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Chapter 3

Laura’s Aunt Susan once sang in musical comedy. Then she became a widow. The period between—the hyphen of marriage—is best forgotten. Never in the years I have known her have I heard her lament the late Horace Q. Treadwell. The news of Laura’s death had brought her hastily from her summer place on Long Island to the mausoleum on upper Fifth Avenue. One servant, a grim Finn, had accompanied her. It was Helga who opened the door for Mark and led him through a maze of dark canals into a vast uncarpeted chamber in which every piece of furniture, every picture and ornament, wore a shroud of pale, striped linen.

This was Mark’s first visit to a private home on Fifth Avenue. As he waited he paced the long room, accosting and retreating from his lean, dark-clad image in a full-length gold-framed mirror. His thoughts dwelt upon the meeting with the bereaved bridegroom. Laura was to have married Shelby Carpenter on the following Thursday. They had passed their blood tests and answered the questions on the application for a marriage license.

Mark knew these facts thoroughly. Shelby had been disarmingly frank with the police sergeant who asked the first questions. Folded in Mark’s coat pocket was a carbon record of the lovers’ last meeting. The facts were commonplace but not conventional.

Laura had been infected with the weekend sickness. From the first of May until the last of September, she joined the fanatic mob in weekend pilgrimages to Connecticut. The mouldy house described in “The Fermenting of New England,” was Laura’s converted barn. Her garden suffered pernicious anaemia and the sums she spent to fertilize that rocky soil would have provided a purple orchid every day of the year with a corsage of Odontoglossum grande for Sundays. But she persisted in the belief that she saved a vast fortune because, for five months of the year, she had only to buy flowers once a week.

After my first visit, no amount of persuasion could induce me to step foot upon the Wilton train. Shelby, however, was a not unwilling victim. And sometimes she took the maid, Bessie, and thus relieved herself of household duties which she pretended to enjoy. On this Friday, she had decided to leave them both in town. She needed four or five days of loneliness, she told Shelby, to bridge the gap between a Lady Lilith Face Cream campaign and her honeymoon. It would never do to start as a nervous bride. This reasoning satisfied Shelby. It never occurred to him that she might have other plans. Nor did he question her farewell dinner with me. She had arranged, or so she told Shelby, to leave my house in time to catch the ten-twenty train.

She and Shelby had worked for the same advertising agency. At five o’clock on Friday afternoon, he went into her office. She gave her secretary a few final instructions, powdered her nose, reddened her lips, and rode down in the elevator with him. They stopped for martinis at the Tropicale, a bar frequented by advertising and radio writers. Laura spoke of her plans for the week. She was not certain as to the hour of her return, but she did not expect Shelby to meet her train. The trip to and from Wilton was no more to her than a subway ride. She set Wednesday as the day of her return and promised to telephone him immediately upon her arrival.

As Mark pondered these facts, his eyes on the checkerboard of light and dark woods set into Mrs. Treadwell’s floor, he became aware that his restlessness was the subject of nervous scrutiny. The long mirror framed his first impression of Shelby Carpenter. Against the shrouded furniture, Shelby was like a brightly lithographed figure on the gaudy motion picture poster decorating the sombre granite of an ancient opera house. The dark suit chosen for this day of mourning could not dull his vivid grandeur. Male energy shone in his tanned skin, gleamed from his clear gray eyes, swelled powerful biceps. Later, as Mark told me of the meeting, he confessed that he was puzzled by an almost overwhelming sense of familiarity. Shelby spoke with the voice of a stranger but with lips whose considered smile seemed as familiar as Mark’s own reflection. All through the interview and in several later meetings, Mark sought vainly to recall some earlier association. The enigma enraged him. Failure seemed to indicate a softening process within himself. Encounters with Shelby diminished his self-confidence.

They chose chairs at opposite ends of the long room. Shelby had offered, Mark accepted, a Turkish cigarette. Oppressed by Fifth Avenue magnificence, he had barely the courage to ask for an ashtray. And this a man who had faced machine guns.

Shelby had borne up bravely during the ordeal at Headquarters. As his gentle Southern voice repeated the details of that tragic farewell, he showed clearly that he wished to spare his visitor the effort of sympathy.

“So I put her in the taxi and gave the driver Waldo Lydecker’s address. Laura said, ‘Good-bye until Wednesday,’ and leaned out to kiss me. The next morning the police came to tell me that Bessie had found her body in the apartment. I wouldn’t believe it. Laura was in the country. That’s what she’d told me, and Laura had not lied to me before.”

“We found the taxi-driver and checked with him,” Mark informed him. “As soon as they’d turned the corner, she said that he was not to go to Mr. Lydecker’s address, but to take her to Grand Central. She’d telephoned Mr. Lydecker earlier in the afternoon to break the dinner date. Have you any idea why she should have lied to you?”

Cigarette smoke curled in flawless circles from Shelby’s flawless lips. “I don’t like to believe she lied to me. Why should she tell me she was dining with Waldo if she wasn’t?”

“She lied twice, first in regard to dining with Mr. Lydecker, and second about leaving town that night.”

“I can’t believe it. We were always so honest with each other.”

Mark accepted the statement without comment. “We’ve interviewed the porters on duty Friday night at Grand Central and a couple remember her face.”

“She always took the Friday night train.”

“That’s the catch. The only porter who swears to a definite recollection of Laura on this particular night also asked if he’d have his picture in the newspapers. So we strike a dead-end there. She might have taken another taxi from the Forty-Second or Lexington Avenue exits.”

“Why?” Shelby sighed. “Why should she have done such a ridiculous thing?”

“If we knew, we might have a reasonable clue. Now as to your alibi, Mr. Carpenter . . .”

Shelby groaned.

“I won’t make you go through it again. I’ve got the details. You had dinner at the Myrtle Cafeteria on Forty-Second Street, you walked to Fifth Avenue, took a bus to a 146th Street, bought a twenty-five-cent seat for the concert . . .”

Shelby pouted like a hurt child. “I’ve had some bad times, you know. When I’m alone I try to save money. I’m just getting on my feet again.”

“There’s no shame in saving money,” Mark reminded him. “That’s the only reasonable explanation anyone’s given for anything so far. You walked home after the concert, eh? Quite a distance.”

“The poor man’s exercise.” Shelby grinned feebly.

Mark dropped the alibi, and with one of those characteristic swift thrusts, asked: “Why didn’t you get married before this? Why did the engagement last so long?”

Shelby cleared his throat.

“Money, wasn’t it?”

A schoolboy flush ripened Shelby’s skin. He spoke bitterly. “When I went to work for Rose, Rowe and Sanders, I made thirty-five dollars a week. She was getting a hundred and seventy-five.” He hesitated, the color of his cheeks brightened to the tones of an overripe peach. “Not that I resented her success. She was so clever that I was awed and respectful. And I wanted her to make as much as she could; believe that, Mr. McPherson. But it’s hard on a man’s pride. I was brought up to think of women . . . differently.”

“And what made you decide to marry?”

Shelby brightened. “I’ve had a little success myself.”

“But she was still holding a better job. What made you change your mind?”

“There wasn’t so much discrepancy. My salary, if not munificent, was respectable. And I felt that I was advancing. Besides, I’d been catching up with my debts. A man doesn’t like to get married, you know, while he owes money.”

“Except to the woman he’s marrying,” a shrill voice added.

In the mirror’s gilt frame Mark saw the reflection of an advancing figure. She was small, robed in deepest mourning and carrying under her right arm a Pomeranian whose auburn coat matched her own bright hair. As she paused in the door with the marble statues and bronze figurines behind her, the gold frame giving margins to the portrait, she was like a picture done by one of Sargent’s imitators who had failed to carry over to the twentieth century the dignity of the nineteenth. Mark had seen her briefly at the inquest and had thought her young to be Laura’s aunt. Now he saw that she was well over fifty. The rigid perfection of her face was almost artificial, as if flesh-pink velvet were drawn over an iron frame.

Shelby leaped. “Darling! You remarkable creature! How you’ve recovered! How can you be so beautiful, darling, when you’ve gone through such intolerable agonies?” He led her to the room’s most important chair.

“I hope you find the fiend”—she addressed Mark but gave attention to her chiffon. “I hope you find him and scrouge his eyes out and drive hot nails through his body and boil him in oil.” Her vehemence spent, she tossed Mark her most enchanting smile.

“Comfortable, darling?” Shelby inquired. “How about your fan? Would you like a cool drink?”

Had the dog’s affection begun to bore her, she might have dismissed it with the same pretty indifference. To Mark she said: “Has Shelby told you the story of his romantic courtship? I hope he’s not left out of any of the thrilling episodes.”

“Now, darling, what would Laura have said if she could hear you?”

“She’d say I was a jealous bitch. And she’d be right. Except that I’m not jealous. I wouldn’t have you on a gold platter, darling.”

“You musn’t mind Auntie Sue, Mr. McPherson. She’s prejudiced because I’m poor.”

“Isn’t he cute?” cooed Auntie Sue, petting the dog.

“I never asked Laura for money”—Shelby might have been taking an oath at an altar. “If she were here, she’d swear it, too. I never asked. She knew I was having a hard time and insisted, simply upon lending it to me. She always made money so easily, she said.”

“She worked like a dog!” cried Laura’s aunt.

The Pomeranian sniffed. Aunt Sue pressed its small nose to her cheek, then settled it upon her lap. Having achieved this enviable position, the Pomeranian looked upon the men smugly.

“Do you know, Mrs. Treadwell, if your niece had any—” Mark produced the word uneasily “—enemies?”

“Enemies!” the good lady shrieked. “Everyone adored her. Didn’t everyone adore her, Shelby? She had more friends than money.”

“That,” Shelby added gravely, “was one of the finest things about her.”

“Anyone who had troubles came to her,” Aunt Sue declaimed, quite in the manner of the immortal Bernhardt. “I warned her more than once. It’s when you put yourself out for people that you find yourself in trouble. Don’t you think that’s true, Mr. McPherson?”

“I don’t know. I’ve probably not put myself out for enough people.” The posturing offended him; he had become curt.

His annoyance failed to check the lady’s histrionic aspirations. “‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft buried with their bones,’” she misquoted, and giggling lightly, added, “although her poor bones aren’t buried yet. But we must be truthful, even about the dead. It wasn’t money principally with Laura, it was people, if you know what I mean. She was always running around, doing favors, wasting her time and strength on people she scarcely knew. Remember that model, Shelby, the girl with the fancy name? Laura got me to give her my leopard coat. It wasn’t half worn out either. I could have got another winter out of it and spared my mink. Don’t you remember, Shelby?”

Shelby had become infatuated with a bronze Diana who had been threatening for years to leap, with dog and stag, from her pedestal.

Auntie Sue continued naughtily: “And Shelby’s job! Do you know how he got it, Mr. McPherson? He’d been selling washing machines—or was it casings for frankfurters, darling? Or was that the time when you earned thirty dollars a week writing letters for a school that taught people to be successful business executives?”

Shelby turned defiantly from Diana. “What’s that to be ashamed of? When I met Laura, Mr. McPherson, I happened to be working as correspondent for the University of the Science of Finance. Laura saw some of my copy, realized that I was wasting a certain gift or flair, and with her usual generosity . . .”

“Generosity wasn’t the half of it,” Auntie Sue interrupted.

“She spoke to Mr. Rowe about me and a few months later, when there was a vacancy, he called me in. You can’t say I’ve been ungrateful”—he forgave Mrs. Treadwell with his gentle smile. “It was she, not I, who suggested that you forget it.”

“Mustn’t be vicious, dear. You’ll be giving Mr. McPherson a lot of misleading ideas.” With the tenderness of a nurse Shelby rearranged Auntie Sue’s cushions, smiling and treating her malice like some secret malady.

The scene took on a theatric quality. Mark saw Shelby through the woman’s eyes, clothed in the charm he had donned, like a bright domino, for the woman’s pleasure. The ripe color, the chiseled features, the clear, long-lashed eyes had been created, his manner said, for her particular enjoyment. Through it all Mark felt that this was not a new exhibition. He had seen it somewhere before. So irritated by faltering memory that he had to strain harshness from his voice, he told them he was through with them for the day, and rose to go.

Shelby rose, too. “I’ll go out for a bit of air. If you think you can get along without me for a while.”

“Of course, darling. It’s been wicked of me to take up so much of your time.” Shelby’s feeble sarcasm had softened the lady. White, faded, ruby-tipped hands rested on his dark sleeve. “I’ll never forget how kind you’ve been.”

Shelby forgave magnanimously. He put himself at her disposal as if he were already Laura’s husband, the man of the family whose duty it was to serve a sorrowing woman in this hour of grief.

Like a penitent mistress returning to her lover, she cooed at Shelby. “With all your faults, you’ve got manners, darling. That’s more than most men have nowadays. I’m sorry I’ve been so bad-tempered.”

He kissed her forehead.

As they left the house, Shelby turned to Mark. “Don’t take Mrs. Treadwell too seriously. Her bark is worse than her bite. It’s only that she’d disapproved of my marrying her niece, and now she’s got to stand by her opinions.”

“What she disapproved of,” Mark observed, “was Laura’s marrying you.”

Shelby smiled ruefully. “We ought all to be a little more decent now, oughtn’t we? After all! Probably Auntie Sue is sorry she hurt poor Laura by constantly criticizing me, and now she’s too proud to say so. That’s why she had to take it out on me this morning.”

They stood in the burning sunlight. Both were anxious to get away, yet both hesitated. The scene was unfinished, Mark had not learned enough, Shelby had not told all he wanted Mark to know.

When, after a brief pause devoted to a final struggle with his limping memory, Mark cleared his throat, Shelby started as if he had been roused from the remoteness of a dream. Both smiled mechanically.

“Tell me,” Mark commanded, “where have I seen you before?”

Shelby couldn’t imagine. “But I’ve been around. Parties and all that. One sees people at bars and restaurants. Sometimes a stranger’s face is more familiar than your best friend’s.”

Mark shook his head. “Cocktail bars aren’t in my line.”

“You’ll remember when you’re thinking of something else. That’s how it always is.” Then, without changing his tone, Shelby added, “You know, Mr. McPherson, that I was beneficiary of Laura’s insurance, don’t you?”

Mark nodded.

“I wanted to tell you myself. Otherwise you might think . . . well . . . it’s only natural in your work to—” Shelby chose the word tactfully “—suspect every motive. Laura carried an annuity, you know, and there was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar death benefit. She’d had it in her sister’s name, but after we decided to get married she insisted upon making it out to me.”

“I’ll remember that you told me,” Mark promised.

Shelby offered his hand. Mark took it. They hesitated while the sun smote their uncovered heads.

“I hope you don’t think I’m completely a heel, Mr. McPherson,” Shelby said ruefully. “I never liked borrowing from a woman.”