There was a moment of confusion.
“Ward!” Ellen Parker cried out.
She was pushed hard from behind, then she and Wardell Lewis and Jericho all wound up inside the apartment. The door was closed and Jericho was leaning against it. Lewis, tall, with longish dark hair and a mod mustache, was naked under the seersucker robe. He looked around, obviously frightened, for a weapon.
“He followed me in,” Ellen Parker said in a husky voice.
The world is full of black tales about the city and its violences. Women are attacked and robbed in the hallways of their apartment houses; drug addicts steal, even kill, for the price of a fix. It would come like this, they were thinking — unexpected, catching them totally unprepared.
Jericho took off his rain hat and shook the water out of it. He tossed it onto a chair near the door.
Lewis’ eyes widened. He was the man-about-town, the gossip hunter, the man who knew everyone. “You’re John Jericho, the painter!” he said.
“I’m John Jericho, friend of Fay Martin’s,” Jericho said. “We’ll have a talk and I hope for your sake you’ll answer questions.”
“What do you mean by breaking in this way?” Lewis demanded.
“I wanted to catch you two together,” Jericho said. “Fay told me about you. I wanted to make sure for myself. Now I’m going to get the truth about last night if I have to scrape you out of your shells.”
Lewis walked over to a table in the center of the room and took a cigarette from a lacquered box. It was a cluttered room, every inch of the wall space covered with photographs of celebrated people in society, politics, and show business, all autographed to Wardell Lewis. Lewis held a table lighter to his cigarette with an unsteady hand.
“If you were a friend of Parker’s secretary,” he said, “I can understand why you’re so steamed up. But so help me, I’m going to have you arrested for breaking and entering, and for threatening us with violence.”
Jericho’s pale eyes were fixed on the woman who was standing behind a chair, gripping it to support herself. He appeared not to have heard Lewis. Fay had been right — she was beautiful. What, he wondered, did she see in a creep like Lewis?
“Fay had found out about you and Lewis,” Jericho said to her. “But she was willing to do anything to keep your husband from finding out that you were having an affair with this clown and feeding him information that could hurt your husband. You didn’t need to kill Fay.”
Ellen Parker’s eyes were wide with fright. “That bomb wasn’t meant for Fay, God help her,” she said. “It was meant for me!”
“Keep still, Ellen,” Lewis said. “This man is your enemy.”
“What makes you think the bomb was meant for you, Mrs. Parker?” Jericho asked.
“Because I was meant to go to the car,” she said. She looked as if her legs were about to fold under her. She clung to the chair.
“Take it slowly from the beginning,” Jericho said. He told himself he had an ear for the truth. Lewis was the kind of man who’d grown up saying, “I didn’t do it!” — but Ellen Parker was something else again. She was two-timing her husband, betraying his secrets, but she obviously believed what she had just said. She believed the bomb had been meant for her.
“It was at the White Hills Community Center, just before last night’s debate was about to begin,” Ellen Parker said. “I had left my seat to go to the powder room. When I came back there was an envelope on my seat. In it was a set of car keys and a scribbled note saying my husband wanted me to get an envelope he’d left in the glove compartment of his car. He was up on the speaker’s stand on the stage. He smiled and waved at me. I waved back, indicating I’d do what he asked — waved back with the note.”
“Was the note in your husband’s handwriting?”
“No. I thought one of his staff had written it. I was just starting to edge my way out of the row of seats when Fay appeared. She asked me if anything was wrong, because they were just about to start. I told her Lloyd needed something from the car and she said she’d get it. I–I was glad not to have to go, so I gave her the keys and the note.”
“Which were blown up in the car with her,” Lewis said. “Ellen can’t prove a word of what she’s saying and he denied he asked anyone to get anything.”
“He?”
“Parker, for God’s sake. Who else? Of course he denies it — he meant to kill Ellen!”
“Why?”
“Because he’d found out about us, why else?”
“I don’t dare go home,” Ellen Parker said, her voice shaking. “The police were there all last night — to protect him. But once they’re gone he may try again.”
“The man’s turned into a homicidal maniac,” Lewis said. “Ellen and I are going to have to get protection from the police.”
“Were you at the Community Center in White Hills last night, Lewis?” Jericho asked.
“Of course I was there,” Lewis said. “I’m covering the campaign, as you know if you read the papers.”
Jericho glanced at Ellen Parker. “And how you’re covering the campaign!” he said. “A man who goes berserk and tries to kill his wife for an infidelity doesn’t usually leave out the wife’s lover. Well, maybe Parker’s saving you for dessert.”
“You think it’s something to joke about?” Lewis said. “I’ve had about enough of this.” He bent down and opened the drawer of the table behind which he was standing. His hand didn’t get out of the drawer with the revolver — Jericho moved too fast. His left hand grabbed Lewis’ right wrist and brought it down on the edge of the table. The gun fell noiselessly to the rug. Jericho’s right hand swung to Lewis’ jaw. The columnist’s head snapped back and he collapsed on the rug without a sound.
Ellen Parker didn’t move from her place behind the chair, still clutching it for support. Her eyes, wide with fear, were fixed on Jericho, as if she expected to be next. He was moving toward her and she obviously wanted to scream, but couldn’t. He took her arm gently.
“There are things I need to know about your husband,” he said. “Could we go somewhere else to talk — somewhere that smells less of treachery?”
She made no move to go to Lewis, but asked, “Is he hurt?”
“He will have a severe headache — I hope,” Jericho said.
They sat together in a corner booth in a little restaurant a couple of blocks from Lewis’ apartment. The rain had let up and they had walked there, Ellen Parker in a kind of trance. Jericho ordered coffee, with brandy to lace it. He leaned back in the booth, watching her, waiting for her to speak. There was something unexpectedly vulnerable about her. She wasn’t the kind of woman he had expected.
“I’ve destroyed myself,” she said finally, not looking at Jericho. “It’s always been that way. I have always destroyed everything that has been good in my life.”
“Your marriage?” he asked quietly.
“Since I was a little girl I’ve always been afraid that people only liked me because I was so rich. I never believed that any man really wanted me for myself. I always tested them and tested them until I drove them away. Then Lloyd Parker came into my life and for the first time I really believed I was loved and wanted for myself, that my money didn’t have anything to do with how he felt about me. For the first time in my life I was happy, without doubts, without fears.”
“What changed it?”
“This venture into politics,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “You can’t get elected dog catcher these days, Mr. Jericho, without spending a great deal of money. Lloyd asked me for a great deal of money and I gave it to him gladly, happily. Then, as soon as I did, he seemed to lose interest in me. Our love life came to an end. I told myself it was because he was working fourteen-eighteen hours a day. But the old doubts, the bitter certainty that it was only my money he wanted, took charge again. I guess I went a little crazy. I went out on the town looking for a man, any man, who’d find me attractive without knowing I was rich, rich, rich. It was Ward Lewis who picked me up and restored my ego.”