Brett Halliday: Michael Shaynes' 50th case

The bedroom light remained lit.

He remained hunched back, hidden in the shadows, and waited, scarcely drawing a breath, his gaze fixed on the front door of his home with terrible intensity.

The door opened inward and for one brief moment the figure of Harry Wilsson was silhouetted against the hallway light behind him. Then he pressed the switch and the light went out, and he stepped out and closed the door solidly behind him.

Marvin Blake did not move as his friend and neighbor circled around the front of the convertible and got in the front seat.

The bedroom light remained on while Harry pressed the starter and his motor hummed into life and the convertible glided down the driveway in the starlight.

Watching him go, Marvin saw that he rolled downward slowly without turning on his headlights to betray his leaving until he had turned into Lily Lane.

As though he had practiced that secretive method of departure often, Marvin thought with anguish.

And he could not help wondering how often he had.

The paramount feeling of which he was aware at that awful moment was one of unutterable sadness. He was numbed beyond any other emotion. There was an empty sickness in his stomach and he hugged his arms tightly about himself and trembled. Everything was over. Everything that had been good in life was now shattered.

He knew, with that sickness inside him, that he and Ellie could never pick up the pieces of their life again. No matter how hard they both tried. She was upstairs in their bedroom, lying in the bed that was still warm from their love-making.

He did not know what to do next. Now that Ellie was alone he could go in without, at least, causing a melodramatic scene. But it was too late in the night to pretend to Ellie that he had just walked up from the station after getting off the late train and had no idea he had been cuckolded during his absence. He looked at his watch and saw it was fifteen minutes after eleven. More than an hour since the train had stopped to let him off. He tried to think of some plausible story he could tell Ellie to explain the lapse of time, but even as he did so he knew it wasn’t feasible.

With her sense of guilt, Ellie would never believe him. And, in truth, he didn’t believe he’d be able to carry it off even if she allowed him to do so. In his heart he knew he couldn’t go in and face Ellie now and pretend he knew nothing.

However, he could, perhaps, go in calmly and without anger, and explain to Ellie that he knew she had been closeted in the bedroom with Harry Wilsson, and listen to her tearful and shamefaced explanation of how it had happened. How Harry had just dropped in casually after dinner to keep her company during Marvin’s last evening away from home, and how they’d had a few drinks together. And how the drinks had hit her unexpectedly and how it happened. Without her anticipating it. Without her wanting it. With her so tight she hadn’t really known it was happening until it was all over. And how terribly ashamed she was and disgusted with herself, and how she still loved him dearly in spite of everything and if he could just find it in his heart to forgive her and to forget…

He knew that was the way it would be if he went in now and told Ellie what he knew. And he didn’t know whether he could stand that or not. Forgive Ellie?

He didn’t know. When a man says he can forgive a person, exactly what does it mean? He can go through the outward motions. He can say the word out loud. But will he really mean the words he speaks aloud? Is true forgiveness honestly possible?

Certainly, he told himself, he could never forget. Never in all the world could he do that. Would it be possible to go on living together with the memory of this night always with him? He told himself firmly that he should try, for Sissy’s sake. At least until the child was older and didn’t need both parents so much. Then, if the situation proved to be unbearable, a quiet and unemotional separation could be arranged.

He had actually picked up his suitcase and started across the drive toward the front door when he stopped suddenly. He knew he could not do it. Not right then. Not while Ellie was still flushed from the caresses of her lover. He needed time to think things out and get a firm grip on himself. To evaluate what had happened, and to calmly plan the future.

He turned slowly and went down the winding driveway, carrying his suitcase with him. There was a southbound local due in a couple of hours that stopped at Sunray. No one need notice him get aboard it, and no one need know he had been in Sunray at all that night. He could go back to Miami, now that he knew the truth, and simply come back on the afternoon train as planned. By that time he would have things thought out clearly, and he would find a way, somehow, to go on and make a life with Ellie.

He felt awfully sorry for himself as he walked slowly and listlessly back down the driveway which he had walked up so blithely and happily only an hour before. He seemed to be standing off on the sidelines and looking at the pathetic figure of Marvin Blake wearily shuffling away from his home in the silence and loneliness of the night, and his heart bled for the man he watched.

Why had they done that to him? His wife and Harry Wilsson. How could they have done such a thing to a husband and a best friend? Didn’t they care, or were they so thoughtless they hadn’t realized what they were doing? Or so much in love that it didn’t matter to them how they hurt Marvin Blake?

Ellie in love with Harry? No! Ellie was in love with him. She had been for ten whole years. You don’t just change loves like you do a dress. A woman like Ellie doesn’t.

And then he wondered if he knew what sort of person Ellie was after all. Did he really know her? Had he ever known her? Or was the Ellie in his mind just an image he had conjured up? What he wanted his wife to be, not necessarily what she was.

Certainly, the Ellie he thought he knew could not have fouled his bed tonight with another man.

Harry Wilsson, too. What did he actually know about him? The Harry that Marvin knew was laughing and gay and out-going. A congenial friend and drinking companion. The best man at his wedding, and the gravely understanding friend who had held his hand while Sissy was being born.

He had just reached the intersection of his driveway with Lily Lane when the whole thing really hit him for the first time. It hadn’t been real up to that point. It was something he had realized and accepted, but with his mind only.

Not with his emotions. It hit him all at once and all over and terribly, and he pushed through the hibiscus hedge with his suitcase to the other side where he couldn’t possibly be seen, and he dropped face downward onto the ground and began crying like a baby.

He didn’t see how he was going to stand it. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

By the time the local came through from Jacksonville, Marvin Blake knew what he was going to do. What he had to do.

Death was the only answer. Oblivion. He would be mourned for a time, but that would end and Marvin Blake would be forgotten.

Sissy would be all right. There was Marvin’s insurance, his automobile agency, and a large equity in the house on Lily Lane. At the age of six, death did not impinge too harshly on a child’s mind, and suicide would be practically a meaningless word to her.

While waiting for the train to reach Sunray Beach, Marvin planned everything carefully. It was most important, to avoid the slightest possibility of scandal involving Sissy’s mother, that no one should ever guess that Marvin Blake had come home this night.

There would be a police investigation, of course, and he realized they would discover that he had checked out of the Miami hotel that afternoon. There was even the possibility that they would discover the return half of his ticket had been used.