The Return of the Black Widowers (25 page)

"The second house holds the Johnstones. He's in his seventies and she's perhaps two or three years younger. He's retired and they're supposed to be quite wealthy, but they don't bank in our bank and I have no personal knowledge of the matter. They sort of shuttle between Maine in the summer and Florida in the winter, but they have a bachelor son, about forty, who stays in the house year-round and is not employed.

"The third house is ours, and the fourth belongs to two sisters, one a Mrs. Widner and the other a Mrs. Chambers. Both are widows and they seem to cling to each other for warmth. They're in their fifties and very wide awake. I'm astonished they weren't aware of my being picked up at the lamppost. They're light sleepers and have a sixth sense for local catastrophe.

"Across the street, there are no houses but only a large lawn and a stand of trees belonging to the Presbyterian Church which is a distance off.—That's it."

He looked about helplessly, and Rubin cleared his throat. "If we go by probabilities, the obvious choice is the bachelor son. He has the house to himself for a couple of months at a time and has nothing to do but work at his counterfeiting, with or without the knowledge of his parents. If the Johnstones are mysteriously wealthy, that may be why. I'm astonished you overlook this."

"You wouldn't be if you knew the boy," said Levan. "Even though he's middle-aged, it's hard to think of him as a man. He's boyish in appearance and attitude, and without being actually retarded in any way, is clearly unequipped to make his way in the world."

"He's capable enough," said Rubin, "to take care of the house for a couple of months at a time."

"He's not retarded," repeated Levan, impatiently. "He's emotionally immature, that's all. Naive. And good-hearted in the extreme. It's impossible to think of him being involved in crime."

Rubin said, "It might be that he's acting. Perhaps he's clever enough to appear incredibly naive so as to hide the fact that, actually, he is a criminal."

Levan pondered. "I just can't believe that. No one could be
that
good an actor."

"If he
were
innocent and childlike," said Rubin, "it might make it all the easier for him to be used by criminals. He might be an unwitting pawn."

"That doesn't make sense to me. They couldn't trust him; he'd give it away."

"Well," said Rubin, "however much you doubt it, that seems to me to be the most reasonable possibility, and if you want to do a little investigating on your own, you had better take a closer look at young Johnstone." He sat back and folded his arms.

Halsted said, "What about the two men with the suitcase? Had you ever seen them before?"

Levan said, "I wasn't at my best, of course, but at the time it seemed to me they were strangers. They were certainly not members of any of the households.

Halsted said, "If they were outside associates of the counterfeiting ring, we might be reasonably sure that the two widows weren't involved. They'd be reluctant to have men in the house, it seems to me."

"I'm not sure about that," said Levan. "They're feisty ladies and they're not old maids. Men are no new experience to them. Still, I agree; I don't see them as gun molls, so to speak."
"And yet," said Drake, thoughtfully, "there may have been at least one woman present. Didn't you say, Mr. Levan, that someone said, 'He's dead drunk. Just put him outside,' and that it was a woman?"

Levan said, "It was a whisper, and I couldn't tell for sure. It might have been a woman, but it might have been a man, too. And even if it were a woman, it might have been another outsider."

Drake said, "I should think someone who belonged there would have to be on the spot. The house wouldn't be abandoned to outsiders, and there's at least one woman in each house."

"Not really," said Halsted. "Not in the Johnstone house, since the old folks should be away in Maine now. If we eliminate the widows, then that leaves the house on the left corner, the Nash house. Then, if Mr. Levan were let off on the corner, and was so under the weather he had difficulty walking, it would be likely that he would go into the first house he came to and that would be the Nashes', wouldn't it?"

Levan nodded. "Yes, it would, but I can't remember that that's what I did.—So what's the use? However much we argue and reason, I have nothing with which to go to the police. It's just guesswork."

Trumbull said, "Surely these people don't live in their houses by themselves. Don't they have servants?"

Levan said, "The widows have a live-in woman-of-all-work."

"Ah "said Trumbull.

"But that doesn't strike me as significant. It just means three women in the house instead of two; a third widow, as a matter of fact, and quite downtrodden by the sisters. She has no more brains than is necessary to do the housework, from what little I know of her. She's impossible as a criminal conspirator."

"I think you're entirely too ready to dismiss people as impossible," said Trumbull. "Any other servants?"

Levan said, "The Nashes have a cook, who comes in for the day. The Johnstones have a handyman who works mainly in the yards, and helps the rest of us when he has time. Emma and I don't have
any servants in the house. Emma is strong and efficient and she dragoons me into helping her—which is only right, I suppose. She doesn't believe in servants. She says they destroy privacy and never do things right anyway, and I agree with her. Still, I do wish we could have someone to do the vacuuming besides myself."

Trumbull said, with a trace of impatience, "Well, the vacuuming is not an issue. What about the Nash cook and the Johnstone handyman?"

"The cook has five children at home, with the oldest in charge, according to the Nashes, and if she has spare time for criminality I think she should get a medal. The handyman is so deeply religious that it is ludicrous to think of him as breaking the commandment against theft."

"Sanctimoniousness can easily be assumed as a cloak," said Trumbull.

"I see no signs of it in this case."

"You don't suspect him?"

Levan shook his head.

"Do you suspect anyone?"

Levan shook his head.

Gonzalo said, suddenly, "What about whoever it was who called your wife to tell her you were outside in the gutter? Did she recognize the voice?"

Levan shook his head emphatically. "She couldn't have. It was just a whisper."

"Is that just your judgment, or does she say so?"

"She would have told me at once if she had recognized it."

"Was it the same whisper you heard in the house?"

Levan said, impatiently, "She heard one and I heard the other. How can we compare?"

"Was the voice your wife heard that of a woman?"

"Emma never said. I doubt that she could tell. She said she thought it might be a way of getting her to open the door, so maybe it seemed to her to be a man. I don't know."

Gonzalo seemed annoyed, and said rather sharply, "Maybe
there's no one to suspect. You may think you can sense counterfeit money, but how do you know you can do so when you're totally sozzled? It could be you saw real money and there's no counterfeiting going on at all."

"No," said Levan, emphatically, "and even if that were so, what would two strangers be doing with a suitcase of hundred-dollar bills? New ones. I could smell the ink. Even if it weren't counterfeiting, there would have to be some sort of crime."

Gonzalo said, "Maybe the whole thing—"

He let it trail off, and Levan said, flushing a little, "—is a pink elephant? You think I imagined it all?"

"Isn't that possible? If there's no one to suspect, if no one could be involved, maybe nothing really happened."

"No," said Levan. "I know what I saw."

"Well, what did you see?" said Drake suddenly, peering at Levan through the smoke of his cigarette. "You were in the kitchen. You saw the wallpaper, if any, the color scheme, the fixtures. The kitchen details aren't identical, are they? You can walk into each house and then identify which kitchen you were in, can t you?

Levan flushed, "I wish I could. The truth is, I saw nothing. There were just the two men, the suitcase on the table, and the money. It occupied all my attention, and I can't even really describe the suitcase." He added, defensively, "I was not myself. I was—was— And besides, after fifteen or thirty seconds, I had passed out. I just don't know where I was."

Avalon, looking troubled, said, "What are you doing about it, Chris? Are you doing any investigating on your own? That might be dangerous, you know."

"I know," said Levan, "and I'm not an investigator. Emma, who has more common sense in her left thumb than I have in my whole body, said that if I tried to do any questioning or poking about for clues, I would not only make a fool of myself, but I might get into trouble with the police. She said I had better just alert the bank to be on the lookout for bogus hundred-dollar bills and investigate
those, when they came in, by the usual methods. Of course, no hundred-dollar bills are coming in. I don't suppose the counterfeiters will pass them in this area."

Gonzalo said, discontentedly, "Then we haven't gotten anywhere and that's frustrating.—Henry, can you add anything to all this?"

Henry, who was standing at the sideboard, said, "There is a question I might ask, if permitted."

"Go ahead," said Levan at once.

"Mr. Levan, you said, earlier, that your wife has a career of her own in real estate, but you said, 'I believe.' Aren't you sure?"

Levan looked startled, then laughed. "Well, we married five years ago, when we had each been single for quite a while, and were each used to independence. We try to interfere with each other as little as possible. Actually, I'm sure she
is
engaged in real estate, but I don't ask questions and she doesn't. It's one of these modern marriages; worlds different from my first."

Henry nodded and was silent.

"Well," said Gonzalo, impatiently. "What do you have in mind, Henry? Don't hang back."

Henry looked disturbed. "Mr. Levan," he said, softly, "when you entered the house by the side door and closed it behind you, you were then in the dark, I believe."

"I certainly was, Henry."

"You circled an umbrella stand. How did you know it was an umbrella stand?"

"After I sat down, I happened to feel it. If it wasn't an umbrella stand, it was something just like it."

Henry nodded. "But you circled it before you felt it, and you dropped into a chair in the dark with relief, and enjoyed feeling the soft padding, you said."

"Yes."

"Mr. Levan," said Henry. "The houses were alike in every particular on the outside, but were free to vary on the inside, you said, and presumably they all did so vary. Yet in your not-quite-sober
state, you managed to dodge the umbrella stand and drop into a chair. You did not bump into one or miss the other. You did not have the slightest idea you were in the wrong house at the time, did you?"

"No, I didn't," said Levan, looking alarmed. "It was only when I opened the kitchen door and saw the men—"

"Exactly, sir: You expected to find the arrangement of objects as it was in your own house, and you found that to be so. When you sat in the chair, which you must have thought was your own, you felt nothing to disabuse yourself of the notion."

"Oh, my God "said Levan.

"Mr. Levan," said Henry, "I think you must have been in your own house after all. Drunk as you were, you found your way home."

"Oh, my God," said Levan, again.

"You were not expected till much later, so you caught your wife by surprise. In your modern marriage, you clearly didn't know enough about her. Yet she did show affection for you. She did not allow you to be harmed. She had you carried out, and then came to get you with an invented story about a phone call. By then the men and the suitcase had gone and since then she has worked very hard to keep you from telling the story to the police or doing anything about it.—I'm afraid that's the only explanation that fits what you have told us."

For a moment, there was an absolute silence over the horrified group.

Levan said, in a small voice, "But what do I do?"

And Henry said, sorrowfully, "I don't know, Mr. Levan.—But I wish you had not refused that drink."