Jealous Woman (8 page)

“In the hotel?”

“In this room.”

“When?”

“Around eleven, sir.”

The cops looked at each other and Jane looked at me and then remembered not to look at me, and you could tell this was something nobody had expected. But the maid didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the way about it. “He came here looking for Mrs. Delavan?”

“’E did, twice.”

“Tell us about it.”

“The first time was around nine. I was lying down on the spare bed, ’aving a look at the illustrated magazines, as Mrs. Delavan was seeing a picture and there was no need for me to ’urry my work in any way. And the buzzer sounded and I got up and put on my cap and peeped out the pigeon ’ole, as they call it ’ere. And ’oo should be in the ’all but Mr. Sperry. And I welcomed ’im in, for I ’adn’t seen ’im since I left Bermuda. And ’e was most gracious to me, as we ’ave one or two personal memories, I think I may say. But ’e was deeply disappointed when I told ’im Mrs. Delavan would be late getting in, and shortly after that ’e left. And it was at this time that ’e gave me the tenner and asked me not to mention ’is visit to anybody. ’E repeated ’imself several times. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Jenkins,’ ’e said. Tell nobody.
Nobody
.’”

“And who was nobody?”

“Mrs. Sperry, I think sir, but ’e made no exceptions.”

“And this was a little after nine?”

“’Is first visit, yes, sir. Then, around eleven I’d say it was, ’e came again. I invited ’im in to wait for Mrs. Delavan, and ’e began walking up and down ’ere, very nervous like, and often looking out the window for ’er, and leaning out and looking down at the street, until I ’ad to warn ’im it was dangerous as ’e could lose ’is balance and fall. Then ’e calmed down a little and I suggested ’e might prefer to wait for ’er alone. So I left ’im there, and left word with him for Mrs. Delavan I would remain dressed a little while if she needed me, and around twelve, as there was no call, I went to bed.”

“Well, that about clears it up.”

The sergeant said that to the patrolman, and the patrolman opened a portable typewriter he had beside him and stuck a piece of paper in and started to write. But Jane got up, lit a cigarette, and broke in on it. “Not quite ... Jenkins, why have you let a whole morning go by without telling me this?”

“Ma’am, ’e asked me not to. ’E gave me a tenner.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you that under all the circumstances you’ve been carrying discretion a little too far?”

“I’ve accepted your suggestion, ma’am, to conceal nothing from the officers, but if I may say ’ow I feel, I’m not looking forward at all to my next meeting with Mr. Sperry, and it’ll cost me the tenner, I’ll ’ave you know, in connection with all your fine ethical ideas, for I can ’ardly keep it now I’ve broken the promise I made to him.”

“... Jenkins, haven’t you
heard
?”

“I’ve not been out, ma’am. I’ve been in my room all morning after making myself a cup of coffee, waiting for your call.”

“I didn’t ring you—I didn’t want to talk about it. ... Mr. Richard was killed shortly after you left him last night, in a fall from that very window.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, don’t tell me that!”

After the cops went and Jenkins quit her bawling, it was Jane that cracked up a little, and it took some little cheek-patting to get her calmed down. But when the phone rang I wouldn’t let her answer. I figured it was the reporters, and if she was that much upset to find out Sperry had had something friendly in mind when he came up there, I didn’t think facing a bunch of buzzards with lead pencils and notebooks would do her much good. We let the phones ring and I put on her coat and zipped her down to the basement and out the side way to my car and headed out of town with her and I had no idea where we were going, but we wound up at Sacramento. We had a swell dinner at the Senator and at last it seemed everything was cleared up and coming back she tucked her hand in mine and said she was falling in love, I said O.K. by me. She said O.K. by her. It’s funny the dumb things you say that mean so much to you you could remember them the rest of your life.

We got in late, and it must have been after two o’clock when my phone rang and on the line was Keyes. “Ed, have you seen the papers?”

“About that maid?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“No, but I was there when she talked to the cops.”

“Does it strike you as peculiar?”

“She hadn’t heard it. She hadn’t been out.”

“You know anything about English servants?”

“I don’t keep servants.”

“Neither do I, but young Norton’s always got three or four of them around, and now and then I go out there. Ed, they’re the most gossipy, curious breed of people I ever saw, and how that maid, with romance waiting upstairs, could sit there in her room without ever once ringing Mrs. Delavan’s phone I simply don’t see.”

“What romance?”

“The former husband.”

“I’m the romance in that household.”

“Yeah, but does the maid know it?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Ed, it won’t add up. The former husband shows up, hands her a ten-spot to keep her mouth shut, and on the second trip she leaves him there to wait for his former wife who’s her mistress. I’m telling you, she couldn’t wait to find out what it was all about. Her nose would be quivering for it. And yet she didn’t make one move to go after it—that is, if the papers have got it right. Or have they?”

“On that point, apparently they have.”

“Well, thank God it’s not my grief.”

“Mine either.”

“This is one time we can spectate.”

“That’s it. Just take it easy.”

T
HE 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.”