Archer - The Chill Part 23

"He can't forgive himself. Did Helen tell you what they quarreled about?"

"Vaguely. It was something to do with a murder here in Bridgeton. Helen believed, or pretended to believe, that her father deliberately let the murderer go free."

"Why do you say she pretended to believe it?"

"My dear dead wife," he said, wincing at the phrase, "had quite a flair for the dramatic, especially in her younger days."

"Did you know her before she left Bridgeton?"

"For a few months. I met her in Chicago at a party in Hyde Park. After she left home I helped her to get a job as a cub reporter. I was working for the City News Bureau then. But as I was saying, Helen always had this dramatic flair and when nothing happened in her life for it to feed on she'd _make_ something happen or pretend that it had happened. Her favorite character was Mata Hari," he said with a chuckle that was half a sob.

"So you think she invented this murder?"

I suppose I thought so at the time, because I certainly didn't take it seriously. I have no opinion now. Does it matter?"

"It could matter very much. Did Helen ever talk to you about Luke Deloney?"

"Who?"

"Luke Deloney, the man who was killed. He owned the apartment building they lived in, and occupied the penthouse himself."

Haggerty lit a cigarette before he answered. His first few words came out as visible puffs of smoke: "I don't recall the name. If she talked about him, it couldn't have made much of an impression on me."

"Her mother seems to think Helen had a crush on Deloney."

"Mrs. Hoffman's a pretty good woman, and I love her like a mother, but she gets some wild ideas."

"How do you know that this one is so wild? Was Helen in love with _you_ then?"

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, like an unweaned child sucking on a dry bottle. It burned down to his yellow fingers. He tossed it into the street with a sudden angry gesture.

"She never was in love with me. I was useful to her, for a while. Later, in some sense, I was the last chance. The faithful follower. The last chance for gas before the desert."

"The desert?"

"The desert of love. The desert of unlove. But I don't think I'll go into the long and dreary chronicle of my marriage. It wasn't a lucky one, for either of us. I loved her, as far as I'm able to love, but she didn't love me. Proust says it's always that way. I'm teaching Proust to my soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s this fall, if I can summon up the _lan_ to go on teaching."

"Who did Helen love?"

"It depends on which year you're talking about. Which month of which year." He didn't move, but he was hurting himself, hitting himself in the face with bitter words.

"Right at the beginning, before she left Bridgeton."

"I don't know if you'd call it love, but she was deeply involved with a fellow-student at the City College. It was a Platonic affair, the kind bright young people have, or used to have. It consisted largely of reading aloud to each other from their own works and others'. According to Helen, she never went to bed with him. I'm pretty sure she was a virgin when I met her."

"What was his name?"

"I'm afraid I don't remember. It's a clear case of Freudian repression."

"Can you describe him?"

"I never met him. He's a purely legendary figure in my life. But obviously he isn't the elusive murderer you're searching for. Helen would have been happy to see _him_ go free." He had withdrawn from the pain of memory and was using an almost flippant tone, as if he was talking about people in a play, or watching ceiling movies at the dentist's. "Speaking of murder, as we seem to be doing, you were going to tell me about my ex-wife's death. She's completely ex now, isn't she, exed out?"

I cut in on his sad nonsense and gave him the story in some detail, including the man from Reno who ran away in the fog, and my attempts to get him identified. "Earl tells me you went to Reno last summer to see your wife. Did you run into any of her acquaintances there?"

"Did I not. Helen played a trick on me involving a couple of them. Her purpose was to stall off any chance for an intimate talk with me. Anyway, the one evening we spent together she insisted on making it a foursome with this woman named Sally something and her alleged brother."

"Sally Burke?"

"I believe that _was_ her name. The h.e.l.l of it was, Helen arranged it so that I was the Burke woman's escort. She wasn't a bad-looking woman, but we had nothing in common, and in any case it was Helen I wanted to talk to. But she spent the entire evening dancing with the brother. I'm always suspicious of men who dance too well."

"Tell me more about this brother. He may be our man."

"Well, he struck me as a rather sleazy customer. That may be projected envy. He was younger than I am, and healthier, and better looking. Also, Helen seemed to be fascinated by his line of chatter, which I thought was pointless--all about cars and horses and gambling odds. How a highly educated woman like Helen could be interested in such a man--" He tired of the sentence, and dropped it.

"Were they lovers?"

"How would I know? She wasn't confiding in me."

"But you know your own wife, surely."

He lit another cigarette and smoked half of it. "I'd say they weren't lovers. They were simply playmates. Of course she was using him to hit at me."

"For what?"

"For being her husband. For having been her husband. Helen and I parted on bad terms. I tried to put the marriage together again in Reno, but she wasn't even remotely interested."

"What broke up your marriage?"

"It had a major fracture in it from the beginning." He looked past me at the house where Earl Hoffman was lying senseless under the past. "And it got worse. It was both our faults. I couldn't stop nagging her and she couldn't stop--doing what she was doing."

I waited and listened. The church-bells were ringing, in different parts of the city.

"She was a tramp," Haggerty said. "A campus tramp. I started her on it when she was a nineteen-year-old babe in the woods in Hyde Park. Then she went on without me. Toward the end she was even taking money."

"Who from?"

"Men with money, naturally. My wife was a corrupt woman, Mr. Archer. I played a part in making her what she was, so I have no right to judge her." His eyes were brilliant with the pain that came and went like truth in him.

I felt sorry for the man. It didn't prevent me from saying: "Where were you Friday night?"

"At home in Maple Park in our--in my apartment, grading themes."

"Can you prove it?"

"I have the marked papers to prove it. They were turned in to me Friday, and I marked them Friday night. I hope you're not imagining I did something fantastic like flying to California and back?"

"When a woman is murdered, you ask her estranged husband where he was at the time. It's the corollary of _cherchez la femme_."

"Well, you have my answer. Check it out if you like. But you'll save yourself time and trouble simply by believing me. I've been completely frank with you--inordinately frank."

"I appreciate that."

"But then you turn around and accuse me--"

"A question isn't an accusation, Mr. Haggerty."

"It carried that implication," he said in an aggrieved and slightly nagging tone. "I thought the man in Reno was your suspect."

"He's one of them."

"And I'm another?"

"Let's drop it, shall we?"

"You brought it up."

"Now I'm dropping it. Getting back to the man in Reno, can you remember his name?"

"I was introduced to him, of course, but I don't recall his surname. The women called him Jud. I'm not sure whether it was a given name or a nickname."

"Why did you refer to him as Mrs. Burke's alleged brother?"

"They didn't strike me as brother and sister. They acted toward each other more like--oh--intimate friends who were simply going along with Helen's gag. I intercepted a couple of knowing glances, for example."

"Will you describe the man in detail for me?"

"I'll try. My visual memory isn't too good. I'm strictly the verbal type."

But under repeated questions, he built up an image of the man: age about thirty-two or -three, height just under six feet, weight about 175; muscular and active, good-looking in an undistinguished way; thinning black hair, brown eyes, no scars. He had worn a light gray silk or imitation silk suit and pointed low black shoes in the Italian style. Haggerty had gathered that the man Jud worked in some undetermined capacity for one of the gambling clubs in the Reno-Tahoe area.

It was time I went to Reno. I looked at my watch: nearly eleven: and remembered that I would gain time on the flight west. I could still have a talk with Luke Deloney's widow, if she was available, and get to Reno at a reasonable hour.

I went into the house with Haggerty, called O'Hare Airport, and made a reservation on a late afternoon flight. Then I called Mrs. Deloney. She was at home, and would see me.

Bert Haggerty offered to drive me out to her house. I told him he'd better stay with his father-in-law. Hoffman's snores were sounding through the house like m.u.f.fled lamentations, but he could wake up at any time and go on the rampage.

chapter 21.

Glenview Avenue wound through the north side of the north side, in a region of estates so large that it almost qualified as country. Trees lined the road and sometimes met above it. The light that filtered through their turning leaves onto the great lawns was the color of sublimated money.

I turned in between the brick gate-posts of 103 and shortly came in sight of an imposing old red brick mansion. The driveway led to a brick-columned _porte-cochre_ on the right. I was hardly out of my car when a Negro maid in uniform opened the door.

"Mr. Archer?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Deloney is expecting you, in the downstairs sittingroom."

She was sitting by a window looking out on a countryside where red sumac blazed among less brilliant colors. Her hair was white, and bobbed short. Her blue silk suit looked like Lily Dach. Her face was a ma.s.s of wrinkles but its fine bones remained in all their delicacy. She was handsome in the way an antique object can be handsome without regard to the condition of the materials. Her mind must have been very deep in the past, because she didn't notice us until the maid spoke.

"Mr. Archer is here, Mrs. Deloney."

She rose with the ease of a younger woman, putting down a book she was holding. She gave me her hand and a long look. Her eyes were the same color as her blue silk suit, unfaded and intelligent.

"So you've come all the way from California to see me. You must be disappointed."

"On the contrary."

"You don't need to flatter me. When I was twenty I looked like everybody else. Now I'm past seventy, I look like myself. It's a liberating fact. But do sit down. This chair is the most comfortable. My father Senator Osborne preferred it to any other."

She indicated a red leather armchair polished and dark with use. The chair she sat in opposite me was a ladderbacked rocker with worn cus.h.i.+ons attached to it. The rest of the furnis.h.i.+ngs in the room were equally old and unpretentious, and I wondered if she used it as a place to keep the past.

"You've had a journey," she reminded herself. "Can I give you something to eat or drink?"

"No thanks."

She dismissed the maid. "I'm afraid you're going to be doubly disappointed. I can add very little to the official account of my husband's suicide. Luke and I hadn't been in close touch for some time before it occurred."

"You already have added something," I said. "According to the official account it was an accident."

"So it was. I'd almost forgotten. It was thought best to omit the fact of suicide from the public reports."

"Who thought it best?"

"I did, among others. Given my late husband's position in the state, his suicide was bound to have business and political repercussions. Not to mention the personal ugliness."

"Some people might think it was uglier to alter the facts of a man's death."

"Some people might think it," she said with a _grande dame_ expression. "Not many of them would say it in my presence. In any case the fact was not altered, only the report of it. I've had to live with the fact of my husband's suicide."

"Are you perfectly certain that it is a fact?"

"Perfectly."

"I've just been talking to the man who handled the case, Lieutenant Hoffman. He says your husband shot himself by accident while he was cleaning an automatic pistol."

"That was the story we agreed upon. Lieutenant Hoffman naturally sticks to it. I see no point in your trying to change it at this late date."

"Unless Mr. Deloney was murdered. Then there would be some point."

"No doubt, but he was _not_ murdered." Her eyes came up to mine, and they hadn't changed, except that they may have become a little harder.