Brett Halliday: Michael Shaynes' 50th case

He stood there looking helplessly up at the shaded windows and hearing no sound from within the bedroom. All he had to do was walk up to his own front door and put his key in the latch and open the door and shout up the stairs, “Yoo-hoo, Ellie. It’s me. Marv. I’m home.”

That’s all he had to do. Simplest thing in the world. So, why didn’t he do it? Why did he stand there like a ninny, transfixed, his heart beating queerly, his mouth dry and his stomach churning?

Because he thought for a moment there was anything wrong inside his house? Because he was afraid of what might be going on behind the drawn shades in that bedroom? Because he even remotely suspected the possibility that Ellie and Harry… that Ellie and Harry might…?

Oh God, no! He shook himself like a man emerging from a trance. What a foul and nasty mind he had! To even think that of Ellie. Or Harry either. Harry was his best and most-trusted friend. He’d no more think of a thing like that than…

And Ellie! Good God, he knew Ellie, didn’t he? She was his wife. She was Sissy’s mother. She loved him. She’d no more do that with Harry than she’d…

Well, all he had to do was walk in the front door and prove that he had a foul and nasty mind.

That was all he had to do.

But suppose…?

If he did walk in the front door the stairs leading up would be right in front of him and there’d be no back way out for Harry if he was upstairs with Ellie. The two of them would be cornered if he walked in the front door.

He had a revolver. It was loaded and ready to shoot and it rested handy in the top drawer of the bureau right there in the hall.

He could go in quietly and get the gun out and then go upstairs and see what was what.

Suppose Harry were there with Ellie?

He could shoot them both. It was the unwritten law that he could.

Not Ellie!

Yes, Ellie, too. Didn’t his manhood demand it?

Damn his manhood and the unwritten law! What was he thinking about? Because it wasn’t so. None of it was so. There was some other explanation for Harry’s car being there and a single light on in the bedroom behind drawn shades and the silence. All he had to do was walk in the front door and find out what the real explanation was.

He couldn’t walk in the front door.

He didn’t believe any of it for a moment, but he couldn’t put it to the test.

Because, supposing it were so? What would he do then?

He couldn’t be an outraged husband and start shooting to protect his honor. It simply wasn’t in him to do that.

There was the detached and dignified approach, of course. Something like: “Sorry to break in on you two like this, but I simply didn’t know how it was with you. It’s all right, Ellie. If you prefer Harry to me, why should I stand in your way? I’ll expect custody of Sissy, of course. And I’ll expect you to do the honorable thing by her, Harry old boy.”

No. Marvin knew that wasn’t for him either. So, what could he do?

God, he thought helplessly, if only he hadn’t come home tonight. If only there’d been some warning. If only he had known he shouldn’t come unexpectedly and had telephoned Ellie from Miami.

Well, he could turn away now and slip back to the station without being seen and catch that late train back to Miami, and then come back tomorrow afternoon on schedule… and he would never need to know.

Could he do that? Could he stand to go on living with Ellie without knowing? He could never ask Ellie. He could never admit to her that he had come home tonight and seen Harry’s car outside and turned away because he suspected something bad.

No, he couldn’t go on living without knowing for sure. First, he had to know what the truth was. After that he could decide what to do, how to live with it.

He shrank back into the shadow of the hibiscus hedge and set his suitcase down very carefully so as to make no sound. Then he lowered his weight down on it and buried his face in his hands.

He told himself angrily that he had a dirty mind. If he trusted Ellie at all… if their marriage vows meant anything to him… he would go boldly up to the front door and at least ring the bell and give Ellie a chance to come down and explain the situation.

Ellie deserved that much trust. Where was his faith in her? Didn’t he know she loved him? He was a lousy bastard to let himself suspect for one single moment that Ellie would do anything wrong. He was surely going to hate himself when it all came out in a simple and innocent explanation.

All right, he told himself fiercely, so he would hate himself. But he knew he would hate himself more if he forced the issue and it turned out there was no innocent explanation. That would mean he would have to leave Ellie. No man and wife can go on living together after one has been caught committing adultery.

Why not, he asked himself miserably. Why did it matter so much? Would Ellie be a different person just because she was in bed with another man tonight? Would there be any physical change in her? Wouldn’t she still be the same Ellie he had loved for ten years? The mother of his child. Would one physical contact with Harry Wilsson change Ellie so much that he couldn’t live with her afterward?

And he answered himself with an emphatic NO to all those questions. Yet he knew there would be a disastrous change in their relationship if he walked into the house and caught her in bed with Harry. All three of them would have to react to that. Marvin did not know why this was so. He didn’t understand why people had to react to a situation like that. But he knew that each of them would. He knew that three or four or five lives would inevitably be smashed into little pieces if he went into the house and found his wife and Harry Wilsson together intimately.

He couldn’t take a chance on doing that to himself and Ellie and Sissy. He couldn’t, God help him, do that to Harry and Minerva. He could not take the risk of going inside his own house.

But he could not, either, go away from the house without knowing for certain. Even though, God knew, he wanted to go away from there.

But that, he could not do.

Yet all the time he did not actually believe in his heart that there was anything wrong. He knew he was getting it all wrong and that there must be an innocent explanation. That is, he tried to know. He willed himself to know. But the inner knowledge was not strong enough to force him to take the ultimate step.

He knew it was a weak thing to do, and he despised himself for his own weakness as he crouched there in the shadows with his hands over his face and did not dare to enter his own home.

But he wondered how many other husbands would have been stronger than he? Oh, he knew a lot of men who would have dashed into the house at the first intimation that his wife might be unfaithful, waving a gun and shouting that his honor must be avenged. But in his heart Marvin believed that sort of man was in the minority.

What does a man’s honor have to do with it, he asked himself. It is his life that is at stake. His future. Everything that he holds dear. Should a man smash that up in one instant of jealous rage which he will regret the rest of his life?

Oh, he was jealous all right. He was writhing and aching and seared with jealousy. He simply could not allow himself to visualize Ellie and Harry in bed together. It was too monstrous. If he just didn’t have to see it with his own eyes.

So he stayed there seated on his suitcase in the shadows and he waited. And kept his face buried in his hands so he could not look up to the dim light in the bedroom. Their bedroom. Ellie’s and his. The bedchamber he had brought her to as a bride and where her maidenhead had been broken. Where Sissy had been conceived.

He did not know how long he sat there. It seemed like many hours, but he knew it was probably less than one. He did not know what caused him to finally lift his head and gaze dully at the house again, but just as he did so he saw a light come on inside the frosted glass upper portion of the front door. That meant to him that the stairway light had been switched on from above and that someone was coming down the stairs.