“Then I did rather a stupid thing. I thought it was right at the time. I never told Bart. We had always been strictly honest with each other, but I just couldn’t tell him that. I thought the news coming from me would destroy his faith in his own manliness, his own perceptions, if you see what I mean. He had to find out by himself. Instead, I encouraged infidelity.”
“With you?”
“I was in love with Bart. Please, would you pour me another touch more?”
Fletch poured into her glass.
“I’m ashamed to say I did,” she said. “I had never been a seductress before, although I had been seduced enough.” I’m, afraid I was rather clumsy at it. Bart couldn’t understand. He thought of me as a friend of Lucy’s. I was his old drinking buddy. Suddenly, I turn all hot and passionate. I should say, I let him see how hot and passionate I always had been towards him.
“He rejected me. There’s no other way to say that, either.
“Months went by. No more mutual dinner parties. No more drinking with Bart.
“I guess finally she told him she was leaving him for another woman. The poor jerk still hadn’t caught on.”
Fletch said, “After Lucy accepted her lesbianism, why did she wait so long before divorcing Bart?”
“Those adjustments take time, I expect. Maybe she thought it was a momentary thing. She had been told she was frigid enough times, by Bart and Bart’s-psychiatrists. I knew that. Here was a person who turned her on. It happened to be another girl.
“Anyway,” Joan continued, “Lucy had nothing and Bart is rich. His father built Wardor-Rand, you know. Bart inherited most of it. Haven’t you noticed the paintings in his apartment? You can’t buy those with cheesecake. His father ended his days being our ambassador to Australia.”
“I see,” Fletch said. “But ultimately, she did tell him, and she told him the truth.”
“I guess so. Can you realize what that must do to a man? Realize he’s been married to a girl who doesn’t, who can’t have the slightest interest in him, sexually?”
“She could have.”
“I’m sure it didn’t seem that way to Bart. Every wants to believe he’s married to a red-hot mama who loves him sexually. My husband did. Twice, apparently. To discover your wife—prefers girls to the point where she is leaving you for a girl—can’t do much for your ego, no matter how modern you are.”
“I guess not.”
“And I’m sure Bart tried to be understanding. He would.”
“Were the facts of this affair public?”
“Everyone knew about it. Everyone in our circle. That’s how I knew the great moment of revelation had come. By that time, you see, neither one of them was talking to me.”
“He must have felt a little foolish.”
“Innocent, anyway. Bart, despite his age, was a very innocent man. He went to one of the up-country colleges. Was never in the service. Worked like hell through law school and during his first years at the firm, having to work with Wardor-Rand simultaneously. His father was dead. When he married Lucy, he was very naive.”
“He isn’t now.”
She offered the plate of bare crackers to Fletch. There was no cheese anywhere in sight.
He refused them.
“So why do you still hate Bart?” he asked.
“Hate him? Did I say I hate him? I suppose I do.
“After, the incident, the revelation, he didn’t come to me. I waited, politely.
“Then one day I heard him on the landing. I opened my door and put my arms out to him. I guess I was crying. It was morning. I said, ‘Oh, Bart, I’m so sorry.’ I tried to hug him. He took my arms away from around his neck.”
“He rejected you again.”
“He even said something rather cutting about my drinking habits. After all the drinks I had poured nursing him. Something unforgivable.”
Fletch said, “I expect the poor guy was feeling a little sour on all womanhood at that moment.”
“It’s not that.” Her tears were as big as drops of gin. “He not only rejected me as a woman. That I could understand, at the moment. What hurts is that he rejected me as a friend.”
“I see.”
Unabashed, Joan continued talking through her tears, her whole mouth working to get the words out comprehensibly.
“Then there was that endless stream of girls who poured through here. Pony tails. Frizzy hair. Blue jeans. Little skirts. It’s been going on for months.”
Fletch waited for her breathing to become more regular.
“So you think, he finally killed one of them.”
“Of course, he did. The bastard.”
She flat-heeled over to the serving table and poured herself a slug of straight gin and poured it down her throat.
“It wasn’t any girl he was killing. Any Ruthie what’s-her-name. It was Lucy. He was killing Lucy.”
For a moment, Fletch sat, saying nothing.
Mignon, sitting on the divan, was looking anxious at her mistress.
Finally, Fletch said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No.” She brushed hair back from her forehead. “I think I’ll take a bath and go to bed.”
“No supper?”
“I’m too tired.”
Fletch dropped her key to Bart’s apartment the coffee table.
“We can get a sandwich somewhere. It’s early yet. What about this pub you’ve mentioned? Up the street?”
“Really,” she said. “I’m much too tired. The police were here this morning. About Bart.”
“I understand.” Standing up, he said, “Someday I’d like to take Mignon for a nice long walk.”
“She’d love that.”
Joan Winslow showed him to the door. Her face looked dreadful.
“Good night.”
When he got to his own door he realized that supposedly he didn’t have the key.
Her door closed.
He shrugged, took his own key out of his pocket, and let himself in.
Twenty
Fletch was still wondering about the source of his own supper, trying to remember the name of the pub up the street, when his doorbell rang.
“Oh, my god.”
The Countess de Grassi was standing among her luggage on the landing.
A head with a taxi driver’s hat on it was descending down the elevator shaft.
“Eighteen, twenty miles you say It’s no eighteen, twenty miles.”
“I said it wasn’t.”
“All the time you lie, Flesh.” She tried, but not very hard, to pick up one of her suitcases, the biggest. “A nice man let me in downstairs.”
“Sylvia, what do you think you’re doing?”
Sylvia could turn an elevator landing into a stage.
“You say Ritz too expensive for me.” Helplessness was expressed by widened eyes, arms thrown wide—even her cleavage seemed wider. “You right. They present me bill.”
“Did you pay it?”
“Of course I pay it. You think the Countess de Grassi some sort of crook? Everybody rob the Countess de Grassi. The Countess de Grassi rob no one!”
Fletch remained in the center of the doorway. “But why did you come here?”
“Why do I come here? What you think? Why should Countess de Grassi stay in too-expensive hotel when her son-in-law live around corner in magnificent apartment?
“I’m not your son-in-law. Ye gods.”
“You marry Andy, you become my son-in-law. You become member de Grassi family. I, Countess de Grassi!”‘
“I’ve heard.” He faltered back a step. “What the hell is this? Son-in-step-law? Step-son-in-law? Son-in-law-step?”
“No! No English double-talk in American, please.”
“Me? Wouldn’t think of it.”
She entered through the small space his body left in the doorway.
He closed the door on her luggage.
“Very nice.” Her quick glance through the living room door was followed by a quick glance through the den door. “Okay enough. Very nice.”