Pandora by Holly Hollander

“Yes, and that destroyed my whole plan, or at least at the time I thought it did.”

“Why’d you kill him, Mr. Sinclair?”

“I had to. Several times when Harry couldn’t come to see about him, I had gone in his place, as his deputy so to speak. Sometimes I’d taken Harry’s check to the sanatorium, and once or twice when I thought Bert wasn’t getting the treatment he should have had, I’d told Harry about it and relayed his instructions to the doctors there. Somehow that had given Bert the idea that I was the one who was keeping him locked up. He was insane, of course, though if you hadn’t been around him much he could seem quite normal. He had a knife, and I shot him. The next morning I came to this house; I knew Elaine had spent most of the night at the hospital and would sleep late, but I told the housekeeper I had to talk to her about straightening up at the school. As I had expected, the housekeeper wouldn’t wake her; but she let me wait again in Harry’s study, and I put back the gun.”

Elaine stood up, her violet eyes brimming with tears. “De Witte, I won’t let you do this. You’re a wonderful person—the best, the most unselfish man I’ve ever known. But I’m not going to let you destroy yourself. Lieutenant Sandoz, those are lies. De Witte is Harry’s friend, his best friend, and now he’s trying to save Harry, but it’s not right.”

Sandoz was up now, too, trying to get Elaine back into her chair. “Just let him tell his story, Mrs. Hollander. Hear him out.” Between them I saw my father’s face as if it were a photo in a frame; his mouth was open, but I don’t think he was saying anything.

“Lieutenant,” my mother said, “I saw my husband with that box open!”

How Blue Did the Job

All of a sudden it got so quiet in our living room you could hear yourself breathe.

Elaine dropped back into her chair and put her face in her hands. “I came into the study, and he was at the table. The box was open. He didn’t see me. There. It’s out. I said it.”

“Elaine!” It was my father. “My God, Elaine!”

Blue said, “Yes, Elaine. My God.” I’d never heard him use that tone before. Everybody looked at him, even her. “You saw your husband with Pandora’s Box open, and you didn’t ask why he had opened it? Why not? And by the way, what was in it?”

There were tears streaking my mother’s perfect little face; I don’t think she wanted to say anything, but after a minute she did. “Nothing. There was nothing in it when I saw it.”

“You didn’t see him put the German shell in it?”

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t have gone through with the drawing.”

“But you went through with it believing that the box was empty? Thinking the whole thing would end in an excruciating anticlimax?”

“I had to. There wasn’t anything else to do.”

Once I heard my father fire a man; it was the chauffeur we had before Bill, and my father had told him to clear out in just the tone he used now. What he said this time was, “Lieutenant, I never opened that box.”

“Mr. Hollander, I’m beginning to think you didn’t.”

Blue paid no attention to them. “There was everything else to do, Elaine. All you would have had to do—if you’d actually seen your husband with that box open, and the box was empty—was suggest to him that you find some interesting antique to put in it as a prize. For a hundred dollars you could have gotten some nineteenth-century books from De Witte Sinclair. You could have used an old gun, or some antique silver. Anything—anything, if you had really seen it open as you say.”

“Are you accusing me of having put the shell in that box?”

“Yes, I am,” Blue told her. “I can prove it. I will prove it.”

Sandoz snorted. “First Mr. Hollander, then Sinclair, and now Mrs. Hollander? Okay, let’s hear it.” He sounded skeptical; but I was watching his eyes, and they told Jake to get behind my mother. Jake did it, just a couple of steps over.

Blue said, “Mr. Sinclair’s confession was simply a trick, as you certainly understand by now. He and I arranged it over the telephone last night, and this morning he came to my place and we rehearsed it.”

Sandoz said, “He was running one hell of a risk.”

Blue nodded. “He really is Mr. Hollander’s best friend, you see. Even rich and powerful men sometimes have one or two real friends, though often they don’t know it. We took a few precautions, however; Mr. Sinclair can produce three witnesses, including myself, who will swear that we heard him express his intention to make a false confession this morning. And it any event a polygraph test would have cleared him.”

Sandoz grunted. “You claimed a minute ago that you could prove Mrs. Hollander made the bomb.” He was watching her and pretending not to. “If you can, why’d you need Sinclair?”

“Because I’m trying to do something you police never seem to. I’m trying to anticipate the trial.” Blue leaned back in his chair. It couldn’t have been noon yet, but he looked tired. “The wisest thing for Mrs. Hollander to do would probably be to confess and throw herself upon the mercy of the court. That is what I would advise her to do if I were still an attorney, as I once was, and if I had somehow been chosen to represent her; but I don’t believe she’ll do it. Despite all that fragile beauty, she’s a stubborn, not very shrewd fighter, and she’s accustomed to getting what she wants.”

Sandoz grunted again. “So?”

“To a great degree the success of her defense will depend on the support she receives from her husband, both in testimony and finance. Yesterday, when I went into Mr. Hollander’s study, I noticed that a German eighty-eight- millimeter artillery shell was missing from his mantel; I won’t bore you now by explaining how I knew that one had been there earlier. In conversation, I brought up the subject of artillery and waited for his reaction. There was none. It seemed clear he had no idea that the ‘bomb’ that exploded at the Fair had in fact been a shell. That hadn’t been