Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“Henry walked out on you?”

“Yes,” The syllable lengthened shakily into a sob. “He left this morning, with the car and the money and – everything.”

“After a quarrel?”

“We didn’t even quarrel,” as if Henry had denied her her rightful due. “The police called from Los Angeles early this morning, and Henry answered the telephone, and afterwards he heard me talking to them over the phone. He started packing right away, before I put down the receiver, even. I begged him to tell me what was the matter. He wouldn’t say a word, except that he had to go away on business. He checked out and drove away without even eating breakfast.”

“In your car?”

“I paid for it, only it’s registered in his name. Henry wanted it that way, and he was so masterful, and besides we bought it for our honeymoon. It was really my idea to put it in his name, it made me feel more married.” She hugged her large fine bosom, but there was cold comfort in that.

“You also mentioned money, Mrs. Fellows?”

“Yes.” A nervous hurt plucked at her eyebrows, drawing them closer together. “Please don’t call me Mrs. Fellows. I hate it. Call me Marjorie, or Mrs. Barron.”

“George’s name?”

“Yes.” She managed a weak smile, with tears still standing in her eyes. “George made me a very generous settlement, and I’ve thrown a lot of it away already. Great fool that I am.”

“How much did Henry get into you for?”

“Thirty thousand dollars.” The sound of the numbers seemed to appall her. Unconsciously, she reached for the alligator purse that was lying on the couch beside her, and pressed it to her girdled abdomen. “He said he had a wonderful chance to make a good investment for both of us: this apartment building in Hollywood. He showed me the apartment building, too. Now I guess it’s gone with the wind.”

There was a gentle tapping on the door behind me. She opened it, and an elderly waiter wheeled in our lunch on a cart. While he set the table, Marjorie left the room. She came back in time to tip him heavily, smiling with a washed and reconstructed face. At least Henry hadn’t taken her for all she had, financially or otherwise.

She ate her lunch with appetite, and asked me how I liked mine. I said that the German beer was very good, and that the quality of the shirred eggs Bercy was not strained. I waited until we had lighted cigarettes, and asked her: “What did you say to the police on the telephone this morning? Apparently that’s what frightened Henry off.”

“Do you think so? This Lieutenant Gary wanted to come and talk to me but I explained that I was on my honeymoon and he said he would get in touch with me again and arrange to have me make a deposition, or something of the sort. Then he asked me a lot of questions about Mr. Dalling’s house: what I was doing there and if I found you unconscious, and of course I said I did – and what time it was. Finally he told me that Mr. Dalling was dead, isn’t that dreadful?”

“Dreadful. Did Lieutenant Gary ask you what you were doing at the house when you found me?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The same as I told you.” She dropped her eyes demurely, and tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette. “That I was just driving by, and saw you lying there on the porch.”

“I think it’s time you told somebody the truth about that.”

She flared up feebly, like a moist firecracker. “How could I tell him the truth? Henry was standing right beside me at the phone, listening to everything I said. I didn’t dare to say a word about my suspicions of him–”

“You’d been having suspicions, then.”

“I was suspicious of Henry from the very beginning, if I’d admitted it to myself. Only he made me feel so good, I couldn’t face up to the facts. I knew he hadn’t much money, and he knew I had. I knew I was foolish to marry again so quickly before I checked his background. But I wanted so hard to believe that he loved me for myself, I deliberately blinded myself and rushed right in. I’d never have given him the thirty thousand if I hadn’t wanted to blind myself. I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid, Mr. Archer.”

“I doubt that you’re stupid at all,” I said. “You’re too darn emotional, is all. You probably made a mistake divorcing George, but a lot of women make the same mistake. Or else they make the mistake of not divorcing George.”

“You’re an awful cynic, aren’t you? But what you say is perfectly true. I am too emotional. I’m a great emotional fool, and you’ve put your finger on my central weakness. It was my foolish emotions that made me give him the money. I trusted him because I wanted to so badly. I had to trust him to make the whole thing stay real for a little longer. I guess it was slipping already.”

“When was this?”

“Last Thursday, the day after we came here. We were in Santa Barbara at the Biltmore before that. Our week there was a perfect idyll. They have a lovely big pool, and Henry actually taught me how to swim. Henry’s a splendid athlete, and that’s one of the things that appealed to me so much. I love to see a man be able to do things. He told me when he was younger, before he got his wound, that he was a boxing champion in the army.” She noticed that she was softening towards Henry, and caught herself up short, the harsh disgusted note breaking out in her voice again: “I suppose that was a lie, like everything else.”

“His wound?” I prompted her.

“His war wound. He was a colonel in the war, until he was invalided out because of his wound. He was living on his disability pension.”

“Did he ever show you a government check?”

“No, but I know he wasn’t lying about that. I saw the wound.”

“Where was he wounded?”

“In Germany. He fought under General Patton.”

“Not geographically. Physiologically.”

“Oh.” She blushed. “He had a dreadful scar on his abdomen. It still wasn’t completely healed, after all these years.”

“Too bad.”

“That week in Santa Barbara he told me the whole story of his life. But even then I began to have my suspicions. There was this waiter at the Biltmore who knew him. The waiter called him by some other name: apparently he remembered Henry from when he worked at another hotel somewhere. Henry was quite put out. He explained to me that it was a nickname, but I knew waiters don’t address hotel guests by their nicknames, and I wondered about it afterwards.”

“What was the name?”

“It’s queer, I don’t remember. It’ll probably come back, though. Anyway, that was when I started to have my real suspicions of him. Then when we came out here he was always going away, on business he said, and he wouldn’t tell me where he went. On Sunday night we had a quarrel about it. He wanted to go out by himself and I wouldn’t give him the keys to the car, so he had to take a taxi. When the taxi-driver got back to his stand, I tipped him to tell me where he had taken Henry, and he said it was this Mr. Dalling’s house. I waited up for him, but he wouldn’t tell me what he was doing there. The same thing happened Monday night. He went out and I waited and waited, and finally I drove out to the house to look for him.”

“And found me instead.”

“And found you instead.” She smiled.

“But you didn’t tell any of this to Lieutenant Gary.”

“Not a smidgen. I couldn’t, with Henry right there.”

“Are you going to, when you give your evidence?”

“Do you think I should?”

“Definitely.”

“I don’t know.” She pushed her chair back from the table, marched up and down the length of the Indian-patterned rug, her plump hips teetering at the top of her long straight legs. “I don’t know whether I will or whether I won’t. He might have really gone on a business trip, and be coming back tomorrow like he said. Henry’s a strange silent sort of man.”