Shadow of Guilt (13 page)

“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.

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.”