Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

There was no nonsense about “this old rag.” Anne said, “It should be quite a thing. I had it specially woven. Cost me six months of clothes, practically.”

“It’s beautiful, but...”

“But?”

“Somehow it isn’t like you.”

She laughed.

When I asked her to have dinner with me that night, she said, “With you? Or on you?”

I gulped and made an unusually adult response. “With me, in a civilized sense.”

“Ah.” She smiled that grave little smile. “Don’t forget that I travel with medical students. If they had money they wouldn’t be inclined to spend it. They haven’t any, so the question doesn’t arise. But forgive me.”

She looked very nice in street clothes. She looked like something I had almost forgotten existed: a lady. I outdid myself in the choice of a restaurant. I couldn’t afford it often during three months but one indulgence couldn’t ruin ninety days, I told myself... until I saw the check. Then I controlled my blink, and reached despondently for my wallet.

Anne made no bones about reading the check. She never made any bones about anything, of course. She studied the upside-down figure and said, “Are you rich?”

“No.”

“Then that is a whopper.”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind?”

And suddenly I didn’t “No,” I said. “It was a good meal.”

She nodded gravely. “You like to live well. So do I.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it mattered to you.”

“Wouldn’t you? Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. I like to live well, and that takes money. So” — she smiled — “I want to get married.”

“You want to marry money?” I was shocked.

“In a way,” she said. “In a way.”

I saw her every day and every evening for almost a month. For twenty-six days, to be exact.

During that time we discussed Life, of course. At least, I did. Anne didn’t talk much. She listened, and if prodded she sometimes gave an opinion. She was always frank, or seemed so. If she did not want to be frank, she said so.

If you have not yet realized it, she was a most unusual person. Most unusual for a female. Astonishingly unusual for a young female. She said what she meant, meant what she said, knew what she wanted, and tried in a direct way to get it.

“Aren’t you wasting your time with me?” I asked her, all humor on the outside, a small ache and a growing confusion on the inside. (I could afford to marry. It wouldn’t be a snap, but my parents would be happy to indulge an only son who had emerged whole from a nasty war... I had never told her that.)

“Probably,” Anne said, and didn’t miss a step. We were dancing at the Casino at Monte Carlo. She looked virginal and unutterably sweet in a long white gown.

“Let’s get off this floor!”

She seemed momentarily surprised, but not disconcerted. She moved gracefully, but with no swinging of hips, to our table.

I sat down with a thump that shook the neighborhood, and demanded, “Don’t you believe in love?”

“Certainly I believe in love.”

That surprised me. “But... still you want to marry for money?”

“In a way.”

“Because you’ve never been in love?”

“I’ve been in love.”

I was an instant victim of gnawing jealousy. “Who with?”

“Grammar, grammar, sir. — With a man not unlike you — a poor boy who is an engineering student. He can’t afford me now and will never earn a penny. He’s a weak man, I know that, but he is — well, somehow suitable. Still, he’s not the kind of man who can earn money.”

“I am not weak and I can earn money.”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you were.” But she smiled.

“You wouldn’t marry me,” I said, still playing with the fire I feared but couldn’t seem to get far away from, “if only because I have such a pug-ugly sort of face.”

“Ah, that.” She didn’t deny it, just put her head a little to one side, and examined me. Then she said, “That inclines me toward you.”

“How about the fact that I will be a money-maker? Don’t you believe it?”

“I do believe it. Entirely. But I want money now. I am twenty-two. I don’t want to wait thirteen years. I want these next thirteen years to be full of nights like this — of gaiety and clothes and beautiful things.”

“That dress is beautiful.”

Her face went totally plain, the only time I ever saw it that way. “This dress,” she said, “is cheap and shoddy. If it doesn’t look bad that’s because I’m twenty-two. It would have looked even better when I was sixteen. But by the time I’m twenty-six, twenty-seven, I won’t be able to get away with this sort of off-the-rack cheapness. I’m not beautiful, but I could be. With money. Only with money.”

That was the one moment when she looked most unbeautiful.

“Thirteen years,” I said. “Why thirteen years? Thirteen and twenty-two — does the age of thirty-five mean something special to you?”

She smiled, and the almost-ugliness went away. “Mean something?” she said gently. “Yes, my dear Bill, it means something. At thirty-five I inherit my father’s estate. Very substantial. Quite rich, I’ll be. At thirty-five. He left a very explicit will when he died — when I was seven years old. The point he made was that women are flighty, foolish, idiotic. I was not to be married for my money. If, at thirty-five, I had still not married, then perhaps it would be best if I were married for my money. His will was unforgivable, but it was not difficult to understand his reasons. My mother was flighty and foolish. She ran away with another man. She died before he did, but he never forgave her and he never forgave me.

“He left me to be a ward of the court, and he pleaded posthumously with that court to bring me up ‘simply.’ Parsimoniously, was what he really meant. In my opinion they carried out his will very faithfully. If he were around to have an opinion he would probably feel that they have been extravagant.” She paused. “Perhaps he didn’t know, perhaps he didn’t realize what a monstrous thing he was doing, was creating. Perhaps?”

She took a deep breath. Then she said, “I don’t like to talk about it. I’m surprised that I am talking about it. But you’re a — nice boy. You see, I want family. I want children, but not if I have to scrape and treat them as my father did not have to but did treat me. And even more than children, I want to belong to someone, to something, to be a part of family. That’s easy to understand, too — the sort of common-sense psychology that preceded Freud. I have been alone, always alone. I have a need to belong — a sense of” — she paused, and then said almost violently — “dynasty.”

“Dynasty?” I smiled. “Look, Anne, I haven’t been entirely frank with you.”

“No?” She came with bewilderment out of her absorption, her fixation, and tried to remember who William Dentelle was. “No?” she asked.

“Not exactly. It’s true that I’m poor, but... well, I don’t really have to be. My parents are pretty well off. And they would help me. Willingly. Until I could earn that money that I know I will earn.”

“Oh.” She found me then, remembered me. But her reactions weren’t what I expected. Her so-clear eyes seemed to cloud, and the small pupils grew even smaller. Then she shook her head — not in dismissal of me, I didn’t think, but of some thought, some notion of her own. She said, “You know, you are a very nice young man, Bill. Too nice, in a way.” Her eyes left my face and looked over and behind me. “Who is that?”

“Who?”

“That man, the handsome man at the bar?”

“Oh, him.” And I told her.