The Man Who Loved His Wife (24 page)

“I'm not so sure about the house,” Don said as he stirred a second cocktail for Nan.

“Donnie!” Cindy was stricken by the announcement. She could not, in Nan's presence, remind Don that her father's death would profit them so that the house would be no problem at all. “Just because my poor father's—I mean, it's terribly distressing and all that—but I mean—we mustn't give up.” Raised eyebrows conveyed a message, which Don seemed not to notice. “My poor Donnie's been so . . . so . . . by this shock . . . I feel . . . well, he's positively not himself. But we mustn't lose interest in living, darling. Aren't you still mad, mad, mad about the house?”

“I'm not sure it's the right place for us.”

“Why not? You said it was the dream of your life to have a house at the very spang edge of the ocean?”

“I still do, love. And no one can say that the house isn't as charming and picturesque as you say”—Don did not wish to denigrate his taste of the past week—“but don't you think it's a bit . . . unspacious?”

Cindy clung tenaciously to last week's paradise. “It isn't too small. For just two people.”

Don had found statelier mansions for his soul, places closer to the status of the Burkes' crowd. “It just occurred to me sweet, that we might want to live more expansively.” He spread his hands to measure the growing dream. “And a slightly more convenient neighborhood. Somewhere closer to your place, Nan.”

“That would be just too lovely,” Nan said without excessive enthusiasm.

“But,” Cindy began again but Don, more and more enraptured
by his visions, cut in with the modest news that he would not want a place quite as large as Nan's but one that, he implied, would be luxurious. “We really ought to have a pool. There are so many days out here when the surf's too high for comfortable swimming.” He added a tennis court and covered patio for parties. At the same time Mr. Heatherington was pleading with him for extra capital and Nan's father was wondering whether young Hustings would consider a seat on the board of a complex of suburban banks.

Cindy could not easily accommodate herself to the larger dream. She parted reluctantly from the little house. Still considering herself a minor heiress, she had not yet raised herself to Nan's level. What put Cindy into a superior position today was her role in the mystery drama. She let drop deftly the information that Elaine had gone about telling the world she expected her husband's death, and in the very manner that it had happened. Cindy still balked at the mention of suicide.

“She actually talked about it? My God!” Nan's mind went to another committee meeting, a luncheon the next day, where guests were free to gossip until the coffee was served and the chairman called for silence. “Tell me more about it. Everything. Do the police know that? What do they think?”

“We ought to be more discreet, love,” Don said reprovingly and shook his head at Cindy in the manner of a man who knew himself master of the house. “I don't think the police would like mere opinion broadcast.”

“I only told Nan.”

“And I won't say a word to anyone,” Nan promised.

With the humility that only a big man can show, Don begged Nan to forgive his warning. He had not meant to rebuke the girls. “It's just that one has to be a bit cautious in these matters. It's safer on the prudent side.” And he turned the conversation from this spicy subject by asking about her husband, her father, and the state of their health and business. Nan listened humbly as Don offered opinions about banking, letting fall the names of famous financiers and of stocks worthy of investment, speaking with authority of tax laws, interest rates, blue chip stocks. It was
hard for Nan to keep from yawning. She might as well have been at home with her father, her husband, and their cronies. Her arrogance dwindled; she became a mere wife and daughter and soon afterward left, escorted to the Rolls by Don, who stepped aside to let the chauffeur open the door.

After she had gone he stayed in the driveway with the two policemen. Their conversation was unimportant. They spoke of baseball, their wives, and the weather. The sky had become clear, the memory of fog drifting off. “What a country this West is,” Don said. “Still open to pioneer spirit. There's nothing a man can't accomplish out here if he's got the stuff in him.” He tapped his chest vigorously.

“You got to get a chance out here like any place else,” the older policeman said doubtfully.

“Every place in the world a man's got to get a chance. You've got to recognize the chance and seize it,” cried Don.

“It's the way the cookie crumbles,” the younger cop said.

“Right you are!” exclaimed Don and raced exuberantly back to the house.

11

THE EVENING PAPER WAS TOSSED UPON THE driveway by the middle-aged newsboy in a bright red convertible with a raucous radio. On the front page was a photograph stolen by an enterprising reporter. The snapshot, enlarged and framed in silver, had been taken in Jamaica during the honeymoon. Both Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher Strode wore jaunty tennis shorts. On the third page there was a two-column reproduction of an advertisement posed by Elaine before her marriage. In a chiffon nightgown and with outstretched arms, head thrown back, smile radiant, she demonstrated a girl's ecstasy at having found a deodorant that guaranteed underarm daintiness. A smaller photograph showed the “one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar death mansion” for which Fletcher had paid eighty-five thousand dollars.

Cindy said she thought it was awful, people's lives being exposed in that vulgar fashion. “Just listen to this, ‘The beautiful
blond daughter, New York debutante, here for a holiday with her lawyer husband . . .' Isn't it too silly?”

“You might just possibly have suggested it,” remarked Elaine.

Don laughed. Cindy's mouth twisted. She went on reading the paper, aggressively rustling pages and reading aloud those passages which were most flattering to herself or most embarrassing to Elaine.

Elaine escaped to the garden. She was very nervous. The birds in the branches twittered restlessly. At this hour of the twilight— no matter how noisily they sang at night— they were quiet. Usually Elaine was not disturbed by natural sounds. This evening she felt positively ill with drowsiness. Fatigue lay upon her like a smothering weight. She had been neither able to sleep nor to arouse herself. Twice she had made coffee, twice let it grow cold in the cup. Once more the desert wind had conquered sea breezes and fog. There had been a three-day surcease and now the heat was upon them again. How Fletcher would have suffered! She felt now that she must find and comfort him.

Voices pursued her. Don and Cindy came out in bathing suits. “Do you think it's heartless of us?” Cindy asked. “But we've simply got to cool off.”

She stood at the edge of the pool, but did not go in. Don dived with an enormous splash. Cindy shuddered away from the pool. “Come in, beauties, it's marvelous.”

Elaine said she was too tired and returned to the house. She was afraid of what she might say if she remained in their nervous company. The scent of jasmine was too sweet, the fallen blossoms of red oleander like blood upon the grass. She had begun to hate her garden.

Cindy watched her go. She was tense and strung up, too. Since Nan had gone, Cindy had been flitting about like a moth under a lampshade. Don had asked about the important matter she had wanted to confide before her friend arrived. This had sent her into a twitter so that she could not keep her mind on any one thing. Don had thought a dip in the pool might soothe her.

“Aren't you coming in?” he called.

“I'm not in the mood.” She looked over her left and right shoulders to be sure there were no more reporters waiting in the garden. The short twilight ended abruptly. Lights flashed frequently, for traffic had become heavy on the hill. Motorists came to gape at the death mansion, but were urged to keep moving by the two policemen in the car at the curb.

Don climbed out of the pool, shook himself like a terrier, and dried his face on his bathrobe.

“What's it all about? Tell me and get it over with.”

Cindy ran ahead to the pavilion, looked about again, and drew a chair to the center. “You needn't be so cross. I'm terribly upset.” Nan had emptied her cigarette case so that Cindy wouldn't be left stranded. Cindy lit one and held the burning match until it scorched her fingers.

The match dropped, flaming, to the floor. Don sprang to stamp it out, but remembered that he was barefoot and pulled away. “For God's sake, you could start a fire.” He looked down for something to press down upon the flame, but there were no small objects about. All the ashtrays had been removed. Perhaps on Monday, when their lives were normal, Elaine had taken them to the kitchen to be washed; perhaps the police had “borrowed” them for examination in the laboratory. Every detail had significance.

The small flame flickered out. Don walked to the rail and looked down at the rows of asters and marigolds, remembered what he had read in Fletcher's diary about the poisons used in the garden.

“What happens to the people who hide things from the police?”

“Huh?”

“It's supposed to be a crime or something, isn't it?”

“What do you want to know for? Did you hide something?”

She was so slow about answering that Don had to snap at her again about dropping ashes on the dry wood. “We've had enough around here without a fire, too.”

“If you're going to be nasty, I won't tell you.” She joined him at the rail, flicked ashes into the flower bed.

“Concealing evidence in a criminal case makes a person an accessory after the fact. Have you concealed something?”

The cigarette was pressed out viciously against the wooden rail. She dropped the stub into the flower bed as slyly as if it were evidence of crime. “A plastic bag. The kind that comes over clothes from the cleaner's.”

“Plastic bag? Where was it?”

Don touched her hand and Cindy shuddered away. She had neither the talent nor training for secrets. A child of the permissively bred generation to whom lies were unnecessary, she stated facts and feelings flatly and with little concern for effect. Her falsehoods had concerned clothing prices which she had inflated to improve her position with girlfriends. Otherwise she had always practiced easy honesty. Since Tuesday morning she had suffered a secret.

“On him. Daddy.”

Don drummed on the rail. To Cindy it seemed that years passed while he stood there tapping his fingers and looking out at nothing. “Aren't you surprised?”

“You found the bag on your father?” His tone was measured.

“Yes. It was under that thing,” she touched the base of her neck, “he breathed through.”

“The bib?”

She nodded.

“Then it wasn't an accident,” Don said. “And you pulled it off?”

“I didn't want people thinking Daddy committed suicide.”

“For Christ's sake!”

“I couldn't bear it. People thinking . . . I mean . . . a girl at school, Martha Ann Lee, her name was, her father . . .” Confession felt like vomit rising. “It was terrible. All the girls whispered and we couldn't look at her without thinking. I mean . . . she had to leave school . . . Martha Ann Lee. The whole family was disgraced. I didn't want people thinking . . .” The taste of nausea filled her mouth. She couldn't go on.

“You little fool.” Don's anger attacked her like a weapon. “Suicide's no disgrace.”

“But it was. One day we met Martha Ann on the street. Nan and I. We couldn't forget. What could we say to her? People remember for the rest of your life.”

“Front-page headlines are a hell of a lot worse than whispers.”

She fought back sickness. “I never thought . . . the police and all that stuff. I mean . . . it could have been a heart attack if the people didn't know.”

“Just when did that thought occur to you?”

“You needn't be so mean. People do die of heart attacks all the time at this age.”

“Is that all there was to it? You didn't want it to look like suicide?”

“Suicide is the coward's way out. I was thinking of Daddy's reputation. How did I know there'd be all that fuss? Besides, Donnie, there's the insurance. A hundred thousand dollars, I told you the other day. And I thought of my mother's insurance, too.”

“Did you think that they wouldn't pay if it was suicide?”

“They don't. Didn't you know that? I was thinking of you too, darling.” She appealed like a child asking forgiveness of a father, and since she no longer had a father, elevating Don to that place. “We can't afford to lose all that money.”

Don explained that she was mistaken about the insurance. Perhaps Martha Ann Lee's family had not received the benefits, but the father might have taken out the insurance just before he died. Fletcher Strode had been insured for many years, since before Cindy was born; at the time of the divorce he had increased his insurance for the protection of the child and his first wife. It was unlikely that after so many years the benefits would not be paid; unlikely, too, that Fletcher Strode's policies contained the suicide clause.