Jealous Woman (9 page)

“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.”

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.”

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.”