James Cain - The Magician's Wife

In a few minutes she did, telling him: “At least I found out what it’s about. Mr. El is dead — he died in Channel City Hospital, where they brought him after he choked on a nut. He always ate nuts and raisins after dinner, slapping great handfuls into his mouth, spite of everyone begging him not to — and tonight it happened, that’s all... Or at least so Bunny Granlund says! ” In spite of herself, Grace wailed it, and then went on to explain: “I called the Alexis house, and the man who answered the call, probably the one you heard too, wasn’t Alec. When he started pumping me, trying to find out who I was, I hung up, as he sounded to me like police. That’s when I got the bright idea of giving Bunny a ring, and she told me what she knew. It seems that Mary MacReady, Mr. El’s nurse, the woman who answered you, had taken a night off when Sally showed up, and Sally put Elly to bed. Then she went out in the kitchen to make some iced tea. While out there she heard something, and when she went in the living room, Mr. El was on the floor, not able to get his breath. She thumped him on the back and, when that didn’t help, called the police to beg them to get her an ambulance. They did, and she rode in the ambulance, taking Elly along. But poor Mr. El was dead when they got to the hospital. Then Sally called Bunny, who took my little darling, God bless her — and that’s all that she knows. But, Clay, is that all? What are police doing there with Sally at home? Or are they police? Or—”

“You’d like to find out, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d give anything to.”

“O.K., let’s do it together.”

He said that driving past the house “ought to tell us something ,” and she volunteered her car, as she kept it out on the street. He walked to Rosemary Park, and she met him downstairs in the lobby, in dark blue pima suit, somber and businesslike. She threaded the residential street, a route strange to him, but then suddenly popped on the Harlow Theater, now dark. She rolled down the familiar street, and as they approached the house Clay spotted white sedans in the drive. “There they are!” he whispered. “Those are police cars.”

She kept eyes left as they drove, and suddenly murmured: “They’re out there, talking — and that’s Alec with them!”

“They must have reached him, then.”

“ Clay, what’s it about? ”

“Maybe nothing. On a thing of this kind, don’t forget, they have to investigate — there’s an autopsy and all kinds of stuff. Doesn’t have to mean anything. Spite of the red tape, it could be mainly routine. And we can’t help tonight. All we can do, Grace, is louse her.”

“You mean we have to wait?”

“Till she gets in touch with us .”

She dropped him at the Marlborough, so upset she didn’t say good night, and he went to bed, though not to sleep. It was around nine the next morning, and he had just finished dressing, when Miss Homan rang him to say a lady was there to see him. Grace, when he let her in, was gay in red-checked gingham, and explained: “I didn’t know what was coming and — wanted to look casual, as though nothing had happened. As though nothing possibly could .”

She had the paper with her and had thoughtfully bought two, so they both could read. Silently, side by side, they went through the main item, finding little in it that added to what they knew. The police, they learned, would “question Mrs. Alexis today,” when the autopsy would be completed and its results known. “So,” said Clay at length, “you got all worked up over nothing.”

“I’m still all worked up.”

“Over what? ”

“Why are they questioning her?”

“Why not? She found him. They have to.”

“Clay, I’m frightened to death.”

“Have you talked to Sally yet?”

“For a minute, over the phone.”

“And what did she say?”

“That ‘it served him right’ — for whapping the nuts in his mouth, I suppose she meant. ‘Like a porpoise,’ she called it. And that frightened me, too. Perhaps she didn’t like him, perhaps nobody did, but her phone could be — what do they call it, Clay? ‘Bugged,’ I think is the word. And besides, he’s dead.”

“You can’t exactly blame her.”

“ I can! She shouldn’t talk like that!”

He continued offering her reassurance, perhaps a bit in excess of what he really felt, and then she broke in to cut him off. Opening the paper to an inside page, she pointed to a box beside the jump head and told him: “All right, you want to know why I’m worked up — that’s why. I don’t think you read it. You’d better.”

The heading was “ Skeeter Tox Baffles Police ,” and the item told how officers answering the call had been perplexed by a smell in the air, which they took to be ether. It seemed that Sally confirmed this, explaining how she happened to have a bottle of ether with her. Her husband, she said, had had a rabbit he used in the act, “that had to be put away, and ether seemed the humane way to do it. So,” she went on, “we got a bottle of it,” and then later found out “it worked on mosquitoes too.” She said, “They fall right over as soon as they come near it.” So, going to Brice’s Point, “where they don’t have mosquitoes, of course, except occasional ones,” she brought the ether along, “and of course nothing would suit Mr. El but that he had to try it too. So that’s why the bottle was out. You rub it on, that’s all — and it works.”

“Well?” asked Clay after reading.

“That means nothing to you?”

“No, Grace. Not a blessed thing.”

“Clay, I never heard of the rabbit — she uses it as a solvent, on her typewriter keys mainly. But also it happens to be the one thing that works on surgical gum — the stuff on adhesive tape. Does that mean something to you?”

“You mean if Mr. El — was all smeared up with that gum? From tape being slapped on his mouth? And then was quickly cleaned up—”

“Clay! No more, please!”

“But that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“You must not make me say it!”

“O.K., you don’t have to say it, but it’s what you mean just the same, and it’s been in your mind, or something like it has, from the beginning, when you started your campaign to get me to marry her now. You’ve been scared to death of what’s been in her mind, and I can’t say that nothing was. But the point is, if something was in her mind, it’s not there any more! What’s been in her mind, that I don’t know — she never talked about it to me any more than to you, and God knows I never brought the subject up. But the point is, if anything was in her mind, it’s not there any more. She’s given that idea up. She proved that yesterday when she promised to do as I wanted and break her marriage up! This thing now is coincidence — as you’ll realize once you think about it. It had to happen sometime! But when it happens now, you fit the thing together and come up with adhesive tape — which exists, so far, in your imagination, and your imagination only! You’re pinning something on her that’s completely your own think-up. Do you hear what I say, Grace? You have self-manufactured jitters, not caused by what actually happened!”

How much he secretly believed of this impassioned harangue it would be hard to say, but he kept at it, patting her, squeezing her hand, giving her little shakes, as he tried to pull her together. She listened, yielding to his caresses, trying to be convinced, but scarcely abating her woe. Sometimes she interrupted, as once when she spoke about Mrs. Granlund: “I forgot to mention, Clay, that when I spoke to her last night, she said not a word about any plan, any previous plan, to take Elly up to Cape May. And the papers didn’t speak of it, either — according to them, Sally was paying him a ‘visit.’ If she left you to take him from Mr. El and hand him over to Bunny, why didn’t Bunny know? And why didn’t she tell the police?”