Michael Shaynes' 50th case ms-50 Page 3

  He stepped closer and his irritation vanished and turned into something else. It was neither his sedan nor Ellie’s coupe that stood in front of his house. It was a convertible with the top down and with lots of bright chrome.

  He took two more hesitant steps forward and stopped again. He recognized the convertible. It belonged to Harry. Harry Wilsson. One of their closest neighbors, and Marvin’s best friend in Sunray.

  3

  He stood there in the night, petrified and disbelieving, staring at the convertible parked in front of his house, knowing there must be some mistake.

  Oh, it was Harry Wilsson’s car all right. There was no mistake about that. There were only two or three convertibles in Sunray, and Marvin had sold this one to Harry Wilsson himself about two months ago. They had argued together good-naturedly about the trade-in value of the Dodge sedan that Harry was turning in on it, and Marvin had ended up by giving his good friend a deal that had left him with almost no profit on the transaction.

  But he knew there must be some mistake about its being there at his house tonight. That is, some simple and reasonable explanation. His first thought was that Harry and Minerva had dropped over to spend the evening with Ellie and cheer her up on the last night her husband was away from home. That was a perfectly natural thing to think. The couples visited back and forth together quite informally all the time.

  But why was the light on only in Ellie’s bedroom and the rest of the house dark?

  Well, he thought, maybe it was just Minerva who had come over for the evening. It was perfectly natural that the two women might have taken a drink up to the bedroom to relax and have a session of female talk.

  But why hadn’t Minerva driven her own Plymouth coupe if that was it? Harry was funny and very possessive about his new convertible. He didn’t trust Minerva to drive it because she was a careless driver and was always scraping a fender or smashing a headlight in minor accidents. Marvin distinctly remembered an on-the-surface laughing but under-the-surface acrimonious discussion about that very thing between the Wilssons the night after Harry brought his new convertible home.

  So there had to be some other answer.

  What was it?

  Suppose Sissy were sick and the Wilssons had come over to help. Maybe that was why they were all upstairs in the bedroom and the rest of the house dark.

  But there was no light showing in Sissy’s bedroom. Marvin Blake stood in his own driveway not more than thirty feet from the house staring up at the shaded bedroom window and straining his ears to pick up some sound. But the house was shrouded in utter silence. And it was awful funny to see the shades drawn at the bedroom window, too. It was quite a warm night and their house was so secluded that no passerby could look into the upstairs rooms, and Marvin couldn’t remember those shades ever being drawn at night before.

  He stood there looking helplessly up at the shaded windows and hearing no sound from within the bedroom. All he had to do was walk up to his own front door and put his key in the latch and open the door and shout up the stairs, “Yoo-hoo, Ellie. It’s me. Marv. I’m home.”

  That’s all he had to do. Simplest thing in the world. So, why didn’t he do it? Why did he stand there like a ninny, transfixed, his heart beating queerly, his mouth dry and his stomach churning?

  Because he thought for a moment there was anything wrong inside his house? Because he was afraid of what might be going on behind the drawn shades in that bedroom? Because he even remotely suspected the possibility that Ellie and Harry… that Ellie and Harry might…?

  Oh God, no! He shook himself like a man emerging from a trance. What a foul and nasty mind he had! To even think that of Ellie. Or Harry either. Harry was his best and most-trusted friend. He’d no more think of a thing like that than…

  And Ellie! Good God, he knew Ellie, didn’t he? She was his wife. She was Sissy’s mother. She loved him. She’d no more do that with Harry than she’d…

  Well, all he had to do was walk in the front door and prove that he had a foul and nasty mind.

  That was all he had to do.

  But suppose…?

  If he did walk in the front door the stairs leading up would be right in front of him and there’d be no back way out for Harry if he was upstairs with Ellie. The two of them would be cornered if he walked in the front door.

  He had a revolver. It was loaded and ready to shoot and it rested handy in the top drawer of the bureau right there in the hall.

  He could go in quietly and get the gun out and then go upstairs and see what was what.

  Suppose Harry were there with Ellie?

  He could shoot them both. It was the unwritten law that he could.

  Not Ellie!

  Yes, Ellie, too. Didn’t his manhood demand it?

  Damn his manhood and the unwritten law! What was he thinking about? Because it wasn’t so. None of it was so. There was some other explanation for Harry’s car being there and a single light on in the bedroom behind drawn shades and the silence. All he had to do was walk in the front door and find out what the real explanation was.

  He couldn’t walk in the front door.

  He didn’t believe any of it for a moment, but he couldn’t put it to the test.

  Because, supposing it were so? What would he do then?

  He couldn’t be an outraged husband and start shooting to protect his honor. It simply wasn’t in him to do that.

  There was the detached and dignified approach, of course. Something like: “Sorry to break in on you two like this, but I simply didn’t know how it was with you. It’s all right, Ellie. If you prefer Harry to me, why should I stand in your way? I’ll expect custody of Sissy, of course. And I’ll expect you to do the honorable thing by her, Harry old boy.”

  No. Marvin knew that wasn’t for him either. So, what could he do?

  God, he thought helplessly, if only he hadn’t come home tonight. If only there’d been some warning. If only he had known he shouldn’t come unexpectedly and had telephoned Ellie from Miami.

  Well, he could turn away now and slip back to the station without being seen and catch that late train back to Miami, and then come back tomorrow afternoon on schedule… and he would never need to know.

  Could he do that? Could he stand to go on living with Ellie without knowing? He could never ask Ellie. He could never admit to her that he had come home tonight and seen Harry’s car outside and turned away because he suspected something bad.

  No, he couldn’t go on living without knowing for sure. First, he had to know what the truth was. After that he could decide what to do, how to live with it.

  He shrank back into the shadow of the hibiscus hedge and set his suitcase down very carefully so as to make no sound. Then he lowered his weight down on it and buried his face in his hands.

  He told himself angrily that he had a dirty mind. If he trusted Ellie at all… if their marriage vows meant anything to him… he would go boldly up to the front door and at least ring the bell and give Ellie a chance to come down and explain the situation.

  Ellie deserved that much trust. Where was his faith in her? Didn’t he know she loved him? He was a lousy bastard to let himself suspect for one single moment that Ellie would do anything wrong. He was surely going to hate himself when it all came out in a simple and innocent explanation.

  All right, he told himself fiercely, so he would hate himself. But he knew he would hate himself more if he forced the issue and it turned out there was no innocent explanation. That would mean he would have to leave Ellie. No man and wife can go on living together after one has been caught committing adultery.

  Why not, he asked himself miserably. Why did it matter so much? Would Ellie be a different person just because she was in bed with another man tonight? Would there be any physical change in her? Wouldn’t she still be the same Ellie he had loved for ten years? The mother of his child. Would one physical contact with Harry Wilsson change Ellie so much that he couldn’t live with her afterward?

  And
he answered himself with an emphatic NO to all those questions. Yet he knew there would be a disastrous change in their relationship if he walked into the house and caught her in bed with Harry. All three of them would have to react to that. Marvin did not know why this was so. He didn’t understand why people had to react to a situation like that. But he knew that each of them would. He knew that three or four or five lives would inevitably be smashed into little pieces if he went into the house and found his wife and Harry Wilsson together intimately.

  He couldn’t take a chance on doing that to himself and Ellie and Sissy. He couldn’t, God help him, do that to Harry and Minerva. He could not take the risk of going inside his own house.

  But he could not, either, go away from the house without knowing for certain. Even though, God knew, he wanted to go away from there.

  But that, he could not do.

  Yet all the time he did not actually believe in his heart that there was anything wrong. He knew he was getting it all wrong and that there must be an innocent explanation. That is, he tried to know. He willed himself to know. But the inner knowledge was not strong enough to force him to take the ultimate step.

  He knew it was a weak thing to do, and he despised himself for his own weakness as he crouched there in the shadows with his hands over his face and did not dare to enter his own home.

  But he wondered how many other husbands would have been stronger than he? Oh, he knew a lot of men who would have dashed into the house at the first intimation that his wife might be unfaithful, waving a gun and shouting that his honor must be avenged. But in his heart Marvin believed that sort of man was in the minority.

  What does a man’s honor have to do with it, he asked himself. It is his life that is at stake. His future. Everything that he holds dear. Should a man smash that up in one instant of jealous rage which he will regret the rest of his life?

  Oh, he was jealous all right. He was writhing and aching and seared with jealousy. He simply could not allow himself to visualize Ellie and Harry in bed together. It was too monstrous. If he just didn’t have to see it with his own eyes.

  So he stayed there seated on his suitcase in the shadows and he waited. And kept his face buried in his hands so he could not look up to the dim light in the bedroom. Their bedroom. Ellie’s and his. The bedchamber he had brought her to as a bride and where her maidenhead had been broken. Where Sissy had been conceived.

  He did not know how long he sat there. It seemed like many hours, but he knew it was probably less than one. He did not know what caused him to finally lift his head and gaze dully at the house again, but just as he did so he saw a light come on inside the frosted glass upper portion of the front door. That meant to him that the stairway light had been switched on from above and that someone was coming down the stairs.

  The bedroom light remained lit.

  He remained hunched back, hidden in the shadows, and waited, scarcely drawing a breath, his gaze fixed on the front door of his home with terrible intensity.

  The door opened inward and for one brief moment the figure of Harry Wilsson was silhouetted against the hallway light behind him. Then he pressed the switch and the light went out, and he stepped out and closed the door solidly behind him.

  Marvin Blake did not move as his friend and neighbor circled around the front of the convertible and got in the front seat.

  The bedroom light remained on while Harry pressed the starter and his motor hummed into life and the convertible glided down the driveway in the starlight.

  Watching him go, Marvin saw that he rolled downward slowly without turning on his headlights to betray his leaving until he had turned into Lily Lane.

  As though he had practiced that secretive method of departure often, Marvin thought with anguish.

  And he could not help wondering how often he had.

  The paramount feeling of which he was aware at that awful moment was one of unutterable sadness. He was numbed beyond any other emotion. There was an empty sickness in his stomach and he hugged his arms tightly about himself and trembled. Everything was over. Everything that had been good in life was now shattered.

  He knew, with that sickness inside him, that he and Ellie could never pick up the pieces of their life again. No matter how hard they both tried. She was upstairs in their bedroom, lying in the bed that was still warm from their love-making.

  He did not know what to do next. Now that Ellie was alone he could go in without, at least, causing a melodramatic scene. But it was too late in the night to pretend to Ellie that he had just walked up from the station after getting off the late train and had no idea he had been cuckolded during his absence. He looked at his watch and saw it was fifteen minutes after eleven. More than an hour since the train had stopped to let him off. He tried to think of some plausible story he could tell Ellie to explain the lapse of time, but even as he did so he knew it wasn’t feasible.

  With her sense of guilt, Ellie would never believe him. And, in truth, he didn’t believe he’d be able to carry it off even if she allowed him to do so. In his heart he knew he couldn’t go in and face Ellie now and pretend he knew nothing.

  However, he could, perhaps, go in calmly and without anger, and explain to Ellie that he knew she had been closeted in the bedroom with Harry Wilsson, and listen to her tearful and shamefaced explanation of how it had happened. How Harry had just dropped in casually after dinner to keep her company during Marvin’s last evening away from home, and how they’d had a few drinks together. And how the drinks had hit her unexpectedly and how it happened. Without her anticipating it. Without her wanting it. With her so tight she hadn’t really known it was happening until it was all over. And how terribly ashamed she was and disgusted with herself, and how she still loved him dearly in spite of everything and if he could just find it in his heart to forgive her and to forget…

  He knew that was the way it would be if he went in now and told Ellie what he knew. And he didn’t know whether he could stand that or not. Forgive Ellie?

  He didn’t know. When a man says he can forgive a person, exactly what does it mean? He can go through the outward motions. He can say the word out loud. But will he really mean the words he speaks aloud? Is true forgiveness honestly possible?

  Certainly, he told himself, he could never forget. Never in all the world could he do that. Would it be possible to go on living together with the memory of this night always with him? He told himself firmly that he should try, for Sissy’s sake. At least until the child was older and didn’t need both parents so much. Then, if the situation proved to be unbearable, a quiet and unemotional separation could be arranged.

  He had actually picked up his suitcase and started across the drive toward the front door when he stopped suddenly. He knew he could not do it. Not right then. Not while Ellie was still flushed from the caresses of her lover. He needed time to think things out and get a firm grip on himself. To evaluate what had happened, and to calmly plan the future.

  He turned slowly and went down the winding driveway, carrying his suitcase with him. There was a southbound local due in a couple of hours that stopped at Sunray. No one need notice him get aboard it, and no one need know he had been in Sunray at all that night. He could go back to Miami, now that he knew the truth, and simply come back on the afternoon train as planned. By that time he would have things thought out clearly, and he would find a way, somehow, to go on and make a life with Ellie.

  He felt awfully sorry for himself as he walked slowly and listlessly back down the driveway which he had walked up so blithely and happily only an hour before. He seemed to be standing off on the sidelines and looking at the pathetic figure of Marvin Blake wearily shuffling away from his home in the silence and loneliness of the night, and his heart bled for the man he watched.

  Why had they done that to him? His wife and Harry Wilsson. How could they have done such a thing to a husband and a best friend? Didn’t they care, or were they so thoughtless they hadn’t realized what they were doing? Or
so much in love that it didn’t matter to them how they hurt Marvin Blake?

  Ellie in love with Harry? No! Ellie was in love with him. She had been for ten whole years. You don’t just change loves like you do a dress. A woman like Ellie doesn’t.

  And then he wondered if he knew what sort of person Ellie was after all. Did he really know her? Had he ever known her? Or was the Ellie in his mind just an image he had conjured up? What he wanted his wife to be, not necessarily what she was.

  Certainly, the Ellie he thought he knew could not have fouled his bed tonight with another man.

  Harry Wilsson, too. What did he actually know about him? The Harry that Marvin knew was laughing and gay and out-going. A congenial friend and drinking companion. The best man at his wedding, and the gravely understanding friend who had held his hand while Sissy was being born.

  He had just reached the intersection of his driveway with Lily Lane when the whole thing really hit him for the first time. It hadn’t been real up to that point. It was something he had realized and accepted, but with his mind only.

  Not with his emotions. It hit him all at once and all over and terribly, and he pushed through the hibiscus hedge with his suitcase to the other side where he couldn’t possibly be seen, and he dropped face downward onto the ground and began crying like a baby.

  He didn’t see how he was going to stand it. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

  4

  By the time the local came through from Jacksonville, Marvin Blake knew what he was going to do. What he had to do.

  Death was the only answer. Oblivion. He would be mourned for a time, but that would end and Marvin Blake would be forgotten.

  Sissy would be all right. There was Marvin’s insurance, his automobile agency, and a large equity in the house on Lily Lane. At the age of six, death did not impinge too harshly on a child’s mind, and suicide would be practically a meaningless word to her.