“What I’m saying,” Carella said, “is that it seems strange for a man not to discuss his will with his own wife.”
“Well,” Anne said, “I guess if a man’s wife isn’t in his will, then he might be somewhat reluctant to let her know about it, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Can you think of any reason why your husband may have decided to change his will?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Could he have had any reason to suspect you were considering divorce?”
“None.”
“You were planning to ask him for a divorce?”
“Yes, but that was a recent decision.”
“A decision you’ve been considering for some time, isn’t that so?”
“Not that long a time.”
“How long a time?” Carella asked.
“I couldn’t say with any accuracy.”
“Longer than last month? When your husband changed his will?”
“I didn’t know he’d changed his will till just this Monday. Oh, I see,” Anne said. “You’re thinking that in a childish fit of pique, after I’d learned I was no longer in his will, I began thinking about divorce. I wish everything in life were as simple as that, Mr. Carella. No, I did not know about his new will, and no, it had nothing whatever to do with my wanting a divorce. I’d simply had enough. Enough of wiping up after him, and supporting his ego, and bolstering—” She shook her head again. “Quite enough. On the Coast, when I was out there last week, I finally knew without question that I wanted out. I wanted to breathe again. I called my mother-in-law and told her what I planned to do. She gave me her blessings. So, you see, it really doesn’t matter to me that I’m not inheriting two million dollars. Two million dollars would be very nice, yes. But I don’t care about that, I don’t even care about the hundred thousand the insurance policy will bring. You may find that difficult to understand, but I really don’t care. I feel no anger, none at all. I feel only disappointment and sadness, as I told you. I served him well for almost fifteen years. Disappointment, and sadness, and — I will admit this — tremendous relief. It will be good to be alive again. You cannot know how good it will be.”
“Mrs. Newman, you told me you have a cleaning woman, isn’t that right?” Carella asked.
“Yes. I have someone who comes in once a week.”
“On what day?”
“Friday.”
“You left for California on a Friday, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And returned on a Friday.”
“Yes.”
“Was your cleaning woman there on the morning you left?”
“No. She was in Georgia. I told you that.”
“Was she there on the Friday you returned?”
“No.”
“She was still in Georgia, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“So if she wasn’t there, she couldn’t have done any cleaning that day.”
“Mr. Carella, I’m sorry, but what...?”
“Mrs. Newman, did you do any cleaning that day? Did you, for example, wipe off the thermostat?”
“What?”
“The thermostat.”
“Wipe it off, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I have done that?”
“I have no idea. Did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“The lab techs were through with the apartment at about ten. That means they’d have dusted the therm—”
“Dusted?”
“For latent prints, the thermostat. And everything else. You got home at eight-thirty, you told me...”
“Yes.”
“Would there have been anyone who — between eight-thirty and ten — might have wiped off that thermostat?”
“Well, I... I don’t know.”
“Or the bottle of Seconal?”
“The what?”
“The Seconal. The bottle your husband had to have handled if he committed suicide.”
“Well, I... I... don’t really...”
“You’re sure you didn’t?”
“Of course I am! Why would I have... of course I didn’t! I went right downstairs to call the police. I wasn’t in the apartment more than... a minute or two... no more than—”
She fell silent all at once.
Carella stood staring at her. When the voice came from behind him, he turned, startled, and saw Susan Newman standing in the doorway to her bedroom beyond. She was wearing a saffron-color quilted robe. There was a faint, forlorn smile on her mouth.
“Darling,” she said, “I think the gentleman already knows.”
“Oh my God,” Anne said, and took a deep breath, and squeezed her eyes shut tightly.
So now it was all over.
Face her down when she got home tonight after the “movie” she’d gone to see, tell her he knew she’d been with this man named Larry Patterson last Monday, enjoying a quick roll in the hay in a borrowed apartment, tell her he knew all about her and her little married playmate, had seen through the lie about the never-scheduled television commercial outside Long General, confront her with the indisputable fact that the man she’d be accompanying to South America was this man Larry Patterson, her lover, tell her, get it over with, end it. End it.
It was almost eleven-thirty when he got back to the apartment.
He inserted his key into the lock, and then opened the door. The apartment was dark, he reached for the switch just inside the door, and turned on the lights. He was bone-weary and suddenly very hungry. He was starting toward the kitchen when he heard the sound in the bedroom.
The sound was stealthy, the sound a burglar might make when suddenly surprised by an unexpected arrival home, nothing more than a whisper really, a rustle beyond the closed bedroom door; he reached for the shoulder holster and pulled his gun. The gun was a .38 Smith & Wesson Centennial Model with a two-inch barrel and a capacity of five shots. He knew this was not a burglar in there, this was Augusta in there, and he also knew that she was not alone, and hoped he was wrong, and his hand began sweating on the walnut grip of the pistol.
He almost turned and left the apartment. He almost holstered the gun, and turned his back on that closed bedroom door, on what was beyond that closed bedroom door, almost walked out of the apartment and out of their life as it had been together, once, too long ago, almost avoided the confrontation, and knew it could not be avoided, and became suddenly frightened. As he crossed the room to the bedroom door, the gun was trembling in his fist. There could have been a hatchet murderer beyond that door, the effect would have been much the same.
And then the fear of confrontation gave way to something alien and even more terrifying, a blind, unreasoning anger, the stranger here in his own home, the intruder in his bedroom, the lover, who was Larry Patterson, here with his wife, the trap sprung, she thought he would be working the Night Watch, she knew she would be safe till morning, there hadn’t been a movie at all, there was only the movie here in this bedroom, his bedroom, an obscene pornographic movie behind that closed door.
He took the knob in his left hand, twisted it, and opened the door. And he hoped, in that final instant, that he would be wrong again, he would not find Augusta in this room, not find Augusta with her lover but instead find a small, brown-eyed girl who went by the name of Felice or Agnes or Charity, a mistake somehow, a comedy of errors they would all laugh about in later years.
But of course it was Augusta.
And Augusta was naked in their bed, absurdly clutching the sheet to her breasts, hiding her shame, protecting her nakedness from the prying eyes of her own husband, her green eyes wide, her hair tousled, a fine sheen of perspiration on the marvelous cheekbones that were her fortune, her lip trembling the way the gun in his hand was trembling. And the man with Augusta was in his undershorts and reaching for his trousers folded over a bedside chair, the man was short and wiry, he looked like Genero, with curly black hair and brown eyes wide in terror, he looked just like Genero, absurdly like Genero, but he was Larry Patterson, he was Augusta’s lover, and as he turned from the chair where his trousers were draped, he said only, “Don’t shoot,” and Kling leveled the gun at him.