“It wasn’t anything I did deliberately.” Wilson sighed and seemed to sag a little more in his chair, and I found myself feeling for him again the sympathy and strange liking that I had felt before, in spite of what he had once done to me, which really hadn’t been deliberate either. “In fact, it wasn’t anything I did at all. I was simply stupid, that’s what I was, and I suppose stupidity is always expensive. You remember when Beth and I separated out in California? Well, of course you do. You also remember that we settled things amicably between us out of court. I made a very generous settlement, it seems to me, for I don’t mind telling you that I could have gotten off without paying her a penny. Not a single penny. It would have entailed a lot of unpleasantness, however, and I was glad enough to settle. Anyhow, she took what I gave her and went off to get a divorce, which was part of our understanding. Soon after she left, I came back here to manage the main factory, and later on I got notice from her that the divorce had been granted. In a couple of years, I married again, and everything seemed to be satisfactorily settled and almost forgotten until Beth showed up here yesterday and told me that I was a bigamist.”
“A what?”
“A bigamist. A man with more than one wife at the same time. She said she hadn’t ever actually gotten a divorce. She intended to at first, but somehow she kept putting it off, and finally she decided it would be unnecessary to get one at all. She hadn’t meant to cause me any inconvenience or trouble, but it wasn’t really much of a problem, after all, for she was willing to go away quietly again, and all that was required of me was to give her twenty thousand dollars to go on.”
“Didn’t you sign any divorce papers or anything, for God’s sake?”
“Yes, I did, but she said they were phony. She had them drawn up by a disbarred lawyer she met somewhere, because, she said, being married made her feel a little more secure in case something came up to make a husband handy. I should have had my lawyers check it out, of course, but I guess it just didn’t occur to me seriously that she might do something like that. It looked perfectly in order and all, but I admit that I know practically nothing about such matters. I admitted in the beginning that I was stupid.”
“I hope you haven’t been stupid enough to tell all this to anyone else.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. I told Cotton McBride that I refused to see Beth, but then he found the five thousand dollars in her room, and later I had to admit that I’d seen her and given her the money, because he was sure to find it out one way or another, and it would only have looked worse for me if I kept on lying. I still didn’t quite tell the truth, though, not all of it, for I merely said I gave her the money because she needed it. I didn’t say anything about my being a bigamist, or blackmail, or that the five thousand, which was all I had in my office safe, was only an initial payment on twenty. Now I’m afraid it will all come out sooner or later in the investigation of what happened to Beth last night, and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to tell it voluntarily in my own way.”
“Do you realize the probable consequences if you do?”
“Yes. I’ll be suspected of killing her. I may even be arrested, and I suppose I must be prepared to face it. It’s odd, isn’t it, how something like this can develop all of a sudden with no warning whatever?” He got up abruptly from his chair with an unfolding motion and stood looking into the darkening yard, and I could hear once more that soft, measured popping of knuckles. “It was damn inconsiderate of Beth to let me go on thinking I was divorced, getting married again and all, but it was even more inconsiderate to come back here and get herself killed the way she did. Still, you know, I can’t seem to feel any malice toward her for it. I can’t even feel that she really meant me any harm. Maybe you’ll understand that. I don’t know. I always thought a lot of Beth. I kept wishing that she’d change enough so that things could go on between us, but she didn’t, and they couldn’t, and now I wish that things had turned out better for her than they did, but there’s no use in wishing to change what is over and done with. Her father died when she was a young girl, you know, and her mother died several years ago, while Beth and I were in California. Do you happen to know if there are any other relatives living?”
“I don’t think so. None who would care or concern themselves.”
“Well, she must be buried, of course, and I guess I’m the logical one to see that it’s done in good order. I’ll buy a little place for her in the cemetery and make the arrangements. It can be done quite simply and cheaply, I think. There’s no sense in making a great fuss about it.”
Sid and I had both stood up with him, and now he suddenly made a jerky half-turn toward us and an odd little half-bow from the waist that somehow managed to give an effect of great courtliness.
“Thank you for tolerating my intrusion. It’s been a relief to talk to someone, but I’ll have to decide for myself, after all, what I must do. I won’t ask you to treat this as a privileged communication if
