Understudy for Death Read online

  But that was then and now was now. I had parked for the purpose of going over in my mind a few questions to ask Mrs. Gladys Chatham in the morning, not to think about sex—but I now found that to think about Gladys Chatham was to also think about sex. I shook my head in the darkness; the woman was built like a steel latrine, but why think of her—the unattainable, when the attainable was readily available at home? I started the car, backed onto the lake road, and pointed for home.

  The house was dark, but I made plenty of noise as I came in. I undressed in the study, took a long shower, and I was still drying myself when I entered the bedroom.

  “Are you asleep, Beryl?” I whispered.

  “Sure,” she said, “sound asleep.”

  I turned on the rose-shaded bedside table lamp. She blinked, covering her eyes with her right hand. Beryl was lying on top of the sheets, a beautiful sight with her shorty white, silk nightgown hiked up above her hips. Her long, tanned legs seemed even darker in contrast to the snowy white band across her hips, which began at her navel, and ended just below the smooth joining merge of her thighs. There was another brown band above her navel, and then it stopped where the halter kept the sun from shining against her incredibly white breasts. And the dark midriff band could be seen through her diaphanous nightgown. As I looked down at her, I was grateful for the laws that kept her from getting an overall suntan! The white, white parts were for my eyes alone—

  “Do we need the light?” she asked. “Do you plan on reading in bed?”

  I laughed. “No, not exactly. I just turned it on to make sure who this strange woman is that I found in my bed. That’s all. I had one in here this morning who seemed a little wild.”

  She giggled. “I’m rather friendly when you get to know me. But if you’re going to leave the light on, Mr. Hudson, please drop the Venetian blinds. The neighbors all think that I married you for your money.”

  I laughed, to please her, although she had made the same joke—if that is what it was—so many times before it wasn’t funny. It was too muggy to drop the blinds, which would block the gentle breeze that struggled through the window, so I turned out the light.

  We didn’t speak, we kissed instead, the inevitable practiced preliminary. Beryl’s upper lip was damp, and her silky skin was as warm as a flannel heating pad. It was well after midnight, and yet the humidity made the air as hot as midday. I had cooled off some under the shower, but little rivulets of sweat were flowing again down my face and neck, and my hair was as damp as if I hadn’t dried it.

  Playfully, Beryl drummed her fingers on my stomach, and then marched downward. “I understand, sir,” she whispered sympathetically, “that you have a growth of some kind here?”

  “I hope so,” I replied, and such proved to be the case.

  There were no shortcuts to love-making with Beryl. She was an emancipated female; she knew her rights and demanded satisfaction every time. Ordinarily, I had no particular objections to prolonging the love play, but there seemed to be a ritualistic sameness, a pattern that had developed over the years that had to be followed at all costs; and instead of being fun, it was something of an ordeal to be undergone before I could obtain my own personal gratification. I was almost detached as I went through the motions, anticipating her responses almost to the second as one followed another.

  She now began to cover my face with kisses, moving her hips in slow rhythm; this was my wordless cue to comply, and wordlessly I complied. But this time I was unwilling to wait, and I achieved my purpose without giving her any warning. My perspiration had dribbled onto her breasts and belly, and I tried to raise myself, to get away. But I couldn’t; she locked her hands behind my head, flinging her lithe body up against me, and glued her open, sticky mouth to mine, making meaningless sounds of pleasure, and begging me not to stop. She was wild, frenzied by the thought that I had finished ahead of her, as tight against me as lichens growing to a rock; and so, in the end, she received the satisfaction she was entitled to—and who was I, a mere husband, to say she didn’t deserve it?

  Chapter Five

  While I was eating breakfast the next morning, my wife made a fresh pot of coffee for a change, and sat down at the table with me. I eyed her suspiciously as she stirred her coffee, but her smile was pleasant and guileless.

  “Are you going to review the Civic Theater play tonight?” she asked conversationally.

  “Don’t I always? I’ve got two complimentary’s, if you want to see it.”

  “Oh, no,” she laughed. “This is one play I don’t want to see.”

  “It’s Lilliom,” I reminded her, “and a near classic. If they do a halfway professional production, you might enjoy it.”

  “No, not this one.” She shook her head. “I read your account of the lecture at the Beachcomber’s last night. Was it really that good?”

  “Better.”

  “How’s your play coming along, Richard. You haven’t talked about it in a long time.”

  “I may start all over again.”

  “Not again!” she said in dismay.

  “Yes, again. But not this morning. I’ve got to get going.” I pushed back from the table and went into the bathroom for my necktie. As I reentered the living room, carrying my jacket over my arm, Beryl tried to stop me at the front door.

  “You aren’t taking the car this morning,” she said flatly.

  “But I am. I’ve got some interviews to make today.”

  “I’ve got a dozen things to do this morning,” she protested.

  “Then you’ll have to ride the bus.”

  She followed me outside, wearing the familiar, woeful, hurt expression, but she didn’t protest any more. I drove away, feeling uneasy inside, as though I had lost an argument of grave importance.

  Because of the building materials used in Florida, there is very little difference between a $10,000 house and a $20,000 house. The size of the lot and its location make the difference in price, not the structure itself. Concrete brick and stucco are used extensively in residences because of possible hurricanes, and this gives the homes a certain sameness in appearance, regardless of what the architect tries to do with his materials. The Yankee Snowbird who moves down to Florida to buy a house becomes confused by the wide range in prices between ostensibly identical homes. The differences are so minor they aren’t apparent to his untrained eye.

  Not even the number of bedrooms can give a clue to the cost of the house. A two-bedroom dwelling often costs a great deal more than a three- or four-bedroom house; and the differences are so subtle that only the builder knows the reasons, and he can’t explain them. In connection with bedrooms, I should mention the Florida-room, because it is unique to Florida homes.

  This room is an appendage—either built into the original structure or added to the building later—with three screened and jalousied sides from floor to ceiling, and it’s the modern counterpart of the old-fashioned, screened sleeping porch. The Florida-room, as a rule, is built onto the back of the house, and from the day it is finished until undeserving offspring inherit the house, three-quarters of the home owner’s living time is spent in this one room. His television set, stereo/hi-fi, and vibrator chair are moved to the Florida-room. If it’s a large Florida-room he eats all of his meals there at a glass-and-wrought-iron table, but if the room is too small for a table, he eats his meals on a folding television tray, just like everybody else in the United States.

  To show off his wealth in Florida, the rich man can reveal his financial status only through his wall-to-wall carpeting and furnishings, and by adding a swimming pool to his backyard. But in swimming pools, consumer credit has come to the assistance of the man with small means; for just a few extra dollars a month added to his thirty-year mortgage, he can also have a swimming pool in addition to a Florida-room.

  Craftsmanship has fallen off to such a poor standard, costly furniture looks little better than the cheaper copies obtained under long-term financing. The wealthy Floridian, who is desperate to show
off his money externally, must furnish his home with genuine antiques or early American furniture, mixed with cast-off European relics, and supplemented by ancient Oriental art objects. Knowing these things, I know that the house containing the most beat-up objects belongs to the wealthiest man. The more threadbare the rugs, the more rickety the furniture, the poorer the taste, the richer the owner.

  All of this is by way of saying that I estimated that Mrs. Victor Chatham’s residence had cost her husband approximately $26,000. If the house had been on the lake, I would have added $5,000 more to my estimate. As I banged the brass knocker on the door—there wasn’t a buzzer—I figured the clever architect had pocketed $.85 by this little trick.

  “Come in, Mr. Hudson,” Mrs. Chatham said smilingly, as she opened the door. “And it’s rude to stare, you know.”

  “I’m sorry. I was thinking.”

  I followed her through the living room, through glass sliding doors, and into a Florida-room which faced a swimming pool. The pool was an oval instead of the conventional kidney or narrow oblong, so this meant that either Gladys or Victor was trying to assert some kind of individuality.

  “Who built your pool, Mrs. Chatham?”

  “We had it put in about a year after the house was finished. The Merlin Marine Company did it in three or four days. It was fun watching them—”

  “It took six days,” I amended. “And the foreman apologized as he said—‘We could finish it by tomorrow afternoon, Mrs. Chatham, but tomorrow’s Saturday and I don’t want to nick you for overtime. So we’ll just leave the mess the way it is, and come back Monday morning.’

  “As soon as he told you that you called your husband to get an okay for the overtime so you could have a new pool celebration party Saturday night.” I smiled. “Am I right or wrong?”

  “Mostly right!” She laughed, a husky, hearty sound, and sat down on a chintz-covered bamboo couch. “Only I didn’t call my husband. How did you know this, Mr. Hudson?”

  “I know the foreman at Merlin, and that’s the way he operates. So your house cost you about twenty-six, five.”

  “That’s close, but it was nearer twenty-eight thousand. I can see you’ve been checking on me.”

  “No, not really. Only an estimate by a native Floridian, but I don’t know how I missed it that far. I’m slipping, Mrs. Chatham.”

  “We have a double carport.”

  “I counted that.”

  “I know!” She clapped her hands. “My husband’s study. It’s completely paneled in Philippine mahogany, all matched wood. And you didn’t see it as you came through the living room because he keeps the door locked.”

  “That’s a dirty trick to play on an assessor.”

  “I think so, too,” she agreed. “I feel like Pandora sometimes; I want to go in there so badly. There isn’t anything in his old study I haven’t seen already, but that locked door is like a challenge to me every day. He’s just fussy about his papers, afraid I’d go through his files and mess them up. I wouldn’t, but—”

  “I think you might,” I said solemnly.

  She smiled like a mischievous little girl. “I might at that.”

  “Now,” I said, taking copy paper and a pencil out of my jacket.

  “Would you like some breakfast, Mr. Hudson?”

  “I had breakfast.”

  “I mean a drink.”

  “Sure. Either bourbon or scotch with water will be fine.”

  “You can have both if you can’t decide.”

  “I’ll settle for the bourbon then.”

  While she fixed the drinks at the bamboo bar with the Micarta top ($98.75 plus tax at all Modern Rattan Stores) I put the paper and pencil on the coffee table in front of me. A good interviewer doesn’t take notes. I had only brought out the paper as a prop to show that I was calling on business.

  “And here we are.” She sat down on the couch again, facing me.

  “To Marion Huneker,” I raised my glass, “wherever she may be.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Over the rim of my glass I fixed my intelligent eyes appraisingly on the woman. She had evidently made an effort to prepare herself for my arrival, but she hadn’t quite made it. Her tawny hair had been brushed, and it swirled about her shoulders with a careless effect. She wore a pair of bullfighter toreador pants that hit her just below the knees, and they were fashioned from a shimmering gold material of some kind. A male-styled white shirt, tied by the tails at her slim waist, was much too large for her, and her formidable bosom wasn’t as evident as it had been in the tight evening gown she had worn the night before. The shirt collar was open at the throat, and although she had powdered after a shower or bath, the powder was caked here and there on her neck. These patches of pink caked powder irritated me, as did the woman’s oversight in failing to remove a tiny fleck of yellow matter from the corner of her left eye. A “sleepy” is the term for this tiny piece of matter that forms in a person’s eye when sleeping. I see too much sometimes, and I was being hypercritical, which wasn’t fair…

  “Can you give me one good reason why Mrs. Huneker killed herself ?”

  “You’re such a serious young man!”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” I said irritably.

  “Because you frown so! If you didn’t glower, you could be quite handsome, Mr. Hudson.”

  “Handsome is as handsome does, I always say. It’s an axiom we ugly men must live by.”

  “You’re far from being ugly—”

  “Well, you’re close to being beautiful.”

  “I wasn’t fishing, Mr. Hudson.”

  “I am. I want to know why Marion Huneker killed herself and her two children.”

  “Why?”

  “My editor has prostate trouble, and he’s afraid to go to a doctor because an examination might turn up a cancer. Being afraid of death himself, he is outraged when somebody takes their own life. Especially a well-to-do woman like Mrs. Huneker, who has no apparent reason to die.”

  “And he wants you to write about her suicide?” Mrs. Chatham wrinkled her nose distastefully. “Isn’t that rather morbid?”

  “Newspaper readers are a morbid lot, Mrs. Chatham; they enjoy reading about death in every form. We report knifings, matricides, patricides, infanticides, and suicides, and the obituary column is the most popular feature of the paper. On state-sanctioned electric chair murders we send a personal representative, and we describe all highway deaths as colorfully as possible. If we were unable to devote a goodly portion of our pages to wholesome, violent death, our circulation would drop drastically. And without a healthy circulation, we couldn’t charge so much for ads.”

  “I see. But why would anybody be interested in Marion’s suicide? Other than morbidly, I mean?”

  “Suicide, more than any other form of death, makes people indignant, that’s why. The life force is all we have, and when people kill themselves, it frightens the survivors. I think my editor wants me to come up with some valid reasons. If so, we can encourage others to commit suicide, and by reporting their deaths, increase our circulation. Suicide, once it starts, comes in waves, like a fashion. A lot of people, who have considered it but haven’t acted for one reason or another, are often encouraged by the brave example of another.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t like your editor, Mr. Hudson.”

  “He’s a good man, Mrs. Chatham. Did you ever see a person murdered, Mrs. Chatham?”

  “I’ve seen dead people before.”

  “Did you ever witness a death; see someone killed right before your eyes?”

  “No, and I don’t want to either!”

  “Neither did I, but that was one of my first assignments when I started on the paper as a cub reporter. Mr. Curtis is against capital punishment, you see, and to make certain that all of the members of the editorial staff see it his way, he assigns new writers to cover electric chair murders at Raiford. Before I made the trip to Raiford I was merely indifferent to capital punishment, but now I’m defi
nitely opposed to it. After you see a boy of twenty killed in the chair, your realize that it is you personally pulling the switch on him.”

  “Are you really serious?”

  “Yes I am. I’m a voter, and as a voter I should be doing something about getting this penalty abolished. To see such a death is to take it seriously. Every year about one out of five hundred thousand Florida residents die in the chair. I realize that this is a small percentage, but suppose your good friend, Marion Huneker, had failed to kill herself after murdering her children? Would you have been willing to pull the switch on her?”

  “I think it’s too early in the morning to talk about such hypothetical questions. And really, Mr. Hudson, I don’t think I can tell you anything about Marion that could help you.”

  “Suppose you try, and then let me decide?”

  “My husband’s a lawyer, as you know, and he wouldn’t want my name in the papers in connection with Marion’s. I know he wouldn’t.”

  “I won’t use your name, I promise. I’m concerned with her motivation, and right now, I’m not even positive I’ll use Mrs. Huneker’s case for my series. It might be better to make it a Jane Doe story. But either way, your name won’t be mentioned.”

  “If you really think I can help…?”

  “How long and how well did you know Mrs. Huneker? As a starter.”

  “We met the Hunekers right after we moved down here from Manhattan. Mr. Huneker was new here, too, and my husband specializes in corporation law. Jack was one of my husband’s first clients; he needed help setting up his business when he was getting started. For awhile, we sort of banded together, both families, but Victor and Jack had nothing in common outside of business. As our circle widened, Victor and Jack seldom saw each other anymore, but Marion and I were still very close, and we got along fine. Actually, Marion and I had little in common either, but she was a friendly person, and I liked her.”