring of foreboding.

“How does he feel about you?”

“How can I tell? He knows I’m going to marry Chuck. He’d never, never say anything.” She came to me, putting her hands on my anus, her young face tragic. “George, what am I going to do?”

“About Chuck?”

“I never told you. I wanted to desperately but something seemed to have happened between us. I felt kind of shy with you. George… I’ve never been really sure about Chuck. Oh, I like him, of course I do. I think he’s good and kind and I know he’s crazy about me. But—well, it was Connie really.”

“Because she wants you to marry him so much?”

“It isn’t that. It’s just—well, this sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I felt I simply had to get away from her. I couldn’t stand being bullied any longer and I thought if I did what she wanted and married Chuck at least I’d be free. That’s really why I was doing it—to be free from her.”

I’d known, of course, that Ala chafed under Connie’s relentlessly Corliss guiding reins, but I’d never realized that she had felt as violently as this.

As I stood looking at her, feeling a mixture of tenderness and guilt, she said, “George, tell me. What am I going to do? Marrying Chuck if I don’t really love him—I mean, it’s rotten for him, too, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

“But how can I possibly break it to her—when she’s so crazy about Chuck—when all the wedding plans are arranged and everything? Oh, George, will you do it? Please, George, please. I can’t ... I simply can’t… I’m scared of her.” Scared of her! I thought of how Connie would feel if she’d heard that. Once again, when I was least able to cope with it, a corroding pity came for my wife. Poor Connie, poor admirable Connie plodding on, organizing everyone for his own good.

Ala was looking at me desperately. “Please, George, you’ve got to help me. It’s the most important moment in my life. It isn’t just Don. Maybe he doesn’t care a hoot for me. I’d be a fool to assume he does. But I couldn’t marry Chuck any more—at least not yet. Not until I know…”

“Listen,” I said, saying the only thing that seemed to be sayable, “don’t do anything now. Just let the weekend take its course… and, well, if you let Don know how you stand with Chuck, maybe it’ll all resolve itself. Then, when you come back and if you’re sure you don’t want to go through with the wedding right now ... I’ll explain to Connie.”

“Oh, George.” She hugged me. “I knew I could depend on you.”

Ala went off for the weekend the next day, ostensibly to Rosemary Clark’s. I felt a little uneasy about it, but there it was. Usually there were all sorts of social things to cope with over the weekend; boring enough but things that got Connie and me through somehow. But that weekend, with a disastrous sense of timing, Connie had decided it would be nice for us to have a little spell in which to relax together. All Friday evening she tried to be sweet and cozy. She merely succeeded in making me feel a suicidal hypocrite.

On Saturday morning, Lew Parker called. A Brazilian tycoon whom Consolidated had been wooing for their expansion program in South America was unexpectedly stopping off in New York the next day on his way to California. I handled most of the South American contacts; I’d even met this man on a business trip to Sao Paulo last year. Lew wanted me to pick him up at Idlewild at eleven, drive him to his hotel and bring him to the Parkers’ for lunch.

“I could send Bob Driscoll, George, but this is important and you’re the only one I can trust to give el Senhor the V.I.P. treatment. Hope you don’t mind working on a Sunday.”

“Of course not.”

“And don’t let Connie murder me. Send her my love.” Connie was completely understanding. She always made a point of putting my work first. We had a supposedly relaxed lunch together, and then, around three o’clock, she had a phone call from which she came back smiling delightedly.

“It was Chuck,” she said. “The poor boy, they’re keeping him an extra week in Chicago and he’s so lonely for Ala he’s flying back right now just for today and Sunday. He’ll have to take a night plane out again tomorrow. Isn’t that touching of him—to come all this way?”

I stood looking at her.

“He’ll be here around seven,” she said. “I’ll call Ala this minute. There’ll be plenty of time for her to get in from Westport.” She started for the phone in the hall.

I said, “Don’t call Westport, Connie.”

She turned. “Why ever not?”

“Because Ala isn’t there. Some people she met at that party invited her and Don Saxby out for the weekend in Massachusetts. Ala was crazy to go and she knew you’d put your foot down. So I said…”

I might have known she wouldn’t make a scene. If only Connie had ever got mad and yelled at me, the barrier between us might not have grown so impregnable. For a long moment she merely looked at me, her eyes very bright and scrutinizing.

“So!” she said.

“It’s hardly the end of the world,” I said. “I simply felt—”

“Since you’re so deep in this conspiracy,” she cut in, “presumably you know the name and address of these people in Massachusetts?”

“It’s Green,” I said. “Thomas Green—in Stockbridge. They’re all right, a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the okay things. But, Connie, she’ll be enjoying herself. She can see Chuck tomorrow. At least let her stay on tonight.”

“With people we don’t know? With Don Saxby? Are you quite out of your mind?”

She turned her back on me and marched out of the room into the hall. I sat down on the arm of a chair. I could hear her on the phone in the hall. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could hear her voice’s clipped, social timbre. Then there was silence, the clicking of her heels—and she was back again.

I had expected the same expression of outraged authority, but she looked shockingly different. Her face was falling to pieces.

“She’s not there,” she said. “They arrived last night, but they left today after lunch.”

“Then they’re probably headed home,” I said.

“Home? They told Mrs. Green they could only stay Friday night, that they had somewhere else to go. It was all planned. He’s taken her off alone.”

She came to me. She grabbed my arm. To me, it was absurdly overdone—Lady Gwendolyn learning of her daughter’s ruin.

“You fool!” she said. “Suddenly trying to play the understanding parent. Look what’s come of it. She’s gone away with him. Don’t you see? They’ve gone off together.”

FOUR

Whatever I was feeling, the exasperation was uppermost—an exasperation which overwhelmed any sense of responsibility for what had happened or any real worry. Connie was still clinging to my arm. I half dragged her over and made her sit down on the gold brocade couch.

“For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t you have any confidence in Ala’s good sense? Why shouldn’t she go off for a while alone with a man? He’s about the only interesting man you’ve ever let her meet. I know you love her, but she doesn’t understand. You’ve always ridden her so hard. She thinks… God knows what she thinks, but, because she was too scared to tell you about it all, she came to me, and thank heavens she did. You know she hasn’t run off with Don Saxby or anything melodramatic. Obviously they wanted a little time to be alone, to find out how they feel. Maybe Don’s the right man for her—he seems to be intelligent, honest and decent—or maybe it’s all just a flash in the pan. But whatever way it turns out, you wouldn’t want her to marry Chuck unless she’s absolutely sure, would you?”

My wife was sitting very straight on the couch, looking directly in front of her.

“Don Saxby—the right man!” she said. “A man she’s only known for a few days, a man who hadn’t even gotten around to looking for a job at twenty-eight, wandering down from Canada, playing around with being a painter. Your own niece, your adopted daughter—and you calmly hand her over to a man like that!”

I resented that dissociation of herself, that brushing off of Ala as “your own niece, your adopted daughter.”

“Don Saxby was perfectly good enough for you, it seemed,” I said.

She turned on me fiercely. “I can take care of myself.”

“So can Ala.”

“Ala?” She rose and stood in front of me, looking down at me. “If you knew…! If you had the faintest conception!”

That was the moment the Rysons chose to call. They came into the room, Mal in his black banker’s chesterfield, Vivien all mink and diamond earrings.

She glided over to Connie, kissing her effusively.

“Darling, we’re not going to take off our coats. We’ve just popped in for a second on our way to the Plowdens’. Chuck called. Isn’t it exciting? He said he was headed right here, so we thought maybe you’d invite us all over for a lovely family supper party.”

“There’s something else, too,” said Mal. “Something I felt I should come around and tell you in person. It’s about that Mr. Saxby.” Mal was studying Connie solemnly, as if she were a board meeting. “As you know, I was impressed with him when I met him in Canada. I was even more impressed the other night. I thought I might be able to use him in the bank so I wrote to my friend Reggie Fostwick in Toronto, purely as a routine check-up on the young man. The news I’ve received is rather disquieting.”

Connie had moved to the window. She was standing there, examining her nails, saying nothing.

“Reggie Fostwick’s wife happens to know a great deal about him. It seems she has some friends in Toronto who have an eighteen-year-old daughter. Last spring, apparently, Mr. Saxby wormed his way into the family as a sort of protégé of the wife and, before anyone realized what was going on, he and the daughter had eloped. Luckily, the parents managed to catch up with them in the nick of time, just as they were checking into a motel as man and wife. There was quite a scene. The girl was hysterical, wildly in love, and Saxby pretended to be very genuine and apologetic. But the father had summed him up. He told Saxby he could choose between their disowning the daughter or accepting a check for ten thousand dollars to leave the country immediately. He chose the ten thousand dollars.”

He paused. Connie was still examining her nails. Vivien’s silly, pretty laugh tinkled. “Isn’t it dramatic? Of course, we can’t be sure it’s true. Whatever happened, it was all hushed up and I’ve always thought that Mrs. Fostwick was a terrible old gossip.”

“Reggie Fostwick is a responsible citizen,” Mal said. “I can’t believe he’d pass on any information unless he was certain it was true. So, Connie, since in a way it was through me that you met him, I feel it’s my responsibility to…”

It went on from there, for hours, it seemed, but finally we got rid of the Rysons. Somehow we got out of the family supper party, too. I knew it didn’t make sense to hope that Mal had been fobbed off with some idle rumor. It had, almost certainly, to be true. I saw what a disastrous fool I’d made of myself, and I was half nuts with worry for Ala. I wanted to call the police instantly, but Connie, icily level-headed, vetoed it.

“And have the whole thing spread across the front pages?”

“What about Chuck? He’ll be here in a few hours. What are we going to tell him?”

“The truth,” said Connie. “What else can we tell him? I said on the phone that Ala was at Rosemary’s. He’ll find out that isn’t so, and he knows all her other friends. Besides, we can’t lie to him about something as important as this. Just now you were being so high-principled about letting her make up her own mind. What about Chuck? If he’s going to marry her, don’t you think he has a right to know the sort of thing she’s apt to do?”

“Apt to do!” I repeated. “She doesn’t exactly do it every day of the week, does she?”

“Well, she’s done it now, and it’s hardly something you can hold me responsible for. God knows, I’ve done everything I can to turn her into a…”

“Into a Corliss. A meek, priggish little consort for the Ryson heir apparent.”

We were glaring at each other. Then I remembered how little I’d bothered with Ala lately, how thoroughly I’d left her to be Connie’s problem.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

My wife’s eyes didn’t relent at all. “Being sorry isn’t going to do much good now, is it?”

Chuck arrived from the airport around seven. He came hurrying in with a brief case, all blond crew cut, grin and excitement. Seeing his blissful, scrubbed young face, and watching it change as Connie told him, made my feeling of guilt and idiocy almost unendurably powerful.

“But a guy like that…” Chuck looked as if he were going to throw up. “Connie, she loves me. I know Ala loves me. She couldn’t change in a week. If this bastard…” He spun around to me, looking as nearly contemptuous of me as he dared to look. “You let her go. You’ve got to help me find her.”

“How?” I said.

“Call these people in Massachusetts again.”

“But, Chuck dear, they don’t know.” Connie put her hand on his arm. “No, Chuck, there’s nothing we can do at the moment. Look, dear, you’d better just go home and wait. I wouldn’t tell your father or Vivien, though. We don’t want them worried unless we can’t help it.”

“God, no.”

“Just say Ala has a cold or something. Then when she comes, we’ll call.”

“But, Connie—please let me stay.”

“Dear, it isn’t likely she’ll be back tonight, is it? In any case, it’s better for me—for George and me to be alone when she does come, so we can get it all straightened out.”

“Then—then if you don’t call, I’ll be around first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, dear.” Connie kissed him. “Try not to worry too much. I’m sure it’s all going to be all right.”

When I awoke next morning, Connie’s bed was empty. It was just after nine. I shaved, showered and dressed and went downstairs. Neither Mary nor the cook, Connie’s doddering old Corliss retainers, worked Sundays. I found my wife in the dining room, sitting with a cup of coffee.

Without looking up at me, she said, “You’ve only got about an hour if you’re to be at Idlewild by eleven.”

I’d forgotten all about the Brazilian tycoon. “I’ll call Lew and get him to send Bob Driscoll.”

“Lew specially wants you to do it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then go. What good can you do hanging around here? How would you get out of it, anyway? Call Lew and tell him you’ve been encouraging Ala to take off for the weekend with a ... a...?” She put her cup down on its saucer. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to go on like this. I… just go. That’s all. Go to Idlewild. If you want coffee, there’s some in the kitchen. You can get me some more, too.”

She held out her cup. I took it and went out with it into the hall. As I started toward the kitchen, I heard a key in the lock of the front door behind me. Ala came in, carrying a little suitcase.

She looked maddeningly pretty, fresh and springlike as a hyacinth. I could have strangled her.

“You little fool,” I said. “What in God’s name have you been up to?”

“But George…”

“Chuck came back from Chicago. Connie was going to call Rosemary, so I had to tell her everything. About you and Chuck, too. Everything. She called the Greens. They told her you and Don had gone off on your own.”

Ala remained totally undisturbed. “So she knows. That’s fine. It makes it a lot easier.” She smiled at me. It was a smile of brilliant self-assurance, it was almost smug. “George, dear, you were wonderful. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have had the nerve. Now it’s all perfect. It’s just the most incredible, marvelous thing that ever happened. I told Don I wasn’t sure about marrying Chuck, the way you suggested, and right away he let me know how he felt. He loves me. He’s loved me from the first moment he set eyes on me. We’re going to be married. Oh, George, I’m so grateful to you…”

She threw herself exuberantly against me. Connie’s coffee cup got dislodged from its saucer and fell, smashing against the parquet floor. Immediately Connie came hurrying out of the dining room.

She stood in the doorway, looking diamond-hard and supercilious. Normally that expression on her face would have quailed Ala, but now, keeping close to me, with her hand on my arm, Ala returned Connie’s gaze with an equally deadly composure.

She said, “George tells me you know. So there’s nothing to argue about, is there? I’ve talked it all out with George and he understands. I’m not going to marry Chuck. I’m going to marry Don Saxby.”

I knew I deserved this, but it didn’t make it any easier.

Connie said, “Where were you and Mr. Saxby after you left the Greens’?”

Ala gazed straight back at her. “We—we just drove around talking and then we went to a motel. We registered as Mr. and Mrs. Don Saxby, but don’t worry. We stayed up all the time, talking. It was my idea, anyway. It seemed the best way to make you realize there was nothing you could do about it.” Ala still had her hand on my arm, still blissfully assuming we were allies, but her eyes never faltered from their challenge of Connie’s face. “Don feels as bad about it as I do. And we finally agreed what to do. We decided I should come back right away and explain it all to you and to Chuck. Don hopes just as much as I do that you’ll be sensible and let us be married in a civilized way. But I warn you. If you’re not, there’s nothing you can do. I’m of age. Besides, George is as much of a parent as you—more because he’s a real uncle—and he isn’t going to stand in our way…”

“Wait a minute—” I began.

But Connie interrupted. “Since you and George seem suddenly so close, has he had time to tell you, among other items, what your Uncle Mal found out about Mr. Saxby? Do you know that last spring Don Saxby tried to elope with the eighteen-year-old daughter of some rich people in Toronto?”

I’d expected that to throw Ala, but she merely laughed.

“That!” she said. “A neurotic little girl who was crazy about him, who tried to trick him into running off with her. You think Don didn’t tell me about that?”

“So he told you, did he?” said Connie. “Did he also tell you that he was only using the girl to get money out of the parents, that he let the father buy him off with ten thousand dollars?”

Ala glared defiantly. “That’s a lie.”

“Do you want to call your Uncle Mal? He’ll tell you whether it’s a lie or not.”

“Uncle Mal! You think I’d pay any attention to him or any of his stuffy old cronies, doddering around, spreading malicious gossip?”

“That’s enough, Ala,” I said. “It looks as if it’s true.”

She spun around to me, the defiance ready for me, too. “How do you know whether it’s true or not? Have you called these friends of Uncle Mal’s? Or the people with the crazy daughter?”

“No, I haven’t, but…”

“My God, you too!” She turned back to Connie, her eyes gleaming savagely. “I might have known you’d cook up something phony like this. You and the Rysons.”

“Ala!” I said. “Stop that.”

She turned back to me. “And you—you’re just as bad as Connie after all. If you knew how ridiculous you both look standing there like characters with a ruined daughter out of True Confessions. All right. I did my best. I was prepared to come back, to get down on my knees, if need be, and grovel over what a fool I’ve been about poor Chuck. But if this is the way you’re going to act, if you’re going to make up stinking lies about Don—okay, fine. I’ve had enough. God knows, I’ve been having enough for years.”

Without looking at either of us, she swept past us and up the stairs.

I started after her.

“No,” said Connie. “You’ve done enough damage as it is.” The front doorbell rang. I was so close to it that I jumped. I turned and opened the door.

Chuck came in. He looked haggard and disheveled, so utterly unlike the up-and-coming young banker that for a moment I hardly recognized him.

“She’s come back, hasn’t she?” he said. “I saw her. I’ve been waiting across the street in a doorway since six.”

FIVE

The way he looked reminded me of something. Then I remembered. His mother had looked at us like that, wild-eyed and remote, when Connie and I had visited her at the sanitarium just before one of her more violent attacks. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“She’s just gone upstairs,” said Connie.

“Can I go to her?”

“She’s in quite a state, Chuck. I don’t know…”

“Whether she’ll see me? Why wouldn’t she see me? She’s engaged to me, isn’t she?”

“But…”

“Okay, Chuck,” I said. “Why don’t you try?”

Connie turned sharply to me, but that was all Chuck needed. He dashed up the stairs.

I said, “Look, Connie, Ala could be right about that girl, you know. Vivien did say Mrs. Fostwick was a gossip. She could have got it all wrong or invented the bit about the money—anything. At least we’ve got to make sure.”

“And just how do you propose to do that?”

“Call the Fostwicks, get the name of these people and talk to them. There can’t be more than one Reginald Fostwick in Toronto.”

I went to the telephone. I got Mrs. Fostwick almost at once and, after she’d squawked a while like a panicked hen, she told me the name of the people. It was Duvreux. In five minutes I was telling Mr. Duvreux our problem. He was clearly a weighty and responsible citizen. It was quite impossible to doubt his word. With a feeling of dull depression, I put down the phone.

“Well?” asked Connie crisply.

“It’s true,” I said. “Saxby did take the ten thousand dollars. And that’s not all. Duvreux checked up on him through private detectives. There was another earlier episode in Quebec.”

“So,” said Connie. “There it is. A very pretty situation, isn’t it? I congratulate you.”

As we stood assessing each other like enemies, Chuck came down the stairs. He was walking unsteadily, almost as if he were drunk.

He didn’t look at either of us. He was gazing straight in front of him.

“She’s locked herself in her room. She wouldn’t let me in. She just talked through the door.”

“But what did she say?” Connie asked gently.

“She says it’s no good. She says she’s never going to marry me. She’s sorry, she says. She’ll explain it all later, but now…”

Suddenly he sat down on the stairs and put his hands over his face. The light from the hall chandelier played on his blond hair and the smooth youthful skin at the back of his neck. He seemed to be in a state bordering on shock. To me Chuck had always been the very symbol of all that was stolid and unimaginative in good young boys. Seeing him like this, I felt disgusted at myself for my careless meddling, and the disgust brought with it a deep rage against Don Saxby.

Connie dropped down at Chuck’s side. She put her hand on his shoulder. She was all maternal warmth and tenderness, as if he were a very little child who’d fallen and scraped his knee.

“Chuckie dear, you mustn’t worry. Please. She’s in a silly, confused stage, but she’s only nineteen. She…”

The phone rang shrilly. My wife glanced up at me, blazingeyed, as if it were my fault it had rung.

“Don’t take it here. Take it upstairs.”

I squeezed past them and hurried up the stairs to our bedroom.

It was Eve. Her voice, coming so unexpectedly from a totally different world, was like sunshine suddenly splashing across the room.

“Eve, Eve baby.”

“George, I’m sorry, but I had to call. Is it all right?”

“All right? Of course it’s all right.”

“Don Saxby’s just been here.”

“At your apartment?” I said.

“I don’t quite know why. I suppose it was because he knows about you and me. He was terribly sweet. He seems absolutely crazy about Ala and he knows Connie’s going to fight it. Apparently Ala’s told him you’ll be on his side, but he begged me to call you right away and let you know how much it means to him that you…”

I had been listening in growing outrage. Now I exploded. “What gall, dragging you into this!”

“Gall? Why? I know it was rather odd coming to me when he hardly knows me, but…”

“He’s a crook.”

I told her about the Duvreuxs. She gave a little gasp. “No. George, are you sure?”

“Of course we’re sure. I’ve just been talking to the Duvreux family in Toronto.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

I hadn’t really thought until then, but now I knew exactly what I was going to do.

“It’s simple,” I said. “If he thinks he’s ever going to see Ala again, he’s out of his mind. And if he tries to hold us up for money, like the Duvreuxs, I’ll go to the police. Once they hear his Canadian record, they’ll get him out of town by tomorrow morning.”

“I can still hardly believe it. He seemed so nice and so—so understanding about us. He said he knew how you must feel about me. That’s why you’d be sympathetic with him, he said. That’s why…”

I heard Connie’s heels clicking up the stairs. “Connie’s coming,” I said. “I’ll have to hang up. Listen, darling, somehow I’ll get to your place. I’ve got to. If I don’t see you, I’ll be a gibbering maniac.”

I dropped the receiver. Connie’s footsteps clicked past the door down the corridor. She was going to Ala. For a moment I stood there, thinking of Don Saxby with hatred. Then the fat pink roses on the wallpaper in front of me seemed to be wabbling slightly, because suddenly I understood why he had gone to Eve. He said he knew how you must feel about me. That’s why you’d be sympathetic… Eve hadn’t known enough of the situation to see what he had meant by that, but I saw. What he’d been saying to her was: Get George Hadley to okay the marriage or I’ll tell his wife—and anyone else who’s interested—that you and he are having a sordid little boss-stenographer affair.

I should have realized, long before, that there was a trap. But it was only then that it came to me—then when the trap was almost closing around me.

For a moment I felt queasy. I saw it all in the papers. Connie—the Consuelo Corliss—made wonderful copy. Readers of salacious gossip would gawp in delight to learn, not only that Consuelo Corliss’s daughter had spent the night in a motel with a man less than a month before her wedding, but that Consuelo Corliss’s husband was also having an affair, with his secretary. If he wanted to, Saxby could spatter mud over all of us. And what was to stop him unless I played it his way? Everyone would know. Lew Parker would know. The whole Hadley family could explode into a scandal far worse than anything I had dreaded in my lowest moments.

Wouldn’t I have to make some sort of a deal with him? Pay him off after all—the way Duvreux had paid him off?

Connie came bustling in from the corridor. She said, “George, it’s almost ten. You’ve got to leave for Idlewild.”

“I’m not going to Idlewild. I can’t. Not possibly. Not now.”

“Why not? It’s far too late for Lew to send anyone else, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got to see Don Saxby.”

“Why? For what possible reason? We don’t have to bother about him any more. Ala’s back. The moment she’s calmed down, I’ll make her see what a fool she’s been. There’s nothing she can do any more anyway, and if he tries to get in touch with her again, we’ll just call the police. That’s all.”

She gave a little shrug. There it was. She’d got it all doped out. Everything was okay. There was nothing to worry about.

She went to the phone, called the garage and asked them to have the car around in five minutes.

I drove to Idlewild. Under the circumstances, there was nothing else to do. I picked up the Brazilian; I took him to his hotel; I took him to Lew’s. Cynthia Parker made some terrible rum cocktails she’d learned about in the Virgin Islands. They were, I suppose, as near to Brazil as she could get. We sat around interminably drinking them; then we sat down to an interminable lunch.

After lunch we had brandies. The Brazilian got jovial, but it didn’t affect his shrewdness. Lew already had a contract drawn up; it was favorable for the Brazilian and he knew it, but he was taking his time. It was a quarter to three before he finally came across and, beaming, announced he thought he should go back to his hotel for a little nap.

I drove him to his hotel in the Sixties, then looked up Saxby’s address in the phone book. He lived just east of Fifth Avenue on Fifty-Fourth Street. I went back to the car and started driving. Fifty-Eighth… Fifty-Sixth… Nothing seemed resolved. What was I going to say? What was I going to do? When I reached Fifty-Fourth Street I didn’t make the turn. I went on driving. Somewhere at random way downtown I crossed to First Avenue and started uptown again.

I was almost at Fifty-Fourth Street when I thought of Eve. I’d planned on going to her after Saxby, but why not talk to her first? The moment I saw her I’d be steady again, I knew, and able to think coherently.

With an immediate lightening of mood, I drove to her street. I left the car in the free parking space opposite her house and ran across into the drab hallway, getting entangled in the leash of an enthusiastic white poodle which was attached to a tall blonde whom I’d seen before and who presumably lived in the building. The moment I pressed the buzzer, the door clicked. I ran up the stairs. Eve, wearing a coat, opened the door.

“George! I was just going out to mail a letter. Thank heavens I didn’t miss you.”

“I couldn’t get away any earlier. I’ve been at Lew’s. Some goddamn Brazilian came into town. Eve baby, I was going to Saxby’s first, then I decided it was better this way.”

I took her in my arms and kissed her as I’d been longing to kiss her all day. But there was no comfort in it, only the knowledge that she, too, would be dirtied up by scandal unless I acted with the coolest and clearest head of my career.

“It’s bad,” I said. “Really bad. I was too much of a fool to realize when I was talking to you on the phone, but—don’t you see? He’s not going to take this lying down. He knows about us.”

Still in my arms, she twisted around to look at me. “You mean he might tell Connie?”

“Why just Connie? What’s to stop him calling some scandal sheet and giving them the whole low-down? He’s a pro. What he wants is money. He got it from the Duvreuxs. He’s going to want it from us. Maybe he’s got us where he wants us, too. Maybe I’ll have to pay him off.”

Her face, very close to mine, was pale, almost haggard.

I went on, “He caught us in that restaurant, didn’t he? And, sucker that I was, I virtually admitted there was everything between us. And then he’s already been to see you. You didn’t realize it, but that’s why he came—to let you know that if we didn’t play ball…” The anger, sour inside me, rose up. “Goddamn him,” I said. “I’ll have to go crawling. I’ll have to…”

“No!” The word came explosively from her. “No, George, I won’t let you. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t come into your life…”

“Eve baby.”

“No, George, listen to me. It’s true. I’ve always known it. I tried to dress myself up in my own mind, but it never really worked. I am exactly what Don Saxby and everyone else would think I am—just another sneaky little secretary trying to grab off the boss. Things were all right enough between you and Connie until I came along. And now because of me… George, don’t pay him off. It’s too humiliating and—and once you started, what’s to stop him going on and on? There’d be no end. There’d…”

I grabbed her arms and shook her. “Eve, shut up, for God’s sake.”

“No,” she said, twisting away. “No, George. He knows. All right. He can make us feel guilty about it because we are guilty. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If we stopped being guilty, what could he do? And we can. I can go away. I can get out of New York City. Then all he has against you is that he saw you kissing some secretary who doesn’t even exist any more.”

I went to her and, although she started to struggle, took her in my arms. “You’ve forgotten one thing, we love each other.”

“What if we do? Does that give us an inalienable right to have each other, when it means wrecking your career, making things impossible for Connie and Ala? Think how we’d feel. We’re—we’re not Romeo and Juliet. We’re just a couple of people trying to be decent, and if we can’t be decent, if it’s all going to dwindle down into a dirty, sordid little… little… then it’s better to forget the whole thing. No, it’s impossible, quite impossible. I’ll go away. I’ll call my sister. I’ll take a bus to California and…”

She was struggling again in my arms and an icy dread, far worse than any panic induced by Don Saxby, invaded me. If I were to lose Eve…!

“Darling,” I said, “you know this is crazy. We have our whole future together. We can’t throw that away now just to make a noble gesture. I don’t give a damn about scandal or about my job. I can always get another job. And as for Connie, I feel like a heel. Of course I do. I am a heel. But we’ve been over that a thousand times. Nothing’s any different.”

“Of course it’s different. You must see. I’ll go. I’ve got to go—”

“All right,” I said. “If you go, I’ll come right after you—throw up everything.”

“George!”

“I mean it,” I said.

The phone rang.

With a violent movement, she twisted out of my arms, went to the phone and picked it up.

“Hello…? Yes, yes, that’s right… That’s… what?” Suddenly her voice cracked. “No,” she said. “No, it can’t be… it… yes, yes, of course… yes, wait a moment, just wait a moment.”

She put her hand over the receiver. She turned to me. Her blue eyes, gazing at me, had no life in them at all. They looked blind.

“What is it?” I said.

“It’s Ala. She’s at Don Saxby’s apartment. He’s dead, she says. He’s there lying on the floor with a gun beside him. He’s been shot.”

SIX

The phone in her hand hypnotized me. It didn’t seem like an ordinary phone at all; it was a hieroglyphic symbolizing disaster.

“He’s dead!” Eve repeated. “She says he’s dead.”

I glanced at my watch. Seven minutes past four. Wasn’t that the sort of thing you had to remember? I went to Eve. I took the phone.

I said, “Ala, it’s me, George.”

There was a choking sound at the other end of the wire. “Ala,” I said.

She spoke then. I could hardly make out the words. “I came. I just found him and… What am I going to do? Connie doesn’t know I’m here and I can’t call her. There isn’t anyone but you. Oh, Mrs. Lord…”

She hadn’t grasped the fact that the phone had changed hands. The quality of panic in her babbled sentences fumed from the receiver like a poisonous vapor.

“Ala,” I said. “It’s George. I’m here at Eve’s. It’s George.”

“George?”

“Listen, I’m coming. Stay there. Don’t touch anything.” There was a silence.

“You understand? Wait. I’ll take care of everything. Just wait till I get there.”

There was another silence, then she said, “Yes, all right. But come quickly. Please—quickly.”

I dropped the receiver. Eve’s hand clutched my arm.

“I’m going to get her,” I said. “But I’ll be back. God knows when, but somehow I’ll get back. You be here, understand?”

“Yes. All right. I promise. But—hurry.”

We went together to the door. I ran down the stairs and across the street to the car. The traffic was desultory Sunday traffic. I was at Fifty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue in less than ten minutes. I found a parking place right opposite Saxby’s number. It was just a brownstone house like Eve’s, but there, somewhere behind the grimy facade, the blind windows, the bulging air-conditioning units—there was the seed from which a whole new dangerous future was sprouting.

Dead. Shot. Murdered? The word I had been fighting to suppress had asserted itself. Don Saxby murdered—and Ala there.

I crossed the street. I went into the little hallway. No one was passing on the sidewalk. Even then I realized that was important. I saw Don Saxby’s name on a card under a buzzer—fourth floor front. I tried the glass-paneled front door. It was locked. I hesitated. Ala would be terrified when she heard the ring of the buzzer. I should have thought of that before and arranged a signal ring so she could be sure it was me. Then I remembered how one summer afternoon at the Cape years before, when Ala was a kid, I’d taught her to tap out her name in Morse. I spelled out A—L—A on the buzzer. Once and then again. There was a silence that seemed interminable, then the front door clicked. I opened it into the hall.

The little cage elevator was there on the ground floor. I took it up.

On the narrow landing of the fourth floor there were three doors. From one of the doors at the rear of the building came the sound of a radio playing some sort of Spanish dance music. It was the first time in my life that a radio—implying people—had ever seemed threatening. I tiptoed to Saxby’s door. I tapped softly. The door opened inward. I slipped inside, pushing the door shut behind me.

Ala was there, standing immediately in front of me. She was wearing a coat. Her face, framed in the fair, Hadley hair, was shockingly different, stripped of all its pretty, indulged young girl’s assurance. It was hollow under the cheekbones, waxy, like a dummy’s face in a department store window.

“Where is he?” I said.

“He’s dead,” she said. “Somebody’s killed him. He’s dead.”

It was a seedy, bachelor’s room with haphazard bits of furniture and its walls painted mustard. I saw Don Saxby right away. He was sprawled on the gray cotton rug just under the mantelpiece. He was wearing a white shirt and dark gray slacks. He lay on his back. One arm was flung up over his head, its clenched fingers resting against the base of a plant stand from which a sickly yellowish philodendron trailed down. I crossed and looked at him. The eyes, beneath the thick black lashes, were open. He looked horribly himself. There was even a vestige of the easy, affectionate smile frozen on his lips. In his neck was a wound, ragged and bloody. Another wound, staining the white shirt scarlet, was in the left side of his chest.

Two wounds. That’s what I thought first as I stared at the open eyes, the small, amused smile. One shot tearing into the neck; a second shot in the heart. I’d known it was murder, of course. Even before Ala had said so, I’d never from the first second had any doubt about that. But there it was remorselessly stated for me by the fact of the two wounds.

I forced my eyes to move away from the body. I saw the gun. It lay on the carpet just under the frilly skirt of an old overstuffed chair with a sagging seat, gleaming theatrically like an object emphasized by the cameras in a TV melodrama.

I turned back to Ala. She hadn’t moved from the door. She was holding her hands tightly locked together over the middle button of her coat. That was the first time I noticed that she was wearing gloves—thick black knitted Norwegian gloves with a white figure, gloves I’d given her last year for Christmas.

Looking at her was terrible to me because it brought with it the realization of how totally ignorant we are of other people—even people we love. There was nothing from the long years of our living together to tell me: She’s innocent. No instinct to prompt: She’s your niece, your child; of course it’s inconceivable she could have killed a man. I stood watching her, remembering her fits of sudden rage as a child, thinking of what could have happened to her infatuation for Don Saxby once she had accepted the fact that she’d been to him only a commodity, a girl with money in the family, nothing more than that.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me.”

Her tongue came out to moisten her lips. It was a nervous trick I’d never noticed in her before. It heightened the atmosphere of unreality.

“I…” she said. “I… There’s nothing to tell. I just came.”

“Why?”

“To see him, to find out… Connie’d said those things, all those disgusting things about Toronto. She swore they were true, that she could prove it. I wouldn’t believe her. I had to come and…” She stopped.

I said, “And?”

“I came here. That’s all. And… and I found him. He was lying there… just like that.”

“He was?”

“Yes, of course he was.”

“Then how did you get in?”

The blood came to her cheeks. “I have keys. He ... he gave me keys last night in the motel, so I could always come, so—”

“You used the keys?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t press the buzzer?”

“Yes. But… but he didn’t answer and he’d said that sometimes the buzzer didn’t work, so I used the keys and—”

“Give them to me.”

For a moment she looked completely stupid. The awful feeling came: She’s lying. She made up that story. She doesn’t have any keys. Then she went to a table. Her bag was there. She picked it up, fumbled in it and held out to me two keys on a little chain. I took them and put them in my pocket, relief mingling with the ever mounting anxiety.

“So you let yourself in and—”

“I found him,” she cut in passionately. “That’s all. That’s absolutely all. I came in and there he was… just like that, lying on the floor. I ran to him; I saw all the blood; I saw the gun. It’s there, under the chair. I... I wanted to get away. That was all… just to get away. Then I... I was too scared to go out in the hall. There are people in the next apartment. I’d heard their radio. I... I don’t know. It was just panic. I’ve got to get someone to help me, I thought, and… and the only person I could think of was Mrs. Lord. I looked up her number in the phone book. I... I called her and… and then, well, that’s it, that’s all, that’s—”

“With your gloves on?” I said.

She watched me blankly.

“You looked up Eve’s number in the book and dialed the number with your gloves on?” I said.

She glanced down at her hands. “I suppose so. I don’t really remember. I…”

She could have dialed that way, I thought. When you’re in a panic you can do things which could seem impossibly clumsy under other circumstances. Suddenly my normal instincts were re-established and it astounded me that I could have permitted myself even to half suspect her. Of course she had done what she said she had done. How preposterous to connect criminal violence with Ala, who had never got nearer to criminality than a traffic ticket.

I said, “Ala, listen, did anyone see you come?”

“No, no.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. There was no one on the street. No one in the hall or the elevator.”

“And you’ve never taken your gloves off since you were here? You’re sure?”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure now.”

“Okay.”

I moved back to Don Saxby. I knew it might be enormously important later that I had used my eyes to take in whatever there was to take in. His shirt-sleeved left arm was thrown out toward the empty fireplace. I saw that there had been a fire in the grate, not a real fire, but, from the curled heap of black ash, it was obvious that someone had been burning something—probably paper. My eyes moved back to the body and, as they did so, I saw a glistening fragment on the carpet by the left arm—a piece of glass. I saw another and then another and then a much larger jagged piece with a handle attached, clearly the handle of a cocktail shaker. So he’d been holding a cocktail shaker when he’d been shot.

I dropped down, bending over him. Yes, there was a little cut on one of the fingers of his left hand where the smashed glass had nicked it. And, close to the wrist, the shirt was sticking to his arm, outlining its contour. Cautiously, I touched the material. The whole area of shirt around the forearm was still slightly damp and there was the familiar, sickly smell of gin.

I got up, making myself study the room. There wasn’t any disorder, no sign of a struggle. There was the phone, and there was the phone book open on a magazine-littered table. I went over to it. The exposed page was in the L’s, and, by chance, Eve’s name was the name printed at the top of the page: LORD. I slammed the book shut as if leaving the page open would not only expose Ala but endanger all of us. Anything else? I went into the bedroom. It was dark and dismal. Flung down on the unmade bed were two large open suitcases, both of them fully packed. Surely, he couldn’t have taken all that with him to Massachusetts for the weekend. Had he then not been unpacking but packing again? Had he been planning to make a getaway? Suitcases, papers burnt in the fireplace, surely…

I went on into the bathroom. Nothing there, just a wrinkled yellow bath mat and a red towel thrown down on it, a cluttered wash basin, a clammy plastic shower curtain.

I went back to Ala. Something had happened to her in the few moments of my absence—a kind of delayed shock. The waxlike look was gone; her face was contorted with terror. The instant she saw me, she ran to me, clinging to me desperately.

“George… oh, George…”

I held her tightly, trying to soothe her. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“But they’ll know… the police. They’ll find out about yesterday, about me and Don, about… about all the things Connie said. And, when they know I was here, when they know how he…he fooled me… what’ll they think? What will they do?”

“They won’t do anything, because they won’t know.”

“Won’t know?”

“You didn’t think I was going to call them? Why? What good would it do? You don’t know anything. You can’t help. Listen, honey, I’m getting you out of here. He’s been killed, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us. What do we know about him? Or how many people wanted to get rid of him? It’s none of our business. Be quiet, honey. Just be quiet. If we can get out without anyone seeing us…”

She was all right again, suddenly, almost astoundingly calm. She looked at me for one moment from blue, almost wary eyes. Then she smiled the incredulous smile of a little girl realizing the dreaded punishment isn’t going to come after all.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Vaguely I had thought I would feel some compunction. I had never consciously done anything before which flagrantly broke the law. But now this seemed the most natural thing in the world. I was, I suppose, getting used to this new life where it was our wits we needed rather than our ethics.

I took a last look around the room, as unmoved by Don Saxby as if he’d been a sack of cement. No, there was nothing, surely, to show that Ala had been there. I went to the door and opened it a crack. The radio music still blared from behind the closed door of the neighbor’s apartment. What about the neighbors and the shots? Had the radio drowned out the noise? Or had the neighbors just been typical New Yorkers about it? Didn’t that sound like shots? Just a car backfiring, baby.

The elevator was still at our floor. Turning, I beckoned to Ala. She slipped out with me into the corridor. I closed the door and tried it. It had locked itself. I drew back the cage door of the elevator and we rode down to the entrance hall. No one was there. Ahead of Ala I moved out onto the steps. A couple of people were strolling toward Fifth Avenue on the other side of the street, paying no attention to anything. That was all.

In a few minutes we were in the car, driving toward Madison. It was twenty minutes to five.

SEVEN

I had got her away, but this of course was only the beginning. When Don Saxby was found, the police would certainly trace a connection between him and my family. There would be interviews, questions, detectives to be outwitted. The whole thing would be a rat race. Now that the immediate danger was by-passed, I felt an enormous exasperation with Ala. The little idiot, blundering about, threatening us all with catastrophe!

She was sitting very close to me in the car, reminding me poignantly of the tense child who used to sit tightly wedged at my side when we drove to the shore on summer weekends, while Connie lay down the law. “Ala dear, do sit up straight. … No, darling, it’s quite absurd to want any ice cream.” Connie! I thought. Connie, the great raiser of children, Connie, Mrs. Boomerang.

For a while neither of us said anything. Then when we were headed up Park Avenue, Ala turned to look at me with shy awkwardness.

“George, I’m so terribly sorry... I mean, about getting so mad with you this morning, about everything.”

“That’s okay.”

“And you were right, weren’t you—you and Connie? I mean, Don must have been what you said he was. And that’s why somebody killed him. Somebody we don’t know—somebody with no connection with us.”

“I suppose so.”

“What a fool I was. And how awful I’ve been to poor Chuck.” She paused and then added explosively, “George—please, George, don’t tell her. I... I couldn’t face it, not if she knew I’d been there. There’d be no end. She’d go on and on. Oh, please, George.”

There had been too much happening for me to think about Connie’s reaction. How, in fact, was my wife going to take it? Wasn’t it just possible that, with her rigid canons of behavior, she would go civic-minded on us? Of course we must tell the police everything. Of course it’s Ala’s duty as a citizen… Then I thought: My God, if we tell Connie, I’ll have to admit I was at Eve’s. How could I explain that away? Something about the Brazilian? Could I say there were some letters I’d had to dictate? Would that sound convincing? Or rather, would I be able to make it sound convincing? I began to see all the intricacies with which I would now have to live. It was an octopus situation with tentacles stretching in every direction.

I turned to Ala. “Is there any way we could keep her from knowing?”

“Of course. She doesn’t even know I left the house. After you’d gone, she came up to my room and she made me let her in. She’d brought me something to eat, and she went on and on about the Duvreuxs, about how Don wasn’t in love with me, how he was only a crook trying to get at the Corliss money. Finally I couldn’t face any more of it from her. I simply had to go to Don and find out the truth myself. But I knew that she’d never let me go to him, so I just pretended to be tired. I begged her to go away so I could sleep. And then, after she’d gone—when it seemed to be all right—I just tiptoed out of my room, locked the door behind me and slipped out of the house. She didn’t see me. She wasn’t anywhere around. She must have been in the library doing the Times crossword puzzle the way she always does on Sunday.”

She put her hand coaxingly on my knee. “So… don’t you see? When we get home, I could just sneak up to my room without her knowing, and then… well, just come down again.”

If we could get away with it, that would make it all much simpler. “All right,” I said. “Fine.”

“You mean it? Oh, George, you are wonderful. But then, there’s something else, too, isn’t there? There’s Mrs. Lord.” She shot me a quick glance. “How lucky you happened to be there. But she’s all right, isn’t she? I mean, we can trust her?”

I thought of Eve waiting in that cramped apartment, tom with anxieties for me. And not only that. She’d promised me not to think any more about leaving, but I knew her so well. She would be thinking about it. Her conscience would still be goading her, even more powerfully now that this disaster had struck. A panic stirred in me that I’d never see her again, that even now she’d be packing, calling a taxi ... I felt my hands on the wheel, sticky with sweat. I’d have to get back to her.

“George, we can trust her, can’t we?”

“Yes,” I said.

We’d reached the house then. As I looked out at its majestic Corliss facade, I thought I saw Connie in a downstairs window. It wasn’t Connie, it was just the white lining of the living-room drapes, but a bitter resentment came, a resentment which, I knew, was merely an inversion of guilt. Now I’d have to be deceiving my wife two ways, not just about Eve, but about Ala, too. Ala and I would have to launch our private lie and once it was launched…

I parked across the street. I said, “She mustn’t see you. Get down in the car. Stay here. I’ll go in first.”

I got out of the car, crossed, went up the marble steps and let myself into the hall. There was no sign of Connie. The living-room door was open. I glanced in. She wasn’t there, either. Almost certainly Ala was right. My wife was in the library at the back of the house. I went upstairs and then down again. I beckoned to Ala from the front door and she hurried over to me. We crept upstairs together. We reached her room. She opened the door with her key.

“We’ve made it!” She flung her arms around my neck. “Oh, George dear, everything’s all right now. You go find her and I’ll just come down in a few minutes. I’ll be sensible and ashamed. I’ll say I’ve realized she was right about Don and about everything. I’ll admit what a fool I’ve been. I’ll apologize. And she’ll never know.”

She was smiling exuberantly as if it had all become a sort of game to her instead of a nightmare in which the man she was supposed to have “loved madly” had been murdered in the most entangling of circumstances. I looked at her with baffled incomprehension. Did the young recover as easily as that?

I found Connie in the library, which had been her father’s pride. It was lined with leather-bound books which he had probably bought by the yard. Connie used it as a sort of shrine, withdrawing there to tap out her directives to her committees or to study her tomes on child welfare or slum clearance or racial discrimination or whatever it was she was currently being informed about. Also, on Sunday afternoons she sat there doing the Times crossword puzzle.

When I went in, she was sitting in a red leather chair, her gleaming head bent over the Times magazine section. She had her reading glasses on and a silver pencil in her hand. She glanced up with the utmost composure.

“Hello, dear. Who was a goddess of war in seven letters beginning with B?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said.

I knew that she was totally ignorant of what had happened in Don Saxby’s apartment, but she wasn’t ignorant of all the turmoil and drama which had been going on in our house before I left for Idlewild. Her habit of reverting to normalcy the moment circumstances made it even remotely possible had always annoyed me. Now, in my state of acute tension, it was infuriating. I sat down opposite her in another of the huge red leather chairs which suggested a private athenaeum club, fighting my anxieties about Eve. Of course she wouldn’t have gone. She’d given me her promise. It was all right and somehow, later on in the evening, I’d be able to slip away to her for a little while.

“Are you sure you don’t know, dear?” said Connie. “A goddess of war beginning… Oh, well, never mind.”

She dropped the pencil, put the magazine section down on a table and took off her glasses. “Well, how was it at Lew’s?”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’ve talked to Ala. I’m sure she’s going to be sensible. She was tired, she said, so we won’t disturb her, but when she comes down, you will talk to her, won’t you? She’s got some silly stubborn thing about accepting it from me but she’ll accept it from you.”

“All right,” I said.

“I am glad it all worked well at Lew’s.”

There it was. She’d established just any ordinary Sunday afternoon. She started to tell me how disgracefully low the education standards were in some parts of Southern California. She must have been reading about it in the magazine section. She was still talking about it when Ala came in. I’d been dreading the moment but I needn’t have. Connie seemed more awkward than Ala, who, with a glibness which slightly appalled me, put on a flawless performance of the contrite young girl who had seen the error of her ways. In half an hour, I’d “talked” to her and Connie had “talked” to her and that was that.

“Well,” said Connie when it was all over, “I must say it’s a relief that you’re being so sensible, dear. Now let’s have a drink and celebrate.”

We had a drink. Then we had supper prepared by Connie. It was exactly as if Don Saxby had never existed in our lives at all. After supper we all sat around in the living room, being so goddamn normal that I could have yelled.

It was almost nine o’clock when the phone in the hall rang. Connie got up to answer it, but I, with a jittery premonition that it was Eve, jumped up too and managed to get to the hall ahead of her.

I shut the door and picked up the phone.

“Darling,” said Vivien Ryson. “Darling George—it’s nine, you know.”

“Nine?” I said stupidly.

Vivien’s laugh tinkled. “Really, darling, I suppose that did sound rather enigmatic, didn’t it? What I mean is—tell Chuck he’d better rush right over here if he’s going to pick up his brief case and make his plane. I do think he’s been a little naughty to spend the entire day with you. He knows how much it means to Mal to have a teeny bit of father-son goings on.” The laugh did its tinkle again. “But don’t bawl the poor boy out. I know what it is. Love, love, love.”

I’d never given Chuck the slightest thought since I’d left him sitting on the bottom step of our stairs that morning with his face hidden in his hands: Chuck, to whom Connie had, “on principle,” told everything; Chuck, who had been so frighteningly broken by the news; Chuck, who hadn’t been with us since nine-thirty in the morning and who apparently hadn’t been at the Rysons’ either.

I said, “But Vivien, he’s not here. He hasn’t been here since morning.”

“But that’s crazy, darling. He only came back from Chicago to be with Ala.”

“I know, but—”

“Then where has he been?”

“I don’t know. Wasn’t he home at all?”

“Not for a moment. And he got up at the crack of dawn. George darling, is something wrong between him and Ala?”

“There may be. I wouldn’t know.”

“Last night he seemed terribly strange. Even Mal noticed it. And then, getting up so early and not being with you… But George, his plane leaves at eleven and there’s his brief case with all his papers and things.”

“He must have decided he can leave them behind.”

“How most extraordinary. Really, George, it is a bit odd. He was so strange last night, most peculiar. Right after dinner he disappeared for ages. Finally I went to look for him and he was in Mal’s and my bedroom, sitting on my bed. It seemed so odd. I mean, why our bedroom? Why not his own? I was worried. I really was. Well, I suppose, it’s just some lover’s tiff. They happen all the time, don’t they? It’s silly to get hysterical. He’s bound to call later. Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye, Vivien.”

“I won’t tell Mal. You know how he is. Love to Connie.”

“Yes.”

As I put down the receiver, my thoughts jittered around Chuck. I forced them into control. It was stupid to worry, of course it was. He wouldn’t have gone home anyway. He’d been broken up, miserable. He wouldn’t have wanted to face his family. He’d gone off somewhere by himself to a bar or to a movie or... I felt my anxiety fading and, as it did so, I looked at the phone and the simplest of devices came to me. Why hadn’t I thought of it hours ago? I picked up the receiver again and dialed Eve’s number. She answered right away.

“Call me back,” I said.

I dropped the receiver and almost immediately her call came through. I knew that although they could hear the phone ring in the living room, they couldn’t hear what I said, but I went through the motions.

“Yes?” I said. “Yes? Okay. Sure. I’ll be right over. In fifteen minutes.”

I hung up. When I went back into the living room, both Connie and Ala glanced up.

“What on earth was all that?” asked Connie.

“It was Vivien,” I said, “and then Lew.”

“Vivien?” said Connie. “What did Vivien want?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “She was just exercising her vocal cords—as usual. But I’m afraid Lew wants me to go right around. Something’s come up about the Brazilian, something we’ve got to straighten out before morning.”

Ala was watching me brightly as if she had seen through me, but Connie just smiled her usual understanding-wife smile.

“At nine o’clock?” she said. “You poor dear. Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. But do try not to have him keep you too late.”

“All right,” I said.

“Give him my love.”

In less than twenty minutes I was with Eve. From the first second that she was in my arms, nothing mattered any more. I told her everything, but it was just a story, something that could have happened to somebody else, for the thought of her leaving me was now as unthinkable to her as it had been to me. If I needed her, it was with me she would stay. It was as simple as that. The magic had come, our magic which brought its miracle, obliterating the old festering guilt about Connie, transcending anxiety and fear—even time.

“George, it’s eleven.”

“It can’t be. It can’t possibly be.”

“It’s eleven. You must go.”

“No, darling. No—not yet.”

“Yes, darling.”

“But it’s all right again, isn’t it?”

“It was never wrong. I couldn’t ever have left—not when it came to the point. I wouldn’t have had the courage.”

“We’ll wait. We’ll go on waiting and everything will get cleared up.”

“Yes.”

“They’re going to find him. Tomorrow probably. It’ll be in the papers. It’ll all begin.”

“But Ala’s safe. There’s nothing else that’s really bad, is there?”

Chuck…? “No,” I said.

“Then let it begin.”

“Let it begin…”

EIGHT

It began on the afternoon of the next day. Eve brought the World-Telegram, to my office after lunch. There was a paragraph on a middle page. It wasn’t much. It merely announced that Donald Saxby, an employee of the Ellerman Art Galleries, had been discovered dead in his apartment that morning by his cleaning woman. He had, the paragraph said, been shot twice. The gun from which the shots had been fired had been lying beside the body. That was all.

While Eve stood behind me, I looked at it uneasily. Thousands of people all over Manhattan were glancing at it right now, giving it a bored second, moving on to something else. But there it was. Donald Saxby, employee of the Ellerman Galleries. Mr. Ellerman…

The phone rang and Eve picked it up. “Mr. Hadley’s office… oh, yes, just a moment.” She put her hand on my shoulder, looking at me warningly. “Connie,” she whispered.

I took the phone. I knew what was coming.

“George, have you seen the afternoon paper?” My wife went right on without waiting for my answer. “George, please. Keep calm. Whatever you do, don’t lose your head. It’s Don Saxby. He’s dead.”

Eve’s hand on my shoulder was warm, reassuring.

“He’s been found in his apartment,” said Connie. “Shot. Twice. Twice, George. Someone must have killed him.”

It wasn’t hard to sound rattled, and sounding rattled, I knew, would do just as well as sounding surprised.

“Killed?” I echoed.

“It’s only a little paragraph. I just happened to see it. George—what are we going to do? Don’t you see? It mentions the Ellerman Galleries. Mr. Ellerman will tell the police I got Don the job. They’ll come to us and… and what are we going to do about Ala? We can’t tell them the truth. How can we? George, can you get away now? Please. Can you?”

“Of course.”

“Make some excuse for Mrs. Lord and everybody. Don’t let her know. Don’t let anyone know. Just come home right away. We’ll have to think.”

I was home in twenty minutes at exactly twenty past three. Connie was waiting for me in the hall. There was no longer any indication of lack of control. She looked even handsomer and more capable than usual. Ala wasn’t there. With incredible frivolity, so it seemed to me, she was having lunch and spending the afternoon with Rosemary Clark. My wife hustled me into the library. She hurried to her desk, picked up a neatly folded newspaper and brought it to me, making me read the paragraph.

“Don’t you see?” Her gray level gaze was fixed on my face with her overbearing “committee” look. “The police are bound to know he was an—an acquaintance of ours. But that’s not all. What about those people in Massachusetts? The Greens? What’s to stop them calling the police and letting them know Ala and Don were there for Friday night?”

There was, of course, nothing to stop the Greens. It seemed inconceivable that I hadn’t prepared myself for that.

“So,” said Connie, “there’s only one thing to do. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter who killed him. Anyone might want to kill a man like that. It’s nothing to do with us. But we’ve got to think out a story and stick to it—you, me and Ala. We’ve absolutely got to. If it all came out about Ala, it could ruin her whole life.”

As I looked at my wife, I thought how invariably I got her wrong. Connie wasn’t going to be civic-minded at all. All that civic-mindedness was reserved for juvenile delinquents, museum directors and slum-property owners. To her this was a family affair. All her clashes and tensions with Ala were forgotten because Ala was a Corliss, even though a pseudo one, and for the Corlisses Connie would fight as relentlessly and unscrupulously as old Charlie Corliss himself.

“Listen,” she said, “I’ve thought it out and I’m sure it’ll be all right. Thank heavens we don’t have to worry about the time he was killed. Sunday, I mean. We both know Ala was here in the house all day. Of course, she was locked in her room most of the time, but we don’t have to tell the police that. We can just say she was here for the whole day, and you and I and Milly Taylor can prove it.”

“Milly Taylor?” I said. “Was she here?”

Connie gave a little impatient shrug. “Didn’t I tell you? After you’d gone to Idlewild, I called her. I knew she probably had nothing to do. I invited her for lunch and we did the crossword together. She left only a few minutes before you came back. So that’s settled. There’s just the other tiling—the trip to the Greens’.”

Just the trip to the Greens’! Nothing more than that! I thought: If only she knew. She went on, making it into a neat little pattern like one of her agenda.

“Now, this is what I’ve decided. We’ll have to rehearse Ala, of course, when she gets back. But listen, George. We have to admit she and Don went to the Greens’ on Friday. We can’t get out of that. But we can say that she just knew Don slightly, that she met the Greens at some party and the Greens invited them both to Massachusetts. They went but Ala got bored. She asked Don to bring her home. We’ll say Don brought her home Saturday evening and that was the end of everything.” She paused, watching me rather severely. “Why should the police have to know there was this—this crazy infatuation? Or that ridiculous motel episode? What possible need is there? Can’t we do it that way? Isn’t that all right?”

Although it was taking a terrible chance of being found out later in a lie, it was, I supposed, as all right as anything could be. At least, it would have been except for one thing.

I said, “What about Chuck? Where was he yesterday? I didn’t tell you, but when Vivien called last night, she said he hadn’t been home at all.”

“He… Chuck…” Suddenly Connie looked completely different. The skin of her cheeks had gone a grayish-white. “George, are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then where… where was he? What…? George, you don’t think… you can’t…” She took a quick step toward me and grabbed my arm. “Why in heaven’s name didn’t you let me know earlier? I told him to go home. I made him promise. I never for a moment—”

She broke off abruptly because Mary had come in. She stood by the door, straightening her hideous Corliss maid’s cap on the messy gray bird’s nest of her hair.

“There’s a gentleman to see you, Miss Connie,” she said. “He says he’s from the police.”

It had, of course, to happen then. In a way it was more alarming right in the middle of our planning than if he’d arrived before we’d even started. And suppose Ala came home while the policeman was still here. If she barged in unrehearsed! How could I have been such a moron as not to have anticipated this and got some sort of story straight with her?

Connie and I looked at each other gauntly.

“What about Ala?” I said.

“She didn’t say when she’d be back. She might—”

“Tell him you aren’t in.”

“Yes.” Connie spun around to Mary. “Tell him I’m not here, Mary. Tell him you don’t know when I’ll be back. Say…”

She must have heard the footsteps a fraction of a second before I did, for she stopped. We both turned to the library door as a man walked in, a tall, youngish man in a neat gray suit.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I hope you’ll excuse me for following the maid in like this.”

He smiled. It was a pleasant—much too pleasant—smile, and his face, composed, with very bright, intelligent eyes, wasn’t like a policeman’s face at all. It was—what? A priest’s face, perhaps? A face which would have gone with one of those quiet, ascetic monks painted by Zurbaran.

He was looking at Connie. “Mrs. Hadley?”

“Yes,” said Connie.

The eyes—were they blue or gray?—turned to me. “And Mr. Hadley?”

I nodded.

“I’m Lieutenant Trant,” he said, “from the Homicide Division. I’m lucky, Mr. Hadley, to find you home so early from work.”

There was nothing ominous in the way he made that remark, nothing on which I could put my finger. But, suddenly, I realized that outwitting the police wasn’t going to be at all the sort of thing I’d expected it to be. Let it begin… I remembered the carefree way in which I’d said that last night when Eve had been in my arms.

Lieutenant Trant was looking around the room, summing it up and summing us up, I felt, through it.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’ve come on a rather unpleasant mission.”

NINE

Connie had gone grand. She always did with people whose presence in the house wasn’t strictly social—with piano tuners and fund raisers and men come to fix the plumbing. Although I knew it was only a nervous habit, it invariably jarred me, but now I welcomed it as probably the most effective defense in our most indefensible circumstances. Very much the Consuelo Corliss, she gave the detective a gracious, almost patronizing smile.

“Do sit down, Lieutenant… er…”

“Trant,” said the Lieutenant and, smiling back at her with equal steadiness, spelled it out. “T—R—A—N—T.”

He gestured to indicate a chair for her. She hesitated and then sat down. He sat down, too. It had been a tiny exchange, but the Lieutenant had definitely won it. For a moment he watched my wife with his quiet smile, paying no attention to me at all.

Then he said, “I understand, Mrs. Hadley, that you’ve made rather a protégé of a young Canadian called Donald Saxby.”

Still being gracious, Connie said, “We’ve read the evening papers, Lieutenant. It’s quite terrible.”

“So you know he’s been murdered?”

“Murdered?” echoed Connie. “Of course, we were afraid it might be that. The papers mentioned two shots. How awful. Isn’t that awful, George? But, of course, Lieutenant, if there’s any possible way in which either my husband or I can help…” She let a small movement of her hand complete the sentence.

For a brief, uninterested moment, Lieutenant Trant glanced at me, then he turned his attention back to Connie. “I’m certainly hoping you will be able to help me, Mrs. Hadley. You see, I’ve just been talking with Mr. Ellerman of the Ellerman Galleries and he tells me that it was as a favor to you that he gave Mr. Saxby a job. He says you had been very interested in the young man and—”

“That’s rather an exaggeration, I’m afraid,” Connie broke in. “I understood Mr. Ellerman employed him because he thought he’d be suitable for the job. All I did was to arrange an interview. My acquaintance with Mr. Saxby—with Don—was really very slight.”

“Oh, it was, was it?” Trant’s eyes widened, showing a lot of white around the irises. “I hadn’t realized that.”

“We just met casually at some private view. He happened to have met a friend of mine in Toronto. We talked. It came out that he needed a job. He seemed very pleasant—and very competent. So I thought of Mr. Ellerman.”

“And that was the extent of your acquaintance?”

“Not exactly. I saw him a couple of times—here and there.”

“But you didn’t know a great deal about him?”

“Hardly anything, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” said Lieutenant Trant again.

I was torn between alarm at Lieutenant Trant’s soft, unemphasized “oh’s” and grudging admiration for Connie’s remarkable poise. But even the poise alarmed me a little, too. Connie had a way of underestimating people, and I had the uneasy suspicion that Lieutenant Trant was very definitely not someone to underestimate.

He was in one of the red leather chairs. They had been designed for lolling, but somehow he was managing to sit up very straight in it.

“I’m disappointed that you didn’t know him better, Mrs. Hadley. At the moment we’re working more or less in the dark. You’re the most promising contact we’ve been able to unearth. He hasn’t been here long from Canada, is that correct?”

“That’s what I understood,” said Connie.

“And he didn’t have many friends in this country?”

“That I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t, for example, know some people called Green? Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Green?”

It had come out so smoothly that it took me a second to realize he was setting a trap. But to my relief I saw that Connie wasn’t shaken at all. She merely wrinkled her brow in concentration.

“Green,” she said. “They’re not the people who live somewhere in Massachusetts?”

“They are,” said Trant.

“Oh, yes, I haven’t met them but I’ve heard of them. Our adopted daughter, Alathea, met them last week at some party. They invited her to visit and she and Don Saxby drove up there to spend the night on Friday. In fact, I believe they were to spend the weekend, but Ala got a little bored with it. She had Don Saxby drive her home Saturday night.”

There it was, sounding very feeble—our major lie. From now on we were committed.

“Saturday night,” said Trant.

“That’s right.”

“What time did he bring her home?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose around ten.”

“Did you meet him? I mean, did he come in with your daughter?”

“No—as a matter of fact, he didn’t.”

“Since he wasn’t discovered by his cleaning woman, Mrs. Cassidy, until next morning, the medical examiner can’t be too exact about the time of death. But he knows it was Sunday afternoon. He’s put a deadline either way—two P.M. and five P.M. Unfortunately, although the people in the next apartment were at home at the time, they noticed no sound of shots, and the woman at the back of the floor seems to be away. So—that’s the best we can do. Between two and five on Sunday. That would be the very next day after he brought your daughter home from Massachusetts, wouldn’t it?”

There again he had managed to make a perfectly self-evident remark quiver with ominous overtones. He waited for Connie to say something in reply. When she didn’t, he said, “So that’s all you’re able to tell me, Mrs. Hadley?”

“I really think it is, Lieutenant.”

“I see,” said Lieutenant Trant.

I was looking at him, thinking of the dozens of flimsy deceptions which might collapse at any minute and give us away, trying to gauge something of what was going on behind his enigmatic priest’s face. I didn’t get to first base. He merely sat upright in the red leather chair, looking at nothing in particular and saying nothing.

When his silence was becoming embarrassing, Connie said, “I’m afraid I don’t know the Greens’ address, Lieutenant. But if you want to get in touch with them, I’m sure that Ala—”

“Oh, no,” said Trant. “I don’t need to get in touch with them. They’ve already got in touch with me. Mr. Green called me just a couple of hours ago to tell me about Mr. Saxby and your daughter being there for Friday night. That’s why I felt a little hopeful about your being able to give us some pointers. You see, since your daughter was there with him, and Mr. Green seemed to feel they were on quite friendly terms, I got the impression that Mr. Saxby must have been—well, almost one of the family.”

“Oh, no,” said Connie quickly, too quickly. “Ala hardly knew him. In fact, I think she’d only met him twice; once here. He stopped by one evening for a drink. And then at a party. It was more or less an accident that they drove up to the Greens’ together. I suppose it was just because the Greens happened to invite them both at the same time.”

That sounded the most improbable of statements, and it seemed incredible to me that Lieutenant Trant could be satisfied to leave it at that. I was waiting for another glimpse of claw from behind the very velvet paws. But then, quite unexpectedly, he rose.

“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t look as if I’m having much success with you, does it, Mrs. Hadley?” He turned to me. “There’s nothing you want to tell me, I suppose, Mr. Hadley?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Connie at once. “George only met him once, didn’t you, George?”

“I believe so,” I said.

“So he was more a friend of the womenfolk,” commented Trant. “Well, I think the most sensible thing for me to do next is to talk to your daughter. So far she’s the last person we know to have seen him alive.”

He stood looking blandly at Connie. Connie looked back just as blandly.

“I’m terribly sorry, Lieutenant,” she said, “but I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment.”

“Then I’ll stop by again when I have the time.” Trant was smiling again, a warm, almost affectionate smile which brought a grotesque reminder of Don Saxby’s smile. “I imagine it will be a mere formality because we don’t expect to have much trouble in catching the murderer.”

He had said that with an almost theatrical casualness, as if it were a statement which wouldn’t particularly surprise us.

“Yes, Mrs. Hadley. You see, Saxby had two suitcases packed and he’d burnt some papers in the fireplace. They’re analyzing the ash but I doubt whether they’ll be able to reconstruct anything. However, all that implies he was getting out of town in a hurry, presumably because he was scared of someone. And then, the gun that killed him was left at the scene. There are, of course, no fingerprints, but the gun doesn’t seem to have belonged to Mr. Saxby himself. There’s no record of any license issued to him. I know it sounds unlikely for a murderer to leave his gun behind, but it happens much more frequently than you might suspect. They’re tracing the ownership right now. In a couple of hours, they should at least know who its original purchaser was, and with any luck the owner may be someone with a known grudge against him and… well, that will be that.”

His smile bathed us in its blandness. Then, without the faintest change of expression, he said, “One thing more, Mrs. Hadley. You mentioned that Don Saxby met a friend of yours in Toronto. Who was that friend?”

I wanted to shout at Connie: For God’s sake, don’t tell him it’s Mal. Don’t let him get on to the Rysons and through the Rysons to Chuck.

For a moment Connie stood looking most convincingly at a loss. “Now,” she said, “isn’t that silly? I’m sure there was someone. I’m—”

“It wasn’t by any chance Mr. Malcolm Ryson, was it?” Trant interrupted.

That was the second time he’d set a trap. Somehow or other, of course, he had already found out about Mal and had slipped it to us that way to see how much he could depend on our truthfulness. Once again Connie recovered admirably. She gave a little rueful shrug.

“How foolish of me to forget,” she said. “Of course it was Mal.”

“That’s what Mr. Ellerman thought,” said Trant. “He told me he was almost sure you’d mentioned the fact that Mr. Saxby had known Mr. Ryson in Toronto.”

“They’d only met,” began Connie. “I don’t think that Mal—” Rut before she could finish, Trant cut in, “I understand, Mrs. Hadley, that your daughter’s engaged to the Ryson boy.”

“That’s right,” said Connie.

“The marriage is going to be in about a month?”

“Yes—on the tenth of December.”

“I suppose he didn’t go with your daughter and Mr. Saxby to the Greens’? I thought he might have. I mean, well, with their being married so soon…”

“No,” said Connie. “I don’t think the Greens knew him, but in any case Chuck was in Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“On business.”

“I see.”

Once again Trant pulled one of his pauses, and I steeled myself for him to ask whether Chuck had actually been in Chicago yesterday. But he didn’t. He merely glanced down at his nails and up again.

“Well,” he said, “the thing for me to do now seems to be to have a talk with Mr. Ryson. Let’s hope I’ll have a little more success with him.” He held out his hand to Connie. “Goodbye, Mrs. Hadley. Thank you for being so co-operative.”

He started for the door. As he did so, a foreboding came to me that this inevitably would be the moment when Ala would dash in and destroy everything. I went with him into the hall and found myself scurrying ahead of him like a butler to open the front door. I glanced up and down Sixty-Fourth Street. There was no sign of Ala.

Trant reached me at the front door and paused. “This is a bad business, Mr. Hadley.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Your wife’s a fine woman and I understand she’s done a lot of good for this city. I’d hate to involve her, however slightly, in something as sordid as this.”

“It can’t be helped,” I said.

He was looking at me now as if he hadn’t really seen me before. The ambiguous eyes—blue? gray?—surveyed my face as if it were a rather tricky chart which had to be memorized in a hurry.

“It’s a great relief to me, Mr. Hadley, that you people knew Don Saxby so casually. There’s nothing I hate more than having prominent people tangled up in a murder case. The D. A. hates it, too. Everybody hates it, in fact.” He paused, looking grave. “You know, when I talked to Mr. Green, I was a little worried.”

“What about?” I said.

“You know how people are, how easy it is for them to get the wrong impression.” He paused again. “Mr. Green seemed to feel from watching your daughter and Saxby that she was… well, that she was in love with him.”

“In love?” I echoed, hoping that my voice had the right inflection of incredulity.

“That would have been a mess, wouldn’t it?” Lieutenant Trant grinned. To me it was an unnerving grin. “Think of it... if your daughter had got mixed up with Saxby just a couple of weeks before her big, slap-up society wedding to the Ryson boy! Well… I’m glad I don’t have that on my hands.”

He held out one of those hands to me. I took it, and as his cool, dry fingers touched mine, I had the panicky impression that he hadn’t believed a single word Connie and I had said, that in some uncanny way he already knew everything about all of us and was merely, for some cryptic reason of his own, biding his time. It was absurd, I knew, but it was a chilling sensation.

He withdrew his hand from mine. For one moment I thought he was going to pat my arm encouragingly, but he didn’t.

He merely said, “Now, Mr. Hadley, don’t you worry. I have a hunch that this is going to be a very routine case. In fact, I feel we’ll get everything straightened out the moment we’ve traced the ownership of the gun.”

He smiled again and started down the marble steps toward a black police car. I stood watching him climb into it and, as I did so, I remembered that the Rysons had a gun. After he had married his “girl bride,” Mal had insisted on having a gun in the house for protection. Vivien had made a gag about his keeping it in a drawer between their beds.

Their bedroom! Abruptly came the memory of Vivien’s voice on the phone the night before. It sounded in my mind, uncomfortably distinct, right down to the tinkling laugh.

Chuck was so strange last night, really most peculiar. Right after dinner he disappeared for ages. Finally I went to look for him and he was in Mal’s and my bedroom, sitting on my bed.

Lieutenant Trant had got into the car. He was leaning out of the window and lifting his arm to me in a friendly farewell.

It seemed so odd, said Vivien’s voice. I mean, why our bedroom? Why not his own?

TEN

I went into the house and closed the door. Connie came hurrying out of the library.

“George, that terrible man. Do you think he believes us?”

“No,” I said.

“Then what are we going to do? George, we’ve got to call Vivien before he gets there. We’ve got to warn her about Chuck. She can’t tell him that none of us know where he was on Sunday.”

I’d decided not to tell her about the gun yet. If I was right, it was going to hit her more powerfully than anything else that could have happened; there was no point in inflicting it on her until I was sure. I went to the telephone in the hall. Then I thought of Mary. It would be safer in the library.

Connie followed me there, hovering, supervising. I dialed the Rysons. I got Vivien right away.

I said, “Vivien, do you know about Mr. Saxby?”

“The wicked Mr. Saxby, darling? What about him?”

“He’s been murdered.”

“Murdered?” Her voice tilted upward.

“Is Mal there?”

“No. He hasn’t come home yet. But darling, tell me…”

“Listen, there’s no time to explain it all, but a policeman’s just been here, and he’s on his way to see you. He’s found out that Mal knew Saxby in Toronto.”

“Knew him!” exclaimed Vivien. “But darling, that isn’t true. Mal only met him once at some party.”

“I know. But whatever happens, tell Mal not to mention the Duvreuxs. And that’s not all. The important thing is Chuck. Do you know where he is?”

“But of course I do. He’s back in Chicago. He sent us a wire this morning. He got tied up or something and only just made the plane. He wanted us to mail him the papers from his brief case.”

Connie was standing very close to me, listening to Vivien’s voice squawking out of the receiver. “Ask her where he was yesterday,” she said.

I said into the phone, “But he wasn’t with you at all yesterday, Vivien?”

“Of course not. I told you last night. Not even for a moment.”

Connie grabbed the phone from me. “Vivien,” she barked, “don’t tell the Lieutenant that.”

“But why not? What’s it got to do with Chuck? Why in heaven’s…?”

Vivien was getting hysterical. I snatched the receiver back from Connie, dreading what I was going to ask but knowing it had to be done.

“Vivien,” I said, “Mal still has that gun, doesn’t he?”

“Gun?”

“The automatic he bought after you were married?”

“Why, yes, I think so. I’m sure. I—”

“He still keeps it in the drawer between your beds?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Go look and see whether it’s still there.”

“George,” said Connie. “My God—George.”

There was a silence at the other end of the wire. Then Vivien said, “Are you out of your mind? Why should I look?”

“Just go and look.”

“Oh, all right. I’m right here in the bedroom. I can reach over and…” Once again there was silence, then Vivien gave a gasp. “It’s not there.”

I felt that queasiness again. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Mal couldn’t have put it anywhere else?”

“No. I’m certain. That’s the place he said it always ought to be.” I knew it would only be seconds before she caught on. “My God, Chuck came here into the bedroom on Saturday night. George, you don’t mean Chuck took it?”

Connie made another wild grab for the telephone. I almost had to struggle with her.

“He must have taken it,” Vivien was saying. “That’s what he was doing. But why? It’s impossible. You can’t imagine he—he killed Don Saxby? He hardly even knew him.”

“Ala went off with Saxby last weekend,” I said. “She thought she was in love with him. She told Chuck she wasn’t going through with the wedding. That’s why he was the way he was. Listen, Vivien, this is terribly important. When the Lieutenant comes, don’t either of you mention the gun and swear till you’re blue in the face that Chuck was with you all day Sunday.”

“But… but, oh, George, I can’t face it without Mal. I simply can’t. You’ve got to come over.”

“How can we? The moment we showed up, Lieutenant Trant would see through it all in a second.”

“But… but…”

“If it is the gun, then it’s hopeless anyway. Trant’s bound to trace it. But just do the best you can. Stall. And call us the moment he’s gone.”

“But George,” she was moaning, “George—”

“I’m sorry, Vivien. There’s nothing else to do.”

I put down the receiver and turned to Connie. She was gazing straight ahead of her with an expression of such naked despair that it was painful to look at her. Then, after a long pause, she said, “So Chuck took the gun.”

“It looks that way.”

She spun on me almost angrily. “You knew last night and you didn’t tell me?”

“Of course I didn’t know. But last night on the phone Vivien told me about his being in her bedroom. It was only when Trant talked about the gun that I got the idea.”

There was a little chair by the phone. She dropped down into it. Her hands were clenched together in her lap. “But if… if he took it…” She looked up at me. “George, did you notice anything about him yesterday?”

“You mean the way he looked?”

A shiver ran through her body. “Like Sally.” She got up again abruptly. “That can’t happen, can it? Something like that? It can’t be latent for years, never giving a sign and then…” She stopped as if she didn’t dare put into words what she dreaded. “George, if he took the gun… if he went, like that, to Don…”

“I know,” I said.

“And Vivien’s hopeless. She’s never going to stand up to that Lieutenant. She… oh, George, what are we going to do?”

I was painfully conscious of her suffering and of her need for comfort. But, as I put my arm around her, all I felt was a smoldering resentment, resentment of this demanding grief, resentment of Ala, and above all, resentment against the circumstances which were entangling me so relentlessly back into a life from which I’d thought I was escaping.

If there’d been something we could do, it would have helped, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing but to wait. I made her sit down on a couch. I sat down with her, plagued by inadequacy and guilt, longing for Tobago—no, not Tobago, some nonexistent tropical isle thousands of miles from anywhere, where there would be no one but Eve and me.

Ala came back in about half an hour. We told her, at least I did. Connie just stood watching her, her face an icy, implacable mask. It wasn’t easy for Ala to pretend not to know as much as she did, in fact, know, but once again she handled it with a smoothness which was almost shocking to me. It was only when I told her about Chuck and the gun that the veneer cracked.

“No,” she gasped. “No, it can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” said Connie.

Ala turned to her. “Then—then you’re trying to say…?”

“We’re not trying to say anything. We’re only telling you the facts.” Connie paused. “Perhaps you have something to say.”

“Me?” repeated Ala. “Why me?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“But George said that Chuck—”

“George said that no one knows where Chuck was yesterday afternoon and that Vivien’s gun is missing. That’s all he said. But if the police find out about it, you know what they’re going to think. And if the gun does turn out to be Mal’s, you’re going to have a lot on your conscience, aren’t you?” The tone of my wife’s voice was bitterly accusatory. I should have realized, of course, that this was bound to happen. Connie’s love for Chuck had always been the deepest reality of her existence, while her feeling for Ala was something artificial which she’d forced upon herself. Now that Chuck was in danger, it was Ala, inevitably, who had become the enemy, Ala, the pseudo Corliss whose irresponsible “Hadley” behavior had brought on the disaster.

They stood there, the two of them, ignoring me, watching each other with a deadly intensity.

It was Ala who finally spoke. In a thin, tight voice she said, “Would you kindly explain what you mean by that remark?”

“What remark?”

“You know what remark. Why should I have anything on my conscience?”

“My God,” said Connie, “you can stand there and say that? You?”

“Why not? What’s it got to do with me? Is there any law that says I’ve got to be in love with Chuck? I thought I could marry him. I thought it was the best thing to do. Then—then when Don came along... I know now what he was. Of course I know and I know what a fool I made of myself. But if Chuck was crazy enough to grab up Uncle Mal’s gun and dash around and shoot him… what’s that got to do with me? I’m not responsible for his actions, am I?”

As I watched them glaring at each other, I could have banged their heads together.

Ala had spun around to me. “George, she knows I know it’s terrible about Chuck. Can’t you stop her picking on me just for once?”

“Picking on her!” echoed Connie. “At a time like this, she can—”

That’s when the telephone rang. I jumped to answer it. It was Mal Ryson, his voice sounding thick, almost incoherent. “George, will you please come over here? Right away?”

“What is it?” I said. “What’s happened?”

“Please come. That’s all. Just come, all of you.”

He hung up. Connie said, “Was it Vivien?”

“Mal,” I said. “He wants us to go right over. All of us.”

“All of us?” exclaimed Ala. “Do I have to go?”

As I looked at her sulky, pouting face, I realized what a total stranger she had become to me. Did she have to go? What did she think this all was?

“Yes,” I said. “Oddly enough, you do have to come. And you’re coming right now.”

We took a taxi to the Rysons’ house on Sutton Place, three dissociated bodies, each infinitely isolated from the other. When we got out at the front door, all the lights downstairs were on. We went up the steps. I rang the bell. Almost immediately the door opened, and Mal Ryson was standing on the threshold. Mal had always seemed to me to be the stodgiest, most placid person I knew, but now he looked about twenty years older—gray-faced, with an old man’s sag to his shoulders.

“Lieutenant Trant’s just left,” he said. “While he was here, a call came through from headquarters. They’ve traced the ownership of the gun that killed Don Saxby. It was my gun.” Ala gave a little gasp. Connie clutched my arm. We all crowded into the hallway. Mal closed the door behind us clumsily, as if his fingers had to think out each separate move.

“And Vivien was frightened,” he was saying. “The Lieutenant went on questioning her. And she got frightened. She didn’t know what she was doing. I know she didn’t, but she told him that she’d seen Chuck in our bedroom on Saturday night. She told him that Chuck must have taken the gun, and then she admitted that we had no idea where he’d been all day Sunday.”

I’d known, of course I’d known, that Vivien would lose her head. Mal came toward us, walking very slowly. I thought his knees were going to buckle under him. He reached Connie and put a hand on her arm for support.

“You’ve got to explain, Connie. I—I don’t understand what Vivien says. What is it? What’s been happening? They’re going to pick Chuck up in Chicago. The Lieutenant says that there’ll be no difficulty about extradition. They’ll be bringing him back tomorrow, he says, for further questioning.”

His eyes, vague and dull, moved from one of our faces to the other as if he were searching there for some evidence of unreality to prove that he was dreaming it all.

“But why, Connie? How can they possibly think that Chuck took that gun and—and killed Don Saxby?”

Ala took an impulsive step toward him. All the sulky defiance was gone. Her lips were quivering. Her eyes were agonized with shame and remorse, and she wasn’t acting, I could tell. The Ala I knew and loved had re-emerged from the deviously self-justifying stranger.

“Uncle Mal,” she cried. “Oh, poor Uncle Mal, you’ll never forgive me—never…”

ELEVEN

We went into the living room. Everything was different. Vivien must have been rioting around with a new decorator. And there she was, half hysterical, fluttering all over the place, dramatizing her “ordeal.” I’d never realized before that Connie disliked her, but now her expression was a dead giveaway.

While Ala, very pale and contrite, sat on a stiff-backed chair, Connie and I explained to Mal everything which I’d only sketched in to Vivien on the phone. It was, of course, far too late to think up any way of shielding Chuck now, and, once we’d told all there was to tell, I decided it was kinder to Mal if we left. He was wonderful about it, very dignified and polite, but his love for Chuck was as basic if less demonstrative than Connie’s, and I knew he could only think that Ala had behaved like a floozie and that I, in encouraging her, had been almost as irresponsible.

As Ala and Connie and I drove home in a taxi, I wintrily contemplated what lay ahead of us. By now they’d be bringing Chuck back from Chicago. Whether he was guilty or not—and how could he possibly be innocent?—our clumsy attempts at lying to Lieutenant Trant would have gone for nothing at all. Tomorrow the papers would be screaming their heads off about us: BANKER’S SON HELD IN MURDER OF SOCIALITE FIANCÉE’S SEDUCER. Tomorrow we’d all be public figures, bound tightly together against the great public. I’d be a part of the clan, too, I who had rejected everything Corliss, I who… My longing for Eve and the realization of her inaccessibility came simultaneously.

It seems to me that we drove home from the Rysons’ in total silence and spent the rest of the evening in total silence, too.

Next morning the papers were almost as bad as I had feared they would be. They announced in headlines of varying degrees of sensationalism that Chuck Ryson, son of Malcolm Ryson, the distinguished banker, had been detained by the police in Chicago and flown back to New York for further questioning in regard to the murder of Donald Saxby. Although by now Trant must have guessed how deeply involved Ala was, there was still no proof and consequently there was no direct mention of any relationship between her and Don. She figured heavily, however, as Chuck’s “heiress fiancée,” whose “nuptials” were to take place next month at a “fashionable East Side church.” There was even a picture of her with me, smiling gayly, her arm around me, at some social function which had left no recollection with me at all.

Reporters pestered me at the office and presumably were pestering Connie and Ala at home. Lew Parker took me out to lunch. He knew the Rysons and admired Mal. He was too tactful to show how curious he was, but that didn’t make lunch any less of an effort. And all the time I was waiting for what was going to come next. What would it be? A call from the police? Or would Lieutenant Trant appear in person, strolling into my office with that quiet, disconcerting smile of his?

What happened in fact was Mal. I’d got home around six. Just after dinner, Connie and Ala and I were sitting in the living room, when Mary came in and announced Mr. Ryson. Ala couldn’t face him. She scuttled upstairs. The moment he walked into the room, I knew the news was bad. Being Mal, he was still trying to look calm and distinguished, but his eyes were more than enough to give him away.

“I’ve seen him,” he said.

“Chuck?” cried Connie. “Where is he?”

“They’ve got him at Centre Street. I’ve just been with him.”

He had moved to a chair and was standing by it with his hand on its back. For a moment neither Connie nor I could bring ourselves to ask what had to be asked. Then Connie did it.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” said Mal. “He admitted he took the gun out of the drawer. He did that, I—I imagine, for my sake. He didn’t want me as the owner of the gun, to get into any trouble, but apart from that…”

I suppose I had been trying to believe that miraculously Chuck would have an explanation for himself. I wasn’t going to be able to believe that any more.

“But, Mal,” Connie said, “you mean he hasn’t told the police anything?”

“Not a thing. That Lieutenant says he’s been questioning him for hours, but he just sits there, refusing to answer. When we were alone together, I thought, I was sure he’d—he’d talk to me, his own father, but he didn’t. I hired a lawyer for him at once. Macguire. He’s supposed to be the best criminal lawyer in town. But when I told him, he didn’t even seem to take it in. I can’t understand. I just can’t understand. He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t do it. Whatever the—the incentive, I know that Chuck would never…”

Suddenly he was crying. He had thrown his hands up to cover his face, but I could hear the choked, squeaky sobs.

Connie hurried to him and sat on the arm of his chair, running her hand over his coarse gray hair.

“Mal,” she said, “Mal dear. It’ll be all right. It’s got to be all right.”

“But—but if he didn’t do it, then why can’t he tell the truth? Doesn’t he realize? That Lieutenant... he said... if he goes on like this, if he refuses to talk, that’s going to be enough for the District Attorney to arrest him, to bring him to trial, to charge him with—”

The phone in the hall rang. I started toward the door, but Connie was ahead of me.

Mal didn’t seem to realize she had gone. Very slowly, his hands came down from his face and he was looking at me—not as me but just as anyone who happened to be there. The tears were sliding down his cheeks. “Why did I buy that gun? It wasn’t necessary. There were Vivien’s jewels, but what difference does that make? They’re insured. I’ve always been very particular about insurance. I’ve always been…”

His thoughts got too muddled. He’d lost track of the sentence. I’d never felt at ease with Mal. As a brother-in-law, he’d always seemed too impressive, too consciously a personage for any intimacies. Seeing him stripped like this made me feel uncomfortable and inadequate.

“Sitting there,” he said, “hour after hour, saying absolutely nothing. Just like his mother. Don’t tell Connie. I wouldn’t want her to worry. But when I looked at him, sitting there on that chair, he reminded me of Sally. That’s always been my dread, ever since it happened to Sally, that maybe Chuck…”

All the time, I’d been straining my ears to catch the murmuring sound of Connie’s voice on the phone outside. Now I heard a faint clatter as she put down the receiver. In a second she was hurrying into the room.

“It was Trant,” she said. “We’ve got to go to Centre Street, you and I, George. He wants to see us.”

“Did he say why?” I said, thinking of a dozen reasons each more alarming than the last.

“I don’t know. He just said we must come right away.”

Connie’s executive personality had returned in full spate. I knew her so well. The only thing that totally defeated her was inaction. Now, hopeless as the situation must have seemed to her, there was something to do and she was herself again.

“The car’s outside, George. I used it this afternoon.” She turned to Mal. “Mal dear, you’ll want to hear what’s happened. Why don’t you stay here? Just sit quietly until we come back. You can call Vivien if you like and have her come over, too. Ala’s upstairs, but I know she doesn’t want to inflict herself on you, so there’ll be no one to disturb you. And you mustn’t worry. Please. It’s all going to be all right. I’ll do something. I’ll speak to the District Attorney. I’ll make him realize there’s been some mistake.”

In a surge of vitality, she organized us all, and in a few minutes she and I were driving downtown. She sat next to me, instructing me all the way. For once I wasn’t irritated by all that excess self-confidence. I even got some comfort from her idiotic optimism.

“It’s all going to work out. We’ve just got to make them see.”

I’d never been in Centre Street before. It was much as I had imagined it to be—cops, detectives, and that barracklike bleakness which goes with all institutions.

We were expected. A plain-clothes man led us through a warren of public rooms and corridors and up two flights into a small bare room on the third floor.

Lieutenant Trant was sitting there behind a plain wooden desk. I suppose it was his office. With its bleak, surely excessive austerity, it was more like a monk’s cell. And Lieutenant Trant, in spite of his elegant suit, his button-down shirt, his black knitted necktie, looked even more like a priest than I’d remembered him. As he rose to greet us, he wasn’t actually smiling but there was a suggestion of a smile in his eyes, a maddeningly tolerant expression indicating unlimited understanding of human nature and its frailties.

“Good evening, Mrs. Hadley, Mr. Hadley. You’ve been very prompt.”

“Where is he?” demanded Connie.

“Your nephew’s here, Mrs. Hadley.”

“You’re going to let us see him?”

“Of course. In fact, he’s asked to see you. That’s one of the reasons why I called. But first, I’m afraid, we’ve got a little talking to do.”

There were two beat-up wooden chairs on our side of the desk. He gestured toward them. I sat down. After a moment’s hesitation, Connie sat down, too. Then Trant resumed his seat behind the desk. He picked up a pencil. It was a worn-down yellow stub. For a moment he just sat there, twirling the pencil in his fingers.

Then he said, “Well, Mrs. Hadley, you weren’t very cooperative with me yesterday, were you?”

I’d realized, of course, that by now he was almost bound to have discovered that, but I don’t think Connie had even let herself speculate along those lines. Now her “I’ll talk to the District Attorney” personality was severely jolted. A flush started to stain the skin under her cheekbones.

“Let me tell you,” continued Trant in his voice of mild admonition, “just what we’ve found out. That should make it easier for you to know where we stand. In the first place, some people who own a motel in New York State got in touch with us. They recognized Miss Hadley’s picture in the paper as the girl who arrived there with a man on Saturday night and registered with him as Mr. and Mrs. Donald Saxby.”

He paused, watching Connie as the flush in her cheeks deepened. The suggestion of the smile was still there in his very clear, very alert eyes. “And not only that. A few minutes ago a call from Canada came in. It was from a rather emotional lady, a Mrs. Fostwick. She said she felt it was her duty to communicate with us. She told us the whole episode concerning the daughter of the Duvreuxs. She also told us that on Sunday morning Mr. Hadley called her in a very agitated state, as she put it, to inquire about these people. So. I may be wrong, but I’d say I have a pretty clear picture of Don Saxby’s relationship with your family, don’t I?”

That wasn’t just a rhetorical question. He was waiting for Connie to answer.

She squirmed uncomfortably on her chair. Then she stammered, “Why, yes, Lieutenant, I’d say you do. But you must understand—”

“How embarrassing it was for you? Of course I understand that, Mrs. Hadley. Your daughter, presumably, was infatuated with a most undesirable man; she spent the night with him in a motel; and almost immediately afterwards he got himself murdered. Even the most public-spirited citizen should be excused for lying to the police under those circumstances.”

It was strange. Everything he said should have had the bite of sarcasm to it, but it didn’t. He couldn’t have been much older than we. For all I knew, he was younger, and yet he was gently, almost affectionately reproving us like a long-suffering uncle. It made him completely unorthodox as a policeman; it should also have made him seem unalarming. But in fact he had managed to intimidate me far more than an ordinary cop with an ordinary cop’s crassness would have done.

Even Connie was feeling it, I could tell, although with her, embarrassment merely manifested itself as a heightening of the grand manner.

With a great effort at dignity, she said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I realize now it was very wrong of us.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Trant, “and I’m sure that you and your husband will now be ready to co-operate.”

“Of course,” said Connie.

“Good. Then I’ll be around at your house tomorrow morning.”

“You mean you’re finished with us for now?”

“For the moment, Mrs. Hadley. The D. A.’s waiting for me and—”

Instantly Connie was the “boss lady” again. “In that case, please let us see Chuck right away. His father tells us he refuses to say what he was doing on Sunday afternoon. I know there’s some perfectly good explanation and I’m quite certain I can persuade him to tell you the truth.”

“I’m quite certain you could, too,” said Trant, “but, as it happens, there’s no longer any need for your kind offices as an aunt. Chuck has already given us a full statement.”

Connie sat up very straight in her chair. “He has?”

“The lawyer his father hired for him, Mr. Macguire, was present at the time. He made the statement quite voluntarily, and I assure you it was all aboveboard.” Trant paused, still studying Connie’s face with his bland, unwinking attention. “His reasons, by the way, for not having talked earlier were touching. It was all a rather romantic attempt to protect Miss Hadley.”

A sudden image came to me of Ala in that mustard-colored little room, standing like a dummy by Don Saxby’s body with her gloved hands clutched together over the middle button of her coat. Was it conceivable then that Chuck could have known she’d been there?

“Protect Ala?” I said sharply.

Trant turned to me. It was the first time during the interview that he had shown any interest in me at all.

“Yes, Mr. Hadley. He was trying to protect her from scandal. Since he knew he could rely on you and your family not to say anything, he felt that if he didn’t say anything either, Miss Hadley’s relationship with Mr. Saxby might never come out at all. It was quixotic of him, of course, but he seems to love her very much indeed. That’s why he refused to say a word, even to his father, until I told him about the motel owners and Mrs. Fostwick. Then, of course, he realized there was nothing he could do any more, so he talked. He gave us a pretty full report of the episode between Miss Hadley and Saxby. He also told us exactly how Mr. Ryson’s gun happened to get into Saxby’s apartment.”

“But he didn’t kill him.” The words came in anguish from Connie. “He didn’t, did he? It’s all been explained. He had nothing to do with it at all.”

Lieutenant Trant looked down at the pencil. When he looked up again, his face was very solemn, almost, it seemed to me, commiserative.

“The moment it was ready, a typed copy of Chuck’s statement was rushed to the D. A., Mrs. Hadley. I’m sorry to tell you this, but the D. A.’s just been on the phone to me. He’s read the statement and, on the strength of the statement, he is having us issue a warrant for Chuck’s arrest. He will be formally charged with the murder.”

“No!” cried Connie. “No.”

She got up. Her gloves fell off her lap onto the floor. She looked down at them dazedly as if the act of picking them up again was something far too complicated for her. Trant had got up too. Coming quickly around the desk, he bent, retrieved the gloves and held them out to her.

“I’m glad you’re here, Mrs. Hadley,” he said. “I think it would be easier for Chuck if it is you and your husband who break the news to him…”

TWELVE

He turned away from her and pressed a buzzer on the desk. A policeman came in.

Trant said, “Take Mr. and Mrs. Hadley to Chuck Ryson.”

I took Connie’s arm. She went meekly with me like a little girl. The policeman led us down the corridor and up in an elevator. There was another bare corridor with the same featureless dinginess. We came to a door. A second policeman was standing in front of it. He let us into a bare room almost identical with Trant’s and locked the door behind us.

Chuck was there, sitting on one of the flimsy wooden chairs. I’d been infected by Mal’s and Connie’s dread of the family insanity and I’d steeled myself to see something quite different from what I saw. Chuck looked exhausted and he hadn’t shaved. The golden stubble on his jaw glinted in the light from the single grimy ceiling bulb, but, so far as I could see, there wasn’t the slightest sign of any mental instability. What he looked most of all was scared, very scared and very young.

He jumped up. For one moment he stood looking at us, then Connie took a step toward him and he was running to her, throwing his arms around her.

“Connie. Gee, Connie.”

“Chuck—Chuck dear.”

“How is she? How’s Ala?”

“She’s—she’s all right.”

“I mean, she knows about Saxby now? She knows what sort of a heel—”

“Of course she does.”

“Then maybe later, I mean when she’s straightened out and all, maybe it’ll be okay between us again?”

He drew a little away from Connie, looking down at her with pathetic, dogged hopefulness as if there was nothing in the world to worry anybody but the state of Ala’s feelings. Connie was looking back at him blindly, then she turned her head and threw a desperate glance at me.

I said, “We’ve been talking to Trant, you know, Chuck.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

“He says you’ve made a full statement.”

His eyes, on my face now, were suddenly embarrassed. “I did my best. Honestly, I did. I wasn’t going to say a word until I had to. Then… then he found out about the motel and everything, so I told him. At least it’s over now. We’ve just got to wait till the D. A. reads the statement. With any luck I’ll be out of here in a couple of hours.”

As he said that, he smiled a quick, sunny smile. I’d got up the courage to tell him the truth, but his naive self-confidence undermined me.

I hedged. “But, Chuck, is that what your lawyer told you?”

“Oh, lawyers! You know what lawyers are like. Always looking on the black side, always yakking about technicalities. But what’s to stop me getting out of here? I told them the truth.”

“The truth!” cried Connie. The wild, afflicted look was still in her eyes but somehow—I suppose because she realized how important it was for Chuck—she’d got control of herself again. “Then, Chuck—you mean, you didn’t do it?”

“Do it? Kill Saxby?” He gave a bleak little shrug. “I wanted to. But wanting to and doing it… well, it seems like they’re two very different things.”

“But—” I began.

Quickly, before I could say what had to be said, Connie threw me another desperate warning glance.

“No, George.” She turned back to Chuck. “You didn’t do it. Then tell us. Tell us what you told the Lieutenant.”

“Okay,” said Chuck. “Okay, sure.”

Connie crossed to me then. She put her hand on my arm, firmly, making it even more plain to me that she wanted me to keep my mouth shut. She said, “But you did take Mal’s gun?”

Chuck’s face was very solemn now. He looked down at the carpetless floor, then he dropped back in his chair.

“Sure,” he said. “I took it.”

“On Saturday night? When Vivien found you in their room?”

“That’s right. It was after you’d told me about Saxby, about what sort of a guy he was, about what had been happening with Ala. At first, I couldn’t really have taken it in. I mean, everything had seemed so wonderful with Ala finally saying she loved me, with the wedding set and everything. I—I just couldn’t believe it. But then, although you’d told me not to tell Dad or Vivien, when I got home I had to mention Saxby’s name. And that did it. Dad came out with the whole story of the people in Toronto and it was as if up till then the shock had kept me from feeling, because, as I sat there listening to Dad, I suddenly got so mad I couldn’t wait for any more, I had to get away, to be by myself. So I went up to my room. I sat on the bed and—and I wanted to kill him. It was just as simple as that. I wanted to kill him. Then I thought of Dad’s gun.”

He broke off, running a hand across his cropped yellow-gold hair.

“I knew I couldn’t do anything then, of course, but the thought of the gun kind of hypnotized me. I wanted to feel it in my hand. So I got up and went down the corridor to their room. I knew Dad kept it in the drawer between the beds. I went straight to the drawer and took it out. I sat down on Vivien’s bed, looking at it, then I heard someone coming. It was Vivien, you know that. I put the gun in my pocket just before she came in, and she said, ‘What on earth are you doing here, darling?’ But… well, I couldn’t face her or anyone. I just got up and went back to my own room. I lay on the bed. I felt terrible, kind of split in two, as if I was standing up beside the bed looking down at myself lying on the bed and I—I thought of Mother. I started thinking: My God, am I going like Mother?”

He held out his hand to me. I took a cigarette out of my case and gave it to him. I leaned over and lit it. His hand was shaking and his eyes, watching Connie, showed a vestige of that same lurking dread which had haunted his father’s face.

“I’ve always been scared of that, you know, ever since that last day when they came to get her, when she was screaming in her room and—and they came up the stairs with the strait jacket, the man in the white coat, the woman, the nurse or whatever she was, coming up the stairs, carrying that—that thing like a life preserver. I remembered all that and I got so scared. I guess I even forgot about Ala and the gun and everything. I just lay there, holding on as if there was a great cliff and I was on the edge. Then I guess I must have passed out or maybe just fallen asleep. But when I came to again it was five-thirty in the morning.”

There was another chair. Connie sat down on it. The noise of its legs scraping across the floor seemed deafening.

She said, “So that’s when you came over to us and waited across the street. You—you still had the gun with you?”

“Yes. I’d fallen asleep without undressing. The gun was still there in my pocket. I guess I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do any more. I was pretty confused. I just knew I had to see Ala. And then, well, she finally came. You know all that. I mean, my going up, talking to her and coming down. I guess I must have seemed pretty odd to you. God knows, I felt odd. You see, she’d said it was all hopeless, that we were through, that—that whatever you said about Saxby, it didn’t matter. She loved him. She was going to marry him. And, knowing what he was, knowing he was only out to shake you down for some money… When I loved her the way I loved her, the way I love her—”

“I know,” broke in Connie. “Of course I know. And I was frightened. That’s why I tried to make you go home.”

“But I didn’t. I don’t know what time it was. Around ten, I guess. And it all seemed perfectly straightforward to me then. I’d go to him. I don’t exactly know what I was thinking I was going to do. I—I didn’t actually say to myself any more: You’re going to kill him. Maybe I thought I could scare him or—I don’t know. But I walked down Madison and I went into a hotel. I looked up his address in a phone book and I called him. I wanted to make sure he’d be there. But the phone didn’t answer and—and that threw me a bit. I got kind of confused again. I started to walk. I must have walked downtown and across because I found myself on Forty-Second Street between Seventh and Eighth, where all the movie houses are. I called again. He still wasn’t answering. I went into one of the movies. It was some sort of an Italian picture. I sat looking at it with my hand on the gun, thinking about Saxby all the time. Then, well, it sounds crazy, but I went to sleep. I must have slept quite a while because when I woke up the picture was starting again. I must have slept through the whole show. I went out. I started walking again and I walked straight to Saxby’s place. I pressed the buzzer; the front door clicked. I opened it. There was a sort of iron grille elevator. I took it up to some floor—the fourth, I think. There was a door. I was just about to knock on it when it opened and he was there. He stood looking at me, smiling, and he said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ ”

Both he and Connie had forgotten me. They sat watching each other, completely absorbed with each other.

“What time was this?” I said.

“The time? Gee, around two, I guess. Two—two-thirty.”

“Yes,” Connie cut in, “you went there. He opened the door…”

“He stood there. He was smiling. He said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ and he stepped aside and I went in and he shut the door behind us. And suddenly I’d—I’d lost the thread again. I guess I’d thought so much about it; I’d sat there in that movie, holding the gun, thinking about him, that—when it was actually happening... I don’t know. But that’s the way it was. I just stood there like a moron. He came up to me, smiling as if he was my oldest buddy. ‘I suppose it’s about Ala,’ he said. “Yes,’ I said. Then the smile went and he said very gently, ‘I’m terribly sorry. I know how tough it is for you. I only hope you’ll be able to forgive me. You see, we love each other and it’s something we can’t fight against.’ When I heard him say that, knowing all about Toronto and everything, I felt the rage surging up in me. ‘You love her!’ I said. ‘You bastard!’ And I took out the gun. He was only about two feet from me. I took it out—and I aimed it straight at his chest.”

He stopped then. In the cruel illumination from the overhead light, I could see his Adam’s apple working convulsively up and down his throat.

“I wasn’t scared of him,” he said. “I swear it wasn’t that. It—it was just—well, feeling the gun in my hand, seeing him standing there, hating him so much—it just didn’t happen. You know what he did? He just leaned forward and took the gun out of my hand. He didn’t say anything. Not a word. He just went with the gun to the door. He opened it. He waved at the door with the gun—and I walked out. I wasn’t there more than a couple of minutes. I just went out and I left the gun with him.”

His eyes moved from Connie to me then, scanning my face with a look of bewildered hopefulness. It wasn’t as if he were realizing how important it was for him that he should be believed. It was as if somehow he hoped to discover from our faces a clue as to how he had let it happen that way, how, after all those hours of brooding and hating, all he’d done was let Saxby take the gun out of his hand and ease him out of the apartment.

It was that expression more than anything that made me believe him. As stories went, it couldn’t have been more improbable. I understood, of course I did, why the D. A. was doing what he was doing. The shots had been fired sometime between two and five. Chuck had been in the apartment after two with the gun, admittedly intending to kill Saxby. Only the most naive of optimists could have hoped for any other decision. But to me it seemed that his bewilderment and shame were completely genuine. Could a murderer have thought of—just that? A story tapering off to quite so feeble an ending?

I hadn’t expected to believe him. I’d resigned myself to his guilt as the inevitable disastrous ending of the whole disastrous affair. But suddenly I was convinced he was telling the truth, and, with the conviction, so many things came crowding: hope, not much of it but some; exasperation against the insensitivity of officialdom; and something else... If Chuck was innocent, who was guilty? Someone totally unconnected with us, who had conveniently sneaked in after Chuck had conveniently left the gun there and before Ala had arrived? Such a person’s existence was possible. Of course it was. And I would have to believe in him because if I didn’t…

Once again the image came of Ala standing in that mustard-colored room, her back steadfastly turned against the body lying on the floor. Another image came of her too last night as a sulky stranger, glaring at Connie, almost indifferent to Chuck, it seemed, in her eagerness to justify herself.

Ala could have killed Don Saxby. There was nothing except my illogical paternal faith to keep me from admitting it. She’d been there. The gun had been there ready for anyone to use. If there’d been a scene, if she’d confronted him with the Duvreuxs and he’d shown his true colors…!

If Chuck was innocent… what about Ala?

THIRTEEN

Chuck was saying, “So you see, I didn’t even try to get back into the apartment. I didn’t do anything. I just took the elevator down, went out in the street and started walking. And that’s when the humiliation came. I thought: My God, that’s all you can do. When you love her, when you’ve loved her almost all your life, the only thing you can do when some two-bit heel…”

The words choked off. Yes, I was thinking, this is true. I know it’s true. Chuck didn’t do it. Then…?

“So that’s all, really. I just went on walking. Then I found I was on Second Avenue in the Sixties, passing a bar I used to go to way back when I was at Harvard, The Red Bear on the corner of Sixty-First Street. I went in. The same barman, Mack, was there. He recognized me. I was the only guy in there at the time. He stood me a drink. It didn’t do any good. After that I had another. I must have stayed there a couple of hours. Then, after that, I went on the town. It seemed the only thing to do. I went from bar to bar. I lost all track of time. Then I saw it was almost nine and I remembered my plane to Chicago. I had my ticket in my pocket. Plastered though I was, I knew I had to get to the airport. I took a taxi to Idlewild. I’d got my timing all crazy. The plane didn’t go till eleven. I had over an hour to wait. I sat around waiting and… well, that’s all there is to that. That’s what I told them, what they wrote down and I signed.”

He stopped. For a moment he sat looking at us, then a very small, tentative smile moved his lips.

“Well,” he said, “that’s what happened. I guess the D. A.’s going to think I’m pretty much of a jerk, but, well, he’s got to believe it, hasn’t he?”

He went on looking at us. When neither of us said anything, the smile gradually faded.

“But…” he said. “Gee, Connie, you…”

Connie got up and went to him. She stood by his chair, bending over, putting her arms around his shoulders. “Chuck… maybe we should have told you at the beginning. I don’t know. I—I just couldn’t think of what was best. The District Attorney’s already read the statement.”

Chuck sprang up. “He’s read it and…?”

“Trant told us,” said Connie. “They’re issuing a warrant for your arrest. They’re going to charge you formally.”

It was horrible to see the way his face changed. First the color faded from his cheeks, then all his skin turned gray, even his lips took on a grayish tinge.

“But—but that can’t be. I’m telling the truth. I…” He turned his gaze wildly from Connie to me. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course I believe you,” said Connie passionately. She spun around to me. “And so do you, don’t you, George?”

“Yes, Chuck,” I said. “I believe you.”

“Then… then—”

“We’ll do something,” Connie cut in. “You mustn’t worry. I’ll do something. I—”

She broke off at the sound of a key in the door. We all turned to face it. It opened and the cop came in.

“Sorry, folks, but I guess you’ve got to leave now.” Connie’s eyes, as she glared at him, were blazing. “I’ve got to see the District Attorney. Now, right away.”

“Sorry, lady. It’s too late tonight to contact the D. A.”

“Then take me to Lieutenant Trant.”

“He ain’t here. He went off just about ten minutes ago.” The cop was watching her with the faintly clinical benevolence of a cop who’d been asked thousands of times by thousands of relatives to be taken to the District Attorney. “Listen, lady, if you’ve got anything to say or if there’s anything you want to know, the man to contact is the kid’s lawyer.”

“Yes, yes.” Connie turned back to Chuck. “Where is he? Where can we find him?”

Chuck felt in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a card. Without a word he handed it to her.

“There you are, lady,” said the cop. “All fixed up. And now, if you please…”

He was standing aside, waiting for us to leave. Connie glanced at the open door and then ran back to Chuck, throwing her arms around him.

“Chuck, Chuck darling, I’ll make them see. I swear I will.” She was kissing him, her love for him as fierce as a lioness’ for her cub. “You mustn’t worry. Please, please, Chuck, you mustn’t.” She tore herself away from him. We went out into the corridor. The cop locked the door behind us.

Being away from Chuck was almost as bad as being confronted by him. As the cop started leading us down the corridor, I was still haunted by Chuck’s gaunt, stricken face because I couldn’t escape the fact that if I told about Ala, they wouldn’t arrest him. The moment they knew about Ala, there would be two people, neither of them more or less suspect than the other. They couldn’t arrest them both. But Ala was innocent, too. Hadn’t she convinced me of that in those moments at Don Saxby’s apartment, just as positively as Chuck had convinced me? What if, later, she’d behaved like a selfish, spoiled brat? There was a lot of the selfish brat in her anyway. It would be monstrous to assume that made her into a murderess. Of course she was innocent and of course I, as her father, her only ally, could do nothing but go on shielding her. It wasn’t as if we’d seen anything at Saxby’s which made it impossible for Chuck to be guilty. To betray her would do nothing really constructive to help him.

But Chuck was innocent, too.

He’s innocent. The words, synchronizing with the steady clump of the cop’s shoes, became a rhythmic, goading jingle in my mind. He’s innocent, he’s innocent…

All this time, Connie was being almost hysterically executive, demanding a telephone, pouring indignation into the cop’s placid ear. Finally he got us downstairs into the sort of reception hall where we’d first entered. There was a telephone on the wall. Monumentally impervious, he grinned and left us. Connie ran to the phone and called the lawyer. I listened vaguely to her crisp, “committee” voice. Then she was slamming down the receiver.

“It’s all right, George. We’re to go to him right away. But I’ll have to call Mal first.”

Another clattering dime, another dialing, the brisk voice again.

“Mal? You’re still there… No, no, dear, I can’t say anything now… We’re going to the lawyer… Yes, yes, wait. I’ll be there soon. Wait, dear.”

She hung up.

“All right, George. Mr. Macguire’s at his home. Seventy-second and First Avenue. That’s where we’ve got to go.”

We started driving uptown. Connie always mixed up bustle with achievement. She had snapped right back. She was going to the lawyer. She was going to fix everything. In my state of moral deadlock, her resiliency set my teeth on edge. What did she think she was going to do? Announce to the lawyer that Chuck didn’t do it and sublimely assume that the word of Consuelo Corliss would be enough for everyone?

“There’s so much to look into. I’m sure they’re doing nothing, nothing at all. There’s that bar, for example. Where did Chuck say it was? The Red Bear, wasn’t it? On Sixty-First and Second?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“That barman, Mack, he’s bound to remember Chuck. Chuck said he was the only one in the place. He… George, didn’t they say the shots were fired sometime between two and five? Chuck wasn’t at all sure when he was actually at Don’s. Maybe it was earlier. Maybe the barman, Mack, could prove he’d arrived at the bar, say, at ten minutes to two.”

“It isn’t likely,” I said.

She swung around to glare at me. “Why are you always so defeatist? Of course it’s possible, and we’ll work on it. Yes, right now. George, get out at Sixty-First, talk to the barman. I’ll drive on to Mr. Macguire’s. There’s no need for you anyway.”

We were, in fact, in the Fifties on First. Suddenly the idea of escaping from Connie and the grueling session with the lawyer seemed wonderful to me. I didn’t have any faith in the bar enterprise, but what difference did that make?

“Okay,” I said.

“Find out everything,” she said, “absolutely everything. Then I’ll meet you back at the house.”

I got out at the corner of Sixty-First Street and First. Connie scrambled into the driving seat and drove away. I walked east down the block. The dim neon sign of The Red Bear showed on the corner of Second. It was just another Second Avenue saloon. I walked in. A straggle of men were lounging at the bar. The television was flickering with its sound off. The barman, a gaunt, balding man of around fifty, was polishing glasses close to a couple of guys who were arguing halfheartedly about something.

“Bourbon and water,” I said.

The barman came back with the drink, and I said, “Is your name Mack?”

“That’s right.” His bored eyes studied my face. “You from the cops?”

“No,” I said.

“Thought maybe you was. They just been in here asking about that Ryson kid they’re holding on a murder.”

“I’m his uncle,” I said. “I want to know when he came in here on Sunday afternoon.”

The barman flicked at the bar with his towel. “Just like them,” he said. “Well, mister, there ain’t no mystery about it. I remember real clear because I took over for the other barman Sunday afternoon. It was just a couple of minutes after I took over and I took over at two-thirty.”

So much for Connie’s inspiration. Chuck had arrived at the bar a few minutes after two-thirty. Don Saxby’s apartment was only a ten-minute walk away. The shots could have been fired at two.

The two men at the bar were arguing even more heatedly.

The barman stood in front of me, watching me now with a sort of tired sympathy.

“It’s tough, mister. Chuck seemed like a nice kid. Always. A real nice kid.”

There was a crash. One of the arguing men had overturned his highball. Liquor was running all over the bar.

The barman started to sop up the spilled drink with his cloth.

It was as I watched the liquor seeping into the cloth that I remembered something which, until then, I’d forgotten as being of no significance whatsoever. When I’d examined Saxby’s body, the shirt sleeve of his left forearm had been damp with martini spilled from the smashed cocktail shaker. I’d actually touched the material. The cocktail shaker must certainly have been shattered when he fell. And when had I touched the shirt sleeve? Not before four-thirty at the earliest.

The barman, having cleaned up the mess, moved soberly back to me.

I said, “Have you ever spilled a shaker of martinis on your sleeve?”

The mournful eyes blinked. “Sure. Guess so. Why?”

“How long does it take to dry?”

He shrugged. “Gee, mister, I never figured it out. Not long. The gin evaporating, that don’t take long.”

I counted back. The latest moment Chuck could have been at Don Saxby’s apartment was twenty past two. Twenty past two until four-thirty. Two hours and ten minutes? Could spilled martini stay damp on a shirt sleeve for two hours and ten minutes?

It seemed impossible. And if it was impossible, Saxby must have been shot sometime after Chuck had arrived at The Red Bear. There it was—an unbreakable alibi for Chuck. I could get him released tonight. All I had to do…

All I had to do! The implications of that phrase were enormous and threatening, obliterating any sense of jubilation. All I had to do to save Chuck was to betray Ala, and to betray her now would be far more catastrophic than it had been earlier. Once Chuck was proved innocent, there would be only Ala. Their case against her would be even stronger than their case against Chuck had been.

But it wasn’t only that. Now that the cards were on the table, I could admit to myself what I’d shirked from admitting before. To tell about Ala would be to tell about Eve and me too. I could claim I’d just happened to be in her apartment when Ala’s call came through. I could say… What had I decided? That I’d had to dictate some letters concerning the Brazilian tycoon which had been too urgent to wait until Monday? But there weren’t any letters to produce, and the man I’d be trying to fool would be Lieutenant Trant. How long, given that much of a clue to intimacy, would it take Trant to hit on the truth? He’d find it out in five minutes. Then the sluice gates of scandal would be burst open for me, for Eve—yes, for Connie, too.

It was ignoble, I knew, that when there were so many much more important issues at stake, this extra complication should loom so large to me, but it did. I thought of what it would do to Eve to be dragged through the mud as a sly little secretary who had plotted to steal Consuelo Corliss’ husband, and suddenly I was filled with rage against the District Attorney and Lieutenant Trant. Why did they have to stick with such crass lack of imagination to the most obvious solution? They knew the history of Saxby and the Duvreuxs. Hadn’t it occurred to them that a man with a background like that could have any number of potential murderers who were not necessarily Rysons or Hadleys? Weren’t they investigating his past? Hadn’t they even consulted their own files or the newspaper files?

The newspapers! One of my oldest buddies was a retired newspaperman turned author. Ted Bradley was a walking encyclopedia of the more sordid aspects of life. Ted might know something, or, if he didn’t, he had a genius for finding out whatever there was to find out.

When I reached him on the phone, Ted was as unemotionally co-operative as I knew he would be.

“So this Saxby pulled a deal in Toronto and another in Quebec? Okay, I’ve got a friend in Toronto. In fact, I’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places. I’ll make a couple of calls. If I dig up anything in a hurry, shall I call you at home?”

At home? Mal and Vivien would be at Sixty-Fourth Street. Connie would be storming in from the lawyer. And I had to make a test with spilled martini.

“No,” I said. “If anything comes in in the next hour or so, call me at...” I gave him Eve’s number.

Eve’s was the place to make the test, and it was with Eve that I should make my decision about Ala.

FOURTEEN

We made the test. In her living room I fixed a shaker of martinis and slopped it all over my shirt sleeve. Then, realizing that the heat of my body would speed up evaporation, I took the shirt off and draped it over a chair. We sat together on the studio couch, watching the shirt, waiting.

The sleeve reached the degree of near-dryness in forty-five minutes. Don’s shirt could have been a little more or a little less absorbent than mine, but only to the extent of lengthening or shortening the process by, say, fifteen minutes either way. I had touched Don’s shirt at four-thirty. That meant the shots must have been fired sometime between three-thirty and four. By three-thirty, Chuck had been in The Red Bear for an hour.

“Well,” said Eve, “that proves it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

For a moment we both stood looking at the shirt. Lying on the chair with the damp sleeve slopping over the arm, it had a spookily human quality, as if at any moment the sleeve might move. Eve turned to me. Her blue eyes were very grave.

“If you tell, they’re bound to arrest Ala, aren’t they?”

“Of course they are—unless by some miracle Ted Bradley can come up with something.”

“It would be mad to depend on that. You know it would. And even if he did find something they didn’t know about Don Saxby’s past, that isn’t going to alter the evidence.” She paused. “This—the martini—it wouldn’t help her, would it?”

“It’d make it worse. Saxby still could have been killed at four, and she was there at four. We know she was. She called you at seven minutes past.”

She gave a bleak little shrug. “But, George, you can’t really believe she did it. Ala? It doesn’t seem possible.”

“Of course I don’t think she did it. But that’s no way of being sure, is it?”

“But if she’s innocent, it would be awful to tell, cruel. It would just be switching the horror from Chuck to Ala. It would be worse almost than leaving things the way they are.” There, of course, was the crux.

“The Lieutenant’s coming tomorrow morning to question us,” I said. “Whatever happens, at least I’ll have to talk to Ala before that.”

“And let her know she can get Chuck released?”

“Isn’t it really her problem? She’s got to realize that if it wasn’t for her, this would never have happened to Chuck. Maybe, if she’s innocent and if she has enough guts, she’ll want to tell the Lieutenant anyway.”

“And if she hasn’t enough guts?” said Eve. “Or if she’s guilty?”

“Then it’ll be right back to being my problem again. I guess that’s the only way to handle it. But if we do have to tell, there’s us, you and me…”

“Us?” she echoed. “Do you think that matters any more? We can’t think about us now. We can’t…”

We sat there thinking about that until Ted Bradley telephoned. A wild hope surged through me as I heard his dry, laconic voice.

“Well, what about this for service?” he said.

“You’ve got something?”

“Trust old Bradley. It was a cinch. I called my contact in Toronto. He didn’t answer, but Bradley’s not one to be daunted. My contact has a brother in San Francisco. He’s an ex-newspaperman too. I called him and he had it all—just like that.”

“All—what?”

“About Saxby. He’d just seen his picture in the local paper and he’d recognized him right away. His name wasn’t Saxby and he wasn’t even a Canadian. He was a guy from Oregon called Don Merchant. About five years ago he and another guy, called Kramer, and a girl, Kramer’s sister, ran a blackmail racket in San Francisco. In his characterization as a painter, Saxby got in with the high-society set and dug up dirt about them. If there wasn’t any dirt, either he or the girl saw that some was provided. Then Kramer moved in for the shake-down. One of the victims finally had enough guts to turn them in. My buddy covered the case. Kramer was shot resisting arrest, Saxby got five years, they couldn’t pin anything on the girl. Incidentally, after his release, when Saxby-Merchant snuck across the border to start operating in Canada, he was breaking parole. How about that? Will that hold you for a while?”

“Terrific,” I said. “Thanks, Ted. Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Just worship me. I’ll go on digging and keep in touch.”

I called Trant at Centre Street. He wasn’t there, but I raised a stink, and a long-suffering sergeant gave me his home number. Trant answered right away. His voice sounded as polite and friendly as ever.

“Oh, Mr. Hadley—yes.”

“Look,” I said, “I’ve just found out something about Saxby in San Francisco. His name wasn’t Saxby, he wasn’t even Canadian, he—”

“He came from Oregon,” Trant broke in, “and his name was Donald Merchant. He was convicted of running a blackmail racket with a girl and a man called Kramer. Is that what you mean? I’ve known that since yesterday. There’s a lot more, too. A later set-up in Quebec with another partner, another girl. Even a very early deal in Portland with yet another girl. Girls and dirt, Mr. Hadley. Saxby was never without them.”

I should, of course, have suspected that if an ex-newspaperman in San Francisco knew something, the police were bound to have known it earlier, but in my great need for hope I’d clung to hope. Now I felt dejected and deflated.

“But with a man like that—”

“A lot of people could have wanted to kill him? That’s hardly the point, is it, Mr. Hadley? The point in this case is that Chuck’s the one who went there to kill him with a gun, Chuck’s the one who admits he was on the scene at a time when the shots could have been fired, Chuck—”

“But, goddamnit, he’s innocent. He told us what he’d told you and my wife and I—”

“Are sure he’s telling the truth? I’m sorry, Mr. Hadley. I know how you feel. Relatives always feel that way. Listen, could I make a suggestion? I’m sure Macguire would say the same thing. If you really want to help your nephew, concentrate on the alibi. When there’s as much evidence as this against anyone, the only effective defense is to prove he couldn’t have been there at the time of death. The time of death, Mr. Hadley. Think about that. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m still on the job. In fact, I’m working on the time of death myself. I’ll be around to see you tomorrow morning anyway, so if you or your wife do think up anything that might be helpful, you can tell me then. Good night, Mr. Hadley.”

He hung up. There it was again, the same old avuncular gentleness, coupled with his uncanny flair for making you think he already knew the one thing you were desperately trying to keep from him. Concentrate on the alibi.

“Well?” said Eve.

“You were right,” I said. “It doesn’t change anything. He knew all that already and more.”

“And he’s still coming to see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Then you’ll talk to Ala tonight?”

“As soon as I get home.”

As I said that, she glanced at her watch. So did I and suddenly it was borne in on me how, ever since we’d known each other, we’d both of us always been glancing at our watches, always been goaded by time. Quick, quick, only a minute more.

“You’ve got to go anyway,” she said. “Connie’ll be wondering what happened to you.”

I glanced around the pink, put-together-with-pins room which, for months now, had been my sanctuary, and suddenly, knowing I did have to go and that my one feeble attempt to stave off disaster had failed, I hated Connie, hated Ala and beyond everything hated Lieutenant Trant. The only thing in the world I wanted was to stay with Eve, to deny every obligation to everyone else, to be able just for once to play it my way.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m going.”

She was standing very close to me. I turned, and in the moment of turning, her nearness and the necessity for leaving her, warring together, were like an actual physical pain. I took her in my arms. I was still in my undershirt. There was a mirror behind us. I could see our reflections. My gaunt, haggard face, like the face of a prisoner on a chain gang, startled me.

“Damn them,” I said. “Damn them all. They got themselves into this. If they have to suffer for it—okay. It’s you, having to drag you into it!”

“If you’re in it, where else should I be?”

I drew her closer, trying, as I always did, to record exactly how she felt in my arms so that the illusion of her could remain with me after I’d gone.

“But if I do have to tell, if there’s all the mud in the world slung at us—”

“What difference does that make? It’s the least of our worries.”

“But when it actually happens, when it makes everything dirty and ugly—”

“I’ve got you, haven’t I? At last I’ve found the one thing in life I want. Do you think I’d let a little mudslinging intimidate me? George darling, haven’t you realized that about me by now?”

Her hands came up my back, moving over the bare skin of my neck. Her lips pressed against my mouth and clung to it. Then she was kissing my chin, my cheek. And the fear of losing her, which had always been there, however deeply I had tried to bury it, was gone. In those seconds I was sure that I was as essential to her as she was to me. And I knew, with the indestructible optimism of love, that whatever they did to us, they could never make what we had dirty and ugly—for us.

“It’ll work out,” I said. “Trant knows his job. He’ll find out who did it. Then they’ll all lick their wounds and crawl back into their Corliss world. And that’ll be my exit cue. Good-bye, good-bye. Nice to have known you. I’ll send you a postcard.”

“From Tobago,” she said.

“Yes, darling, from Tobago.”

And there it was, shimmering in my mind, the dream Tobago so much, much more beautiful than any real Tobago—basking in the sunshine with the sky blue as the sea and the sea blue as the sky and the tall palm trees swaying in a breeze, their delicate fronds gleaming like jade.

At Sixty-Fourth Street the lights were on in the living room. The moment I opened the front door, Connie came out into the hall.

“Mal and Vivien went home. George, why did it take so much time?”

“I was waiting in the bar for a call,” I said.

“But Mack, the barman, was there?”

I took off my coat and hung it on the hall tree which Vivien had made her buy because it was “amusing.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What did he say?”

Her voice was never loud. In fact, it was a very pretty voice. But in its eagerness it seemed to be yelling.

I went into the living room and made myself a drink, not because I needed one but to give myself a moment’s respite. She came hurrying after me.

“Well, George, tell me. What did he say?”

I turned to her with the drink in my hand. “It’s no good. The police had already been there anyway. Chuck got to the bar just after two-thirty. It’s only a ten-minute walk from Saxby’s. It doesn’t help.”

“But… the man’s quite sure?”

“Absolutely sure,” I said.

I’d known, of course, what that would do to her. She was always so pigheadedly determined to anticipate the best that when it didn’t come it knocked her much harder than it would ever knock me. She sat down on the arm of a chair, her hands dejectedly in her lap.

“I—I was so sure…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What about the lawyer? Didn’t he have any bright ideas?”

“The lawyer? Oh, he tried to be encouraging. He’s quite a nice man. But, well, a lawyer’s got to be realistic, doesn’t he? He said the District Attorney has more than enough evidence. In a case like this, he said, about the only really effective thing would be an alibi. That’s what he’s going to work on. That’s—that’s why I was hoping so much about the bar. That’s why…” She got up abruptly, grabbing at hope again. “But it is almost an alibi, isn’t it? They say Don was killed between two and five. We know Chuck left just after two. If only there was some way ... if somebody had heard the shots or something… and it was later. If we could prove he was killed later…”

She was looking straight at me as if she were willing me to come up with some staggering inspiration. Trant and now Connie. The irony was crippling. I told her about Ted Bradley and my call to Trant, not that it would help, but just to let her know. “At least they realize what Saxby was. Maybe something will come up.”

“When?” she said. “When? All this time Chuck’s there in that terrible place. He knows he’s innocent and he’s there. I keep thinking about him all the time and I can’t stand it much more. I…” Her voice choked off but after only an instant she had pulled herself together again, smiling a pale, almost humble smile. “I’m sorry. I know it’s as bad for everyone else as it is for me. It’s just… well, it’s been such a terrible day and I’m dead tired.”

“Of course you are.”

“And there’s nothing else we can do tonight, is there?” She came to me and put her hand on my arm. “Let’s go to bed, dear. We both need some sleep.”

Ala would be in her room. I’d have to stall and sneak up to her when Connie was safely in bed.

I said, “Okay, you go on up. I’ll just finish this drink.”

“Couldn’t you bring it up with you?” Her hand on my arm tightened its grip. “Please, George, bring it up. I can’t face being alone any more. It’s all too much for me. It… oh, George, George…”

She threw herself clumsily against me. Her hands were moving spasmodically up and down my arms.

“I know you hate me to be weak. I—I know you think we ought to be independent, ought to be able to stand on our own feet. And you’re right. I know you are. That’s what a good marriage should be. But now when everything’s become such a nightmare, there’s nothing to keep me going but you.” Her arms were around me, clinging to me desperately. The guilt was in me, the double, triple guilt, and, forcing a way through my defense, came pity for her and contempt for myself that I should still be pretending I could give her something which months ago, somehow, somewhere, had become lost.

“Be with me, George,” she said. “Please be with me.”

I put down the drink, feeling the entangling net of obligation closing around me. So when was it to be for Ala? Tomorrow morning? Early, before Connie was awake? I stood there holding my wife in my arms. Then I eased myself gently away and with an arm around her guided her up the stairs and into our bedroom.

“It’s all right, Connie. It’s going to be all right.”

Long after she was asleep, or pretending to be, I lay awake. She’d been holding my hand between the beds. Her arm still lay exposed on the white spread. It was as firmly rounded and beautiful as it had been twelve years ago.

Twelve years? Twelve years from that auspicious, rapturous wedding night to—now.

FIFTEEN

It was after eight when I awoke. As I glanced at my watch, remembering Ala, remembering Trant, I cursed myself for oversleeping. Connie was still asleep but she wouldn’t be for long. Mary and the cook would already have arrived. At any minute the Corliss morning ritual would be under way. I slipped out of bed, put on a robe, crept out of the room and hurried down the corridor.

Without knocking, I opened the door of Ala’s room. The grayish November daylight, filtering in through the closed curtains, revealed her lying on her back, the dilapidated old elephant sprawled at her feet. Her fair hair was mussed over the pillows, her young face was warm and pink, undamageable by the relentless scrutiny of morning. As I looked at her, unconsciously typifying all youth and guilelessness, my love for her welled up in me, making it totally impossible for me to connect her with guilt.

“Ala,” I said softly.

She opened her eyes. For a second they looked at me, blue as Eve’s, unaffected by any jar of returning consciousness, merely fresh, untroubled young eyes opening to welcome another young, untroubling day.

She sat up, smiling spontaneously. “Gosh, is it late or something?” Then she was awake enough to remember enough and her face grew solemn. “Nothing’s happened, has it?” Once again she had managed to confuse me. Nothing’s happened!

I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Trant’s coming today.”

“I know. Connie told us last night. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“That’s one word for it,” I said.

“I mean, to think that Chuck, because of feeling that way about me…! I never thought Chuck was capable of feelings like that, feelings that weren’t just…” She gave up as if the thought was too complicated for her. She was watching me from big, mournful eyes. “He did do it, didn’t he? Connie doesn’t believe it, of course. She’d drop dead before she’d ever let herself believe it. But… oh, George, I feel so terrible. I never dreamed, honestly…”

I said, “He didn’t do it, Ala.”

“He didn’t?” Her face was suddenly radiant. “You mean they’ve found out? They know who did do it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s far more complicated than that.”

And I told her. To begin with, the eager, happy look was still there, then gradually as she started to realize what was involved, her face seemed to grow smaller, thinner, pinched around the nose. When I’d explained it all, she said, “You’re—you’re sure the thing with the spilled drink proves it?”

“Quite sure,” I said. “That’s why I’ve told you. Don’t you see? If we tell we were there, we can have Chuck out of jail today.”

“But if we told—what would they think about me?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“They’d think I did it.”

“Probably.”

“Of course they would. The gun was there. I’d—I’d found out about Don. I…” she clutched my arm. She stared at me wildly. “George, you’re not going to tell. Please, please, you aren’t going to tell.”

It was panic and I could understand it, of course. And yet as I looked at her desperate eyes, her quivering, almost hysterical mouth, I felt a bleak sensation of depression. If she’s innocent, I had said to Eve; if she has enough guts… “George, you can’t tell. You can’t.”

“And you?” I said. “You don’t think you could tell?”

“Me!”

“Chuck’s innocent; he’s in a cell; they’re going to bring him to trial. And you can save him.”

“But—but—you said it yourself. He’s innocent. They don’t convict people when they’re innocent. It… oh, I know it’s terrible for him, but—but they don’t, do they?”

“If they don’t convict innocent people, then there’s nothing for you to worry about either, is there?”

I knew that was cruel, that it was imposing on her a moral obligation which, if I’d been in her shoes, would probably have been too heavy for me. But if I didn’t test her, I’d never know.

“You are innocent, aren’t you?” I said.

“George!” The word came from her in a gasp. “You? You can think that I…?”

“I’m only asking.”

“Asking,” she echoed and her voice was harsh. “A lot of trust I get around this house, don’t I? If it’s come to the point where I have to convince my own so-called father I’m not a murderess—all right. No, George Hadley, for your information, I did not kill Don Saxby.”

“All right. That’s all I wanted to know.”

Instantly she was smiling. “You believe me?”

“Of course I believe you.”

“Oh, George, George dear, then you’re not going to tell.” There it was once more, that bewildering faculty of hers to assume, just because she wanted to, that everything was perfectly all right again.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell,” I said. “If a time came when I had to for Chuck’s sake—then I’d tell.”

“No,” she said. “No, you can’t.” She was staring at me, the panic in her eyes again. Then, in a very quiet voice, she said, “You see, there’s something you don’t know. Something they’d find out about. Once they arrested me, once they thought I did it, they’d look into things and they’d find out and—and then they’d be sure.”

“Sure?” I said, watching her, not understanding.

“Sure I’m a juvenile delinquent,” she said, “a glorious example of an overprivileged delinquent, just the sort of spoiled brat to shoot her man because he done her wrong.”

She said that with a bitterness which was almost tough, a tone which was utterly unlike anything I connected with Ala.

I said, “You mean because you spent the night with Don in that motel? They already know that.”

“But they don’t know I’m what you might call a second offender. You don’t know, either. You weren’t even here. You were off somewhere on one of your business trips. Where was it… about this time last year…? South America?”

“Last year when I was in Brazil?”

“That’s it, I guess.” There was a pack of cigarettes by the bed. She reached over for it, took a cigarette and fit it with a hand that was shaking slightly.

“When you came home, I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d understand a bit, but Connie wouldn’t let me. She made me swear never to mention it to a soul.”

“Connie?” I said. “Connie was in this too?”

“Up to the neck—descending like a goddess from the heavens, hurtling south in her Lincoln Continental to rescue her prodigal baby daughter—her prodigal adopted baby daughter.”

The bitterness in her voice had an even sharper edge. “And it was all her fault as much as mine. I know you’ll think I’m just trying to excuse myself, but it’s true. I swear it. If you knew what it was like, being eighteen, and having her treat me as if I were an idiot child of twelve. And not only that. There was Chuck, too—always Chuck. She’d never for a single minute stop promoting Chuck. ‘Chuck’s coming to dinner tonight.’ ‘I bought two tickets for the theater tonight. I thought you and Chuck might like to go.’ I had Chuck running out of my ears. I might have loved him. For all I knew I did, but with Connie pushing, pushing, how could I tell? All I wanted was to be left alone, to try to find out about living for myself. And then there was this party. It was in the Village. Needless to say, I wasn’t supposed to be there. You know how Connie feels about the Village. But I’d wangled it and I met Gene.”

“Who’s Gene?”

“You’ve never even heard of him, have you? Well, he wasn’t anything much, just a typical Village character, I suppose. But he was charming, amusing, all the things Connie had always taught me were shoddy, superficial, dreadfully unCorliss. That was enough to make him seem fascinating. I knew he had a wife and that they were separated, but that didn’t make any difference because—well, it wasn’t anything serious. He’d take me out to lunch. If I could sneak out at night, we’d go dancing in the Village. It was just frivolous, just fun—someone I’d found for myself, someone that made me feel grown-up. And, most of all, there was the wonderful sense of thumbing my nose at Connie.”

She flicked ash from the cigarette onto a tray. “And then a chance for a weekend came up. He had some friends near Richmond. They’d heard about me. He thought I’d like them. That was all. It was just a weekend with his friends and, well, I made up some excuse for Connie the way I did later with Don and we drove south. When we got there, it was fine, wonderful. For the first time in my life, I felt I was really doing something on my own. Then suddenly it was all ghastly because Gene’s wife showed up. Some people in New York had told her Gene had taken me there. She was a drunk. I’d never known that. And she was wild with jealousy. She had a gun. There was a hideous fight. We were all mixed up in it, the wife, Gene, me, everyone. Finally the gun went off. I don’t quite know how, but it did and it shot the wife in the arm. Some neighbors heard the shot and called the police. We were all hauled off to jail. Gene was hopeless; he just collapsed. As it turned out, he was pretty much of a heel anyway.”

She shivered. “I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, in despair, I called Connie. She came, of course. She came galloping to save me. I don’t know what she did. Promised convertibles to a couple of cops, I suppose, but she got it all hushed up, she got me home—and, of course, she’d finally got me where she wanted me, too. Even I had enough sense to see that.”

She stubbed the cigarette in the ash tray. “She’s incredible, really. She didn’t even bawl me out. There wasn’t a single word of reproof. She was just infinitely understanding. Now I would see how she’d always been right. Now I’d learned my lesson. In future I’d be a reformed character and worthy to be a lovely, contrite bride for Chuck. It sounds awful, I know, after she’d saved me and everything, but I hated her for it, hated her much more than if she’d just washed her hands of me. But there was everything to be said for her side, of course, and nothing for mine. I realized that. So from then on I played it her way. I knew I’d have to marry Chuck and try to be a good wife. But, as Connie would say, I’ll never learn, will I? Don came along and there I was, all starry-eyed, all ready to be me again.”

She looked straight at me, her mouth twisted in a pale little self-mocking smile.

“Mel” she said. “What a mess I turned out to be. You sure had a brilliant instinct for adopting daughters, didn’t you?”

There were so many things for me to feel: amazement that all this could have happened without my having the slightest suspicion; understanding of the deadlock between Ala and Connie which had made something like this episode and the Saxby episode almost inevitable; and deep sympathy, too, for Ala, whose pathetic, if shabby, attempts at independence had had such disastrous results. But, most of all, what I felt was anger against Connie. Why hadn’t she told me? If she’d told me, I’d never for an instant have let the Saxby business get started. But, oh, no, Connie believed in handling things herself. Drive south, pay off the cops, hush things up. The wedding must go on. Of course it must. Nothing must stop the wedding, her wedding. And then, when Saxby appeared on the scene… handle that, too. Make a fuss, try and stop Ala from seeing him, but don’t tell George. There isn’t any need for George.

“George.” Ala’s voice came through to me. “You do see, don’t you? They never knew who was actually holding the gun when it went off. It could have been me. Certainly they’d say it was me, wouldn’t they? I mean, if they knew I was at Don’s, if they arrest me... I wouldn’t have a chance, would I?”

I looked back at her, thinking again of the only thing that mattered at the moment—Lieutenant Trant.

“No,” I said. “I guess you wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Then—then you won’t tell?”

“No. Not now. We’ll have to think of some other way for helping Chuck.”

“Oh, George, if you knew how terrified I’ve been.” She threw her arms around my neck. “When I saw Don lying there, it was Richmond again only much, much worse. I thought I’d die. Before I called Mrs. Lord and you came and made it all right, I’d—I’d decided I’d have to kill myself. Oh, it’s terrible about Chuck. I know it’s all my fault he’s arrested. I know I ought to tell and—and let him go free. But I can’t. I just can’t… George, please, please, don’t think I’m too awful.”

I held her very tight in my arms. Her young body, under the white pajamas, was trembling. Poor kid, I thought; whatever she might have deserved, she certainly hadn’t deserved this.

“It’s Connie,” she was babbling. “It’s all Connie. I didn’t want to be wild. If only she’d trusted me, if only she’d let me feel I had a soul of my own, I’d—I’d have loved Chuck. I’d have been all right. I know I would. But because of her, everything got screwed up. It isn’t her fault, I guess. She’s always thought she was doing the right thing. But—”

The door opened then. Ala jumped away from me. I swung around on the bed. Connie, in a long pink wrapper, was moving into the room, looking very grim and purposeful, almost as if Ala had conjured her up in her own image of her as “the boss lady.”

“George,” she said. “Do you mind if I talk to Ala alone for a moment?”

“No.” Ala, staring at her, was instantly ready with her defiance. “George, please, whatever she wants to say—stay.”

“You mean that?” said Connie.

“Of course I do.”

“All right. It’s probably just as well anyway.” For a long moment my wife stood by the bed, watching Ala with a kind of weary resignation. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary to bring this up. Even when they arrested Chuck, I tried to fool myself that there must be some other way. But there isn’t. I see it now. After the horrors of last night—well, I’ve decided and that’s that.”

She shifted the steady gaze of her eyes to me. “Maybe I should have told you. I almost did, but I felt it would only make it worse for you without doing any good for anyone. Even last night, when I was almost sure of what I’d have to do, I thought I’d talk to Ala first.”

She paused. “On Sunday afternoon around four I went up to her room again. I thought she might have woken up but I didn’t want to disturb her if she was still sleeping. I tried the door. It was locked, but the key wasn’t in the lock. I looked through the keyhole. I could see the bed and she wasn’t in it. I started banging on the door. I banged for about five minutes. I knew then, of course, that she couldn’t be there. She’d locked the door and slipped out.”

She turned back to Ala and her face was implacable, the face of the Goddess of Justice. “I knew you’d gone to Don’s. Where else could you possibly have gone with all those elaborate precautions of locking the door and pretending you wanted to sleep? But at the time it didn’t seem to matter much. In fact, I decided it was probably best for you to go to him and have it out in your own way, and if you wanted to be secretive about it, that was all right too. If you’d stayed away long I’d have come after you, but you came back right after George and it seemed all right—until, of course, I heard that Don was dead.”

She paused again. “You can imagine what I felt then. I knew I ought to challenge you, but I couldn’t. I suppose I was scared. I didn’t want to know the truth. If she needs me, I thought, she’ll come to me. I left it at that. Then they arrested Chuck and you still didn’t say anything. I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem possible that you could let them arrest him and just stand by doing nothing. But you did, didn’t you? It was the same old thing again—Ala saving her own skin.”

She gave the faintest shrug of her shoulders, a shrug which indicated total resignation to a truth which once and for all had to be faced.

“I’ve done my best for you. You can’t say I haven’t been protecting you to the point of idiocy. But that’s all over now. When Lieutenant Trant comes this morning, you’re going to tell him. You understand? Whatever you did, whatever wretched mess you’ve got yourself into, you’re going to tell Lieutenant Trant everything. If you don’t, I will.”

SIXTEEN

That Connie had known all the time wasn’t surprising, of course. What could have been more typical of her than to have gone upstairs again to “make Ala see sense,” and then when she found she wasn’t there, to have kept it to herself, once more to have shouldered the responsibility of her “problem” daughter singlehanded?

Ala was sitting on the bed with her back against the wall, looking at Connie as if she were her doom.

“Well,” said Connie, “you might as well admit it now. You did go to Don’s, didn’t you?”

I knew it would be absurd, worse than absurd to lie to her any more. Surely Ala must realize it too. I stood looking at her, waiting for her to speak for herself, but she didn’t. Her face had closed in on itself with the old, bitterly resentful antagonism.

Well, I thought, here it comes.

“You’re right, Connie,” I said. “She was there.”

“George!” cried Ala.

“It’s no good now, Ala. You’ve got to see that. She was there, Connie. And so was I. I found her there. Saxby was dead. She hadn’t killed him. She’d just let herself in with keys he’d given her and discovered him dead. I got her away. I didn’t tell you—well, for the same reasons that you didn’t tell me.”

Connie’s mouth was so tight that she seemed to have no lips at all. In the beautiful, sculpt face, it was just a line—a line slashed with a chisel.

“You actually knew she was there? You saw her there in the apartment with the body—and you didn’t tell? Not even after Chuck was arrested? Didn’t it occur to you that there might have been something you didn’t even notice which could have given Trant a clue—something which could have saved Chuck? Didn’t you think of that?”

“There was something,” I said.

I told Connie about the martini. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Ala. I kept my eyes on my wife’s face, knowing that whatever it might involve, this at least was owing to her.

When I was through, she said, “And it was only last night you realized the spilled drink could save Chuck?”

“Yes.”

“But the moment you’d thought of it, you knew you’d have to tell Trant.”

Connie said that without the slightest indication of a query in her tone. It was a statement, letting me know that, from her point of view, no one but a monster could have made any other decision.

I did look at Ala then. She was even more deeply withdrawn behind the white, unrevealing mask. The blindness in her eyes was utterly denying me.

I said, “We can’t tell Trant, Connie.”

“Can’t?”

“Not possibly. You must see that more than anyone. Ala’s just let me know about Richmond.”

I’d thought that might soften her, but it didn’t.

“All right. So you know about Richmond. What difference does that make?”

“What difference? Once they let Chuck go, they’ll arrest Ala. They’ll have all the evidence in the world against her. And when, on top of everything else, they find out she was involved with the shooting of another man’s wife—”

“Well, she was involved, wasn’t she? It happened. She let it happen. No one made her go off with that man, any more than anyone made her go off with Don Saxby. My God, there’s a limit, isn’t there? There’s got to be a limit somewhere.”

Connie’s voice was rasping now with bitterness. “Protect them. That’s what they say. Protect the rotten people. Stand up for them, cover up for them, understand them, straighten them out. It isn’t their fault. Oh, no, something went wrong. If an eighteen-year-old girl lies to her family, sneaks off with a married man... if that same girl, only a year later, when she’s about to marry as fine a boy as she’ll ever meet, sneaks off again with a shoddy criminal blackmailer who gets himself murdered… Protect her! If you knew how sick I am of protecting her.”

She swung back to Ala, glaring down at her. “The time’s come to protect the good people, the innocent people for a change. If you think you can’t face what you’ve brought on yourself, then that’s too bad because you’re going to have to face it. If you don’t tell Lieutenant Trant and if George doesn’t—then I will. I’ve said it already and I say it again and I mean it. You understand?”

For a moment she stood swinging her contempt at us like a sword. Then, with a toss of the head, she started toward the door.

“Connie,” I called.

“There’s nothing more to say.”

“Oh, isn’t there.” It was Ala who suddenly spoke. The fierce challenge of her voice made Connie turn back just as she had reached the door.

Ala got off the bed. She was as cold now, as cold and deadly as Connie. For one second she flashed a glance at me. It repudiated all connection with someone who had betrayed her.

“Okay, Connie,” she said, “you’re going to tell Trant, are you?”

Connie didn’t speak. She stood there with her arms folded in front of her.

“All right,” said Ala. “Tell him. It’ll be lovely for all of us. Lovely for you, too. Maybe loveliest of all for you.”

Still Connie said nothing, and the antagonism in the atmosphere was suffocating.

“You see, there’s one thing you forgot to ask George, isn’t there? He came there to Don’s. He heroically got me away. All right. But why was it George? How do you think he happened to get there? I’ll tell you. I’ll put you out of your suspense. When I was at Don’s, when I found him dead, when I was in a panic of terror, who was there for me to turn to for help? You? Do you think I was going to give you another chance to be smug and noble? Don’t make me laugh. There was only one person I could think of—only one person I could trust to be kind, to be human—Mrs. Lord. She was the one I called from Don’s, and George was the one who came because he was there with her. And do you know why he was there? He was there the way I went off with Gene and with Don Saxby. He was there snatching a few moments when he got the chance, just the way I snatched a few moments when I got a chance. That’s something for you to tell Trant, too. Dear Lieutenant Trant, I’ve managed to turn my daughter into a juvenile delinquent, but that’s not all. Oh, no, I’ve achieved something far more brilliant than that. I’ve driven my husband into keeping his dear little secretary in a love nest.”

She spun around to me. She was smiling but it was more a grimace than a smile, a grimace of loathing for herself, for me, for all of the world. “Don Saxby told me all about it when we were driving up to Massachusetts. He caught them kissing in a restaurant. And George admitted it, Don said. George told him it had been going on for months and months. I—I wasn’t going to tell. I thought it was fine. Good for George, I thought. Get a little warmth, that’s what we all need around Consuelo Corliss, a little warmth. More power to George. But—but if you’re going to tell Trant about me, all right, tell him. But, while you’re about it, you might as well tell the world about you too, what a ridiculous, pitiful, unwanted object you are.”

She threw up her hands to cover her face, to cover the dreadful grin. Then she ran to the bed and flung herself down on it, burying her face against the pillows, sobbing.

It had happened at last, in the way I had least expected, in the most humiliating way that it could have happened. To blame Ala would be pointless. She’d been pushed to her breaking point. This, I supposed, had seemed the only weapon left with which to defend herself. And Connie…? That, it seemed, was what life was always going to do to Connie, to smash her savagely in the jaw at the moment when she was least prepared for the blow.

She was still standing as she had been standing before. Her face still wore the same glacial dignity, but there was a difference, a deadening as if, behind the flawless facade, she was empty.

“Connie...” I began.

She turned away from me, the skirt of her long robe swirling around her. She went out of the room.

Ala was still sobbing. I crossed to the bed and patted her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I guess you had to say it.”

I found Connie in our room. She was sitting, as she always sat in the mornings, in front of her dressing table, in front of all the bottles and jars, brushing her hair. I moved toward her. I could see myself in the mirror, standing behind her reflected face. Mirrors, I thought. I was always seeing myself in mirrors… Eve and me, Connie and me—as if we had lost our reality and had become insubstantial. Perhaps it was because of the deceit, the enforced lies, the well-intended evasions, our constant refusal to admit reality existed. Now, knowing I had to face what I’d avoided for so long, I felt the pain, the jitters, but a sort of liberating relief as well.

“Connie,” I said, “I’d have given anything for it not to have happened this way.”

She went on brushing. The silver brush gleamed back and forth over the gleaming hair.

“Things usually come out eventually,” she said.

“We were going to wait. We had it all planned to wait until Ala was married and—and then to tell you and let you decide how you wanted it handled. Then this came, all the complications. Eve was ready to call it quits, to go away. She couldn’t face the scandal for you. She… Oh, God, I wish I could explain.”

For a moment Connie’s hand with the brush was still. She sat looking at her face in the mirror, examining it clinically, her eyes never moving the inch or so upward to meet my reflected eyes in the glass.

“I don’t see what you have to explain,” she said. “It’s nothing very unusual, is it? Thousands of husbands get tired of their wives after twelve years. Wives can be very dull.”

“It isn’t that,” I said. “You know it isn’t. You’re wonderful. Everyone knows how wonderful you are. It’s just that I’m not wonderful, I’m just not in your league, I’m just a guy with all the human failings that don’t come with a Corliss. And with Eve… well, it doesn’t matter. Eve’s nothing in particular either. She’s my league, I guess.”

“Then you definitely do want to marry her?”

Connie’s voice was as flat and impersonal as if she’d asked whether I’d definitely wanted to wear my gray mohair suit to the office that day. Her hand had started to hover over the jars. That so very familiar habit of uncertainty, coming together with the magnificent certainty of her self-control, suddenly made her human again, throwing me off balance, confusing everything.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we want to get married.”

The long, beautiful hand selected a jar and unscrewed the cap.

“Then I hope you’ll be very happy.”

“Connie!” I said. “Connie, for God’s sake…”

She did turn then on the stool, the jar of cream in her hand. “What’s for God’s sake about it?”

“Can’t you see? We’ve driven ourselves crazy about this. And then, when I tell you, all you say is, ‘I hope you’ll be happy.’ ”

“I’m sorry. Isn’t that the right thing to say? There isn’t much else to say, is there? It isn’t exactly the moment to be discussing our marriage or rather our lack of marriage anyway, is it? With Chuck in jail? With Lieutenant Trant coming any minute?”

Her fingers went into the jar and came out smoothing the cream over her face. I watched the white mask smearing over her skin. Mirrors, masks—everything seemed to be symbolizing our predicament.

“Don’t tell him about Ala,” I said. “Please, Connie, don’t tell him.”

She looked at me squarely. “If all this comes out about Mrs. Lord, Lew isn’t going to like it, is he? You know how stuffy he is about scandal. He’s going to hit the ceding. You don’t suppose he’d fire you, do you?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Who cares?”

“Perhaps,” she said, rubbing the last of the cream in, “if I go to him and explain, that’ll help.”

“Help!” I said. “My God, do you think under the circumstances I expect help from you?”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” I was filled with rage, rage that came not just from that moment but from the years in which I’d refused to admit there was any cause for rage. “Do you want to supervise the divorce too? Do you want to turn it into another of your projects like this house, like Ala’s marriage, like taking Miss Taylor to the Philharmonic because you insist she’s so fond of music?”

She put down the jar. She got up. The iciness of her control had melted. She was watching me with a sort of tormented bewilderment.

“What is it? I don’t understand. You say you want a divorce. All right. I say you can have a divorce—and I hope you’ll be happy and if I can help with Lew I’ll help. What’s wrong with that? All I ever try to do is the right thing. It’s the same with Ala. I try to do the right thing—and what happens? She only hates me for it. And you… My projects, you say? My project of Ala’s marriage? Did you want me to leave her rotting in that Richmond jail? Or did you want me to call you in Brazil and scream for you to come and take over? Or—or to tell Chuck that my own daughter was a floozie when there was a good chance she’d simply got herself into a mess because she was young and silly? And what do you mean about this house? What’s wrong with this house? Didn’t you want to live in it? If you didn’t, why didn’t you tell me? If everything I do annoys you, why didn’t you let me know? I could have changed. If only you’d said what you wanted, I…”

Suddenly there was rage in her too. “I could change! What am I saying? I’ve changed already. I’ve changed all right and see how you like it—you and Ala. You’ve both of you always done everything you wanted to. That’s always been your philosophy. Go off, fall in love with your secretary, go off with any young man who gives you the opportunity. All right, let’s go, it’ll be a load of fun and if anything goes wrong, there’s always Connie to pick up the pieces. Well, all that’s changed now. You can take care of yourselves from now on. And if Ala thinks I’m going to pick up her pieces at the expense of Chuck…”

There was a knock at the door, a timid, tentative knock. Then the door opened and Ala came in. She was still in her pajamas. She closed the door behind her and took a step into the room, pausing on the edge of the carpet. The traces of tears were still on her face. She looked very small and taut.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s why I’ve come—to say I’m sorry. I—I don’t see how either of you can forgive me ever.” Her eyes moved to me. “And George, please tell Mrs. Lord how sorry I am too. I didn’t have any right to say that. I don’t even expect it’s true. Probably it was just some lie of Don’s.”

She paused a moment, then impulsively she turned to Connie.

“And that’s not all. There’s something else. Just now you called me rotten and you’re right. I can see now. I can see what a monster I’ve been to Chuck. When he thought he could help me by not talking, he risked his own neck just for me. And now… now when I could help him…” She made a little gesture with her hand. “It’s because I was scared. That’s all. It was because I was so terribly scared and I’m scared now. But that doesn’t matter. That’s what I want to say. When the Lieutenant comes, I’m going to tell him everything. And I won’t say anything about George and Mrs. Lord. I’ll say I went there alone. I can explain about the drink on the shirt just as well as George. It won’t make it any worse for me—and it’ll be easier for you.”

In the first second when she said that, I’d felt only incredulity, then, as I saw the determination on her face, the incredulity merged into a huge, warm pride. I had been right. Ala had the guts after all.

But she wasn’t looking at me. I wasn’t in this, I knew. This was something far more basic, something between Connie and her.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said, “because I know myself. I was afraid if I didn’t commit myself, I might get cold feet. But it’s all right now. I’m certain it is. And nothing anyone can say can change me. I’m going to tell and maybe, once I’ve told, I—I may feel a bit more worthy of Chuck. And maybe, once I’ve told, you—you won’t feel so bad about me either. I’m sorry, Connie. I don’t know why I’ve always been so beastly to you. You’ve done so much for me, protecting me, always protecting me. I don’t understand what’s been the matter with me, but… I’m sorry.”

When anyone looks back on his life, he can almost always find a moment about which he can say, “There it was. That was when I grew up.” And, as I watched Ala, the pride still blooming in me, I thought: It’s happened. In these last few minutes, Ala’s come of age. I glanced at Connie, hoping and praying she would be big enough to accept this for what it was. There was a look of wonderment on her face. For a moment she didn’t speak.

Then she said, “You really mean it? This is your decision?”

“It’s my decision.”

“You know what it involves?”

“Of course I know.”

Suddenly Connie’s face crumpled. She ran to Ala and took her in her arms.

“No,” she said. “Ala, Ala dear, I can’t let you. I can’t think how I ever suggested it. I was mad. I was half out of my mind with worry about Chuck. We’ll do something. We’ll find some other way.”

“There isn’t any other way,” said Ala. “Not for me. This is the only way I could ever have any respect for myself.”

“But, Ala baby…”

“Don’t worry, Connie. Please. I’ll be all right. Honest, I will.”

Ala’s arm was around Connie’s shoulder. She was looking at her with a serene, almost maternal watchfulness. Reversing everything I’d ever thought was possible between them, it was Ala who was comforting Connie. And, ironically, just at the moment when I’d made my final break from them, I felt what I hadn’t felt in years—the basic, deep-in-the-blood, deeper-even-than-reason-or-affection tie of the family.

SEVENTEEN

We were all three of us waiting in the library when Trant arrived.

In the first instant he came across the threshold, I saw a glimpse of someone behind him, but all my attention was for Trant. As always, he was a little more himself than I’d remembered, a little taller, a little more self-effacing, a little more alarmingly priestlike. This time the familiar smile was almost a beam.

“Good morning,” he said. “For a change I think you’re going to be quite pleased to see me today.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Come on in,” he called. He stepped aside, and, as he did so, Chuck hurried into the room.

For a moment we all stared.

“Chuck!” gasped Ala.

Connie took a quick step toward him.

“It’s okay, Connie,” he said. “Everything’s fine. They’ve let me go.”

He grinned at Trant, then he turned to Ala, the grin fading into a shy, tentative smile. “Hi, Ala.”

Trant took out a cigarette case. He opened it, selected a cigarette and tapped it on the case.

“As I told you last night, Mr. Hadley, it was all a question of the time of death. Right after I spoke to you, I went to see the woman who lives on Saxby’s floor. She’d been away when I’d tried her before, but she’d come back. She was, in fact, just about to get in touch with me.”

He lit the cigarette, watching us all with quiet benignity. “On Sunday she’d been right here in New York having lunch with friends. She got back to Fifty-Fourth Street at exactly three twenty-five. The taxi driver asked her the time when she paid the fare so she’s quite positive of that. She passed his door on the way to her apartment. She knew Saxby well enough to recognize his voice and she heard him. She’s perfectly sure of that, too. He was in the apartment talking very loudly as if he were quarreling with someone. She didn’t hear any other voice because she was there only a second before she went down the hall to her own apartment. A few moments after she’d got there, she heard what she thought was backfiring in the street. As it tinned out, the evidence is as exact as any evidence can be. Don Saxby was alive at three twenty-five and he was shot at three-thirty. By three-thirty, Chuck had been at The Red Bear for almost an hour.”

Thanks to this staggering piece of good fortune, there was no need for Ala’s great gesture after all. We were all right. Miraculously, we had been saved.

Ala gave a little sob and ran to Chuck.

“Chuck, Chuck darling… It’s so wonderful. I can hardly believe it. Oh, Chuck, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I’ve been such a monster. But—but I would have helped. I swear it. If there was anything I could have done…”

“Ala baby, it’s okay.”

“But—”

“It’s okay, I said.”

His arm was around her. His young face under the cropped, yellow-gold hair was touchingly protective. “Are you crazy, trying to blame yourself? I was the one who did it, wasn’t I? I was the dumb jerk.”

“But, Chuck, if you knew…”

“I know all that matters. I know you’re you. That’s all I ever wanted.”

Trant had been watching them with an indulgent “youth-youth” expression. At this point he said, “I guess you two kids have quite a lot to say to each other. Why don’t you go off for a while—and relax?”

Ala turned to him incredulously. “You don’t want to—to ask me anything?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you.”

Ala grabbed Chuck’s hand. Together they hurried out of the room.

“Well,” said Trant the moment the door had closed behind them, “that’s very pleasant, but I’m afraid it’s only a beginning for me. Chuck’s been eliminated as a suspect, but that doesn’t eliminate the murder, does it?”

His voice couldn’t have been more friendly, but it brought its intended chill. Connie’s face had gone wary. I stood waiting for the blow. I knew Trant well enough by then to be sure there would be one.

With elaborate politeness he said, “Do you think we could sit down, Mrs. Hadley?”

“But—but, of course.”

He waited until Connie and I were seated, then he chose the same leather chair he had taken before.

“Well, Mrs. Hadley, now we all know something about Don Saxby’s past record. A man like Saxby will always be very murder prone. Any number of people in Oregon, San Francisco, Quebec, Toronto, even New York at some time or other must have been very eager to get at him with a gun. But as I tried to tell Mr. Hadley last night, the D. A. isn’t apt to be too interested in abstract theories. He’s a realist and a realist with fixed ideas. Last night he was convinced from the evidence that Chuck was guilty, and even now, when Chuck’s alibi has shown up, he’s still more interested in the present than in any lurid past. And the present, I’m afraid, is the Hadley family, isn’t it?”

He looked down at his hands and then up again.

“Which is my kind of roundabout introduction to the fact that what the D. A. is most concerned about at the moment is your alibis… alibis for the two of you and Miss Hadley. Since we know quite definitely that Saxby was killed at three-thirty, it shouldn’t be too difficult to clear this up, and once we’ve done so, that’ll put you out of the picture, won’t it? And the D. A. can start getting interested in—well, shall we say the person who actually killed Saxby?”

His amiability had never been so silken. Everything today was the D. A. That was his new gimmick, his new device for making himself seem absolutely harmless, a mere underling and a sympathetic underling at that, carrying out the tyrannical instructions of the D. A.

“Well, Mr. Hadley,” he was saying, “shall we start with you? Would you mind telling me where you were at three-thirty on Sunday afternoon?”

As always, his attack had come from a direction against which I was least protected. We were fairly safe with Ala. Connie could make the blanket statement that she and Ala had been in the house all afternoon. But what about me? I’d left Lew Parker just before three, I’d driven the Brazilian to his hotel. That had taken about ten minutes. And after that? At the crucial moment I’d been driving at random around New York trying to make up my mind whether to go to Saxby or not.

This realization was awkward, to say the least. But before I could get started on any floundering improvisation, Connie broke in.

“Why don’t you start with me, Lieutenant? In my case and Ala’s, it’s really so terribly simple. As it happens, we were in the house all day. We never left it.”

To my intense and grateful relief, Trant turned away from me to her.

“The servants were here, I suppose, Mrs. Hadley?”

“Why, no, Lieutenant. They never come in on Sundays.”

“So it’s just what we call a family alibi. I don’t want to alarm you, Mrs. Hadley. Family alibis usually hold up with the D. A. But I’m afraid they do carry a little more weight if they’re supported by someone from outside the family.” Connie was wearing her gracious, slightly patronizing smile. “But Sunday afternoon is such a family time, Lieutenant. We hardly ever have anyone in. We just had lunch. Ala sat around reading and… well, there was Miss Taylor, of course. But I don’t suppose she’d count because she’s virtually one of the family too.”

“And who is Miss Taylor?” Trant said.

“She’s the secretary of one of my committees. But to all intents and purposes, she’s my secretary too. I invited her to lunch and after lunch…” Connie was sitting by the library table, and on it, right beside her, was the copy of the New York Times magazine section. She rested her hand on it. “As I said, Ala sat around reading and Miss Taylor and I did the puzzle. We were still doing it, weren’t we, George, when you came back?”

Connie had given me not only a breathing space but my cue. She was saying to me: Don’t worry. I can call Miss Taylor and get her to include you. The relief and gratitude grew even more intense. For a moment she and Trant sat looking at each other. Then very casually Trant rose, went to the table and picked up the puzzle. He stood studying it with the same bland smile.

“You both worked on it, I see,” he said. “There’s one lot of very neat capitals—and another lot that aren’t so neat.”

“Oh, the messy ones are mine, I’m afraid,” said Connie. “Miss Taylor invented neatness.”

Trant dropped the paper back on the desk. “Well, Mrs. Hadley, I’d say this makes it a lot better from the D. A.’s point of view. Where can I find Miss Taylor?”

Connie gave him Miss Taylor’s address. He took it down. “By the way, Mrs. Hadley, just when did she leave?”

“When was it?” said Connie. “I can’t quite be positive. Do you remember, George? Wasn’t it around four-thirty?”

Once again she was giving me my cue. “Yes,” I said. “I think it was around then.”

Trant turned to me. “So you’d been out, Mr. Hadley. And when you got back, Miss Taylor was still here?”

“That’s right.”

“Then perhaps you’d tell me where you’d been.”

I told him about Lew Parker and the Brazilian. Thanks to Connie, it was easy to say I’d come home right after the Brazilian. That put me safely in the house by three-thirty at the latest.

After I’d finished, Trant said, “Good,” and then abruptly, “May I use your phone to call headquarters?” Without waiting for us to say yes, he went out into the hall. Within a few minutes he was back.

“So,” he said, sitting down again. “That does it, doesn’t it? I’ll talk to Miss Taylor, of course, but this seems to take care of the whole family. Under the circumstances, I doubt whether I’ll even have to talk to Miss Hadley. Alibis were what the D. A. wanted, and alibis are what we’ve got, aren’t they, Mr. Hadley?”

I should have felt relief. Once again Lieutenant Trant seemed to have accepted the flimsiest evidence in our favor as if it were overpoweringly strong. And yet, once again, instead of relief came a sensation, gnawing like a rat, that he had believed us no more than he’d believed us the first time, that this whole new pose was an act, an almost insultingly obvious camouflage set up to cover some hidden intention of his own.

I felt it even more when he smiled. His gaze was still on my face, but the smile, so natural, so spontaneous, seemed to have nothing to do with his eyes.

“Well, Mr. Hadley, now that the ordeal’s over, you might be interested to hear a new development that just came up. I thought of you right away because you were the one who felt so strongly that we should broaden our interest in Mr. Saxby. Of course, this may have nothing to do with the case, but at least it’s indicative of the line which we and the D. A. will now have to follow. This morning early, Don Saxby’s cleaning woman, Mrs. Cassidy, came to pay me a visit.”

Connie leaned forward tensely in her chair.

“She’s the woman who discovered the body. When I first interviewed her, she was very rattled. She gave her testimony and that seemed to be that. But early this morning she showed up at headquarters. Mrs. Cassidy, apparently, is a woman of very high principles. She’d come to unburden her conscience, she said. She also brought with her a bracelet she’d found in Saxby’s apartment.”

“In the light of Saxby’s record,” I said, “there’s nothing strange about finding a bracelet in his apartment.”

“There’s nothing particularly strange about it, but her story is quite strange. Apparently, about six weeks ago, when she was making the bed in Saxby’s bedroom, she pulled it out from the wall to fix the sheets and she found the bracelet. It had fallen to the floor between the bed and the wall; quite a valuable bracelet. She was standing there with it in her hand when Saxby came back into the apartment. He saw the bracelet in her hand and he told her to keep it. ‘Finders, keepers!’ he said. Mrs. Cassidy protested that it was much too valuable, but he insisted. He said, ‘It’s about time I gave you a little present. But just one thing. It belonged to a lady, a married lady. She won’t want it back, I’m sure. But if ever I ask you to come and meet her, I’d like you to tell her just where you found it.’ ”

Trant paused with a suddenness that seemed consciously dramatic.

“Mrs. Cassidy, of course, isn’t the brightest woman in the world and she was longing to keep the bracelet. She either didn’t understand or kidded herself she didn’t. But we understand, don’t we? Don Saxby was back at his very dirty tricks. A married woman had compromised herself. And now he had a witness. Whenever in the future he wanted to put the screws on her, he could always produce Mrs. Cassidy as a threat. Pay up—or my cleaning woman can tell your husband she found your bracelet in my bed. There’s motive for murder there, isn’t there? And, of course, it’s only one instance we happen to have stumbled on. From now on we’ll have to go in for a thorough investigation of Don Saxby’s other professional activities in New York, and I’m sure that eventually we’ll find that one particular blackmail victim who saw Chuck’s gun there, picked it up in a moment of rage—and killed him.”

He rose. Connie and I got up too. He went to Connie, holding out his hand for one of his abrupt, unexpected leave-takings.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hadley, that you and your family have had to bear the brunt of the scandal. Let’s hope it’ll all die down now and that your names will be out of the papers. I’ll do everything I can.”

Connie took his hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“There’s nothing to thank me for. I’m supposed to be the discreet cop, the cop with the velvet touch. They kid the hell out of me for it at headquarters. But this time, I’m afraid, I’ve been the cop with the ham hand.”

He turned to me, holding out the very unhamlike hand to me too. But then, just before I could take it, he withdrew it again. “Oh, by the way, perhaps you’d like to see the bracelet.”

As his hand went into his pocket, his gaze was still on my face. This time the smile was in his eyes too—a steady, indestructibly friendly smile, directed from his eyes to mine. There was really nothing to worry me. A bracelet was a bracelet. It was unlikely that I should have felt uneasiness, coiling and uncoiling, in the pit of my stomach, but I did.

His hand came out of his pocket. Lying over its palm was a bracelet of baroque pearls, the bracelet I had given to Connie on our fifth wedding anniversary.

EIGHTEEN

He put the bracelet back in his pocket. He shifted the smile to Connie for a moment, then he moved toward the door. I opened it for him and went with him down the hall. On the steps I watched him stroll down to the street and into his black police car. He waved and drove away. I went back into the library, feeling numb.

Connie had risen. She was standing in front of the broad ribbons of leather-bound books with Mr. Corliss’ classic busts—Homer, Julius Caesar, a lady with large blind eyes, Sappho?—standing in imperious chilliness above them. She was as cold, as marmoreally still as the statues.

I looked at her; not, I hoped, as an accusing husband. To have accused her, in my circumstances, would have been revolting.

I didn’t say anything, either. I’d seen the bracelet, so had she. Whatever there was to say had to come from her.

In a dry little voice she said, “Has he gone?”

“Yes.”

She moved to a window. It was a pointless movement if it had anything to do with Lieutenant Trant because the windows looked out on the back yard. For a moment she stood there, gazing out at God knows what. Then she turned. “It isn’t what you think,” she said.

“It’s your bracelet.”

“Of course it is. But Don put it where—where it was found. You’ve got to believe me. That must have been one of his filthy, blackmailer’s tricks.”

“You mean he stole it from you?”

“No. I knew I’d lost it. The clasp was loose anyway. I was almost sure I’d lost it there in his apartment. That’s why, when you mentioned it once, I—I hedged.”

“So you have been there.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been there.”

She moved over to a couch, the largest red leather couch in the huge room. There was a silver cigarette box. It had a fancy message of gratitude and greeting on it. It had been given to her father by some group or other of his devoted employees. She opened it, took out a cigarette and fit it in her stilted, “society-woman” way.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? Everything coming today. Ala telling me about Mrs. Lord—and now this.”

I thought I could see it all, or if not all, enough: Connie’s flush of pleasure when we’d run into Saxby at the opera, her exaggerated reluctance to let Ala go with him to the party, even my own initial, instinctive, quite unjustified jealousy. I felt the jealousy, even less justifiably, now.

“You were in love with him,” I said.

“In love? No, I wouldn’t call it love.”

“What would you call it?”

She held the cigarette tilted upward between her first and second fingers. “You accused me once of having my head in a gas oven about him. Do you remember?”

I remembered. It was almost as if I were back sitting on the edge of my bed, taking off my shoe, exhausted and prickly with exasperation.

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

“And I said, ‘Would it make any difference to you if it was true?’ It seems incredible now that I hadn’t guessed you’d found someone else. But then I’m not very good at understanding what goes on in other people, am I? Look at Ala. I always thought I was helping her, and look what came out of it—Richmond, Don Saxby. Oh, I knew there was something wrong between you and me, of course. I’d known that for a long time, but I thought… well, it seemed perfectly natural for you to get more and more wrapped up in your work. I knew you’d always felt a bit awkward about my having money. It seemed natural too that you’d want to prove yourself, that you’d be tired often—and even bored often. But I thought that was probably true of most marriages, even good ones, I mean. I used to tell myself it was just a phase, a sort of middle phase which would work itself out. And all the time, in your mind like Ala’s, I’d become the bogey woman, the schoolteacher who made too many demands, the overbearing Consuelo Corliss who had to be escaped from for a little warmth—to Mrs. Lord, the woman in your league.”

She smiled. It was a wry little drooping of the comers of her mouth.

“You’ve got to believe me. I never had the slightest idea. That’s why I wasn’t in love with Don Saxby. I was stupid enough to think I still had what I wanted, not quite the way I wanted it, of course, but I thought that would come back too.”

I felt a terrible embarrassment. What could I say? Fortunately—or more probably considerately—she didn’t give me a chance to say anything.

“Of course, with Don it was a temptation. I’d felt so—so unnecessary as a woman for so long. And when I met him in that gallery, when he seemed to admire me… He called the next day; he took me to lunch. I went once, twice, again. He was always so charming, managing to make me feel amusing and pretty and clever. It was all so different. I mean, there never seemed to be much of a chance for you and me to do anything like that together. I’d drifted into all those committees and things. They’d filled up the time in a way, but… We even went to the movies. He bought popcorn. We held hands. I knew it was ridiculous for a woman my age, but somehow it didn’t feel ridiculous. And then, after the movies, we’d go to his horrible little apartment for a drink. It was fine. I liked it fine, but always around quarter to five or five I’d think: George will be home soon, and I’d always make a point of getting back before you because I always felt that was one of the good times between us, when you came back from the office and had a drink and…”

She gave a little shrug. “Then the last time… about a month ago? I don’t remember. Anyway, after the movies, we went back to his apartment and he made love to me. He’d never done it before. But he did then and I—I almost went through with it. I was muddled. I didn’t really know what I felt. But at the last minute… well, I guess I’m not cut out to be an unfaithful wife. I shirked it. I just ran out. That was the last time I saw him alone.”

She sat down on the arm of a chair. She sat just as straight as she always did. She turned from profile to look at me, smiling again.

“As it turned out—now we know what he was and what he was after—prudery paid off, didn’t it? Perhaps, without admitting it, I always realized he was a phony. But there it is—the not very edifying story of me and near infidelity. Sometimes after that I almost regretted it, at times when you seemed particularly bored and I felt particularly dull—like the night at the opera. That’s why, when we ran into him quite by chance, it was exciting. It boosted my morale. There’s my admirer, I thought. I know it was childish, but when he still seemed to admire me, I wanted to show him off, I wanted to bring him back here and let you see. Then, of course, all the things with Ala began. That certainly paid me out for my giddiness, didn’t it?”

She threw out a hand. “So there it is. Ala—you—Don Saxby. I made a fool of myself all along the line, but once you get kicked out of a fool’s paradise, at least it’s a comfort to understand why you had the kick coming to you.”

Listening to her had been terrible for me, not for what she’d done, not for her pathetically justified blossoming under Don Saxby’s attentions, but for the light it shed on me. In her merciless self-accusation, she hadn’t accused me. There had never been a moment when she’d even hinted that any inadequacy had been mine. But I stood accused, and as I looked through her eyes back into the years of our marriage, back long before Eve, the realization of my own hypocrisy blazed out at me like a building suddenly illuminated by floodlights.

There I’d been, smugly committed to my own self-elected conception of what marriage to Consuelo Corliss had involved: the humiliation of being the husband of a rich woman (had Connie ever by word or deed showed she’d thought of me that way?); the strain of being the “average-guy” husband of an icily efficient, universally admired social figure (had Connie ever vaunted her own position?); and then, most self-deluding of all, the conviction that I was a red-blooded male stuck with a frigid female. Poor George Hadley. That’s what I’d chosen to think: that the marriage was too tough for me, never that I had been too feeble for the marriage. Poor George Hadley, no warmth at home for him. Ala’s phrase again. No warmth!

It was fine. I liked it fine, but always around quarter to five or five I’d think: George will be coming home soon…

She was still sitting on the arm of the chair, still smiling at me with her bright, almost impersonal smile, making no demands whatsoever. She would, I knew, rather die than make me feel she had been implying there were any seeds for reconciliation in what she’d revealed. She knew as well as I that it was far too late for us to pick up the pieces now. We might have, if this had happened before Eve, but this sort of thing never happened “before” anything. That was one of life’s axioms.

And that was what made the situation unbearable now. I knew my love was completely committed to Eve and I knew, although now there was no smugness in it, that indeed it was Eve’s league where I belonged and not Connie’s. There was nothing left to face my wife with but offerings which she would never accept—pity, regret and, of course, my own awareness of my total failure as a husband.

For a moment—it seemed like a moment of infinite duration—we just stayed there, Connie on the arm of the chair, me standing in front of the books.

It was Connie who said, “Isn’t this board-meeting day?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re terribly late, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but Lew knows we’re having our time of troubles.”

She got up. “George, about the bracelet. You got it at Cartier’s, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What if Lieutenant Trant is able to trace who bought it?” It was indicative of how far we had got from the pressure of the moment that, until she’d said that, I’d given up thinking of Lieutenant Trant. I’d hardly thought of Don Saxby either except as a thing which had happened to Connie and me—certainly not as a corpse.

She was looking at me, her face very calm but very solemn. “If he does identify it, if he finds out it’s mine…”

No, I thought. After all that had happened, they—whoever they were, the fates?—couldn’t do this to us.

“Won’t he think I killed him, George?”

She said that without emotion as if she were merely bringing up a fact to be considered.

The confusions in me steadied themselves. “But he can’t. At least we can be sure of that. You have an alibi. He knows that. Miss Taylor.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, Miss Taylor.” She gave a little smile. “So that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about, isn’t it? And we won’t have to worry about you either because I’ll call her right away. She’ll say you came home before three-thirty. I know she will. She’ll do anything for me.”

“All right,” I said. “Try her.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. I looked at my watch. “I’d better get down to the office. Lew wanted to see me this morning.”

“That’s something else,” she said, and her voice was almost its old, brisk Connie voice. “The first chance you get, do tell Mrs. Lord that I know and understand. Poor dear, life must have been awful for her all these last months. The least we can do is to relieve her mind a little.”

“Connie,” I said, and my voice cracked. I’d opened my mouth to speak and suddenly there was this thick, painful constriction in my throat. “Connie, I…”

“You really should hurry, dear,” she said. “You know how peevish Lew gets when he’s kept waiting…”

NINETEEN

I went to Consolidated. Connie called to say that Miss Taylor had left for South Carolina early that morning because her mother had suddenly been taken sick.

“It’s maddening, George. But it’ll be all right, I’m sure. I’ll call her father and leave a message for her to get in touch with me the moment she arrives. Oh, and there’s something else, too. Vivien’s just heard about Chuck and she’s wild with enthusiasm. She insists on giving a family celebration party tonight. I’ll have to go, of course. But—well, with the board meeting and everything I’m sure you won’t have a proper chance to talk to Mrs. Lord at the office and I really think—I mean, for her sake—that you should let her know it’s all right. So I told Vivien not to count on you. I said you were working late. Wasn’t that the best thing?”

As I listened I wondered whether there was anyone in the world except Connie who would be behaving like this—arranging my alibi for me, staffing Vivien, thinking about Eve under circumstances which would have turned any other wife into a vengeful fury. Once again I felt the same old mixture of emotions: admiration, gratitude and a faint, very faint resentment that she should still be organizing me.

“Thanks, Connie. Thanks a lot.”

Bob Driscoll came for me then, and for the rest of the day I was tied up. The meeting wasn’t over until five and I hurried back to my office. It was the first time I’d had a chance to see Eve alone all day. When I told her about Connie, her reaction was far less complicated than mine.

“She really gave us her blessing?”

“Not only that. She figured we’d want to be alone for a while so she got me out of going to Vivien’s party.”

“And all these months…! George, she is wonderful, isn’t she? How am I ever going to let her know how grateful I am?”

That was when Vivien swirled into the office. For a moment she dazzled me. There was always so much going on with Vivien—furs gleaming, jewels and teeth sparkling, the tinkling laugh, the pretty “starlet” way which apparently hadn’t made the grade in Hollywood but had certainly been richly rewarded in her role as Mrs. Malcolm Ryson.

“George, darling! Hello, Mrs. Lord.” She ran to me and enveloped me in mink. “What’s all this about working late? Today of all days? Are you out of your mind? I’m just through having my hair done right around the comer and I said to myself: This is ridiculous. I’ll just plunge into that office and drag George off by the scruff of his neck—whatever that is.”

She swooped around to Eve. “You see, don’t you, Mrs. Lord? The nightmare’s all over. Chuck’s free again. He worships Ala. Ala worships him. How could she ever have wavered, etcetera? It’s all exactly as if nothing had happened, as if they’d turned back all the clocks. Tell him, Mrs. Lord, tell this dreary man he’s simply got to come and celebrate with the others. All the family together.”

I looked at Eve. She looked at me. I knew we were both feeling the same way. Whatever had happened to her own marriage, Connie had finally succeeded in getting Chuck and Ala together. One small way of repaying her was for me to see that the whole family was united at the moment of the celebration.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call you later at home, Mrs. Lord. If there’s any time, we still might get through some of the reports.”

“There!” said Vivien. “I knew it. I knew no one could be as monstrous as all that. Well, darling, off we go. I have the car outside.” She grabbed both my hands and then, just as she was going to whisk me away, she gave a little cluck. “Really, what happens at board meetings? You look as wilted as last week’s lettuce. You can’t blight my celebration like this. We’ll stop off at your house on the way and you can change into your most glamorous wedding garment. Good-bye, Mrs. Lord. Good-bye, good-bye.”

Bombarding me with an unbroken barrage of chatter, Vivien drove me to Sixty-Fourth Street. We were actually getting out of the car before I saw Lieutenant Trant. He appeared from nowhere, it seemed, hovering at my side like a chauffeur ready to assist the descent of an elderly employer.

“Hello, Mr. Hadley. Good evening, Mrs. Ryson.” He moved his grave smile from one to the other of us. “This is a piece of luck for me, Mr. Hadley. I’ve just been told by the maid that no one was at home.”

“They’re over at our house, Lieutenant,” said Vivien. “We’re giving a party. A celebration—after Chuck’s terrible ordeal.”

She was smiling her standard woman-to-man smile at Trant, snuggling around inside her mink. She seemed completely to have forgotten her own “terrible” ordeal when she’d ratted on Chuck. I wished I were able to forget so easily.

I said, “Did you want anything in particular, Lieutenant?”

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Hadley, I want to speak to you.”

I turned to Vivien. “You go on,” I said. “I’ll come by in a minute.”

“All right, darling.” Vivien smiled at Trant again. “But don’t keep him too long. Please, Lieutenant, promise me. We need him.”

She waggled her hand at him, kissed me on the cheek and drove off. For a moment Trant stood looking after her, then he turned to me. I preceded him up the steps, opened the front door, and led him into the library.

I should by then have become used to the oppressiveness he always inspired in me, the sensation that ever since I’d first met him he had been biding his time, crouching like the most patient of tigers for a sudden, eventual pounce. But now, although his smile was as unintimidating as ever and he had in so many words that morning dismissed us completely from the case, I felt tenser than I’d ever felt before with him!

I said, “How about a drink?”

I went over to the bar and was actually pouring myself a shot of bourbon before he said, “No, thank you. I don’t think so. Not now.”

I put water in my drink. “You don’t mind if I do?”

“Of course not. You probably need one.”

He took out his cigarette case and, selecting a cigarette, inevitably tapped it on the case and fit it.

“Cartier’s,” he said, “is a very impressive store, Mr. Hadley. I’d tried a couple of other jewelers first, but less than five minutes after I’d shown them that pearl bracelet at Cartier’s, they were able to identify it as a bracelet you had them make for your wife seven years ago.”

The nightmare's over! Vivien and her celebration! My hand was gripping my glass so tightly that with a hallucinatory sensation I could almost feel it crushing, driving splinters into my palm.

“I can’t say I was very surprised.” The Lieutenant’s continuing voice sounded very slightly muffled as if it were coming to me through a thin barrier of paper. “There’d already been several hints. The woman who heard the shots had seen him on several occasions come into the building with a woman. She didn’t know who the woman was, of course, but the general description could very well have fitted Mrs. Hadley. And then—well, the Duvreux story established a sort of pattern, didn’t it? Begin as a protégé of the wife-switch to the daughter. Of course, Chuck confused the issue for a while, but he never sidetracked me too much. I mean, from the moment the motel owners checked in and Mrs. Fostwick called from Toronto, I had a fairly good idea who killed Don Saxby. And now, since I’ve found out about the bracelet, I would say I have a very good idea.”

He paused, but his eyes never left my face. I was looking back at him stupidly, I imagine, or however a rabbit is supposed to look back at a snake.

“Usually, Mr. Hadley, once you’ve found the best motive you’ve found the murderer. A man who discovers that both his wife and his daughter have been—what shall we say—betrayed?—by the same man, has a very good motive for murder, doesn’t he?”

Somehow, I suppose, in the even flow of his words, I had gathered what he was leading up to; I had realized that after the long crouch the pounce had come. But that it should have come in just this way was so staggeringly unexpected that

I felt nothing at first but astonishment merged with something that was almost amusement.

“You’re not accusing me?” I said.

“Accusing you, Mr. Hadley? No, I’m not accusing you. I’m only asking you what you would say if I did accuse you.”

“I’d say it was ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous that you would have wanted to kill a man who’d done what Saxby did to your wife and daughter?”

“No, not exactly, but—”

“But—what?”

They can’t do anything to you if you’re innocent. How many times had I been uttering that trite reassurance in the last few days? But gradually I could feel it all as an octopus again; I could feel tentacles creeping from the right, the left, from behind.

“Well, Mr. Hadley? You admit you had the motive. What about the opportunity? Wouldn’t you say in your own defense that you couldn’t have killed him because you had an alibi?”

I’d been waiting for that, waiting with the image of Miss Taylor hovering ominously in my mind. I knew as clearly as I knew anything that a lifeline thrown by Lieutenant Trant would be suspect but I grabbed it.

“Yes,” I said. “I imagine I’d remind you that I had an alibi.”

Trant turned away from me with maddening leisureliness. He saw an ash tray on Connie’s desk and crushed his cigarette in it.

“We called Miss Taylor, Mr. Hadley. This morning when I borrowed your phone I told headquarters to get in touch with her. They got the South Carolina number. We talked to her the moment she arrived. She confirmed Mrs. Hadley’s and Miss Hadley’s alibis, of course. But when it came to you, her story was a little different from yours or your wife’s. She said that, to the best of her knowledge, when she left at four-thirty, you still hadn’t come home.”

So much for Connie’s “arrangements.” I might have known that in any contest of wits between Connie and Trant, Trant would certainly win. He had paused again, giving time for this body blow to make its effect.

Then he went on, “I’m sure that you’ve been planning to get in touch with her and ask her to include you in the alibi. For all I know, you’ve already done so. But I’m afraid I got ahead of you. And I spoke to her from the office. I have the conversation on tape. As the D. A. sees it and as I see it, Mr. Hadley, the only people, apart from yourself, who at the moment have any known immediate motive for murdering Don Saxby, were Mrs. Hadley or Miss Hadley. Miss Taylor has been able to give them both a definite alibi. But you…” He made a little gesture with his hand.

“Motive, Mr. Hadley, opportunity… and an alibi which didn’t happen to hold up very well, did it? That’s what I want you to think about. I know it’s unorthodox for a cop to show his hand, but I’ve never cared much for being orthodox. And in a case like this where the murdered man, morally if not legally, deserved what was coming to him ... I feel, well, shall we say that I feel holding out on you any longer wouldn’t be cricket?”

Once again, at the least imaginable moment, he was stretching out his hand, smiling his exasperating smile of tolerance for all human frailty.

“Don’t bother to see me out. I know the way. But there’s one last thing I’d like to say. Even in cricket, I believe, the object of the game is to win. I have no actual proof yet. I’ll even be frank enough to tell you that. But now is only now. Good evening, Mr. Hadley. I won’t keep you from Mrs. Ryson’s celebration any longer.”

He went out of the library. I heard his footsteps going down the hall. Then the front door opened and closed.

I stood there with my drink half drunk in my hand. The imaginary tentacles were crawling, curling around me because I saw the decision I’d have to make. It was the same soul-destroying decision that had confronted me last night, only now it was I who had been put into the position vacated by Chuck. For, in spite of Trant’s threats, I knew there need be no danger for me at all. All I had to do was to admit I’d gone to Saxby’s and found Ala there. Once Trant knew Ala’s alibi was a fake too and that I’d actually discovered her there by the body, he would, without any shadow of doubt, forget about me. His terrible round game of “pick the murderer” would come to a remorseless close with Ala.

But knowing what I had to decide didn’t make the decision any easier. Ironically, this was supposed to be the first day of my freedom from the Corlisses; the first day of my real fife with Eve. What would happen to Tobago if I didn’t tell? But if I did tell, how would Eve and I ever be able to five with ourselves.

I took a gulp of my drink, feeling at the lowest ebb of exhaustion. There was no proof against me. Trant had admitted it. And he would never be able to get any because I wasn’t guilty. Didn’t the answer fie there? Wouldn’t Eve have to agree that there was only one thing to do? Once it had seemed possible for me to sacrifice Ala if need be, but now, after she’d so splendidly shown her courage, now at the very moment when she was being reunited with Chuck, it was something, I knew, which just couldn’t be done.

I finished my drink and put the empty glass down on Connie’s desk. What I’d put it down on was the Times magazine section, still opened at the crossword puzzle which Connie and Miss Taylor had done together and which Trant had studied so carefully. I glanced down at Connie’s familiar messy writing and Miss Taylor’s neat letters, legible as neon signs.

The puzzle was completely finished. That was the first thing I noticed. Then, as if drawn by magnetism, my eyes fell on the clue for number eight down. A goddess of war in seven letters. My eyes flashed up to the puzzle itself. There was the answer written in, in Miss Taylor’s unmistakable capitals: BELLONA.

As I looked at the word, I felt myself spinning dizzily back in time. I was coming here into the library around five on Sunday afternoon. Connie was sitting in the red leather chair, her reading glasses on, glancing up at me with her bright, unperturbed smile.

Hello, dear. Who was a goddess of war in seven letters beginning with B?

Five o’clock! Half an hour: after Miss Taylor was supposed to have left! And Connie hadn’t known who the goddess of war was then; the puzzle hadn’t been finished then. So!

This shock was so enormous that for a moment I couldn’t force my swirling thoughts into any sense. But gradually the pattern emerged. Connie’s alibi for herself had been as fake as our alibi for Ala and our alibi for me. On Sunday Miss Taylor had never been at the house at all. Connie had merely gone to her later and made her fill in the puzzle to provide Trant at just the right moment with the magnificently casual and convincing piece of evidence of the two female buddies sitting cozily together on a family Sunday afternoon, taking turns writing in the words.

Miss Taylor hadn’t got around to lying for me, but she’d certainly lied brilliantly for Connie.

Ever since I’d left for Idlewild on Sunday morning, my wife had been alone. Ala had been physically there, of course, but she’d been locked in her bedroom at the back of the house. Connie could have gone out and come back a dozen times—and nobody would ever have known.

TWENTY

Eve and I were sitting together in the pink living room. I’d gone directly to her house and told her about Connie. For a while she just couldn’t believe it. That was another of the ironies. Eve was like everyone else, including me. She was so convinced of Connie’s integrity that it was beyond her powers of comprehension to grasp the fact that Connie, of all people, could have been saying one thing and doing another—forcing Ala to speak the truth while she at the same time had been hiding her own far more incriminating involvement.

“But all that about Miss Taylor and the puzzle—it wasn’t just for Trant. She told you Miss Taylor had been there long before there was any question of alibis. She’d decided on it from the beginning, hadn’t she?”

“She must have.”

“And the bracelet.”

“I know.”

She was looking at me, her eyes very solemn. “Do you think she could have been lying about that too? I mean, do you think she was really crazy about Saxby?”

Did I? Whatever else I was prepared to believe, could I possibly believe that my wife’s pathetic baring of her heart about our marriage that morning had been nothing but a theatrical sham? It was fine. I liked it fine. But whenever it got to be five o’clock I suddenly thought: George is coming home soon…

“No,” I said. “I can’t believe that. The thing with the bracelet was faked by Saxby.”

“But even so, he could have used it against her, couldn’t he? Ala had refused to listen about the Duvreuxs. She’d said she was going to marry him anyway. If Connie had gone to Don’s determined to break it up once and for all, if she’d threatened to call the police and expose him about the Duvreuxs, couldn’t he have counter-threatened with the bracelet? Either I marry Ala or I tell your husband you’ve been having an affair with me. It’s awful, I know, that she was still thinking—well, that she had you. But couldn’t it have happened that way? Connie, thinking she was saving not only Ala but her marriage, picking up the gun…?”

That had occurred to me too because nothing, of course, could have been more in keeping with Connie’s character. Poor Connie, barging into yet another situation determined at all costs to save everybody singlehanded.

“George,” Eve was saying very quietly, “what are you going to do?”

Always, however hard we tried to get away from it, we had come back to that.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“But if they try to arrest you…”

“How can they when they have no proof?”

“Do you really believe that still? They know you have a motive. They know you have no alibi. And you did go there. Maybe they’ll find that out, too. Oh, George, I know how you feel. She’s your wife. You feel guilty because of us. Of course you do. But—but we’ve tried, haven t we? For months we’ve been trying to put her first, trying to do the right thing. There’s got to come a time when we think about us. And if they arrested you now, now when we’re so nearly there…” Suddenly her face was out of control. She threw herself against me. “Oh, George, George darling, if they do try to arrest you, tell. Please, promise me if you have to, you’ll tell.”

I knew, of course, that she was right. Whatever Connie had or hadn’t done was no longer my responsibility. Whatever muddled feelings might still be goading me—guilt, pity, even the residue of tenderness for my wife—were now in a way betrayals of Eve.

I put my arms around her, drawing her closer, kissing her.

“I love you,” I said.

“Oh, George, I know. I do know.”

“Then there’s something else you know too. You know I’ll never let anything stop me taking you to Tobago. Not Trant, not Connie—not even Ala.”

“Then—then you promise?”

“If need be. But first I’m going to call her at Vivien’s. It’s the least I can do.”

I kissed her again and, getting up from the couch, went to the phone. Just as I was about to lift the receiver, the front door buzzer rang. Eve jumped up.

“Don’t answer,” I said.

It buzzed again. We both turned, looking uneasily into the little hall as if the hall itself constituted a threat. Then for the third time the buzzer sounded. This time the finger pressing it didn’t release its pressure, sending a continuous screech echoing through the apartment.

“You’d better go,” I said. “Just get rid of them—whoever it is.”

Eve hurried out into the hall. I heard the door open. I heard Eve give a little exclamation. Then, coming ahead of her, walking in as nonchalantly as though he were a cocktail guest, Lieutenant Trant moved into the room.

“Hello, Mr. Hadley,” he said. “I rather expected to find you here.”

He was smiling his same old aren’t-we-buddies smile. I knew he was actually standing there, but for a moment he had no reality as if he were merely a figment of my own anxieties. The smile lingered on me for a moment, then he moved it to Eve.

“I’m sorry about making all that racket, Mrs. Lord, but I was told you were in, and this is quite important. My name, by the way, is Trant. Lieutenant Trant. Do you mind if we all sit down?”

He waited as he always waited. He made his little gesture. Eve hesitated, glanced at me and then sat down on the couch. I sat down beside her. Then, as always, after he was the only one left standing, Trant lingered a moment, dominating. Then he perched himself on the arm of a chair.

“It’s funny,” he said, “why people go on thinking of Manhattan as a big, impersonal, faceless no man’s land. To me it’s always seemed much the same as any small town anywhere in the country. Neighbors watch neighbors the way they watch them in Skull Crossing, Montana. And neighbors—mostly female neighbors—make a point of calling the cops whenever they get a chance, just the same as if Mrs. O’Grady’s heifer had broken through their backyard fence again.”

He paused. “This evening, Mr. Hadley, when I got back to the office after talking to you, there was a message that a Mrs. Ross had called. I’ve just come from talking to her. As it happens, she lives upstairs in this building. She’d called me because she’d seen your picture in the papers. She wanted me to know, in the strictest confidence as she put it, that for the last four months if not longer you’d been coming here every Thursday evening to see Mrs. Lord.”

He took out his cigarette case and held it without opening it in his hand.

“And not only that. As it turned out, Mrs. Ross also saw you here on the actual afternoon of the murder. You may remember her, Mr. Hadley, a large blonde with a white poodle. Apparently you tangled together right outside the building. On Sunday afternoons, it seems that Mrs. Ross makes a habit of walking the white poodle at exactly five minutes to four because there’s a television program she watches at four—which establishes the fact that it was five minutes to four when you came here. As you may remember, Don Saxby was shot at three-thirty. Anyone, even a white-haired little old lady, can walk from Saxby’s apartment here in under twenty minutes.”

He opened the cigarette case. He took out a cigarette. While I waited for him to tap it against the silver top of the case, I could feel the veins throbbing in my temples. The tapping came. He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

“I told you, Mr. Hadley, that you had both opportunity and motive, but I didn’t know at the time just how much opportunity and motive you had, did I? I didn’t know that you were seen less than twenty minutes after the crime at a spot only fifteen minutes away. Nor, speaking in terms of motive, did I know that it wasn’t merely a question of your wife and your daughter, it was a question of Mrs. Lord, too. Don Saxby, who could always be depended upon for digging up scandal, must have been very pleased to find out about Mrs. Lord. He had you three ways, didn’t he? If it had cost the irreproachable Mr. Duvreux ten thousand dollars to pay him off, how much was it going to cost you? More money, I’d say, than you were either willing or able to pay. I don’t blame you. Let me say that again, I don’t blame you at all. But it’s too bad, isn’t it, that your wife’s attempt to get you an alibi—which was really noble of her under the circumstances—just didn’t happen to work out?”

They can’t do anything to you if you’re innocent! All the time that his voice had gone stabbingly on, I’d tried to cling to that shakiest of premises. And yet with every word his case had become more hideously plausible. There were, it seemed, hosts of witnesses, people I’d hardly thought of, people I’d never even seen—Mrs. Ross, the motel owners, the Fostwicks in Toronto—hosts of them, all relentlessly marshaled by Lieutenant Trant to prove that they can indeed do something to you if you’re innocent.

“Well, Mr. Hadley.” Cigarette smoke was trailing between his face and mine. “What would you say now if I accused you of killing Donald Saxby?”

All this time Eve had been sitting close to me on the couch, very straight, her hand brushing against my knee. I had been very conscious of her hand. It had been the one thing that was giving me any steadiness at all. Now, as I let the situation flounder on with no power, it seemed, to control it, she rose to her feet. For a moment she stood glaring at Trant, then she turned back to me.

“Tell him, George,” she said. “You’ve got to. You promised me. Tell him.”

“Just what do you want him to tell me, Mrs. Lord?” Trant said softly.

She stood there, looking at me, her face bleak with despair. “I know it’s awful. I know how you feel. But—but it’s got to be done. It’s… No, maybe it hasn’t. Maybe there’s another way, a way which won’t make it so bad for you later on.”

She had turned toward the phone. For still another long moment she hesitated, then she went to it and dialed a number.

“Hello. Can I speak to Mrs. Hadley, please?”

“Eve!” I exclaimed.

I jumped to my feet. I took a step toward her, but before I reached her she was saying, “Mrs. Hadley? This is Eve Lord. Something’s happened and I think you ought to know. Lieutenant Trant’s just accused George of killing Don Saxby. He’s accused him because he thinks George is the only one in the Hadley family without an alibi. This is my idea, to call you, it isn’t George’s. I just think there might be something you want to say.”

Her voice was icily calm. Somehow it had managed to paralyze not only me but Lieutenant Trant. We both watched her, keeping perfectly still. Faintly I could hear my wife’s voice at the other end of the phone. Then Eve was holding the receiver out to me.

“She wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. Everything seemed to be a long way off. I heard Connie’s voice, very clipped and brisk.

“George, is this true?”

“It’s true.”

“And it’s just because the alibi with Miss Taylor didn’t work?”

“More or less.”

For a moment there was a pause. Then she said, “You haven’t told him about Ala?”

“Of course not.”

“And he’s going to arrest you?”

“I guess so.”

“Then, George, George dear, you can’t hold back any more. You know you can’t. You know Ala wouldn’t want you to. Tell him.”

“About Ala?”

“It’s too late now. We can’t lie any more—any of us. We’ll have to tell the truth—and face it.”

“The truth, for example, about Miss Taylor?”

I waited, feeling an extraordinary, disembodied lightness. “Miss Taylor?” said Connie. “What about Miss Taylor?”

“That she wasn’t at the house on Sunday at all?”

“Wasn’t there? But—but, George, of course she was there.”

“And you did the puzzle together?”

“Well, no, not that. Not the puzzle. How did you find out?”

“I just did,” I said.

“I meant to tell you this morning, but—well, there were quite a lot of other things to talk about, weren’t there? You see, I know how the police are. Right from the beginning I knew we’d need as good an alibi as possible for Ala. It wasn’t just that I knew she’d snuck out, it was the Richmond thing too. I was so scared they’d find that out, and just Miss Taylor and I saying we were there seemed so feeble since Miss Taylor was almost a part of the family. So—so I thought I’d make it look better. I thought if I got Miss Taylor to fill in the puzzle, at least there’d be something tangible. I mean, they couldn’t say we were lying if there was the puzzle with both our handwriting as evidence, could they? That’s what I thought. That’s…” Her voice suddenly cracked. “But, George, all this time you’ve been thinking Miss Taylor wasn’t here at all?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then—then what must you have thought of me? That I’d been doing it for myself? To try to make an alibi for myself? Oh, George... let me talk to the Lieutenant.”

“But—”

“Please, George, let me talk to the Lieutenant. I’ll make him see. I’ll tell him everything, but I’ll make him see. Somehow I’ll make him see.”

Somehow she’d make him see. Through all the conflicting thoughts and emotions, that was what came through to me the strongest. Connie being Connie! Connie once again fighting the dragon singlehanded. I’ll do something. I’ll make them see.

I handed the phone to Trant. The instant I did so, Eve cried, “I had to. George, you do see, don’t you?”

“Of course I see,” I said.

I went to her and put my arm around her waist. We stood watching Trant while Connie “made him see.” He hardly said a word, just an occasional “yes” or “no.” Then with a “No, not now. There’s no need for you at the moment,” he put the receiver back on its stand. He turned to look at me.

“So all along it’s been Miss Hadley you’ve been protecting.”

“More or less,” I said.

The friendly smile came again and for the first time its friendliness seemed totally without ulterior motive.

“Then I think this is the moment to tell you that in all my experience as a cop I’ve never met two people who lied so often and so badly as you and your wife. It’s a relief to know it was in so admirable a cause. It’s a relief too to know that my little comedy paid off. I apologize, Mr. Hadley, but you’ll have to take my word for it that I had my reasons.”

“Reasons?” I said. “For what?”

“For accusing you.”

He paused a moment as if he were musing. Then his eyes moved from mine back to Eve. She was looking at him, her lips parted in astonishment.

“Then you’ve known all along that George didn’t do it?”

“Not all along, Mrs. Lord. Until just about an hour ago, I was almost sure he was guilty. But just now when I went on with the accusation here, it was a bit phony, I admit. I was using a little pressure to squeeze out the facts. A cop on a case has to ascertain all the facts, you know. It says so in the detective’s manual, page seventeen, I think.”

I watched him with no feeling at all, knowing once and for all that I was never going to be able to understand him.

“You mean you’d found out about Ala for yourself?” I asked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Hadley. That was quite a surprise. In this case, I’ve turned out to be the most consistently surprised cop in the history of the New York police force.”

He stubbed his cigarette in an ash tray.

“You see, while I was talking to Mrs. Ross upstairs, a phone call came through from headquarters. After that even I could hardly go on believing that you were guilty, because the murder of Donald Saxby has been solved.”

He went back to the chair and perched himself once more on its arm.

“Yes,” he said, “nothing fancy, no gimmicks, just a call from headquarters. Of course, I set things up for the call. I can at least give myself credit for that. But I didn’t really get any nearer to solving the case than you, Mr. Hadley. In fact, you got a little nearer than I did. You were the one who made such a fuss about San Francisco.”

He looked down at his hands as if suddenly the condition of his nails was of vital importance to him.

“I’d already contacted the San Francisco police, of course, and I’d already got the dope on Saxby, Kramer and the girl who worked with them, Kramer’s sister. But it was only after you called me that I got in touch with the Coast again and had them trace the Kramer girl. I wanted to make sure you couldn’t accuse me of concentrating exclusively on the Hadley family.”

He looked up then. “This evening the word came back. They’d traced Ruth Kramer. She was living in New York under another name. She’d gotten herself into the big money. And not only that. She’d got there through a very fortunate connection with your family.”

A faint smile was playing around the corners of his mouth now. “Once I knew that, the rest couldn’t have been more obvious, could it? In the old days, by the way, Saxby hadn’t just been Ruth Kramer’s partner, he’d been her boyfriend. Here she was hitting the pay dirt. Why not cut Saxby in? He’d just come down from Canada after pulling the Duvreux deal. Here, all set up for him in New York, was an even more promising mother-daughter combination—and something Ruth couldn’t use herself. Okay. Give the boyfriend a break.”

His quiet, unemphasized voice with its odd, almost affected turn of phrase, was extraordinarily spellbinding. As I stood there with my arm around Eve, I just listened, contented to listen as if, now that everything was changed, this was no longer the voice of our antagonist but the voice which miraculously was going to make life possible for us all again.

“It worked, didn’t it? It worked fine. In a couple of months, Saxby had got through the mother to the daughter, he’d got the daughter into the motel. Who knows? With the bracelet to dangle over the mother’s head, he might even have succeeded in marrying the daughter and ended up sitting as pretty as Ruth Kramer. But there was one snag—one big snag. He’d broken parole when he crossed into Canada. If ever the police got on to him, the whole game was up. And that’s where luck turned against him. Quite by chance, you found out about the Duvreuxs, Mr. Hadley, and were angry enough to be ready to go to the police. Suddenly the balloon collapsed. There was only one thing for Saxby to do—get out of town in a hurry.”

He leaned a little forward, resting his hand on the knee of his elegantly pressed gray pants. “But Saxby wasn’t one to throw in the towel. He’d lost out with the Hadleys but there was still his old girlfriend. What if Ruth Kramer had cut him into the deal in the first place? Saxby was a firm believer in dog-eat-dog. Okay, he had to get out of town, but there was nothing to stop his leaving with a nice big check from Ruth Kramer. She wasn’t sitting as pretty as that. The moment it came out who she really was, she would have been back in the gutter too. So!”

He gave a slight, quizzical shrug. “There’s the murder set-up. Saxby called Ruth Kramer. He told her to bring him a check for a going-away present. Once he got the check, he said, he’d burn whatever papers he’d been keeping to remind her just who she was. Ruth Kramer must have been a very angry girl, but she knew when she was licked. On Sunday afternoon she went around with the check. She handed it over. He burned the papers in the fireplace. That could have been the end of the episode, but it wasn’t, because of Chuck’s gun.”

He paused. “I imagine it wasn’t just having to give him the money, although that must have been annoying enough. Ruth Kramer knew her Saxby. She knew, whether he’d burnt the papers or not, this was only a beginning. From now on, what was to stop him coming back and back again for a touch whenever he felt in the mood? And what use was he to her any more anyway? She’d got her place in the sun and she’d got it through her own unaided efforts. Saxby was as obsolete in her life now as a dinosaur and yet as dangerous as a saber-toothed tiger.”

He was grinning at me. “I don’t blame her for shooting him—particularly with someone else’s gun. No, if I’d been Ruth Kramer, I’d have shot Donald Saxby myself.”

I knew, of course. I’d known almost from the first moment he’d mentioned Ruth Kramer. Vivien, who had come from California, who must have actually seen Chuck taking the gun!

Trant was just sitting there, watching me, perched on the chair arm, bringing once again the incongruous image of a cocktail party guest. Someone should have been offering him a little circle of toast spread with caviar.

“Then,” I said, “then Ruth Kramer when she changed her name—”

“She changed it through marriage, Mr. Hadley. You see, when her brother was shot resisting arrest and Saxby was given five years, she was left with no one to take care of her. Not being taken care of was something Ruth Kramer didn’t like at all, so she did what any sensible girl in her place would have done. She looked around for a stopgap until Saxby was out of jail. She found an ideal one—a pathetic invalid who’d already been condemned to death by his doctors, an invalid, incidentally, who was very adequately insured. She found him in Bakersfield, California.”

“No!” I heard the word. I knew I’d said it. I knew that choking cry was the sound of my own voice.

“Yes.” I could hear Lieutenant Trant’s voice but it, like my own, seemed merely a grotesque hallucination in my mind. “Yes, Mr. Hadley, his name, I’m afraid, was Oliver Lord.”

My arm was still around Eve. It seemed to have no life of its own at all as if, in some nightmare, it had grown onto her, was grafted onto her—and nothing could separate us but a tearing of skin.

“When Oliver Lord died, Mr. Hadley, Ruth Kramer came to New York. She was looking for work, their kind of work, which would pay off for herself and Saxby too. She found it at Consolidated Carbide, didn’t she? The husband of a rich woman with a nineteen-year-old daughter? The mother and daughter for Saxby, the husband for her—a husband who had been married for twelve years, a husband at the exact psychological moment when he could be eased into having a little fling. To begin with, I imagine, the husband was rather incidental, the big money seemed to lie with the mother and daughter. But—I’m only guessing, of course—suddenly Ruth Kramer found the husband was even riper for romance than she’d suspected: What do you know? This wasn’t just a guy with an itch, this was a decent guy, a guy in love who might even divorce his wife and whisk Ruth Kramer right up out of the gutter once and for all. What had she got on to? And why had she ever cut Saxby in?”

We were still—Eve and I—locked together by the awful paralysis of my arm. I stood listening, just listening, not interpreting at all, not feeling anything but the pressure of my arm against her side. Trant’s voice pounded on like a hammer.

“But Saxby was there, wasn’t he—the Frankenstein’s monster she’d brought in as an ally but who, when his own part of the scheme collapsed, had turned into the enemy. He wasn’t going to scuttle out of New York and leave Ruth Kramer to live happily ever after as Mrs. Hadley. Not Saxby. The telephone call. Come over, bring the check. What time was it, Mrs. Lord? Sometime after three, I guess. Just time enough for you to give him the check while he burned the papers, and then to pick up the gun, shoot—and run. You were lucky you did it when you did, weren’t you, because Mr. Hadley showed up at your apartment at five minutes to four. You must just about have made it before he arrived.”

Eve had been wearing a coat. Suddenly that little fact dug into me splintering the ice with which I had been immobilized. When I’d come to my “sanctuary” in desperate need for Eve’s help with my problem, she’d opened the door with her coat on. I was just going out to mail a letter. Thank God I didn’t miss you. Behind the humiliation, the anguish, the stultifying exhaustion, there now was a hard, cruel little voice spelling everything out. I could see it all. That was almost the most terrible part of it. I was as positive of it all as if, all along without admitting it, I’d been conscious of the extreme and ludicrous folly of my bid for a new life.

It had never been Eve, it had been Eve and Donald Saxby. All through my shabby idyl, Saxby had been hovering in the background, pulling the strings. The French restaurant! Of course. That chance meeting when for the very first time in our relationship it had been Eve who had suggested we go out to eat. That had been part of it—part of their infinitely intricate plot. A little pressure on the husband now. I’ve got Ala where I want her. This would be a good moment for me to surprise the husband kissing his secretary. It’ll get him into the right mood for sanctioning the Stockbridge weekend.

Saxby, always Saxby. The most frustrating sensation in the world, I discovered, was the longing to kill a man who was already dead.

Somehow I had moved away from Eve. I was standing on my own, watching the two of them. Trant’s face, stripped of its gentleness, was hard as a rock. Eve’s face didn’t seem to be her face at all. It was the small, shrunken face of a little old woman.

“Well, Mrs. Lord, there isn’t much point in going on with this, is there? You let Chuck get arrested. Just now you were hoping to pin it on Mrs. Hadley. And, of course, there was always Ala, if need be, wasn’t there? Anyone, in fact, except Mr. Hadley. You needed Mr. Hadley as a far more desirable successor to Mr. Lord.”

Eve stood looking at him from her shrunken little old woman’s face, and when the words came out they were tight and dry.

“There isn’t any proof.”

“Proof? But I’m afraid there is, Mrs. Lord.” Trant’s hand had gone to his pocket. “I sent a man over to Saxby’s apartment tonight and he found it caught in the flu of the chimney. You shouldn’t have thrown it on the fire, Mrs. Lord—not at a time when you were so emotionally disturbed. It was after the shooting, wasn’t it? Hot air above a fire is buoyant, you know. If you don’t watch out, a piece of paper can very easily float up a chimney. It would have been much safer to have destroyed it at home, but I suppose you were very eager to get rid of it and never have to see it again—ever.”

His hand came out of his pocket. He was holding an envelope. He opened it and carefully slid a piece of charred paper onto his palm.

“Your check, Mrs. Lord. And, as you will see, your signature is intact. Twenty-five thousand dollars. As I understand from the California police, that was the exact amount of your insurance on Mr. Lord. The name of the payee or most of it is burnt away. But the last three letters of it are there… XBY.”

He was putting the check back in the envelope and the envelope back in his pocket.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is it.”

There was, I knew, no short cut for me away from humiliation. But already, very dimly, I could see the way ahead. Once you get kicked out of a fool’s paradise, at least it’s a comfort to understand why you had the kick coming to you.

Connie had said that. I’d got the kick all right—George Hadley who had turned out to be the fool of the family.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hadley.” Trant’s voice, quiet with sympathy—a doctor’s voice—came through to me. “I’ll be taking her away now. There won’t be any need for you. In fact, I imagine it’s about time you had a little talk with your wife, isn’t it?”

My wife! At that moment when it seemed impossible that there could be any grain of comfort anywhere, I could hear Connie’s voice as if she were speaking in my ear.

I was stupid, I know, but I thought things like that happened in all marriages, even good ones. I thought it was just a middle phase. You see, I was sure I had what I wanted, not quite the way I wanted it, of course, but I was always sure that would come back, too.

I watched Lieutenant Trant leading Ruth Kramer to the door.

FIN

PATRICK QUENTIN

Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelley (30 April 1906 – 2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 1931 Richard Wilson Webb (born in 1901 in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, an Englishman working for a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia) and Martha Mott Kelley collaborated on the detective novel Cottage Sinister. Kelley was known as Patsy (Patsy Kelly was a well-known character actress of that era) and Webb as Rick, so they created the pseudonym Q. Patrick by combining their nicknames—adding the Q "because it was unusual".

Webb's and Kelley's literary partnership ended with Kelley's marriage to Stephen Wilson. Webb continued to write under the Q. Patrick name, while looking for a new writing partner. Although he wrote two novels with the journalist and Harper's Bazaar editor Mary Louise Aswell, he would find his permanent collaborator in Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934.

Wheeler's and Webb's first collaboration was published in 1936. That same year, they introduced two new pseudonyms: Murder Gone to Earth, the first novel featuring Dr. Westlake, was credited to Jonathan Stagge, a name they would continue to use for the rest of the Westlake series. A Puzzle for Fools introduced Peter Duluth and was signed Patrick Quentin. This would become their primary and most famous pen name, even though they also continued to use Q. Patrick until the end of their collaboration (particularly for Inspector Trant stories).

In the late 1940s, Webb's contributions gradually decreased due to health problems. From the 1950s and on, Wheeler continued writing as Patrick Quentin on his own, and also had one book published under his own name. In the 1960s and '70s, Wheeler achieved success as a playwright and librettist, and his output as Quentin Patrick slowed and then ceased altogether after 1965. However, Wheeler did write the book for the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd about a fictional London mass murderer, showing he had not altogether abandoned the genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As Patrick Quentin

- A Puzzle For Fools (1936)

- Puzzle For Players (1938)

- Puzzle For Puppets (1944)

- Puzzle For Wantons (1945) aka Slay the Loose Ladies

- Puzzle For Fiends (1946) aka Love Is a Deadly Weapon

- Puzzle For Pilgrims (1947) aka The Fate of the Immodest Blonde

- Run To Death (1948)

- The Follower (1950)

- Black Widow (1952) aka Fatal Woman

- My Son, the Murderer (1954) aka the Wife of Ronald Sheldon

- The Man With Two Wives (1955)

- The Man in the Net (1956)

- Suspicious Circumstances (1957)

- Shadow of Guilt (1959)

- The Green-Eyed Monster (1960)

- The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow (1961), short stories

- Family Skeletons (1965)

As Q Patrick

- Cottage Sinister (1931)

- Murder at the Women's City Club (1932) aka Death in the Dovecote

- SS Murder (1933)

- Murder at the 'Varsity (1933) aka Murder at Cambridge

- The Grindle Nightmare (1935) aka Darker Grows the Valley

- Death Goes To School (1936)

- Death For Dear Clara (1937)

- The File on Fenton and Farr (1938)

- The File on Claudia Cragge (1938)

- Death and the Maiden (1939)

- Return To the Scene (1941) aka Death in Bermuda

- Danger Next Door (1952)

As Jonathan Stagge

- The Dogs Do Bark (1936) aka Murder Gone To Earth

- Murder by Prescription (1938) aka Murder or Mercy?

- The Stars Spell Death (1939) aka Murder in the Stars

- Turn of the Table (1940) aka Funeral For Five

- The Yellow Taxi (1942) aka Call a Hearse

- The Scarlet Circle (1943) aka Light From a Lantern

- Death, My Darling Daughters (1945) aka Death and the Dear Girls

- Death's Old Sweet Song (1946)

- The Three Fears (1949)

As Hugh Wheeler

- The Crippled Muse (1951)

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PATRICK QUENTIN

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BIBLIOGRAPHY