I said I might be persuaded. She said, “Three teas, Carmen.”
The maid favored me with a polite glance that was as good as a curtsy and passed me on her way out.
“I’m Leola DeLancey. This is Daniel Clague, my attorney.” Smiling the way she had in her photograph, as if she felt like blowing up at somebody but was too refined to do so in polite company, the woman held out a slender hand. I descended the three steps to take it. Her grip was strong and cool. She was my height and thin as a wire, and the simple one-piece sheath she wore with a cord knotted loosely around the waist did nothing to detract from her gauntness. If anything, it accentuated it. She had very high cheekbones and straight thick brows over gray eyes, and her chin came almost to a point. Her hair, pulled back as before and caught with combs behind her head, was silver with a bluish tint.
Clague was two inches shorter, squarely built but beginning to sag in all the standard places. His hair was brown going dirty gray. He had a broad, sad face with slack jowls and dewlaps over the corners of his downturned mouth and bags that pulled at his milky eyes to reveal scarlet crescents beneath the whites, which he sought to hide by wearing black horn rims. His hand was spotted and flabby, and after grasping it I wanted to mop my palm with my handkerchief but couldn’t think of a way to do it without offending him. He didn’t look happy to see me. I had a hunch he wouldn’t have looked happy to see the Second Coming of Christ if he had ringside seats and a cut of the gate.
“Thank you for consenting to this interview, Mrs. DeLancey,” I said.
Her eyes scoured the back of my skull. “You’re welcome. Now that we’ve been gracious to each other, we can sit down and attend to business. Let’s talk about Janet Whiting.”
I
TOOK POSSESSION
of a chair upholstered in an Indian rug design, canted backward slightly and closed in on three sides with flat wooden panels like a box. Opposite this and its mate on the other side of a Wells Fargo strongbox reincarnated as a tea table stood a couch modeled after the same design, on the edge of which perched Leola DeLancey. Clague remained standing behind it. I asked if she’d mind my smoking.
“I’d rather you wouldn’t, Mr. Walker. My husband was the last person to use tobacco in this house. I don’t approve of the habit.”
I had one out already. I put it away. It was a shame. If ever a room was designed to be smoked in, this was it.
“Now then,” she said. “What’s your interest in the late Mr. DeLancey’s relationship with the Whiting woman? You said something over the telephone about a murder.” She saw me glance at the lawyer. “You can speak in front of Daniel. I asked him to be here.”
“As a matter of fact I insisted upon it,” put in Clague. His speech was slow and monotonous, like a record winding down. “It was a concession on Mrs. DeLancey’s part after refusing to take my advice and cancel the interview. As her attorney I feel that any contact with this woman or her representatives would be detrimental to her interests, particularly at this time. Mrs. DeLancey’s interests.”
“Those interests being Mrs. DeLancey’s attempt to have her husband declared legally dead,” I prompted.
He looked surprised. Anyhow, his lower lip descended a quarter inch, opening a black inverted U in the bottom half of his face. It made him look like a fresh-caught bass. “Where did you learn that?”
“Don’t act like you’re shocked,” his client commanded. “We’ve been at it a solid year now. It was bound to get out.” Her eyes darted back to me. “I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”
The maid came in with three white china cups on a silver tray, put it down on top of the strongbox, and fussed about laying out white linen napkins and silver spoons and a mirror-finish antique sugar bowl worth as much as my car. I waited for her to leave, but the lady of the house was staring at me impatiently. I tasted my tea and set the cup down in its saucer and never touched it again. Even so, that put me one up on both of the others.
“First I’d like to make it clear that I never said I was representing Miss Whiting, nor anyone else, for that matter.”
Clague said, “Are you saying that you’re acting on your own behalf?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m telling you what I didn’t say.” I took a deep breath and told as much of it as I thought they were entitled to hear: Of my being called by a woman who gave her name as Ann Maringer and her reasons for hiring me, of my finding the dead man in her apartment, of my interview with Phil Montana, who told me that Ann Maringer was Janet Whiting and that she had vanished last year as Judge DeLancey’s heirs had begun proceedings to have the Judge declared legally dead. I was still talking when Mrs. DeLancey interrupted.
“You say that as if you think the two incidents are related.”
“Are they?”
“Don’t answer that, Leola.”
She didn’t look at the lawyer. The maid shifted her weight delicately to remind her mistress that she was still there. Mrs. DeLancey asked her to open the drapes. Lake St. Clair leaped out at me, so blue it hurt to look at it.
“If there is any connection I know nothing about it.” She switched to the offensive. “What led you to Phil Montana?”
“Didn’t I say that the dead man in the apartment was Montana’s personal bodyguard?” I rewound the conversation in my mind. I had said that. She shook her head.
“It’s too thin. If that were what put you onto him you would have gone to see him right away, the palace guard notwithstanding. By your own admission you waited more than twelve hours. Something else happened to make you think he was involved. What was it?”
I met her level, level gaze. The cops could take lessons from the widow DeLancey. I got the box out of my pocket and opened it, holding it out. Her eyes remained on mine for an instant, then lowered to take in the jewelry. Clague leaned over her shoulder, adjusting his glasses.
“Ann Maringer—I’ll call her Janet Whiting, for clarity’s sake—gave me the ring as a retainer,” I said. “I took it to an expert, who identified the setting as the work of a jeweler Montana uses exclusively. Montana told me he’d had the ring made for Miss Whiting as a favor to the Judge. Do you recognize it, Mrs. DeLancey?”
“No,” she said dryly. “But then a man doesn’t usually ask his wife for her opinion on a gift for his mistress, does he?”
“That depends on the man. Or the wife.”
“Or the mistress.”
“The world thrives on contrast.” I closed the box and put it away. “Have you ever met Miss Whiting?”
“Careful.” Clague laid a pudgy, speckled hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off right away. Well, they were old friends. She opened her mouth, then closed it. When it opened again:
“I almost said no. I’ve nothing to gain by lying. I met her twice. The first time was at the coast guard station the day Arthur’s plane was reported missing over Lake Superior. I don’t recall what was said; we were both in too much shock over what was happening. Of course I recognized her from her photographs. The second time was a year ago in Probate Court. Daniel and I were in the judge’s chambers, discussing the procedure involved in having Arthur declared dead. Jack was there as well. My son. She burst in unannounced and demanded to be heard. Babbling something about a later will naming her as Arthur’s chief beneficiary. When the judge summoned the bailiff to remove her she became hysterical. She had really to be carried out bodily, screaming imprecations all the way.”
“Imprecations?”
“At the judge, me, everyone. Daniel?”
Clague nodded gravely. “A demented young lady. A pathetic case.”
“Do you think there was anything to her claim?”
“Claptrap!” the lawyer exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“Claptrap.”
“Thank you. That’s what I thought you said.”
“No such will exists,” he continued. “I was Arthur’s attorney for seventeen years. If there were such a document I would have known about it, because I would have drawn it up. Not that I wouldn’t have tried to dissuade him from a course so preposterous.”
“Do attorneys usually have attorneys?”
He screwed his face into an expression someone had told him was wry. “Of course. A surgeon doesn’t remove his own appendix.”
“Not unless he’s on Blue Cross,” I said, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“If you doubt my qualifications, I refer you to the firm of Burlingame and Briggs of Toledo, Ohio. I was a corporation lawyer there for eight years before coming to work for Judge DeLancey.”
“I was just curious.” I turned to the woman. “Exactly what did Miss Whiting say as she was being carried out of the judge’s chambers?”
“Leola,” said Clague, “I advise you not to answer that.”
“It’s all right.” Her face was a varnished mask. “She accused me of arranging for Arthur’s death.”
I had been patting my pockets in search of my notebook. I stopped. I didn’t think I’d have any trouble remembering this conversation.
She smiled that strained smile that I was beginning to realize wasn’t connected in any way with her true emotions. “Your next question will be was there any basis for the allegation. No. In your line of work, Mr. Walker, I imagine you encounter more than your share of bored housewives who have fallen out of love with their husbands, monied shrews who never loved them in the first place, jealous hags who would kill rather than suffer the humiliation of desertion. I belonged to none of those categories. I loved my husband very much. And strangely enough, I think he continued to love me. He found something in the Whiting woman that I wasn’t able to supply, but he never stopped caring for me. I know the torment he went through when his affair became public and our marriage was held up as a travesty before the world. It was me he was concerned about, and what it might do to my peace of mind. I had every right to leave him. You’ll remember that I didn’t.”
“I remember.” The question of why she hadn’t divorced him even when he had asked her to had ranked right up there with who killed Jimmy Hoffa and whatever happened to Fabian.
“It had nothing to do with his money, as the newspapers hinted. Under the circumstances my settlement would have been queenly. Come to think of it, if I had murdered him, I doubt that I would have been convicted, such was the extent of public sympathy for the ‘most notoriously wronged wife since Desdemona.’ The papers’ words, not mine. Certainly I would have gotten off lightly. I never entertained the thought. I couldn’t bear to think of life without him.”
“I won’t say I bore the situation with equanimity. I knew of the affair early in its development. You have no idea, Mr. Walker, of the positive
glee
with which some friends are wont to impart news of a husband’s escapades to the man’s wife. I made the usual threats of divorce and separation, which at that point he wasn’t prepared to accept. But I could see that they hurt him deeply. He was a man trapped between his lust and his duty to wife and home. So I felt sorry for him. Maybe that’s the real reason I stayed, and I’m just confusing it with love. After all this time I’m no longer in a position to say which it was, love or devotion. But I never hated him and I never felt the urge to kill him.”
“How did you feel about Janet Whiting?”
Daniel Clague straightened with a long, hissing intake of breath, as if he were inflating himself. “I must warn you, Mr. Walker, of the folly of defaming a person of Mrs. DeLancey’s reputation in her own home, before witnesses.”
“And I must warn you, Daniel, that your shirt will burst if you stuff it any tighter.” A hard glint of amusement showed in his client’s eyes. “Stop talking like a lawyer and let the man do his job.”
“Really, Leola, I can’t see why you wanted me here if you won’t listen to my advice.” His cheeks looked a little less sallow when he was angry.
“As you said, you insisted.” She returned her attention to me. “How did I feel about Janet Whiting? I didn’t. Oh, I was curious about her at first—that’s natural, I suppose—but once I had found out all there was to know I became completely indifferent. She was a gray person, living a sordid little life without goals or aspirations beyond getting her hooks into a foolish old man with money. And that, young sir, is as boring an objective as you’re ever likely to find.”
“How did you find out all there was to know about her?”
“You of all people should be able to figure that out.” She still looked amused. “I hired a detective agency.”
An alarm went off at the back of my head. “Which one?”
“I don’t remember the name. It was so long ago. A big firm, headquartered in Lansing. It was recommended to me.”
“Reliance?”
“That’s it. How did you guess?”
“Blind stab. I met one of their operatives last night. He said the agency had been engaged to watch Phil Montana.”
“That’s interesting. But it really isn’t such a coincidence, is it? It’s a large company. They must have hundreds of clients.”
“You’re probably right.” I got off that. “Can you tell me what caused the breakup between Montana and your husband?”
Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the maid fluttering around, straightening this and that, and dismissed her. When she had vanished down the passage:
“I don’t know what broke them up. Didn’t Phil tell you?”
“He said it was over some bad advice Judge DeLancey had given him. I didn’t press him on it. I didn’t think it was important.”
“Do you think it’s important now?”
“I don’t know. At this point I’m sweeping up everything in sight and hoping to sort it out later. Perhaps Mr. Clague knows.” I looked at him, raising my eyebrows. He shook his head gravely. Everything he did he did gravely.
“Arthur never confided anything not of a legal nature to me. And I would never have asked him about it. That was the kind of relationship we had.”
I nodded gravely. Now he had me doing it. “Did he leave a large estate?”
She laughed before Clague had a chance to inflate himself again. This time there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of amusement in it. “Except for a trust fund and this house,” she said, “you could put the whole thing in an egg cup. The Internal Revenue seized everything else. It seems Arthur was not in the habit of declaring his actual earnings. It would have been worse if he hadn’t suffered a major investment loss shortly before his death. As it is we’re still paying off the interest and penalties, and will be long after I’m gone.”