The Fourth Side of the Triangle (9 page)

She refused to meet his eyes; sitting there, she was actually wringing her hands.

“Has it?”

He could barely hear her “Yes.”

And he was astounded. It was true. Sheila had told him the literal truth. He had never been so bewildered in his life.

“But Mother, I don't understand. Why didn't you tell me this before, when we were discussing …?”

“There are some things one simply doesn't reveal,” Lutetia said stiffly, “even to one's children. Especially to one's children.”

“Mother, I'm not a child any more. I've known the facts of life for a long time, although my upbringing in that respect has been more like that of a tulip.” His bitterness was beginning to well up. He bit his lips, and the pain calmed down. “If Dad's had this, well, condition, you tell me how he could have been unfaithful to you, as you said.”

“Infidelity is not just … physical.” Her lips were drawn up in a snarl of tension. “There's infidelity of the spirit as well. Your father's father and mother lived together for fifty-one years without having to find another woman or man.”

“Mother, Mother.”

He studied her, at a loss. How could he have arrived at his age knowing so little about his parents? His father, with problems both physical and psychological Dane could now only begin to guess at, going through his elaborate monkeyshines—drawn car shades, changed clothes, disguise, like some character out of E. Phillips Oppenheim or Conan Doyle—merely to visit another woman he could not even sleep with; his mother, tormented with such cloudy concepts as “infidelity of the spirit” to cover her outraged Victorian feelings …

“Mother.” He went over to her, stooped, took her hands. “I'm just beginning to realize how awful this must be for you. Would you like me to stay overnight?”

She busied herself preparing his old room with the zest of a woman welcoming back one of her menfolk after a three-year whaling cruise. They kissed and parted for the night. He lay in bed staring at the college banners on the wall. His mother, he knew, was on her knees in her room, praying; he envied her. His thoughts ranged afield, but kept coming back to Sheila Grey. What was he feeling so persistently and profoundly? Uncleanliness? Indecency? Revulsion?

For his actions of the evening, search as he might, he could find no trace of justification.

The next morning, dressing, thinking it would soon be fall and that he had hoped to have his book finished by the end of the year—a goal that now seemed parsecs away—Dane hunted for a cigaret. The box on the bed table was empty, and he went through his coat pockets.

He found a crumpled pack of cigarets, but no cigaret case. His silver cigaret case was missing. With a thump of his heart he realized that he could not recall having seen it or felt it after visiting Sheila's the night before.

He found his lighter and lit one of the out-of-shape cigarets—one sock on, the other off—telling himself: Forget her.
Forget her
.

After a while, hands shaking badly, he finished dressing.

He almost cried out when he walked into the dining room. His father was seated at the table drinking coffee. When had he come in? And with what story? The elder McKell looked haggard, as if he had not slept; his clothes were wrinkled. This was unprecedented.

“Morning, Dad. How was your trip?”

“All right.” Ashton's voice seemed stifled. His eyes, Dane noted now, were bloodshot. He raised his coffee cup, set it down, moved the saucer, fiddled with the sugar tongs. Dane was relieved when his mother joined them.

She was paler than usual this morning. It was evident that she had already talked to her husband. Dane wondered what he had told her, what she had said to him.

But beyond brief, almost formal, exchanges, breakfast was consumed in silence. Looking up from his eggs from time to time, Dane would catch his father's eye; the eye would immediately move elsewhere. Dane tried to interpret the look. Baleful? Reproachful? Secretive? Frightened? He grew uneasy. It's time the curtain came down on this whole thing, Dane thought, feeling his temper rise, pushing it back down, sitting on it. Not that again.

“Well!” Ashton McKell said abruptly. “This table is about as lively as Wall Street on Sunday morning.” His whole demeanor had changed. “And it's my fault. I've been working too hard. I'm worn out. Lutetia, what would you say to a trip somewhere? Just the two of us? A pleasure trip?”

“Ashton!”

“Now that the tourists are coming home, we could go to Europe. No business—just sightseeing with the rest of the rubbernecks from the States. I promise I wouldn't visit a single branch office or customer.”

“Oh, Ashton, that would be simply lovely. When would you plan to go?”

“Why not now?” The tycoon's lips were taut. “We can leave as soon as we get a good boat. One of the
Queens
. I'll arrange for passage this morning. No flying this time—a leisurely sea crossing—”

“Let's go to Paris first!” cried Lutetia. “Where shall we stay?”

They chattered away about plans like newlyweds. So Sheila had been telling the truth about that, too. She had been tapering him off, letting him down gently, and at last he had got the message. Or was it something else—?

“We've never been to Luxembourg,” Ashton said enthusiastically. “—Yes, Ramon?”

“The car is ready, Mr. McKell,” the chauffeur said.

“Wait for me.”

“What is it, Margaret?” asked Lutetia. Ramon withdrew, and old Margaret, the senior maid, had come in.

“Callers, ma'am.”

“At this hour? Who are they?”

“Policemen, ma'am.”

“
Policemen?
”

The roaring began in Dane's ears. He barely heard his father say, “Show them in, Margaret. Lu, you let me handle this—you, too, Dane”; was barely conscious of the entrance of two men in plainclothes, one of them a giant of a man with a gravelly voice.

“I'm Sergeant Velie of police headquarters,” the big man said, flipping open his shield case. “This is Detective Mack of the 17th Precinct. I'm sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, but you know what's happened in this building—”

“Happened?” Ashton McKell was on his feet. “No, Sergeant, we didn't know. What is it?”

“The tenant of the penthouse, Miss Grey, was murdered a little before half-past ten last night.”

Lutetia McKell was slewed around, one delicate hand gripping the back of her chair; her husband's pallor took on a corpselike lividity. Dane fought down the ugly and familiar roaring by sheer savagery.

“What we want to know, sir,” Sergeant Velie was saying, “is if you people heard anything around the time of the murder …”

Ashton McKell's knees buckled and he pitched over with a thud.

II The Second Side

·

ASHTON

The two policemen picked up Ashton McKell and carried him to the couch, loosened his clothing. Dane did nothing.

“You maybe ought to call a doctor, Mrs. McKell,” the bigger detective said.

She shook her head. From somewhere she had produced a silver filigree smelling-salts bottle and she was holding it to her husband's ashy nose. He twitched, trying to get away from it. She pursued him with firmness. “It's just overwork. My husband works too hard, and then this shock on top of it … Only yesterday he was called to Washington by the President. Last week he had to fly down to South America. We were just talking about a vacation … Murdered, you say? That poor woman. No, we didn't hear anything; this is an old house with very thick walls and floors. Dane, please fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. Don't say anything to the servants. There's no point in distressing them.”

She continued to talk. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, listening to her, that her husband should have fainted on hearing of a tenant's violent death.

Gradually his color returned; his eyelids fluttered. Lutetia rose and faced the detectives.

“You've been very kind. It's all right now. I know we mustn't keep you gentlemen.”

“We'll probably have to come back,” the big sergeant said with an air of apology. The officers left.

Dane had brought the water in a daze. He sat down at the table, trying to master his nerves, which seemed to have been invaded by St. Vitus. All the little muscles in his hands and face were twittering. He knew he would never forget the sight of his father's face, this morning of September 15th, drawn even before the detectives' visit, turning clay-colored as the announcement came and his eyes turned over and he slid to the floor. Had his father ever before in his life fainted? Dane was sure he had not. The news of Sheila Grey's death must have been a tremendous shock.

The two detectives … the tall one with the sledgehammer hands and the rumbling voice who did all the talking—what was his name again? Sergeant Velie—were deference and concern his usual attitudes on the job? Dane thought not. All detectives had to be actors of a sort, and it seemed to Dane that Sergeant Velie had been striding the boards in full make-up. He knew something. Far more than he had let on.

Dane reached for a cigaret. Then it came back to him: he had not been able to find his cigaret case earlier this morning, just the remains of an old pack. The flat taste of the cigaret he had smoked seemed still in his mouth. Or was it the taste of fear?

His father had begun to moan; his mother had phoned Dr. Peabody after all and was back at her husband's side; Dane ignored them and ran back to his room. He tumbled things about, questioned the servants, went through the other rooms.

“My cigaret case!” He flung the phrase at his parents. Lutetia looked up; her blue eyes were moist, she was holding on to her husband's hand. “Have you seen my cigaret case?” She shook her head, obviously bewildered that such a thing could be on his mind; as for Ashton McKell, he was now breathing regularly—otherwise, he lay in silence.

Dane collapsed in a chair. His mother—raised in the world of her grandmother, when pipes were Rough, cigars Ostentatious, and cigarets Fast (snuff was regrettably outmoded, while chewing tobacco was not mentioned in polite society)—had given him the silver case on his twenty-first birthday as a sign of grace, conferring the solid right in his new manhood to smoke in her presence without the hint of reproof that had greeted his two or three earlier attempts. The case was a beautifully handcrafted Tiffany piece; the inside of the lid was engraved
Philip Dane DeWitt McKell
.

Where was it?

If he had left it in Sheila's apartment, then the police had found it. The presence of his cigaret case on the scene of the crime … He might be able to get by with saying that he had left it there on a previous visit … Worry nibbled at him.

If the police had found the case, why hadn't the two detectives mentioned it? Of course, they might be laying a trap for him. On the other hand, suppose they hadn't found it?—because it wasn't there? In that case, what had happened to it?

The next two days were unpleasant. His parents made no further mention of a European tour. Ashton McKell's manner at home was listless and preoccupied.

Dane tried to work on his book without any success whatever. It was easier to sit turning the pages of illustrated books of other people, the illustrations distracting without requiring concentration—bulky books, Audubon's sketchbooks, volumes of Peter Breughel and Hieronymus Bosch. The Bosch he flung aside; that nightmare world ruined his sleep. Demons, naked women and men, apples … silver cigaret cases …

There was something besides the cigaret case. For weeks he had been monopolizing Sheila Grey's life—lunches, dinners, the theater, the ballet, walks, ferry rides.
Cherchez l'homme
.

He supposed it worked that way, too. Look for the man. He was the last man in Sheila's life. How long would it take the police, by routine legwork, to get around to him?

He found it childishly easy to yield to his mother's plea that for the present he take his meals with her and his father. He wondered if she knew, or suspected, about him and Sheila.

They were at breakfast, a moody one, his father's
New York Times
untouched beside his plate, when the two police officers returned. One look at their faces told Dane that it was no longer a matter of questions like
Did you hear anything unusual
, etc.

Again it was Sergeant Velie who did all the talking. He greeted Lutetia politely, nodded to Dane. But his attention was concentrated on Ashton McKell.

They had all risen; the sergeant waved them back, refused a chair, and said, “On this Sheila Grey murder. I can tell you she was shot through the heart”—a stifled sound from Lutetia, and Ashton gripped her hand without taking his eyes off the officer—“and was killed instantly. A .38 S. & W. Terrier revolver was found next to the body. You want to say something, Mr. McKell?”

Ashton said quickly, “That's probably my gun, Sergeant. There's no mystery about it if it is, although of course you want an explanation. I lent it to Miss Grey. She said she was sometimes nervous being all alone in the penthouse. At the same time I didn't want a frightened woman handling a loaded gun. So I filled the chambers with blanks without mentioning it to her—it was more to give her confidence than anything else. Do you mean to say …?”

“Say what, Mr. McKell?”

“That Miss Grey was shot with my gun?”

“Yes.”

“But it was loaded with blanks! I loaded it myself!”

“It was no blank,” Sergeant Velie said, “that killed her.”

“I don't know how it could have been replaced,” Ashton McKell said in a calm voice—was there the slightest tremor?—“or by whom. For all I know Miss Grey may have done it herself. I don't know how much she knew about firearms.”

Sergeant Velie was looking at him with great steadiness. “Let's skip the gun and bullets for now. You admit you knew the woman?”