“Yes,” he said, his eyes shut, “I suppose it is.”
“John loves me best of all the women in the world and I love him and try to understand his wrong way of thinking.”
&nb
sp; Krovitch hit the table with his fist. “God damn, oh, God damn it, Fabian! If you think you can—”
“I’m helpless,” said Fabian.
“But she’s—”
“I know, I know what you want to say,” said Fabian quietly, looking at the detective. “She’s in my throat, is that it? No, no. She’s not in my throat. She’s somewhere else. I don’t know. Here, or here.” He touched his chest, his head.
“She’s quick to hide. Sometimes there’s nothing I can do. Sometimes she is only herself, nothing of me at all. Sometimes she tells me what to do and I must do it. She stands guard, she reprimands me, is honest where I am dishonest, good when I am wicked as all the sins that ever were. She lives a life apart. She’s raised a wall in my head and lives there, ignoring me if I try to make her say improper things, cooperating if I suggest the right words and pantomime.” Fabian sighed. “So if you intend going on I’m afraid Ria must be present. Locking her up will do no good, no good at all.”
Lieutenant Krovitch sat silently for the better part of a minute, then made his decision. “All right. Let her stay. It just may be, by God, that before the night’s over I’ll be tired enough to ask even a ventriloquist’s dummy questions.”
* * *
Krovitch unwrapped a fresh cigar, lit it and puffed smoke. “So you don’t recognize the dead man, Mr. Douglas?”
“He looks vaguely familiar. Could be an actor.”
Krovitch swore. “Let’s all stop lying, what do you say? Look at Ockham’s shoes, his clothing. It’s obvious he needed money and came here tonight to beg, borrow or steal some. Let me ask you this, Douglas. Are you in love with Mrs. Fabian?”
“Now, wait just a moment!” cried Alyce Fabian.
Krovitch motioned her down. “You sit there, side by side, the two of you. I’m not exactly blind. When a press agent sits where the husband should be sitting, consoling the wife, well! The way you look at the marionette’s coffin, Mrs. Fabian, holding your breath when she appears. You make fists when she talks. Hell, you’re obvious.”
“If you think for one moment I’m jealous of a stick of wood!”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, no, I’m not!”
Fabian moved. “You needn’t tell him anything, Alyce.”
“Let her!”
They all jerked their heads and stared at the small figurine, whose mouth was now slowly shutting. Even Fabian looked at the marionette as if it had struck him a blow.
After a long while Alyce Fabian began to speak.
“I married John seven years ago because he said he loved me and because I loved him and I loved Riabouchinska. At first, anyway. But then I began to see that he really lived all of his life and paid most of his attentions to her and I was a shadow waiting in the wings every night.
“He spent fifty thousand dollars a year on her wardrobe—a hundred thousand dollars for a dollhouse with gold and silver and platinum furniture. He tucked her in a small satin bed each night and talked to her. I thought it was all an elaborate joke at first and I was wonderfully amused. But when it finally came to me that I was indeed merely an assistant in his act I began to feel a vague sort of hatred and distrust—not for the marionette, because after all it wasn’t her doing, but I felt a terrible growing dislike and hatred for John, because it was his fault. He, after all, was the control, and all of his cleverness and natural sadism came out through his relationship with the wooden doll.
“And when I finally became very jealous, how silly of me! It was the greatest tribute I could have paid him and the way he had gone about perfecting the art of throwing his voice. It was all so idiotic, it was all so strange. And yet I knew that something had hold of John, just as people who drink have a hungry animal somewhere in them, starving to death.
“So I moved back and forth from anger to pity, from jealousy to understanding. There were long periods when I didn’t hate him at all, and I never hated the thing that Ria was in him, for she was the best half, the good part, the honest and the lovely part of him. She was everything that he never let himself try to be.”
Alyce Fabian stopped talking and the basement room was silent.
“Tell about Mr. Douglas,” said a voice, whispering.
Mrs. Fabian did not look up at the marionette. With an effort she finished it out. “When the years passed and there was so little love and understanding from John, I guess it was natural I turned to—Mr. Douglas.”
Krovitch nodded. “Everything begins to fall into place. Mr. Ockham was a very poor man, down on his luck, and he came to this theater tonight because he knew something about you and Mr. Douglas. Perhaps he threatened to speak to Mr. Fabian if you didn’t buy him off. That would give you the best of reasons to get rid of him.”