Tales of the Black Widowers

"Why?" asked Avalon.
"Don't know. It seemed important at the time. God, how I remember that night, because I kept thinking, maybe I'll sleep late because I'm not sleeping now and I knew I wouldn't. I must have dropped off at about four a.m., but at eight I was up and crawled out of bed to get myself breakfast.
"It was another sunny day. Pleasant and cool, but you knew it was going to have all the warmth of spring with none of the heat of summer. Another nice day! You know it hurts me, now and then, that I didn't tike Marge better than I did. I mean, we got along all right, but we weren't close. I swear I visited them more to be with Alex than to be with her. And then I got a call."
Halsted said, "You mean a telephone call?"
"Yes. Eight o'clock of a Sunday morning. Who would make a call at that time to anyone unless they knew the jerk always got up at eight. If I had been asleep and had been awakened, and growled into the mouthpiece, the whole thing would have been different."
"Who was it?" asked Drake.
"Alex. He asked if he woke me. He knew he didn't, but he felt guilty calling that early, I suppose. He asked what time it was. I looked at the clock and said, 'It's eight-oh-nine a.m. Of course I'm awake.' I was sort of proud of it, you see.
"And then he asked if he could come over, because he had had an argument with Marge and had stamped out of the house and didn't want to go back till she had cooled down… I tell you, I'm glad I never married.
"Anyway, if I'd only said no. If I'd only told him I'd had a bad night and I needed my sleep and I didn't want company, he'd have gone back to his apartment. He had no place else to go. And then it all wouldn't have happened. But no, big-hearted Mario was so proud of being an early riser that he said, 'Come on over and I'll fix you coffee and eggs,' because I knew Marge wasn't one for early Sunday breakfasts, and I knew Alex hadn't eaten.
"So he was over in ten minutes and by eight-thirty I had the scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him, and Marge was alone in the apartment, waiting for murderers."
Trumbull said, "Did your brother-in-law tell his wife where he was going?"
Gonzalo said, "I don't think so. I assumed he didn't. I figure what happened was he stamped out in a fit of rage without even knowing where he was going himself. Then he thought of me. Even if he knew he was going to visit me, he might not have told her. He would figure: Let her worry."
"All right," said Trumbull, "and then when the junkies came to the door and maybe tried the lock, she figured it was Alex coming back and she opened the door to them. I'll bet the lock wasn't broken."
"No, it wasn't," said Gonzalo.
"Isn't Sunday morning a queer time for junkies to make the rounds?" asked Drake.
"Listen," said Rubin, "they'll do it any time. The craving for drugs knows no season."
"What was the fight about?" asked Avalon suddenly. "I mean, between Alex and Marge?"
"Oh, I don't know. A little thing. Alex had done something at work that must have looked bad and that was one thing that Marge couldn't stand. I don't even know what it was, but whatever it was, it must have been a blow at her pride in him and she was sore.
"The trouble was that Alex never learned to just let her run down. When we were kids, I always did that. I would say, 'Yes, Marge; yes, Marge,' and then she'd run down. But Alex would always try to defend himself and then things would just get worse. That time, most of the night was filled with argument… Of course, he says now that if he only hadn't made a federal case out of it, he wouldn't have left, and then none of it would have happened."
"The moving finger writes,' " said Avalon. "Brooding on these ifs does no good."
"Sure, but how do you stop, Jeff? Anyway, they had a bad night and I had a bad night. It was as though there were some kind of telepathic communication." "Oh, bull," said Rubin. "We were twins," said Gonzalo defensively. "Only fraternal twins," said Rubin, "unless you're a girl underneath all those clothes." "So what?"
"So it's only identical twins that are supposed to have this telepathic sympathy, but that's bull, too."
"Anyway," said Gonzalo, "Alex was with me and I ate and he didn't eat much, and he cried on my shoulder about how hard Marge was on him sometimes, and I sympathized and said, 'Listen, why do you pay so much attention to her? She's a good kid if you'll only not take her seriously.' You know all the consoling things people say. I figured in a couple of hours he'd be talked out and he'd go home and make it up and I'd go out to the park or maybe back to bed. Only in a couple of hours the telephone rang again, and it was the police."
"How'd they know where to find Alex?" asked Halsted. "They didn't. They called me. I'm her brother. Alex and I went over and identified her. For a while there, he looked like a dead man. It wasn't just that she was dead. After all, he'd had a fight with her and the neighbors must have heard. Now she was dead, and they always suspect the husband. Of course, they questioned him and he admitted the fight and leaving the apartment and coming to my place-the whole thing."
"It must have sounded phony as hell," said Rubin.
"I corroborated the fact that he was at my place. I said he'd arrived at my place at eight-twenty, maybe eight twenty-five, and had been there since. And the murder had taken place at nine."
"You mean there were witnesses?" asked Drake.
"Hell, no. But there'd been noise. The people underneath heard. The people across the hall heard. Furniture being overturned; a scream. Of course, no one saw anyone; no one saw anything. They sat behind their locked doors. But they heard the noise and it was around nine o'clock. They all agreed to that.
"That settled it as far as the police were concerned. In that neighborhood, if it isn't the spouse, it's some petty thief, probably an addict. Alex and I went out and he got drunk and I stayed with him a couple of days because he was in no condition to be left alone and that's all there is to the story."
Trambull said, "Do you ever see Alex these days?"
"Once in a while. I lend him a few bucks now and then. Not that I expect to get paid back. He quit his job the week after Marge was killed. I don't think he ever went back to work. He was just a broken man-because he blamed himself, you know. Why did he have to argue with her? Why did he have to leave the house? Why did He have to come over to my place? Anyway, there it is. It's a murder but no mystery."
There was silence for a time, and then Halsted said, "Do you mind, Mario, if we speculate about it, just- just-"
"Just for fun?" said Mario. "Sure, go ahead, have fun. If you have questions, I'll answer as best I can but as far as the murder is concerned, there's nothing to say."
"You see," said Halsted awkwardly, "no one saw anybody. It's only an assumption that some nameless addicts came in and killed her. Someone might have killed her with a better reason, knowing that it would be blamed on addicts and he'd be safe. Or she, maybe."
"Who's the someone?" said Mario skeptically.
"Didn't she have any enemies? Did she have money that somebody wanted?" said Halsted.
"Money? What there was was in the bank. It all went to Alex, of course. It was his to begin with; everything was joint."
"How about jealousy?" said Avalon. "Maybe she was having an affair. Or he was. Maybe that's what the argument was about."
"And he killed her?" said Gonzalo. "The fact is he was in my apartment at the time she was killed."
"Not necessarily he. Suppose it was her boy friend, or his girl friend. The boy friend, because she was threatening to break off the affair. The girl friend, because she wanted to marry your brother-in-law."
Mario shook his head. "Marge was no femme fatale. I was always surprised she made it with Alex. For that matter, maybe she didn't."