The Man in the Net (25 page)

Authors: Patrick Quentin

Tags: #Crime, #OCR

BOOK: The Man in the Net

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“Sure, sure, I guess so.”

“He called at nine in the morning. The man in the store remembers that clearly. Even if you imagine Vickie could fake a man’s voice, she couldn’t possibly have made that call. That day she’d been on the lake with Leroy fishing since dawn. They didn’t get back until after ten.” He looked around for Leroy and saw him hovering with Buck behind the thin, alert figure of Gordon Moreland. “That’s right, isn’t it, Leroy?”

“Yes,” he said. “We were out fishing, yes.”

“So much then for that fantastic accusation of Vickie. But you know now, don’t you? Everyone knows. There’s no doubt about it now.”

Slowly, savoring this moment which, against all expectations, had finally come, John turned to Brad.

“Are you that much under his thumb? Are you going to stand there and let him accuse Vickie without doing a thing about it? Linda decided to marry you, didn’t she? That’s why she made the tape. She threatened you with it and you were scared, far too scared to get out of your own mess yourself. But there was always Daddy. There’d been Daddy to fix your rich marriage for you and for himself, and now there was Daddy to rescue you from the clutches of Linda. You went to him, didn’t you? After Linda had given her final threat at the birthday party, you had that long ‘business’ conference with him. You confessed the whole miserable foul-up.
I’m in a terrible jam. It’s not only my marriage. It’s the company. I let her know the company had been crooked and that you used Vickie’s money to get you out of the hole …
You were terrified, weren’t you? But Daddy wasn’t
. Just leave this to me, Brad. You get down to New York, out of the way, and when you come back …
”

Anger and contempt were merged now with his excitement.

“After that, you didn’t know, did you? After you came back, you couldn’t be sure. Maybe I’d done your job for you. Maybe miraculously I’d done what you wanted to be done, just when you needed it being done. That’s what Daddy told you, wasn’t it? Oh, he hadn’t done a thing. He hadn’t any idea what had become of Linda. But you couldn’t have been sure. Could Daddy really have liquidated her—ruthlessly wiped out the menace to the family and the family firm? Couldn’t Daddy have done that? Wasn’t he perfectly capable of it? How about calling me and persuading me to go to vote? Couldn’t he have been hoping that I’d be lynched at the town meeting and it would all be over before any investigation began? And then, tonight, at the Morelands’, you knew, didn’t you? You had to know.”

He crossed the room and grabbed Brad by the arm. “Tell them. Go on. If you don’t, God knows what will happen to you. But you’re innocent. You can put up a good fight in court to prove you had nothing to do with it at all. So. Go on. Tell them. Who sent you from the Morelands’ to get the tape out of the box?”

Brad looked up. The disintegration of his face was pitiful. His tongue came out flickering over his lower lip.

“I didn’t know, John. Honestly, I didn’t …”

“Brad!” Mr. Carey’s voice rang out in a harsh travesty of authority. “Brad, don’t let him …”

“Who sent you to get that box?”

For a moment Brad’s eyes shifted between his father and John. Then he hung his head and whispered, “It was Dad. He sent me. He had to wait for Steve Ritter. He said I must go. But I didn’t know. He didn’t say why. Go get that box, he said. I…”

Steve Ritter and the farmers had closed in around Mr. Carey. Brad turned to his wife and put out a hand tentatively.

“Vickie…”

But she swung away from him and ran to the window, turning her back on them all.

It was over, thought John. With the demoralized Brad in the witness stand against him, Mr. Carey was as doomed as if he’d made a confession.

All the men were milling excitedly around, but John felt completely removed from them. He went over to Vickie. She was still at the window, gazing out past the lounging men and over the Fishers’ unmowed lawn to the woods. He put his hand gently on her shoulder and, as she turned her head slightly toward him, he felt the pity and affection in him growing and expanding into a sensation of kinship. Linda … Mr. Carey … He’d been a monster’s victim; so had Vickie. It had been the same for them both, and now …

“John.”

A hand was tugging at his sleeve. He looked around and there was Emily gazing up at him from black anguished eyes.

“Angel told. I tried but I couldn’t stop her. When they came, Angel told. Oh, John, is it all right?”

His hand was still on Vickie’s shoulder. With his other arm, he drew Emily toward him.

“Yes, Emily,” he said. “It’s all right.”

FIN

PATRICK QUENTIN

Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelley (30 April 1906 – 2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection
The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow
was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 1931 Richard Wilson Webb (born in 1901 in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, an Englishman working for a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia) and Martha Mott Kelley collaborated on the detective novel
Cottage Sinister.
Kelley was known as Patsy (Patsy Kelly was a well-known character actress of that era) and Webb as Rick, so they created the pseudonym Q. Patrick by combining their nicknames—adding the Q "because it was unusual".

Webb's and Kelley's literary partnership ended with Kelley's marriage to Stephen Wilson. Webb continued to write under the Q. Patrick name, while looking for a new writing partner. Although he wrote two novels with the journalist and
Harper's Bazaar
editor Mary Louise Aswell, he would find his permanent collaborator in Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934.

Wheeler's and Webb's first collaboration was published in 1936. That same year, they introduced two new pseudonyms:
Murder Gone to Earth
, the first novel featuring Dr. Westlake, was credited to Jonathan Stagge, a name they would continue to use for the rest of the Westlake series.
A Puzzle for Fools
introduced Peter Duluth and was signed Patrick Quentin. This would become their primary and most famous pen name, even though they also continued to use Q. Patrick until the end of their collaboration (particularly for Inspector Trant stories).

In the late 1940s, Webb's contributions gradually decreased due to health problems. From the 1950s and on, Wheeler continued writing as Patrick Quentin on his own, and also had one book published under his own name. In the 1960s and '70s, Wheeler achieved success as a playwright and librettist, and his output as Quentin Patrick slowed and then ceased altogether after 1965. However, Wheeler did write the book for the 1979 musical
Sweeney Todd
about a fictional London mass murderer, showing he had not altogether abandoned the genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As Patrick Quentin