Harvey answered my knock. He was in shirtsleeves and his tie was awry. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. His breath was sour in my nostrils.
“What is it, Archer?”
“You tell me, lover-boy.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“You were the one Ruth Cave wanted to marry. You were going to divorce your respective mates and build a new life together – with her money.”
He stepped backward into the office, a big disordered man who looked queerly out of place among the white-leather and black-iron furniture, against the limed-oak paneling. I followed him in. An automatic door closer shushed behind me.
“What in hell is this? Ruth and I were good friends and I handled her business for her – that’s all there was to it.”
“Don’t try to kid me, Harvey. I’m not your wife, and I’m not your judge…I went to see Janet Kilpatrick a couple of hours ago.”
“Whatever she said, it’s a lie.”
“She didn’t say a word, Harvey. I found her dead.”
His eyes grew small and metallic, like nailheads in the putty of his face. “Dead? What happened to her?”
“She was shot with her own gun. By somebody she let into the house, somebody she wasn’t afraid of.”
“Why? It makes no sense.”
“She was Cave’s alibi, and she was on the verge of volunteering as a witness. You know that, Harvey – you were the only one who did know, outside of Cave and me.”
“I didn’t shoot her. I had no reason to. Why would I want my client convicted?”
“No, you didn’t shoot her. You were in court at the time that she was shot – the world’s best alibi.”
“Then why are you harassing me?”
“I want the truth about you and Mrs. Cave.”
Harvey looked down at the papers in his hand, as if they might suggest a line to take, an evasion, a way out. Suddenly his hands came together and crushed the papers into a misshapen ball.
“All right, I’ll tell you. Ruth was in love with me. I was – fond of her. Neither of us was happily married. We were going to go away together and start over. After we got divorces, of course.”
“Uh-huh. All very legal.”
“You don’t have to take that tone. A man has a right to his own life.”
“Not when he’s already committed his life.”
“We won’t discuss it. Haven’t I suffered enough? How do you think I felt when Ruth was killed?”
“Pretty bad, I guess. There went two million dollars.”
He looked at me between narrowed lids, in a fierce extremity of hatred. But all that came out of his mouth was a weak denial. “At any rate, you can see I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill either of them.”
“Who did?”
“I have no idea. If I did, I’d have had Glen out of jail long ago.”
“Does Glen know?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“But he knew that you and his wife had plans?”
“I suppose he did – I’ve suspected it all along.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that he asked you to defend him, under the circumstances?”
“Odd, yes. It’s been terrible for me, the most terrible ordeal.”
Maybe that was Cave’s intention, I thought, to punish Harvey for stealing his wife. I said, “Did anybody besides you know that Janet Kilpatrick was the woman? Did you discuss it with anybody?”
He looked at the thick pale carpeting between his feet. I could hear an electric clock somewhere in the silent offices, whirring like the thoughts in Harvey’s head. Finally he said, “Of course not,” in a voice that was like a crow cawing.
He walked with an old man’s gait into his private office. I followed and saw him open a desk drawer. A heavy automatic appeared in his hand. But he didn’t point it at me. He pushed it down inside the front of his trousers and put on his suit jacket.
“Give it to me, Harvey. Two dead women are enough.”
“You know then?”
“You just told me. Give me that gun.”
He gave it to me. His face was remarkably smooth and blank. He turned his face away from me and covered it with his hands. His entire body hiccuped with dry grief. He was like an overgrown child who had lived on fairy tales for a long time and now couldn’t stomach reality.
The telephone on the desk chirred. Harvey pulled himself together and answered it.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy, preparing for re-direct…Yes, I’m finished now…Of course I’m all right. I’m coming home right away.”
He hung up and said, “That was my wife.”
She was waiting for him at the front door of his house. The posture of waiting became her narrow, sexless body, and I wondered how many years she had been waiting.
“You’re so thoughtless, Rod,” she chided him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a guest for dinner?” She turned to me in awkward graciousness. “Not that you’re not welcome, Mr. Archer.”
Then our silence bore in on her. It pushed her back into the high white Colonial hallway. She took up another pose and lit a cigarette with a little golden lighter shaped like a lipstick. Her hands were steady, but I could see the sharp edges of fear behind the careful expression on her face.
“You both look so solemn. Is something wrong?”
“Everything is wrong, Rhea.”
“Why, didn’t the trial go well this afternoon?”
“The trial is going fine. Tomorrow I’m going to ask for a directed acquittal. What’s more, I’m going to get it. I have new evidence.”
“Isn’t that grand?” she said in a bright and interested tone. “Where on earth did you dig up the new evidence?”
“In my own backyard. All these months I’ve been so preoccupied trying to cover up my own sordid little secret that it never occurred to me that you might have secrets, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“You weren’t at the trial this afternoon. Where were you? What were you doing?”
“Errands – I had some errands. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you – wanted me to be there.”
Harvey moved towards her, a threat of violence in the set of his shoulders. She backed against a closed white door. I stepped between them and said harshly, “We know exactly where you were, Mrs. Harvey. You went to see Janet Kilpatrick. You talked your way into her house, picked up a gun from the table in the hall, and shot her with it. Didn’t you?”
The flesh of her face was no more than a stretched membrane.
“I swear, I had no intention – All I intended to do was talk to her. But when I saw that she realized, that she knew–”
“Knew what, Mrs. Harvey?”
“That I was the one who killed Ruth. I must have given myself away, by what I said to her. She looked at me, and I saw that she knew. I saw it in her eyes.”
“So you shot her?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” She didn’t seem to be fearful or ashamed. The face she turned on her husband looked starved, and her mouth moved over her words as if they were giving her bitter nourishment. “But I’m not sorry for the other one, for Ruth. You shouldn’t have done it to me, Rod. I warned you, remember? I warned you when I caught you with Anne that if you ever did it to me again – I would kill the woman. You should have taken me seriously.”
“Yes,” he said drearily. “I guess I should have.”
“I warned Ruth, too, when I learned about the two of you.”
“How did you find out about it, Mrs. Harvey?”
“The usual way – an anonymous telephone call. Some friend of mine, I suppose.”
“Or your worst enemy. Do you know who it was?”
“No. I didn’t recognize the voice. I was still in bed, and the telephone call woke me up. He said – it was a man – he said that Rod was going to divorce me, and he told me why. I went to Ruth that very morning – Rod was out of town – and I asked her if it was true. She admitted it was. I told her flatly I’d kill her unless she gave you up, Rod. She laughed at me. She called me a crazy woman.”