Shadow of Guilt (17 page)

I didn’t say anything, either. I’d seen the bracelet, so had she. Whatever there was to say had to come from her.

In a dry little voice she said, “Has he gone?”

“Yes.”

She moved to a window. It was a pointless movement if it had anything to do with Lieutenant Trant because the windows looked out on the back yard. For a moment she stood there, gazing out at God knows what. Then she turned. “It isn’t what you think,” she said.

“It’s your bracelet.”

“Of course it is. But Don put it where—where it was found. You’ve got to believe me. That must have been one of his filthy, blackmailer’s tricks.”

“You mean he stole it from you?”

“No. I knew I’d lost it. The clasp was loose anyway. I was almost sure I’d lost it there in his apartment. That’s why, when you mentioned it once, I—I hedged.”

“So you have been there.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been there.”

She moved over to a couch, the largest red leather couch in the huge room. There was a silver cigarette box. It had a fancy message of gratitude and greeting on it. It had been given to her father by some group or other of his devoted employees. She opened it, took out a cigarette and fit it in her stilted, “society-woman” way.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? Everything coming today. Ala telling me about Mrs. Lord—and now this.”

I thought I could see it all, or if not all, enough: Connie’s flush of pleasure when we’d run into Saxby at the opera, her exaggerated reluctance to let Ala go with him to the party, even my own initial, instinctive, quite unjustified jealousy. I felt the jealousy, even less justifiably, now.

“You were in love with him,” I said.

“In love? No, I wouldn’t call it love.”

“What would you call it?”

She held the cigarette tilted upward between her first and second fingers. “You accused me once of having my head in a gas oven about him. Do you remember?”

I remembered. It was almost as if I were back sitting on the edge of my bed, taking off my shoe, exhausted and prickly with exasperation.

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

“And I said, ‘Would it make any difference to you if it was true?’ It seems incredible now that I hadn’t guessed you’d found someone else. But then I’m not very good at understanding what goes on in other people, am I? Look at Ala. I always thought I was helping her, and look what came out of it—Richmond, Don Saxby. Oh, I knew there was something wrong between you and me, of course. I’d known that for a long time, but I thought… well, it seemed perfectly natural for you to get more and more wrapped up in your work. I knew you’d always felt a bit awkward about my having money. It seemed natural too that you’d want to prove yourself, that you’d be tired often—and even bored often. But I thought that was probably true of most marriages, even good ones, I mean. I used to tell myself it was just a phase, a sort of middle phase which would work itself out. And all the time, in your mind like Ala’s, I’d become the bogey woman, the schoolteacher who made too many demands, the overbearing Consuelo Corliss who had to be escaped from for a little warmth—to Mrs. Lord, the woman in your league.”

She smiled. It was a wry little drooping of the comers of her mouth.

“You’ve got to believe me. I never had the slightest idea. That’s why I wasn’t in love with Don Saxby. I was stupid enough to think I still had what I wanted, not quite the way I wanted it, of course, but I thought that would come back too.”

I felt a terrible embarrassment. What could I say? Fortunately—or more probably considerately—she didn’t give me a chance to say anything.

“Of course, with Don it was a temptation. I’d felt so—so unnecessary as a woman for so long. And when I met him in that gallery, when he seemed to admire me… He called the next day; he took me to lunch. I went once, twice, again. He was always so charming, managing to make me feel amusing and pretty and clever. It was all so different. I mean, there never seemed to be much of a chance for you and me to do anything like that together. I’d drifted into all those committees and things. They’d filled up the time in a way, but… We even went to the movies. He bought popcorn. We held hands. I knew it was ridiculous for a woman my age, but somehow it didn’t feel ridiculous. And then, after the movies, we’d go to his horrible little apartment for a drink. It was fine. I liked it fine, but always around quarter to five or five I’d think: George will be home soon, and I’d always make a point of getting back before you because I always felt that was one of the good times between us, when you came back from the office and had a drink and…”

She gave a little shrug. “Then the last time… about a month ago? I don’t remember. Anyway, after the movies, we went back to his apartment and he made love to me. He’d never done it before. But he did then and I—I almost went through with it. I was muddled. I didn’t really know what I felt. But at the last minute… well, I guess I’m not cut out to be an unfaithful wife. I shirked it. I just ran out. That was the last time I saw him alone.”

She sat down on the arm of a chair. She sat just as straight as she always did. She turned from profile to look at me, smiling again.

“As it turned out—now we know what he was and what he was after—prudery paid off, didn’t it? Perhaps, without admitting it, I always realized he was a phony. But there it is—the not very edifying story of me and near infidelity. Sometimes after that I almost regretted it, at times when you seemed particularly bored and I felt particularly dull—like the night at the opera. That’s why, when we ran into him quite by chance, it was exciting. It boosted my morale. There’s my admirer, I thought. I know it was childish, but when he still seemed to admire me, I wanted to show him off, I wanted to bring him back here and let you see. Then, of course, all the things with Ala began. That certainly paid me out for my giddiness, didn’t it?”

She threw out a hand. “So there it is. Ala—you—Don Saxby. I made a fool of myself all along the line, but once you get kicked out of a fool’s paradise, at least it’s a comfort to understand why you had the kick coming to you.”

Listening to her had been terrible for me, not for what she’d done, not for her pathetically justified blossoming under Don Saxby’s attentions, but for the light it shed on me. In her merciless self-accusation, she hadn’t accused me. There had never been a moment when she’d even hinted that any inadequacy had been mine. But I stood accused, and as I looked through her eyes back into the years of our marriage, back long before Eve, the realization of my own hypocrisy blazed out at me like a building suddenly illuminated by floodlights.

There I’d been, smugly committed to my own self-elected conception of what marriage to Consuelo Corliss had involved: the humiliation of being the husband of a rich woman (had Connie ever by word or deed showed she’d thought of me that way?); the strain of being the “average-guy” husband of an icily efficient, universally admired social figure (had Connie ever vaunted her own position?); and then, most self-deluding of all, the conviction that I was a red-blooded male stuck with a frigid female. Poor George Hadley. That’s what I’d chosen to think: that the marriage was too tough for me, never that I had been too feeble for the marriage. Poor George Hadley, no warmth at home for him. Ala’s phrase again. No warmth!

It was fine. I liked it fine, but always around quarter to five or five I’d think: George will be coming home soon…

She was still sitting on the arm of the chair, still smiling at me with her bright, almost impersonal smile, making no demands whatsoever. She would, I knew, rather die than make me feel she had been implying there were any seeds for reconciliation in what she’d revealed. She knew as well as I that it was far too late for us to pick up the pieces now. We might have, if this had happened before Eve, but this sort of thing never happened “before” anything. That was one of life’s axioms.

And that was what made the situation unbearable now. I knew my love was completely committed to Eve and I knew, although now there was no smugness in it, that indeed it was Eve’s league where I belonged and not Connie’s. There was nothing left to face my wife with but offerings which she would never accept—pity, regret and, of course, my own awareness of my total failure as a husband.

For a moment—it seemed like a moment of infinite duration—we just stayed there, Connie on the arm of the chair, me standing in front of the books.

It was Connie who said, “Isn’t this board-meeting day?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re terribly late, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but Lew knows we’re having our time of troubles.”

She got up. “George, about the bracelet. You got it at Cartier’s, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What if Lieutenant Trant is able to trace who bought it?” It was indicative of how far we had got from the pressure of the moment that, until she’d said that, I’d given up thinking of Lieutenant Trant. I’d hardly thought of Don Saxby either except as a thing which had happened to Connie and me—certainly not as a corpse.

She was looking at me, her face very calm but very solemn. “If he does identify it, if he finds out it’s mine…”

No, I thought. After all that had happened, they—whoever they were, the fates?—couldn’t do this to us.

“Won’t he think I killed him, George?”

She said that without emotion as if she were merely bringing up a fact to be considered.

The confusions in me steadied themselves. “But he can’t. At least we can be sure of that. You have an alibi. He knows that. Miss Taylor.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, Miss Taylor.” She gave a little smile. “So that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about, isn’t it? And we won’t have to worry about you either because I’ll call her right away. She’ll say you came home before three-thirty. I know she will. She’ll do anything for me.”

“All right,” I said. “Try her.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. I looked at my watch. “I’d better get down to the office. Lew wanted to see me this morning.”

“That’s something else,” she said, and her voice was almost its old, brisk Connie voice. “The first chance you get, do tell Mrs. Lord that I know and understand. Poor dear, life must have been awful for her all these last months. The least we can do is to relieve her mind a little.”

“Connie,” I said, and my voice cracked. I’d opened my mouth to speak and suddenly there was this thick, painful constriction in my throat. “Connie, I…”

“You really should hurry, dear,” she said. “You know how peevish Lew gets when he’s kept waiting…”

I went to Consolidated. Connie called to say that Miss Taylor had left for South Carolina early that morning because her mother had suddenly been taken sick.

“It’s maddening, George. But it’ll be all right, I’m sure. I’ll call her father and leave a message for her to get in touch with me the moment she arrives. Oh, and there’s something else, too. Vivien’s just heard about Chuck and she’s wild with enthusiasm. She insists on giving a family celebration party tonight. I’ll have to go, of course. But—well, with the board meeting and everything I’m sure you won’t have a proper chance to talk to Mrs. Lord at the office and I really think—I mean, for her sake—that you should let her know it’s all right. So I told Vivien not to count on you. I said you were working late. Wasn’t that the best thing?”

As I listened I wondered whether there was anyone in the world except Connie who would be behaving like this—arranging my alibi for me, staffing Vivien, thinking about Eve under circumstances which would have turned any other wife into a vengeful fury. Once again I felt the same old mixture of emotions: admiration, gratitude and a faint, very faint resentment that she should still be organizing me.

“Thanks, Connie. Thanks a lot.”

Bob Driscoll came for me then, and for the rest of the day I was tied up. The meeting wasn’t over until five and I hurried back to my office. It was the first time I’d had a chance to see Eve alone all day. When I told her about Connie, her reaction was far less complicated than mine.

“She really gave us her blessing?”

“Not only that. She figured we’d want to be alone for a while so she got me out of going to Vivien’s party.”

“And all these months…! George, she is wonderful, isn’t she? How am I ever going to let her know how grateful I am?”

That was when Vivien swirled into the office. For a moment she dazzled me. There was always so much going on with Vivien—furs gleaming, jewels and teeth sparkling, the tinkling laugh, the pretty “starlet” way which apparently hadn’t made the grade in Hollywood but had certainly been richly rewarded in her role as Mrs. Malcolm Ryson.

“George, darling! Hello, Mrs. Lord.” She ran to me and enveloped me in mink. “What’s all this about working late? Today of all days? Are you out of your mind? I’m just through having my hair done right around the comer and I said to myself: This is ridiculous. I’ll just plunge into that office and drag George off by the scruff of his neck—whatever that is.”

She swooped around to Eve. “You see, don’t you, Mrs. Lord? The nightmare’s all over. Chuck’s free again. He worships Ala. Ala worships him. How could she ever have wavered, etcetera? It’s all exactly as if nothing had happened, as if they’d turned back all the clocks. Tell him, Mrs. Lord, tell this dreary man he’s simply got to come and celebrate with the others. All the family together.”

I looked at Eve. She looked at me. I knew we were both feeling the same way. Whatever had happened to her own marriage, Connie had finally succeeded in getting Chuck and Ala together. One small way of repaying her was for me to see that the whole family was united at the moment of the celebration.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call you later at home, Mrs. Lord. If there’s any time, we still might get through some of the reports.”

“There!” said Vivien. “I knew it. I knew no one could be as monstrous as all that. Well, darling, off we go. I have the car outside.” She grabbed both my hands and then, just as she was going to whisk me away, she gave a little cluck. “Really, what happens at board meetings? You look as wilted as last week’s lettuce. You can’t blight my celebration like this. We’ll stop off at your house on the way and you can change into your most glamorous wedding garment. Good-bye, Mrs. Lord. Good-bye, good-bye.”