Jealous Woman

8

The inquest was next night at a mortuary on Sixth Street, and Jane wasn’t a witness, but the cops had asked her to attend, as something might come up, and they wanted her there in case. So we drove the maid over, and Keyes was already there, with Mrs. Sperry, a big-shot lawyer in town named Morton Lynch, and a squinty-eyed number named Biggs that kept fingering a trick derby he had, that seemed to be Sperry’s valet, and that corresponded, in looks at least, to the guy named in the eye’s report on who didn’t come out of the room that night. Mrs. Sperry was in black, with a veil, but one you could see through. She didn’t look at Jane or the maid, but after we had sat down she nodded at me with a sad little smile, and reached over and gave my hand a grip. Some newspaper men were there, with three or four other guys that weren’t newspaper men but tried to look like they were. They work for the adjusters, so I knew there was an insurance angle. Some cops were at a table, and on the other side of a counter was the undertaker, but back there on a table you could see part of a sheet, with something under it. The whole room wasn’t much bigger than my private office, and we all sat on folding chairs that had been set up in rows with an aisle down the middle. Every time somebody would come in they’d start to sit in the first two rows on the right-hand side, but the cops would wave them to other seats. It turned out, when some more cops came in with them, where they’d been rounding them up, these two rows were for the jury.

The coroner was Dr. Hudson, that I had met once or twice, and the cops all stood up when he came in. He was a squatty little guy, and after he had sat down and taken some papers out of his briefcase and studied them, the same sergeant as had come to see Jane banged on the table with the flat of his hand for us to stop talking. Then he asked all who had been summoned to testify to raise their right hands and the maid did and quite a few others did and he gave them the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and they all mumbled they would. Then he called the maid and the valet to view the body and when they had he asked them if they knew the deceased and they said they did and he was Richard Sperry and lived on the island of Bermuda. Then he asked if there was anybody else who wished to view the body, corroborate the identification, contest it, or add anything to this part of the inquest, and he looked at Mrs. Sperry, but she shook her head no and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then he had two cops tell how they had got the call in their car, and all the rest of it, how it had happened that night, anyway from their end of it. Then the ambulance doctor that had certified the death testified. Then two autopsy doctors went on, and they told a lot of compound occipital stuff, but all it seemed to add up to was that he died of a bashed-in head. Then he had a huddle with the sergeant and called the maid. She told it about like she had told it to the cops. Then he looked around and asked if anybody else had any knowledge of the case. He didn’t expect any answer, you could tell that, because he was already putting his papers back in the briefcase. And Keyes didn’t either, you could tell from the way he was whispering to Lynch. And his head couldn’t have snapped around quicker if a gun had been fired in his ear than it did when Mrs. Sperry rose up like a ghost coming out of the floor, stepped into the aisle, did a slow march to the chair they had put out for the witness, and said: “I have.”

“You know something of this, Mrs. Sperry?”

“I do.”

“Something more than you told the police?”

“I told the police only the barest facts — that I spent the evening in my suite, that I was not with my husband at the time he met his tragic end, and that I had nothing more to tell them.”

“You mean, other things have come to light since?”

“I mean there was more.”

“That you — withheld?”

“I had to know my legal position first.”

“In respect to?”

“Self-destruction.”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

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

“Suicide, I suppose you mean.”

“In England, only the insane commit suicide.”

“I’m not following you at all.”

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

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

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

“Is the estate involved, Mr. Lynch?”

“I would say, yes.”

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

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

“In this country it’s not a crime.”

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

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

“But I’m going to testify.”

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

“I saw my husband leap to his death.”

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

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

“Please continue, Mrs. Sperry.”

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

“At — anything relevant to this case?”

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

“He’d been talking that way?”

“Often.”

“Yes, but lately?”

“That night.”

“Did he have some reason?”

“None, none at all.”

“But there must have been something.”

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

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

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

“I don’t know her window.”

“You’re in the south wing?”

“Yes, on the seventh floor.”

“Facing the setback?”

“My sitting room does.”

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

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

“And then you withheld what you knew?”

“Not intentionally, at first.”

“What actually did you tell them?”

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

“They told you he’d been in the bar?”

“I believe they did.”

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

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

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

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

“I guess that’s about all.”

“One other thing, Doctor.”

“Yes, Mr. Lynch?”

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

“Mr. Lynch, why don’t you tell them?”

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

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

“Out of respect for the truth.”

“Even if the estate is involved?”

“A clear conscience comes first.”

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

9

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

“Oh, always.”

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

“The widow?”

“How does she take it?”

“Well, she’s generally upset. Naturally.”

“They just hate it.”

“Well, who does love an undertaker?”

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

“I thought she behaved with great dignity.”

“But how much bitterness did she show?”

“I didn’t notice any.”

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

“...Such as?”

“Whatever she really saw.”

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

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

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

“It’s shifty. And I’ve been—”

“Kind of stuck on her?”

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

“She’d still be your perfect lady.”

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

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

“And that girl, that Mrs. Delavan—”

“Oh, so she’s the scandal!”

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

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

Then the phone rang.

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

“Who was he?”

“Ireland, I think he said.”

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

“But — there is no insurance.”

“There has to be, if he rang you.”

“There was, but the policies lapsed.”

“Do you still have them?”

“They’re in Kennebunkport.”

“Maine?”

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

“Did he do it?”

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

“He was a fool if he did.”

“Why?”

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

“Unless what?”

“The suicide clause touches you out.”

“On that they could refuse to pay?”

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

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

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

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

“Taking an awful risk, too.”

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

“Get the policies.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll have to.”

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

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

“But it’ll be six more weeks, and—”

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

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“O.K., think about it.”

“With you, is that the idea?”

“Something like that.”

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

“I never saw it before.”

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

“He never gave me a gold pen.”

“To give Mrs. Sperry.”

“Likes her?”

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

“Who, for instance?”

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

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

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

“At Jane’s expense, you might say.”

“How so?”

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

“Oh, so there is insurance?”

“Turns out there is.”

“Now it makes sense.”

“Hey, you! On a bartender’s say-so—”

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

“Is this your case?”

“In a way, yes.”

“I didn’t know we were on the risk.”

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

“Covering what, for instance?”

“Murder, perhaps.”

“But nothing serious?”

“Scandal, pretty definitely.”

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

10

I spent half the night lying awake, with that same old creepy feeling coming over me, because there was the phone call and there was the insurance, and you couldn’t laugh them off. Next day the papers were full of the inquest, with “wealthy American baring facts of English husband’s fatal fall,” and I kept waiting for it, whatever it was that was about to pop. And then everything died down, and you’d think there’d never been a guy named Richard Sperry, or a fatal fall, or anything. Jane flew east for the policies, got them, flew back, put her claim in. On the smaller ones she was O.K. and collected. On the big one the suicide clause still had a month to run, and she hadn’t a Chinaman’s chance, at least as it looked then, but I told her to put a claim in anyway. She started her period of residence all over again, and the Count’s education all over again too, with me at the edge of the track looking on, and Jackie getting that gleam in her eye, over what she said was the prettiest show ring entry she’d ever had at the ranch. Delavan was mildly upset at the residence period having to be started all over again, but not as much as we would have expected. The day after the autopsy, or pretty soon anyway, Keyes crossed me up by going home. I had thought he was really going to bear down and try to marry that pile of money. La Sperry, I mean. But he went home and stayed home. It came late fall, and I picked out a Christmas present for Jane, a gold cigarette case I thought she’d like. I had it gift-wrapped and tucked it away in my desk. And then one day she and I were headed for a ride and were going down in the hotel elevator when a bellboy got on with a little fox terrier with a blanket on her underneath the leash harness. Jane no sooner saw her than she gave a yelp and took her in her arms, and come to find out, it was Sperry’s dog and her name was Dolly. But if the dog had ever seen her before she gave no sign of it. All she did was mope, and the boy said she’d been like that since Sperry died. ”If something’s not done, Mrs. Delavan, I don’t think she’s going to be around much longer.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“Gee, if you only would.”

So we fixed it up she was going to exercise the little thing, and when she got done she’d bring him back to the lobby, and the boy seemed to get it she didn’t want any truck with Mrs. Sperry. But a wink passed, and they fixed it up the exercising would be done on the roof. “That’s one thing I learned from Dick. If you’re in a hotel and you have a dog on your hands, the roof’s closer than the street, and a great deal simpler.”

The roof was just a jumble of vents, chimneys, and water tank, with a boardwalk promenade for the sun-tanners and badminton nets and shuffle board stuff and patio furniture. We walked Dolly around and how far we got cheering her up was nowhere. After a while we sat down and Jane took the dog in her lap and tried talking to her. And then all of a sudden she said: “What’s she doing here?”

“Who? Mrs. Sperry?”

“Yes. I thought she’d left.”

“Does she have to be doing something?”

“She doesn’t live here.”

“Maybe she just likes Nevada.”

“And what’s he doing here? Tom?”

“Well, you’re getting a divorce, aren’t you?”

“I’m getting a divorce. He came out here to get an annulment, and now he’s changed his mind. I’m to file a suit which he’s not going to contest, and there’s no reason whatever, no legal reason I can think of, for him to stay on here.”

“Maybe he just says he’s changed his mind.”

“I’m sure he’s not crossing me.”

“Well, it’s nothing to us.”

It popped in my mind about the phone call to the bartender, which I had never told her about, because it could have meant her. But now she seemed 100 % on the up-and-up and I heard myself open up about it. “Ed, why haven’t you said something about this before?”

“...I thought it might upset you.”

“You mean you thought I did have some sort of engagement with Dick?”

“I mean I was sick of him.”

“But I hadn’t seen him in three years.”

“So you told me.”

“And I was at a picture show.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But — I still don’t understand it. I’m sure the bartender told Mr. Keyes exactly what you say he did, and that it happened that way, but — it doesn’t sound like her — or anybody. To send a message through a bartender instead of asking for Dick and talking to him. And what he did next, coming to my room, and having that long palaver with Jenkins. He was kind to servants, but awfully short-spoken. That he should have let down his hair the way he did, or she says he did, is almost incredible. It all seems so strange.”

By that time the dog was so restless she did nothing but moan and twist and wriggle on Jane’s lap. Jane handed her to me, went and got a cord off one of the badminton nets, and tied one end of it to the leash and the other to a table leg. Then she gave the little dog a pat and told her to run around. The dog didn’t wait, or even look at us. She gave a little whimper, raced for the parapet, and jumped. I dived for the cord and missed, but the table leg held it, and in a second I was hauling in a pooch that was scared so bad, and bopped so bad, where she whammed against the wall outside when the cord tightened, that she clean forgot she was supposed to be torching for somebody, and was so glad when I held her to me it was comical. But when I went over to Jane with her all I got was a stare. “Ed, do you know what’s under that spot where she jumped?”

I looked, and what I was looking at was the place on the pavement where they picked up Sperry. “Ed, this is directly over that window of mine that Constance Sperry said she saw him jump from. The little lady he had the engagement with is right there in your arms, and he had a standing date with her every night — every night they were together, that is — since he bought her in Venezuela five years ago. She was here, she saw it happen, and that’s why she leaped into what, so far as her little mind could understand, was his grave. Ed, after a phone call to the bartender, made in such way that it must have been intended to implicate me in something she knew was about to happen, and after what we’ve just seen, there’s only one thing to believe. They brought Dolly up, they started walking around, she stopped to admire the view or something. He stopped beside her. Then a quick push, and with that low parapet almost anything would cause him to lose his balance. Then a beeline to her room to take the call from the police she knew would come.”

“Seems funny they weren’t seen.”

“Who would see them?”

“Elevator girl. Anybody.”

“But you don’t know hotels, perhaps. They don’t like dogs taken up on the roof. Didn’t you see the wink the boy gave me just now, as I slipped him his dollar? And Dick always used the stairway, where they would meet nobody that hour of night. And the phone call, which would mean one thing to Dick and another thing to the bartender, and the place she picked out to do it, would throw suspicion on me if any suspicion arose, because she must have known about those insurance policies. Suicide, though, that was safer. The frame-up against me she didn’t really expect to fall back on unless she absolutely had to.”

“But what would she kill him for?”

“Let me think.”

So she thought. After a long time she said: “Maybe I have it now.”

“It makes no sense to me.”

“Dick probably wanted the marriage to go on. Perhaps she didn’t.”

“How do you figure this out?”

“The way she acted with Tom. Complimenting him when he told her about that insurance he tried to take out for me. I took that for just a little preliminary soft soap, though the real scheme would be disclosed later. Then when Dick threatened Tom, it all fitted together and I took it for granted the two Sperrys were a team. But if she was up to something Dick didn’t know about, if she’s found somebody she likes better—”

“Like Keyes?”

“I think she’s kidding Keyes.”

“Go on.”

“If she was up to something Dick would never have stood for, then Tom’s annulment action was the one perfect break for her. It would be granted, it would almost certainly lead to the Bermuda court rescinding Dick’s divorce, and her marriage would then, of course, be automatically annulled. She’d be out, she’d never have to face anything up with Dick, and best of all, there’d be nothing to decide about property or anything of that sort, and remember she’s the one that has the money. But when Dick scared Tom out of it, that popped everything into the soup. So, do something quick. So, phone call. So, get him above my window. So, bump him.”

“Keyes thought she was scared to death of the insurance investigators, and what they might find out. He figured she made it suicide, so they’d close the case and go home.”

“Then he thinks she did it?”

“...He thinks you did.”

“I? Are you serious?”

“He is. And if he is, it is.”

“But why would I do it?”

“Insurance. Spite.”

“Over what?”

“Sperry marrying her.”

“Then Mr. Keyes must be crazy.”

“About darling Constance he is.”

We went over it some more, and the more we went over it the more it made sense. She kept going back to the swim in Bermuda, when she was sure he meant she wasn’t coming back, and said he was never like that until he met Mrs. Sperry. Then that got her started on Jenkins, and then she said: “But Ed, why was she in on it?”

“You sure she was?”

“If it happened up here she was lying.”

“Keyes thought her story very peculiar.”

“But why? She didn’t even like Constance Sperry. After I left, she did nothing but write me what a hell on earth it was working for her, and pleading with me to take her back and bring her to the United States. And it wasn’t until I found out her mother had been a waitress on the Aquitania and she was actually born in New York that it was possible to get her in, but those letters, believe me, were pitiful.”

“When was this?”

“Last month.”

“Then she didn’t come to this country with you?”

“Under the law she couldn’t.”

When we went down she rang Jenkins and told her to come up. “Wait a minute, Jane. I’m not sure I’d tip what you know until we’ve got this better figured out than we have. I wouldn’t say anything to her. Not now.”

“Say something to her? I’m going to fire her.”

“No! You’re forgetting something!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your big policy. Your $25,000.”

“What does she have to do with it?”

“If he didn’t do it, and you didn’t, you’re due to get paid. And if we can sweat it out of Jenkins who did do it, you better keep her here till we’re ready with the heat, and she’ll be where you want her instead of some place else.”

“I’ll do no more about the insurance.”

“What?”

“I must have an end of this!”

She had the beat-up look around the eyes, and was already at the writing desk, making out a check for Jenkins’ pay. So she went through on it, the dumbest thing that was done in connection with the whole case. Jenkins stood there, and kept asking if there was something she had done, and couldn’t she have some explanation, or another chance. Jane kept saying she’d decided on another arrangement, and pretty soon Jenkins left. It seemed to me, watching her, that she was talking more to watch Jane than to hang onto her job.

That night when I got home there was a message to ring Operator 22, or whatever the number was, in Los Angeles. When she put me through it was Keyes. “Ed, the Reno police have that phone call to the bartender.”

“How do you know?”

“They rang me.”

“Why you?”

“To see what I knew. After all, I’d been with Mrs. Sperry a lot, and I delivered the pen.”

“And what did you say?”

“That it was the first I had heard of it.”

“Then that lets you out.”

“Ed, I’m warning you.”

“Thanks.”

“Keep away from that dame.”

“You coming up here?”

“I might fly. Over the week-end.”

“About the taxi driver or Mrs. Sperry?”

“Oh, the driver recovered.”

“Drop in. I may have news.”

11

So he flew up here, just about the time the cops began giving Jane a working over that got worse from day to day. First they’d ask to come over, she’d ask me to stand by, then they’d go over it some more, where she was that night, when was the last time she’d seen Sperry, and they’d spring trap questions on her until a couple of times I had to kick their shins to make them get back over the line. That’s bad with a cop, to act like there’s anything you’re afraid to be questioned about, and to have a boy friend around a woman to tell her how to talk. But with that look in her eyes, I wasn’t sure how much she could take. They’d go, and next day they’d be back, and you could tell they’d been talking to Mrs. Sperry, but what she’d told them you couldn’t tell, because if there’s one thing a cop is good at it’s keeping his own mouth shut and letting you do the talking. All you could say for it was that the papers didn’t have it, so at least it could have been worse.

But when Keyes arrived, and finally did get around to dropping by the office, I found out what Mrs. Sperry had told them. The point was she was trying, or pretending to try, to cover up for Jane, but since it was her own phone call, she had to put it on the line who it was Sperry was supposed to have the date with. She said Sperry had told her there was a “little old lady,” who “lived upstairs in the hotel somewhere,” and “wanted to ask him some questions about Bermuda,” if he “would drop by at the end of his evening, before he went to bed.” And it seems the cops thought there was something funny about it, all of it, especially the little old lady, and the funny hours she kept, and the funny coincidence they couldn’t find any little old lady. “But she was ready for them, Ed. Do you know what she told them?”

“Something good, I bet.”

“That she didn’t believe it either.”

“Well, say, that is good.”

“That it seemed so fishy, and that was what made her so depressed. She was certain the story about the little old lady was just an excuse of Sperry’s to get out.”

“Funny she reminded him though, Keyes.”

“That was to check on him.”

“That he was in the bar?”

“On a drinking deck, not a jumping deck.”

“Why did she practically beg him to go topside?”

“To vex him.”

“Well say, Keyes, that’s very good.”

“If he got sore enough he’d stay in the bar.”

“She told all this to the cops?”

“She’s a thoroughbred, Ed.”

“Just how do you figure she’s bred so high?”

“She’s covering scandal.”

“Sperry’s?”

“With — whoever.”

“Oh, say it, I don’t mind.”

“His former wife, would be my guess.”

“If so, why did she remind him?”

“Well, you can hardly blame her, another way you look at it, if she knew he did have a date with Mrs. Delavan, for not wanting a stood-up lady to come roaring down to the bar and letting the whole world in on it. If he had a date he had one, and there was nothing she could do about it. But at least she could make sure that the date was where it was supposed to be and not all over the hotel. She could localize it, as they say in medicine, and pretend she didn’t care.”

“So she called him?”

“Ed, she could hardly anticipate that—”

“Jane would up with his heels and heave him out the window?”

“Whatever she did.”

“You ever pushed somebody out of a window?”

“No.”

“O.K., try.”

I stood up in front of the window and kept egging him on to try and push me out. He kept saying I was leaving out the big element that had to be considered, which was surprise, and I kept saying if anybody could get me out, with the sill across my waist, and the sash across my eyes, they were probably a wrestler but not likely a slim, small girl that didn’t weigh but 105 pounds. After a while he got sore, and I piled in: “O.K. then, Keyes. You’ve let a woman take you like Grant took Richmond, but now you get it.”

I told him about the dog, and all the things Jane and I had figured out, and he had been pink from the winter nip when he came in there, but now he got white, gray, and green. There’s a couch in there in the office where I sometimes have a nap, and he went over and lay down. “You think this is something I just dreamed up? You think—?”

But he waved his hand for me to shut up and I did. For a long time he lay there, as sick a thing in the way of a man as I ever hope to look at. Once he opened his eyes and said: “Did Mrs. Delavan tell this to the cops? I mean, about the dog?”

“She answered their questions. They didn’t ask her about any dog and she didn’t tell them. She stuck to what she knew. The dog, if you want to make something of it, that’s in the realm of conjecture.”

“Then that’s all right.”

It was along toward sundown of a winter Saturday when he finally stood up and went over to the window and stood staring out at the city. He looked like an old man. “Ed, I’m powerful hard hit.”

“I’m sorry, Keyes.”

“It goes together like a clock. Clears it all up.”

“Not quite all. That maid—”

“Simple.”

“Not to me. She didn’t even like Mrs. Sperry. She—”

“The maid was not in on it.”

“Even you thought she lied.”

“Did you ever see the play Macbeth?”

“In college we played Macbeth. I was Banquo.”

“Fine, then you’ll understand what I see in this. In Macbeth, a man suspects that another man suspects him. Macbeth has an idea, from something Banquo says, that Banquo thinks there was something peculiar about the murder of Duncan. So what does Macbeth do? Banquo has nothing on him. It’s all in the realm of what Banquo thinks. So to get rid of Banquo he puts himself in the power of three thugs, who he hires to kill Banquo. Bad, Ed. A very bad play. But it brings out the principle involved here. Only a fool would put herself in the power of a Cockney servant girl on something like this, especially when she didn’t need her help, or anybody’s. Therefore we can only conclude she got in the girl’s power by accident.”

“Meaning?”

“Ed, she was up there. Jenkins was.”

“And saw it?”

“Just happened to. And cashed in.”

“...What would she be doing there?”

“At that hour of night, I would say there was only one thing she would be doing, and that would be lolly-gagging with a guy. For a little slavey that sleeps in one of the small inside rooms down over the kitchen and isn’t allowed to bring anybody in there, that just about would be the answer. She was up there, snugged into a canvas swing with a guy, and here comes this little procession of a man, a woman, and a dog. She keeps quiet, hoping not to be seen, and we can pretty well be sure that the guy, whoever he was, wanted it that way too. The procession marches around, and she sees it’s Sperry, Mrs. Sperry — and who else does she see, Ed?”

“Dolly.”

“Who can’t talk, but can tell tales.”

“But why that story Jenkins told the cops?”

“There was nothing else for her to do.”

“What reason did she have?”

“To protect Mrs. Sperry, for a price, we can assume. To get it off the roof.”

“And why Mrs. Sperry’s story at the inquest?”

“The insurance investigators. If they could hang it on Mrs. Delavan, they’d save themselves every cent of their obligation. Therefore, they’d dig. But digging, real digging, was what Constance dare not have. If she hadn’t been seen, then the plant that was made by the phone call, with the location of the body, would have made Mrs. Delavan guilty, so fine. But once there was evidence against herself, once there was stuff those insurance guys might turn up, she had to do something to get them out of the picture. On suicide, they were satisfied. So she made it suicide. She thought fast.”

“Nice.”

“Horrible.”

We walked out to the street, and he took my arm. “Ed, I can be thankful of one thing, though.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“It’s not my case.”

“I guess that helps.”

“But, Ed, suppose I had to pin it on her!”

He went back to Los Angeles, and for a couple of weeks all that happened was the itching I did over the $25,000 in insurance Jane had thrown away by firing Jenkins. But then one day Jane rang me and said the police wanted to talk to her again, and could I be there. This time it was a couple of plainclothes men, by the name of Brady and Lindstrom, and I think it was Lindstrom that did the talking. He fished a gold bracelet out of his pocket that was bent up quite a little and had three horses’ heads on it with rubies for eyes. Or garnets, whatever they were. Nobody quite seemed to know. He asked Jane if she’d ever seen it before, and she said: “Yes, it’s mine.”

“Where’d you get this here bracelet?”

“From a cousin of mine.”

“What’s his name?”

“Harold Sherman.”

“When was this?”

“About ten years ago. When I was in school. I rode three of his horses to firsts in a Long Island horse show, and this was his way of thanking me. I’m sure, if you’ll look, you’ll find some sort of engraving inside there about it.”

“When did you wear it last?”

“I’ve never worn it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s pretty ghastly, you know.”

Lindstrom looked at it and Brady looked at it and they kind of looked at each other. You could tell that something being pretty ghastly was a new idea to them. So far as they knew, if it was gold and it had jewels in it, it must be O.K. and if she said she’d never worn it, it was a 2–1 shot she was lying. Lindstrom said: “Who has been wearing it?”

“Nobody that I know of.”

“When did you miss it?”

“I haven’t missed it.”

“You didn’t know it was gone?”

“Not until now.”

“...Where you been keeping it?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I put it away when it was given me, I don’t recall now just exactly where. I wrote a polite note about it, and forgot it. I haven’t seen it since — I can’t say when.”

“You got a jewel box?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Didn’t you keep it there?”

“I tell you, I don’t know. It could be.”

“I’ll have a look at this here jewel box.”

I said: “No, you won’t.”

“...Hey, Mac, who are you?”

“A friend. And my name’s not Mac, it’s Horner, like you were told. And the lady’s not some tart in the Monday line-up. She’s accommodated you so long as it was a question of clearing up a case that seemed to be giving you some trouble. Now it involves going into her jewel box that’s different and how’d you like to get the hell out?”

“Mac, I don’t care for that kind of talk.”

“A judge’ll be talking to you in an hour if—”

“O.K., O.K., if that’s how you want it.”

“Beat it.”

It took me an hour to get her quiet again, but then I called a Lieutenant I knew over at headquarters to find out what it was about. It was a couple of hours before he called me back. “Ed, it was found on the street, the way I get it, the night Sperry took his dive. Found by a brother and sister on their way home from a bowling alley and they advertised it in the Register, under found, by the name of Jane and by the name that was engraved on it. They didn’t get any answer so they advertised again. And then Lindstrom, he got interested in it, why Jane didn’t come to get her bracelet so he went over there to talk to them. He traced who it belonged to by the New York jeweler that made it, and that’s about all I can tell you, but I guess Lindstrom wanted to know more about it on account of that other stuff that’s been turned up.”

“O.K., thanks.”

Jane and I figured on that a while, and after a while she said: “Ed, I’m getting frightened. It’s more of that devilish plan. She threw that down there at the time she pushed him over.”

“How would she have it?”

“I could have left it in Bermuda.”

“Any way you can prove you did?”

“Jenkins might know. She packed me.”

“If we could get out of her whether you brought it with you or left it in Jamaica that would be a help.”

“I’ll get her up here.”

“She still here?”

“I suppose so.”

I give you one guess, though, what the answer was on that. She had checked out without giving a forwarding address or anything. “All right, Ed, I’ll say it since you won’t. Firing her was just about the stupidest thing I ever did in my life, and you warned me, I can’t say you didn’t.”

“We’ll find her.”

But suppose you try finding a Cockney girl that walked out the side door with her suitcase in her hand and just vanished. We hung around the gambling halls, the bus depots, the taxi stands; we called up all the little hotels. After three or four days I knew it was one for a detective, and we went to a guy on Fourth Street that we picked out of the classified phone book, though not anybody the company had ever done business with. He made a lot of notes, took my check for $150, explained there was quite a lot of preliminary expense getting out dodgers for his correspondents, that seemed to be people that kept an eye on cars and so on, and liked to pick up some dough on missing persons and didn’t mind a little Hawkshaw excitement in their lives. But his face gave a twitch when we said we had no photograph, and I knew it was going to be tough.

About a week after that, when I went up one afternoon to take Jane out to dinner, I found her all in, hanging onto herself till her fingernails were cutting the palms of her hands to keep from breaking out into screaming hysteria. And come to find out the bishop’s granddaughter was in town and had come to see her about Delavan. It seemed he didn’t want to marry her any more, which might explain why Delavan was so nice about it when Jane started her period of residence all over again. “Ed, she was here for two hours — three hours, I don’t know, I thought she’d never go. And what can I do for her? She’s a frizzle-haired, washed-out, pint-size simpleton. She talks baby talk. Even when she’s trying to be sensible she talks it. And she’s been perfectly horrible for Tom. For years and years she’s been in his hair, and don’t ask me what hold she has on him. He’s known her ever since they were children, and God knows what went on. Nothing, probably. She wouldn’t have enough gump for something really scandalous. But somehow, maybe because she’s so tiny, maybe because she plays on his sympathies or something, that guilt complex of his gets into it, and he’s alternately involved with her and trying to break away from her and his life is nothing but a series of runnings away from her. That’s all I was. He calls it rebound, but it was more than that. One more lunge at freedom for his soul. That he never gets. Now he’s lunging again and she’s after him again. Why don’t they get married, and give the rest of the world some peace?”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I was sorry.”

“Has she seen him?”

“He refuses to see her.”

“And she wants you to intercede?”

“And I won’t.”

“Good.”

“... Ed!”

“Yeah?”

“Tom would know about the bracelet!”

“He might, at that.”

“Well, she helped, after all!”

She went in the bedroom and talked, and came back looking better. “He says he’s sure I haven’t had any such thing since he met me, or he’d have known it. He reminded me that he inventoried everything just after the wedding, in connection with a new floater policy for the house, and he was very careful about everything of mine, especially my jewelry and coats, and he’s positive there was no such bracelet. And if there’s any trouble about it, he’s willing to testify, or talk to the police, or do whatever is necessary.”

“You didn’t actually ask him to go to the police?”

“No, I said if, as and when needed.”

“O.K.”

Couple of days later, I was over at a trucking company’s offices, trying to close a group deal. Stuff like that is mostly a matter of corporation taxes, and I was lining it out for a bunch of execs in the secretary’s office, when a girl came in and said I was wanted on the telephone and that it was important. I took it outside, on her phone, and it was my secretary, Linda. “Mr. Horner, I’ve been trying to reach you all over town. Mr. Delavan’s been killed.”

“What?”

“They called us, on account of our card in his pocket.”

“Who called?”

“The state police.”

“The state police?”

“He fell from a horse. Outside of town.”

“When was this?”

“They called twenty minutes ago and they’re going to call again as soon as they get him back to town. What shall I tell them?”

“I’ll take over.”