My Son, the Murderer Read online

  His sudden furies always infected me.

  “What the hell do you think I am—a slot machine, installed here to dole out dollars to you whenever you get a crazy whim? How can I possibly make up my mind about Rome now?”

  He stuck out his lower lip. “How long will it take you to think?”

  “How do I know?”

  “But Sylvia wants to know. Sylvia…”

  “Sylvia will have to contain herself and write a couple more poems for the Literary Review to soothe her savage breast.” Suddenly I was ashamed of losing my temper, and my old aching love took possession of me. I put my hand on his sleeve. His arm was quivering, but he didn’t draw it away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no point in getting mad with each other. I’ll think it over seriously. And I’ll let you know in a couple of days. I’ll call you.” Then I remembered. “You’d better leave me your number.”

  He stood glaring at me. Then, with crude theatricalism, he swung round to the bed, took out his pen and, in huge, sprawling figures, wrote his telephone number across the back of one of the pages of the novel manuscript.

  “There it is. That’s where you can always find me. Call whenever you deign to feel in the mood. And, meanwhile, give my love to your little friend—to Ronnie Hitler Stalin Napoleon Casanova Sheldon! ”

  He pushed past me to the door, went through it and slammed it.

  I heard the front door slam too.

  2

  I didn’t think any more about Bill. I knew it would only depress me. I got my car out of the garage and drove to Idlewild.

  I was, perhaps, too fussy and possessive about Ronnie. But the fact that he had married without giving me the slightest warning hurt me a little and filled me with vague misgivings. Intimately as I had known him for almost twenty years, I had never seen Ronnie even half-way to the altar. Dozens of women, eyeing the Sheldon millions, had made every known play for him, but, with an infallible instinct for self-preservation, he had always managed to avoid any emotional entanglement and slip back into his own oddly monastic isolation. The right wife, of course, would be wonderful for him. But the right wife for a very rich, over-sensitive man with a romantic dread of competing with his own bank balance is not to be found on every street corner.

  I tried to visualize the new Mrs. Sheldon. I failed completely.

  At Idlewild, the plane had already arrived, but the passengers were still in Customs. Standing by the gate through which they would emerge, I found Angie Sheldon, Ronnie’s sister who kept house for him.

  Angie was older than Ronnie, a pale, rather shapeless woman whose clothes were always expensive and never quite right. I had known her and even been fond of her for as long a time as I had worked with Ronnie, but her personality had never really impinged on me. She had been passionately devoted to Felicia and she was supposed to have had a tragic love affair in her youth with a Latin-American who died and whose photograph, sulky and Valentino-ish, stood on a table by her bed. But neither of these achievements managed to give her any marked characteristics. She was just Angie who was always there, good old Angie who worshipped Ronnie and who presided conscientiously and rather clumsily as hostess at her brother’s frequent parties.

  When she saw me, she gave me her vague, weak-eyed smile. “Hello, Jake. I suppose you got a cable too.”

  “Yes. What an event! Who on earth has he finally settled for?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Angie twisted the gloves in her hand, which was the only hint that she might be flustered or anxious. “He’s hardly dropped me a line since he’s been gone. It’s so unlike him.”

  That was one of the few positive traits of Angie’s character which registered with me. Only the greatest cataclysm could induce Ronnie to write a letter. But, whenever he did anything that was particularly typical of him, Angie would say: “It’s so unlike Ronnie.” I wondered how she would take the intrusion of a new woman into 58th Street. I glanced at her heavy, kindly face, at her rather wispy hair, and at the grandiloquent blue mink coat, but there was nothing to give me the slightest clue.

  And then the people started to stream out through the barrier.

  I saw Ronnie almost at once. He was wearing a dark suit and a black homburg hat and he was carrying a furled umbrella. He looked, as always, far handsomer and more assured than anyone else and also immensely British. I might have guessed that a five-month stay in England would have done that to him. He was walking with his hand on the elbow of a woman. They were some distance away and the woman looked almost absurdly dowdy. That was my first impression. Then Ronnie saw us and waved the umbrella.

  He started to run towards us and fell upon us, scooping Angie off the ground, pounding me on the shoulder, the British Ambassador characterization completely abandoned. He was, as always on reunions, like a big, clumsy, sentimental retriever.

  “Angie, darling… Jake, old boy… Well, well, well…”

  The woman was hovering at our side. She was small and probably forty and seemed somehow to be deprecating herself. In those first moments it didn’t occur to me that she was enchanting-looking. I was only conscious of the fact that she wore cotton stockings, flat shoes, a terrible British coat with a piece of beige fur at the neck and one of those straw hats like milkmaid bonnets which, I supposed vaguely, had disappeared in the Thirties. I thought: It isn’t possible. Ronnie can’t have married—this!

  Ronnie disentangled himself from Angie and turned to put his arm round the strange woman, grinning at her affectionately.

  “This, my dears, is my mother-in-law, Norah Lacey. She comes from Shropshire; she’s forever sitting behind silver teapots, saying: ‘It’s milk and sugar for you, isn’t it?’ and she thinks, if you don’t watch out, Indians will scalp you on Madison Avenue.”

  Norah Lacey flushed like a little girl. The heightening pink on her fair skin brought out the beauty I hadn’t noticed before. She looked like a rose.

  “Ronnie’s always teasing me,” she said. “You’re Angie, aren’t you? And you’re Jake. I’m delighted to see you. And I don’t think that about Indians on Madison Avenue at all.”

  Lacey, I thought. The name was familiar. Then I remembered. Basil Lacey was the British author whose American book rights Ronnie had cabled me to pick up.

  A party of three more people had joined us. One of them was a bare-headed, goateed man of about sixty in a wool cape suggestive of Scottish moors; the second was a short, middle-aged woman with cropped grey hair, an ugly face and eyes as alert as a fox-terrier’s; the third was a small, dark-haired girl whom I took to be a school-girl.

  “Here they are.” Ronnie turned to the man. “This is my father-in-law, Basil Lacey.” He indicated the woman. “This is Lady Phyllis Brent. And this”—he stepped forward and, bending, kissed the little girl adoringly, almost reverently on the forehead—“this is Jean—this is Mrs. Ronald Sheldon.”

  At the risk of making myself sound clumsily imperceptive, I must admit that it had never for a moment occurred to me that the little girl could possibly be Ronnie’s wife. At a first glance she had looked no more than twelve. Even now, as Ronnie drew her forward, I saw that, once again, the English style of dress was partly to blame. She was wearing a little felt hat like an inverted bowl which could easily have been part of some school uniform, and the navy blue suit, which bore no resemblance to her figure, almost succeeded in concealing the fact that her breasts were mature.

  Jean Sheldon looked at Angie and me from very straight blue eyes above a straight nose and rather grimly pressed lips. She neither smiled nor registered hostility. She was lovely, I realized, in a delicate, virginal way. But, in my embarrassment at the difference in their ages, I could only think: She’s young enough to be Ronnie’s daughter. And, for an instant. Ronnie, who had always been to me the epitome of good looks and eternal youth, seemed suddenly and rather pathetically worn.

  Ronnie introduced Angie and me. Mrs. Sheldon put out her hand. I took it. The clasp of her small finger
s was surprisingly firm and strong as a boy’s.

  “You see, Jake—Laceys come by the dozen.” Ronnie was beaming at me—the retriever naively, almost absurdly proud of the game he’d brought back for his master. “They’re all so fascinating that I couldn’t resist any of them. Angie, darling, you can squeeze them all into Aunt Lydia’s penthouse, can’t you? You’re so clever at things like that.”

  He chatted on with Angie, making plans. I had seen Ronnie through many enthusiasms, but I had never seen him as carried away as this. I looked at the quiet little group of Laceys standing around him. How long were they going to stay? Forever?

  I didn’t quite know why, but the sense of misgiving which I had felt on the way to the airport increased.

  Back at the house on 58th Street, off Park, which Ronnie had inherited from his father, we all had champagne and then lunch. Angie, in her inconspicuous manner, had somehow arranged it with Johnson, the butler, and the cook so that the lunch was as high-caliber as if it had been planned. Somehow, too, she managed to get all the unexpected newcomers’ baggage installed in the big upstairs apartment and their sleeping quarters arranged without any undue fluster.

  Ronnie was in an extravagantly gay mood. But my feeling of misgiving did not leave me. Even for Ronnie, with his unaccountable and sometimes perverse streak of whimsy, to arrive completely unheralded with a new bride and three new in-laws was almost incredibly irresponsible. And, with an evasiveness which seemed ominous, he hardly mentioned the marriage. All his lunch-time talk was about Basil Lacey, who was, in fact, the author Ronnie had told me to buy up and whose works, embarrassingly, I had not yet had time to investigate.

  Ronnie’s great contribution to the publishing firm had always been his hunches. While I went stolidly on building up what seemed to me a sane and balanced list. Ronnie would stay more or less out of the picture until, suddenly, he would discover a “genius” and go overboard for him. In the history of Sheldon and Duluth, he had discovered a dozen or more “geniuses”, at least five of whom had paid off and only two had been disastrous mistakes. That, for any publisher, was quite a handsome average.

  It was now immediately clear that Basil Lacey was his new discovery.

  “It’s amazing, Jake. Here’s this man. He’s written three novels—three of the most sensitive, the most perceptive, the most startling books I’ve read in years. They’ve all been published in England, but not one of them caused the faintest ripple. Can you believe it? There was this man—this unusual figure, this genius, starving to death—with his womenfolk in some terrible thatched cottage in the middle of nowhere. It’s a scandal, the worst scandal in British literature since Johnny Keats. But all that’s over now.” He beamed as dazzlingly as the dazzling silver and porcelain of his own lunch-table. “This man is going to be put on the map. A couple of years and Sheldon and Duluth will have established a new D. H. Lawrence.”

  I was used to Ronnie’s reckless enthusiasms, and prepared to take them seriously. But I was not used to the reaction of the Laceys. I had always heard that the English are easily embarrassed, particularly if their poverty or their personal merits should be publicly advertised. But the Laceys seemed to take Ronnie’s rhapsodies in their stride. Basil, looking without his cape very thin and bright-eyed and intelligent, sat with a wine-glass in his hand, smiling a faint “modest” smile. The aristocratic and, as yet, unidentifiable Phyllis Brent jabbed a match to a cigarette that had gone out in her mouth and snapped: “Greatest damn talent in England and it took an American to realize it.” Lacey’s wife and daughter went on eating in silence, as if the fact of Lacey’s genius was so well-established that another reference to it was no more noteworthy than a reference to the weather.

  Perhaps it was over-sensitive of me to think they were patronizing Ronnie, but that’s what I felt.

  Ronnie saved his climax for after lunch, when we had moved into the huge famous living-room, filled with the loot of his collecting mania which had always irritated Felicia—the almost overwhelmingly good Braques, the Picasso wood-and-plaster collage, the Benin figures and the whole wall of Tamayos.

  Ronnie gave everyone liqueurs and announced that Basil had written a play. It was, needless to say, a masterpiece and Ronnie wanted my brother, Peter, who is a Broadway producer, to hear it.

  “Jake, old boy, I know they’re terribly busy people, but could you get them for dinner tonight? Basil could read the play. I’m busting. I just can’t wait.”

  I knew Peter and Iris were desperate for a new play. I was pretty sure they would jump at almost any suggestion. I said I’d call them.

  “Wonderful. We’ll have a party. But it’s got to be the whole family. We’ve got to have Bill. He’s got to meet his godmother.”

  My spirits quailed somewhat at that. Bill was indeed Ronnie’s godson and Ronnie knew nothing about the latest breach between us, which had happened after he had left for England. Furthermore, with a sweetness that always touched me, he had made a point of ignoring Bill’s surliness and always went out of his way to woo and charm him. I knew Bill would make a fuss about coming and I also knew Ronnie would be terribly hurt if my son didn’t turn up to pay his respects to the new Mrs. Sheldon. Because I was embarrassed. I took it out in anger against Bill. The little brat! For once I’d force him to face his social obligations.

  “I’ll bring him,” I said.

  “Fine.”

  Ronnie had crossed to his wife and was looking down at her with that wondering, almost humble adoration which I had noticed, at the airport. Suddenly Mrs. Lacey gave a little startled cry. She had been pulling some knitting out of a bag and one of the needles had knocked her brandy-glass off the chair-arm into her lap. Ronnie ran to her side and started solicitously patting at the stain with his handkerchief.

  Mrs. Lacey was pink with embarrassment. “Oh, dear, how clumsy of me! ”

  “What difference does it make? You won’t be wearing this suit much longer.” Ronnie grinned at her. “I’ve arranged it all on the plane with Basil. He’s given me carte blanche. On Monday I’m going to dress this whole clan to its teeth. Truck-loads of finery will pour in from all quarters of the globe. Gone will be the habiliments of woe—deep into the past with Shropshire.”

  “Oh, no, Ronnie,” Mrs. Lacey exclaimed. “Don’t be foolish. Of course you mustn’t. After all you’ve done for us! ”

  I glanced at Basil Lacey, who had kindly given Ronnie carte blanche to spend a small fortune on his family. The author was merely smiling his modest smile as if a particularly sensitive passage of prose had been praised.

  Suddenly I wanted to get away. I told Ronnie I had to leave. He went with me into the hall to see me off the premises. We paused by a table on which was standing an exquisite little Greco-Buddhist female figurine. Ronnie’s face was still shining with enthusiasm, but, as he turned to me, the familiar, almost sheepish look of uncertainty showed in his eyes.

  “I very nearly cabled you to come over, old boy. But I didn’t. I guess I was scared you wouldn’t approve. You’re such an old disapprover. But they’re wonderful, all of them, wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like them. You do approve, don’t you? Now you’ve met them?”

  Now I’d met them? What had I met but a silent little girl and a group of hangers-on who seemed more than adaptable to good fortune? I knew my opinion at that point was worthless and for all I knew, based on jealousy. I knew also that even if I’d had anything constructive to say, it was far too late. It wasn’t going to help Ronnie to tell him that I was completely baffled by the whole deal.

  Rather awkwardly, I said: “Jean seems very sweet—and she’s a great beauty.”

  “She is, isn’t she?” He’d got my endorsement and instantly the doubt vanished from his eyes. He put his hand on the little statue. It was fluid and graceful, the youthful, faintly smiling profile as much in movement as the rippling folds of the stone robe. “You’ve noticed the resemblance, of course. A dead ringer for the Haddad figure, isn’t she? I noticed it the firs
t moment I saw her. It seemed too good to be true.”

  I saw then, or rather, I thought I saw. Ronnie had been able to resist all types of predatory women with the greatest of ease, but he had never been able to resist any work of art that moved him. Had he then mixed up Shropshire with the London art galleries? If that was what had happened, it helped me to understand the phenomenon of the Laceys.

  But it didn’t, in any way, lessen my forebodings.

  3

  At home I called Peter and Iris, who accepted Ronnie’s invitation. They didn’t know Ronnie very well, but he intrigued them and they were interested about the play. I called Bill too. I hated doing it and, at the same time hated my own cowardice. But my son was surprisingly biddable. He was thinking about Rome and Sylvia Rymer, no doubt, and realized that this was not a moment to antagonize me further.

  “Okay, Pop. Sure. I’ll be there to salaam.”

  I arrived at 58th Street at seven-thirty. The entire family party was assembled in evening clothes. The Laceys, living up to one’s traditional expectations of the British, looked far more distinguished in formal dress—even though their distinction was oddly “period”. Basil Lacey, in an ancient dinner-jacket, seemed immensely, almost Edwardianly, the Man of Letters. Mrs. Lacey and Lady Phyllis Brent both wore long-skirted, bare-shouldered satin gowns and a great deal of face-powder. Mrs. Lacey was somehow touching to me, as if she were gallantly trying not to let the side down. Phyllis Brent could have been the ugly, ambitious consort of a governor-general or a minister.

  But the most marked change was in Ronnie's wife. As if the natural progression from day to evening had broken some spell of apathy, she had become astonishingly alive. Her eyes were sparkling and her skin seemed lit up from inside. Her dress was the corniest pink chiffon ball gown, almost certainly run up by her mother, but she wore it as if she were a young duchess.

  Ronnie’s choice of a bride seemed more understandable. I started to feel less uneasy.