“HI, BEAUTY!” CALLED DON AS HE UNLOCKED THE front door. The salutation was for whichever of the two girls heard him first. “I’m back, sweet. Anyone call me?” The tone was loud and automatically cheerful. He had to force the appearance of high spirits. The morning had been spent drearily at a double-feature in a cheap movie theater. After a greasy lunch at a stinking drugstore counter, he had wandered among the downtown stores, looking at imported slacks and brass-buttoned blue jackets, which would have been correct and smart attire for the host of a beach house. He charged two ties and a blazer to Elaine’s account, less because he wanted the things than for the psychological effect. It was important that he appear jaunty and unconcerned.
“Hey, where’s everybody?”
At the end of the hall he saw a shape approaching, but it was his own image reflected in the mirror whose green and shadowed surface showed a dismal figure.
“Cindy!”
A silent house, a shadowed mirror, the echo of his own voice brought about a swift sinking of heart. Fletcher’s bedroom door was closed, Elaine’s, too. He burst into the guest room. “Good grief, you’re not still sleeping.” His wife stirred and moaned. “Don’t tell me you’ve been in bed all day. It’s half-past three.”
She lay with open eyes, staring at the ceiling. “Where’ve you been all day?”
“I called up a chap I knew at college. Tony Buchanan, I don’t think you ever met him. He’s in oil, I thought maybe he’d have some good contacts for me.” The explanation was swift and glib. “Just caught him before he left for Spain. I drove him to the airport and we had lunch. I ought’ve called you, oughtn’t I?”
Cindy groaned.
“Are you sick? What’s wrong? Didn’t I tell you not to drink so much champagne?”
“Daddy’s dead.”
“No! I don’t believe it. You’re kidding. Sorry, dear. That was a hell of a thing to say. As if I’d kid about it. But the shock.” He stretched out his arms, regarded the tremor of his hands. “Look how I’m shaking. How’d it happen? Suicide?”
Cindy jerked up like a puppet on wires. “No! No!”
Her temper showed more of resentment than grief. Don thought he knew all of her moods. The vehemence surprised him. “What was it? An accident?”
“They said sleeping pills. Why does everybody think that?”
“Who’s everybody? Have a lot of people been here?” he asked nervously.
“The police. And the doctor, of course.”
“Police?”
“Two detectives. It’s the thing when somebody dies and they think it’s suicide. Why do they, Don?”
“Elaine’s been afraid of it for a long time. How’s she taking it?”
“Cold as ice. I don’t understand her at all.” An abundance of tears showed Cindy’s warmer nature. “Why are you so worried about her?”
“She’s his wife.”
“I’m his daughter. And I refuse to believe in any suicide.”
In a cajoling tone Don asked what made her so certain. Her answer showed family loyalty, if not logic. A man like her father would never do a terrible thing like that. Besides, he had no reason to end his life. “He had everything he wanted, didn’t he? Unless there was some trouble about his investments and he lost everything. There was a broker that called him from New York this morning. You don’t think he’s lost all his money, Don?” Grief at her father’s death was overshadowed by deeper fear.
“I’ve heard nothing about it. The market’s strong now. Everything seems in good shape financially.”
“You see!” Cindy exclaimed. “I knew it wasn’t anything like that . . . I mean . . . why should he? Disgrace himself and his family. I don’t want my father remembered as a suicide.”
“It’s no disgrace.”
“It’s the coward’s way out. I loved my father too much to believe that of him.”
Don consoled her as best he could, petted her gently, said she ought to be glad her poor father had found peace, and that they ought not to question the will of God. He sat in the darkened room, holding her hand until she fell asleep again. There was only one idea in his mind, to get his hands on the diary. His fingers itched for the touch of that potent book, his eyes ached for the sight of Fletcher’s handwriting. He dared not move until he was sure that Cindy was asleep. Fortunately, the house was quiet. He listened at Elaine’s door before he went to Fletcher’s bedroom.
On the dresser lay the things Fletcher had taken out of his pockets before he lay down for his final sleep; wallet, address book, keys, pencil, fountain pen. Don’s hands trembled with the key ring. He had to wipe sweat from his fingers before he could unlock the drawer. He opened the diary at random, turned from one entry to another, finding in each some new excitement.
Elaine came into the room quietly.
Don managed to slide the diary into the top drawer before he rose and took her in his arms.
“I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “I’ve been sleeping so hard that there could have been an earthquake and I wouldn’t have known. Dr. Julian gave me a shot of something absolutely lethal.”
“I’m so sorry, dear.”
She patted his shoulder to show gratitude.
Don looked over his shoulder to be sure that the diary was safely out of sight.
Elaine was neat and severe in dark trousers and a white shirt. Untinted lips and shadowed eyes added to the look of austerity. A purple bruise scarred her jaw. “I can’t believe it, Don . . . that he’s . . . gone. Or maybe,” she licked dry lips, “it’s just that I don’t want to. Don, do you think it was that awful fuss last night and his getting so furious and losing his voice? It made him so desperate. I feel that—” But she cut herself off and assumed a locked-away look that denied feeling.
“How awful it must have been for you this morning. What bad luck that I wasn’t here to help you.”
She caressed the bruised jaw. “I tripped in the kitchen last night and knocked my face against the edge of the sink. Dorine puts too much wax on the floor. Is it still so swollen? Fletcher put an icebag on it.” An inexperienced liar, she added unnecessary detail.
Cindy drifted in like a sleepwalker, sipping instant coffee and saying she had not been able to sleep again. “Has anybody got a cigarette?” She looked around frantically, as if she could not live another ten seconds without one. “Donnie, I haven’t told mom yet.”
“Want me to?”
Don saw that Elaine had gone over to the desk. He came over quickly and touched the papers that lay there. “As a lawyer I can be a big help to you girls.”
“I’d better tell Mom myself. After all, I am her daughter.”
No one denied this, and Cindy took the telephone on the long wire into the hall where she could speak privately, but excitement raised her voice to such a pitch that the others heard every word. She broke the news with ecstatic importance.
The first Mrs. Strode was, of course, hideously shocked. From time to time Cindy would put her hand over the instrument and call in to report that her mother who had, after all, lived with Daddy for so many years, did not believe he was a man who would kill himself in any circumstances. Every question and statement was repeated several times. Fletcher would have been irritated by the long conversation. Since she was a little girl, Cindy had been scolded for tying up the telephone. Now she was free to talk as long as she liked. They were all free to be themselves without considering the whims of a sick and surly man.
She was through at last. “My mother wants to know when we’re having the funeral.”
“That depends upon when they finish the autopsy,” Elaine said. “That detective promised to ask them to rush it. I thought he might have tried to call while I was sleeping. And Dr. Julian said he’d help me with the arrangements.”
“Why him?” demanded Don.
“He wants to be helpful, but if you’d prefer to take care of things, Don . . .” Elaine was on her way to the kitchen. “Is anyone hungry? We haven’t eaten all day.”
“Did you ever see anyone so heartless?” asked Cindy.
“We’ve got to go on living,” Don said. When Cindy had left the room, he took out the diary, put it in his pocket, locked the desk drawer, and went to the bathroom because it was the only place he could be sure of privacy while he read what Fletcher Strode had written about his life, his wife, and his death.
AFTER HE MADE his last house call of the day, Ralph stopped at a delicatessen, bought noodle soup, roast chicken, ham, tongue, roast beef, corned beef, smoked salmon, coleslaw, pickles, potato salad, three kinds of cheese, rye and white breads, apple strudel, and chocolate cake.
The abundance delighted Elaine. “How he would have loved this. Fletcher. Delicatessen was his very favorite food. He was even more extravagant than you are.” Such memories were tribute, a list of foods her service to the dead. “Smoked turkey, sturgeon, Nova Scotia Salmon, fois gras, Holland asparagus and caviar.” Here she paused to recall a naughty evening when they had started with an early snack of caviar and vodka, made love, and forgotten a theater party. Wayward memories restored her. She moved about gracefully as she fetched plates and laid out cold cuts in rows between bouquets of parsley. “Roquefort was his favorite cheese, but it had to be real, French, first-class Roquefort.”
He would never again ask her to mix Roquefort with sweet butter, never stand as Ralph stood now, watching while she flew from table to refrigerator, from stove to sink, never come bumbling into the kitchen to find out what they were having for dinner. Now, poignantly, because of this small thing, his pleasure in the flavor of cheese, she saw death—his death—as something more than an end to suffering, for there had also been an end to pleasure. The joys of an ordinary day are what give purpose, if not meaning, to being alive: a clear sky, breakfast coffee, a walk on the beach, the car humming along the open road, the change of seasons, a good joke, the surprising conduct of one’s friends. The list is too long for recording. Even in the last sad years, after he had rejected gaudier activities, Fletcher had loved to lie back in his comfortable chair, drinking cold beer and watching a stiff fight, a close race, a tough game on TV. He enjoyed surprises and treats, like giving presents; no birthday or holiday had gone unmarked. Pretty women still fascinated him; he never failed to watch the sway of a firm buttocks under a tight skirt, considered himself a connoisseur of legs and breasts, and could never resist pinching or kissing her flesh when his wife came close. There were other things, indeed too many for recording, and now it would make no difference that the Mets won or lost a World Series.
They ate so solemnly that the food lost flavor. Ralph’s efforts at lightness increased the weight of gloom. To divert them he talked about his boyhood in this house. Elaine’s bright eyes were turned toward him, but Ralph could not tell whether she was far away or listening too attentively. Just the same, he tried to divert her. “My Aunt Cora may not have been the world’s greatest cook, but she was tops with certain dishes. Her stuffed breast of veal was famous. She got the recipe from a Hungarian chef whom Uncle Jules treated for stomach ulcers.”
“Do you think,” asked Cindy, “it would be correct for my mother to come to the funeral?”
“If she wants to,” Elaine said.
“Wouldn’t it be embarrassing for you, dear?” asked Don.
Elaine shrugged. “For her, too, I imagine. With such a small and quiet funeral, we’d have to speak to each other.”
“It won’t be that small,” declared Cindy. “There’ll probably be a lot of people. I won’t have you getting chintzy about my father’s funeral.”
“She doesn’t mean it’s to be cheap, love. Elaine feels that your father hadn’t many friends here, and—”
“We’ve got friends, you and I, Donnie. Dozens of people have entertained us, and with your contacts and all. It’s been bad enough, not being able to entertain, but the least we can do is give my father a proper funeral. He deserves it. He was an important man.”
“Whatever you like. Please take care of it, Don. Let Cindy have whatever she thinks will impress her friends.”
“I refuse to sit here and be insulted. With my father not cold in his grave.” Cindy pushed back her chair. High heels clattered on the tiled floor.
Elaine said she was sorry. Don started after Cindy, but changed his mind and returned to his chair to remark that the poor kid seemed strangely obsessed with the notion that her father had not killed himself. “What’s your opinion, Doctor?”
Ralph replied that he could not judge an act he had not witnessed. There could be no definite answer until the autopsy was done.
“Elaine oughtn’t to be surprised. She’s been expecting it for a long time, haven’t you, dear?”
Elaine’s face, which so frequently betrayed her with a rosy flush, had become bloodless, the ivory flesh as yellow as saffron. Her right hand protected the bruise.
“She told me so quite frankly. Out there in the pavilion.”
Her eyelids flickered, her long neck bent in acquiescence. “Yes, I did expect it. I was afraid for a long time.” Each word came out separately, forced by a reluctant will.
“Not without cause,” Ralph said. “When a man keeps a supply of drugs hidden, it’s obvious what’s on his mind.”
“Hidden! And you found them?” Don sounded angry as though he had been cheated of important information.
“Yesterday. Before he died. Dorine and I were cleaning his closet. So I knew I’d been right about what I told you.”
My wife, Fletcher Strode had written in his diary, is a devious woman.
“What did you do with the pills?”
“I hid them the way I hide the others.”
“What others?” Don persisted.
“The prescription. I kept the bottle hidden and only gave him two a night. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No, dear, you didn’t. Probably forgot to mention it.” Don threw her an indulgent smile. “Bit complicated, isn’t it? Two hidden stores of pills. Did you remember to tell that to the detectives?”
“She did,” Ralph said, “and we discussed it with them. It’s not extraordinary. A potential suicide always complicates things. With all the vacillations—he’s apt to change from hour to hour—and in the end, the act is triggered by an impulse.”
“Impulse.” The word hung in the air while Elaine’s hand, bearing a fork, remained at the level of her chin.
“Don’t you believe it was impulse? After all that storm and temperament last night,” Don said. “An impulse of that kind would be very natural. On anybody’s part.” He turned to Ralph. “It’s not good form to speak ill of the dead, but we have to be honest about it. He was beastly to her.”
“He was so miserable,” Elaine flared out. “You don’t know. None of us will ever know how miserable. Desperate!” Her hand tightened on her jaw as though she cherished the hurt Fletcher had given her.
In a sudden fury she gathered up plates and coffee cups. “Are we finished?” Whether they were or not, she whisked their dishes off to the kitchen. They went after her, offered help, but proved a hindrance. She was nervous, declared they got in her way, that they would put things in the wrong places, clog the garbage disposal, let good food go to waste. “Please, may I do that?” and “Do let me pass,” or, with a shriek, “No, no, not there!” Ralph retreated to the edge of the kitchen and Don kept saying, “Sorry . . . so sorry, dear,” like a penitent schoolboy.
“You must think I’m an awful bitch,” she said to Ralph when Don had gone off to his bedroom and she was finishing at the sink.
“I think you’ve had enough. You’ve behaved admirably, but you’re worn out. I’m putting you to bed.”
“And leaving?”
“I’ll sit with you until you’ve relaxed.”
“Not in there.” She led him along the hall past the door of her bedroom. Even as a doctor he was not to be allowed that privilege. She did not want him to remember that he had entered the room as her lover.
He arranged pillows so that she could stretch comfortably upon the living room couch. They agreed not to talk about Fletcher’s death and could find nothing else to talk about. Neither lovers nor friends now, they looked at each other like strangers, and at the room as though they had no right to be there. When he had come to this house as an adopted child, Ralph had been drawn irresistibly to the formal parlor with its silk drapes, waxed woods, glistening porcelains, its pretty little objects of ivory and silver. The room had been declared out of bounds to a clumsy boy. It was cozier now, less formal, yet with all of Elaine’s books and lamps and pictures, he still felt himself an intruder.
Death had come between the lovers. In the silence Elaine grew restless. She was worn out but not sleepy after her long, drugged nap. She recalled those conversations she had planned but never held, confessions of her fears, and she wondered, looking at Ralph’s somber, bony face, if his knowing could have prevented the final act. “I meant to tell you,” she began. Her lips twitched and a nerve jumped on the left side below the eye. She wanted her face concealed from his pale and searching eyes. Once more at the window with her back to him, “I was afraid, I guess. It was on my mind all the time,” she confessed.
“I knew.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t want you to be frightened.”
“I was. Terribly. All the time.” Passionate hands were clasped before her breast as in prayer. “I used to go to his room nights”—she breathed in spasms between the phrases—“to listen and know that he was alive.”
“If you’d gone to him last night, you might have been in time to save him.”
She had no answer. Beyond the window there was no world. The sky had no color, the stars were hidden. Fog shut out the ocean and the lighted streets below the hill. Elaine did not know that she was crying. There were no sobs. Tears jetted out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. They brought no relief.
THERE IS AN acute moment between sleep and thought when every sense becomes aware and the mind, free of daytime clutter, finds reality in illusion. Elaine heard Fletcher at her door again. She knew he was dead, yet felt the living presence. Waiting as she had waited last night (and on so many nights when he had come to her bed for consolation), her ear tuned itself for the whine of hinges, the weight of footsteps, the rhythm of his breathing. Every nerve and cell anticipated the touch of his flesh, her heart raced, temperature rose, and all the excitable muscles of loins and pelvis became clamorously alive. For an instant, only the slightest sliver of a second, she let the past return, the good past, the times that had been crazy with love and consummation. “Hi, lovable!” Through all of this she knew and accepted reality. “You’re dead.”
Time became infinity as she lay in passionate silence waiting for the nightmare, if it had been nightmare, to come to its crisis. “Oh Fletch, Fletch,” she moaned, “why did it have to be like this?” She heard the answer as clearly as if he were in the room, heard the voice, mechanical, irate, the crippled ringmaster crying out his bitter commands to the mocking, stubborn animals. Over and over, like a faulty phonograph record, those sickening belches and cackles. She turned on the light, rejecting sleep. Sleep had become the enemy, admitting terror, distorting memory, revealing truth.
In the light he was there, too, inescapable in every object she looked at, touched, and felt against her body. All of her trinkets, her jewelry, many of her garments, had been chosen by him. “I like you in those colors, lovable.” The robe she wrapped about her on chilly nights was one he had enjoyed. She could feel the big hand on the soft fabric.
She forced herself to enter his room. Scents of intimacy remained. She smelled toilet water, sniffed his shirts, touched his hairbrushes. Last night he had left his things upon the dresser—wallet, fountain pen, key ring, a scattering of small change. Jacket and trousers had been hung neatly upon the silent valet, socks and shirts and shorts placed upon the bench below the window. Everything as usual, except the man who had died in that bed. His head had left a hollow in the pillow, the sheets were wrinkled, the covers thrown back. She stood a few feet from the bed, frowning at the emptiness as though she sought some answer there. Vigorously then, she jerked off the sheets. The ease with which she handled the dead man’s linens was astonishing.
“What are you doing at this hour?”
She whirled about, faced Don, and said, “I thought I’d clean up a bit. It’s all such a mess.” She jerked off the bedclothes and automatically, like a good housewife, folded them.
“It’s quarter to three.”
“What difference does it make? I couldn’t sleep. It’s better to keep busy.” She went on with the tasks. A passion for tidiness had seized her. “If people come here, we’ll want it to look nice.” With the same energy she gave to the folding of sheets, she offered excuses. “Cindy expects people to call. You and she have made so many friends.”
“Plenty of time tomorrow. No one knows about it yet.”
“I suppose I do look silly in the middle of the night.” She swept out of the room, carrying the linens to the hamper.
Don hurried ahead to switch on the lights. In the narrow corridor he turned and faced her. When she had got rid of the sheets and pillowcases, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, Don.”
He had not seen her alone since he had read the entire diary. “Let me help you through this. Ask anything of me, tell me anything you want, trust me, beauty.”
She was glad he was there because she had to keep busy, to move around, use her hands, occupy herself with small tasks. She made a pot of cocoa. Fletcher had always taken cocoa on sleepless nights. He said it soothed him.
“I hope you don’t think I’m nosy asking you this, but how are you fixed for money?”
The milk in the pan required full attention. She had to watch carefully so that she could snatch it off the flame when it started to bubble. “That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.”
“At the moment, I mean. Cash on hand. The estate will be tied up. In probate for quite a while.”
The milk began to boil. Elaine slid the pot off the burner. “We haven’t a lot, Cindy and I, but if you need anything right away, just ask me. I’ll be happy to do what I can.” The offer was reckless. Don had little more than two hundred dollars of borrowed money in his bank account, and was at the end of his resources. But he felt the risk worthwhile if Elaine had confidence in him.
“You’re sweet, Don. Will you hand me two cups? The big yellow ones. I don’t need money, thank you. I’ve got two accounts, a checking and a savings, in my own name, Elaine Guardino Strode. In case anything ever happened to him, he said.” She stirred the cocoa with the wooden spoon. “He probably planned this for a long time.” She went on and on about Fletcher’s desperate unhappiness and the suicide impulse, repeating everything she had told Don that afternoon in the pavilion.
Don listened attentively. No matter what tomorrow should bring, today’s assets depended upon Elaine’s goodwill. His offer of a loan had primed the pump. “And remember, if you need advice, I’m a lawyer. I want you to come to me with all your problems.”
She thanked him absently. There were other things on her mind, “Do you feel any twinges of guilt?”
“Me?”
Elaine sat moodily over the steaming cocoa, her head bent above the cup like a gypsy brooding over tea leaves. A shadow had fallen across her face. “We tormented him.”
“That’s nonsense, ridiculous, an exaggeration. No one tortured him, he was the one who caused all the trouble.”
“He thought we were lovers.”
“He thought. Suspicion haunts the guilty mind.” This was a direct quotation. Fletcher had used the old saw as though it had been an original, striking thought. Don had made notes on several items before he locked the book back into the desk. “It was his jealousy. Not only of me, of every man. You told me so yourself.”
As Elaine raised her head the mysterious shadow vanished. She held her cup in both hands like a child. “It’ll be strange without him. There’s a kind of emptiness already. These past few years, every day, every hour, has been with him and for him, trying to keep him interested in living. Not that I was very successful.”
“You’re free now. It’s all over, your life’s your own, you can do what you like.”
Fletcher had known that she dreamed of freedom; there had been mention of it in the diary.
“What do I want?” She set down the cup and held out both hands for freedom to be delivered into them. “Perhaps later I’ll know. It’s funny, I used to think about it, when I was bored sometimes and lonely for New York, I’d imagine . . .” She stopped, hugging her body, lowering her shoulders under the weight of freedom too suddenly achieved. “Sometimes I thought he knew. Once he heard me on the phone, I was talking to an old friend who’d just got a divorce. I said to her that she was free, her life was her own. He thought I was speaking of him and me and ever since I’ve felt so . . . so . . .” She raised dark lids, letting Don look into her eyes, letting him know she was not afraid of a word, “guilty.”
“You take things too hard, you’re too sensitive.” It was to show his faith in her that Don spoke this way.
“It was wicked of me, with him so sick and unhappy and dependent. But I suppose one oughtn’t to feel too responsible for every foolish and meaningless word. Or daydream. Perhaps I am too sensitive.” This was accompanied by a flutter of self-conscious laughter. “Daydreams can be dangerous, can’t they?”
“Not if they stay just dreams.”
“I suppose.”
“But dreams are the source of action.” Don remembered some professor—of law, psychology, logic?—who had advised students to seek criminal motives in man’s reveries. With every word Elaine made herself more vulnerable and more helpful to Don Hustings. He added quickly, “You need someone to look after you. I’m the man of the family now. Leave your problems to me, dear.”
“You are a help, Don. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad, too.” Sympathy shone out of his dark eyes. A family pet could have shown no greater devotion.
“Perhaps it’s better this way. For Fletcher. He was too proud, he couldn’t ever be resigned. There was no real compensation for him, ever. Not one of your cheerful cripples.” She wore a delicate, faraway expression that her husband might have called devious.
Such a woman, mused Don, unaware that expedience shaped his thinking, might well be judged as her husband had foreseen. She had changed in Don’s eyes; her flesh had a different color. She had become dark, brooding, tragic, Italian, with black hair falling about her shoulders like a shawl. The electric clock ticked, the refrigerator rumbled, and below the hill, fire sirens shrieked. The very air seemed nervous.
Later, when Elaine had gone back to her room, Don reread an item copied from the diary:
When it is over and I am gone she will say she loved me and wanted me to live. She might even believe this is true because I have noticed that most people believe what they need to believe. Especially when desperate and trying to hide from the killer side of our souls. Believing is convenient when it helps us forget that our minds are like beasts in the jungle.
In the locked desk drawer Don had also found lists of properties, stock holdings, bonds, and investments. Although not yet a member of the bar there, he knew that in California, as in most states, a person convicted of murder cannot inherit the victim’s property.
He returned to the bedroom quietly. Cindy heard him, turned toward the wall, and pretended to be asleep. She had been restless too, had got up twice, first to take a crumpled plastic bag from a hiding place behind the luggage in the closet, to fold it and place in her hatbox; then to remove it, shake it out, and place it over the beige organza dress she had worn to the party.