While he spoke, she had raised her head again and was staring at him wild-eyed. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. Montemayor interpreted it for her in a few words.
“You,” she shouted at Sponer, “killed Mortimer yourself!”
Sponer shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever for?” he asked. “I didn’t know him from Adam. All I know is what you told me. Do you think I did it because of his money? He hardly had any on him.” He took Mortimer’s wallet from the table, pulled out the cheque book and the little money that it contained, and threw them down. “There!” he said. “Or do you think it was because of his things? He only had these two suitcases and a few odds and ends on him.” He produced Mortimer’s passport and the Colt revolver, and also chucked them down, followed by the silver and a couple of cartridges. “That’s the lot,” he said. “Hardly worth killing for, is it? I didn’t do it, but neither do I know who might have done it.”
Winifred glanced at the things with horror, and Montemayor looked at them, too.
“Perhaps,” Montemayor said, “his fate just caught up with him.”
“What fate?” Sponer asked.
“He was,” said Montemayor, “after all, a gangster.”
“What was he?”
“A gangster, a criminal.”
“Who? Mortimer?”
“It’s not true!” Winifred cried.
“Yes, it is!” Montemayor shouted back. “He was every inch a gangster! His whole character proved it! His success with women proved it! The way in which he chased after you, and the way you reacted to him proved it! You knew that yourself anyway!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! It was George Anstruther himself who told me that!”
“What did he tell you?”
“Everyone knows about it there!”
“A man of his wealth wouldn’t…”
“He had none any more! He was through! And if he wasn’t a criminal himself, he lived off the crimes of others! He sold stolen stocks and shares, he was in cahoots with crooks and I don’t know what else! He was in no danger of getting into trouble with the police, that’s for sure! Whom do the police go after over there do you think? Gangsters? They wouldn’t dare. But he did seem to run the risk of getting into trouble with his own kind, the crooks. Let’s face it, it’s the gangsters themselves who bump off one another, isn’t it?”
“Here in Europe? You must be mad!”
“No, not at all! He was gunned down. They saw a chance and took it. It wouldn’t even occur to the local police, who are quite ignorant of such things, to make the connection.”
“And who would have done it?”
“One of their own. Every so often they come over here, too; the world’s their oyster. And the art is to do it in a moving car! To hop on, fire, hop off without even the driver noticing, and…”
“He must have noticed it! You heard the shot, didn’t you?” she yelled at Sponer.
“There were three,” Sponer said coldly. “One in the throat, two in the chest.”
She was about to say something, but couldn’t. “And where,” she muttered at last, “is he now?”
“Mortimer?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He made a vague gesture.
“Where is he?” she yelled.
“Do you want to see him?” he asked. “You won’t be able to. No one will see him again.” He lit a cigarette and gave the woman who had ruined his life a cold, hard look.
“What do you mean?” she mumbled. “Where is he?”
“In the river,” he said. “The river’s long. It’ll take him some time to get to the sea. How should I know where Mortimer is now!”
She let out a cry, jumped up from the sofa, clenched her fists and pounced on him. He looked at her coldly without defending himself or trying to restrain her. The woman’s mortification was the dead man’s only revenge. But how long, Sponer thought to himself, is this going to go on for? I shall probably never taste freedom again. Whereas she?… In a few months, perhaps in a few weeks, she’ll go on deceiving her husband with another man, just as she did with Jack Mortimer.
He grabbed her wrists and shoved her away in exasperation.
She tumbled backwards, was about to say something, but swung around suddenly, rushed to the phone and grabbed the receiver. Montemayor was immediately at her side.
“What are you up to now?” he asked.
“Get the police!” she snapped.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. However, she paid no attention to him whatever, lifted the receiver and had already opened her mouth to ask for connection when he snatched the receiver out of her hand.
“Leave it alone!” he commanded, and rang off.
“I wouldn’t dream of it!” she cried, and reached for the phone again.
He held the receiver firmly. “Stop it!” he cried.
“What’s come over you?” she shouted.
“You’re not going to phone!”
“Why not?”
“Because I, your husband, forbid you!”
“You’re no longer my husband, and there’s nothing you can forbid me!”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Is that so? Maybe because you wanted to double-cross me, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Only you haven’t done it! Sure, you wanted to do it, but it didn’t quite work out, did it?”
“Let me phone!”
“No!”
“You no longer own me! I was already unfaithful to you in Paris!”
He laughed. “Really?” he said. “Do you think Mortimer would still have followed you here after that? It wouldn’t even have entered his head, I tell you. He wasn’t that type. Do you imagine he loved you? He didn’t love you. He only wanted to use you to hurt me, that’s all!”
“That’s a lie!” she shouted.
“I knew him better than you.”
“No, that’s not true! But even if it were, I’d still love him and hate you, because I can’t live with you any more!”
“You’ll just have to get used to it. You’re not a free agent. You haven’t been unfaithful to me and, rest assured, you won’t! Nor will I allow you to compromise yourself by contacting the police! No one need know that you’ve been here!”
“Not even the police?”
“Yes, that’s right. Because they’re just not going to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not going to report it to them!”
“You think you can stop me?”
“Yes.”
“No, you can’t!”
“You’ll be surprised! And I shan’t go to the police either. Because my reputation is worth more to me than yours and all this sordid murder of your lover. Have you mentioned your name downstairs at the reception? No! Does anyone here know who you are? Again, no! Therefore you’re not going to go out of your way to get mixed up in this affair! We’re going to leave the hotel, and no one will ever know who we were. Early tomorrow morning we’ll be off. This gentleman, the driver, too, for whom Mortimer’s role is equally…”
“Ha,” she snarled. “And you honestly believe that I—?”
“Go on…”
“—that I shall travel with you and not say word? That I shan’t immediately make a full statement and ensure that everything possible is done to catch Mortimer’s murderer?”
“Mortimer?” he bellowed. “I couldn’t care a toss about him, nor what happens to any of your lovers, never mind this man, who certainly isn’t Mortimer’s murderer!”
“He is!”
“No, and you’re not going to make a fool of me or get an innocent person into trouble.”