The Man Who Loved His Wife. Vera Caspary
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“Never heard of him.” In the voice of the gullet there is no inflection. Gesture and facial expression announced scorn. A great poet’s name ought to be as well known as Shakespeare or Cadillac.
Elaine did not remind Fletcher that he knew very little about poetry. His self-esteem had become so frail that she could not utter a word that he might interpret as criticism. She left a book of poems on a table in his den and noted with pleasure that he had secretly looked into it. One day he came to her with the proud news that he had found another great poem, opened the book to a stanza he ordered her to read aloud:
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let his be heard;
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word;
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Evidently he had memorized the lines. His lips moved as Elaine read. For a time then she allowed herself to believe that a new life had opened to him. She sought other interests, unsuccessfully, for Fletcher had never learned to lose himself in quiet pursuits nor to accept the consolations of art. The books she brought home—volumes of history, philosophy, science, essays—were untouched, the poetry anthology returned to the shelf. He preferred a game of gin rummy, taught her to play pinochle, but found her such an unsatisfying opponent that he soon returned to his games of solitaire, his detective stories, and the flashy accounts of murder featured in the best newspapers of Los Angeles.
It was during this period that she gave him the diary.
IT BECAME HIS obsession, a guarded secret, the man’s private life. Like every amateur writer, Fletcher considered each sentence immortal, every turgid idea daring and original. In the way of those who establish new religions and accept their own beliefs as the ultimate word of God, he saw revery as reality and fed bias with every trifle of every uneventful day. Time and time again he returned to his favorite entry:
Evil is in the air around us. Look at those nearest you. Every soul contains every sin. In the hidden self the murderer waits. I have seen the change in E. From love to pity, from pity to disgust, from disgust to evil. Guilt shines right out of those beautiful eyes. When she is the sweetest to me she is most deceitful. Is her kindness a way to hide her wish to get rid of me? She is a devious woman.
He had written and rewritten this entry on pages of old memo pads marked: FROM THE DESK OF FLETCHER STRODE. When finally his prose had satisfied him, he had copied the paragraph into the diary. In his active days Fletcher had scribbled notes on the memo pads, dictated the complete thoughts and messages to educated secretaries who had corrected errors of syntax. Now he found value in words and became committed to thought. Had he lived longer he might have developed some kind of philosophy.
Words which he had never spoken (devious, obsession) became as valuable to Fletcher as his gold Patek Philippe watch or platinum and pearl cufflinks in his safety deposit vault. The diary was also kept locked away. To show that she respected his privacy, Elaine asked no questions, never remarked that he shared none of his secrets. It was beyond imagining that into this secret volume he was writing her doom. Obsession. Devious. The words gave him strength. Exercise of the imagination nourished belief in what he had written. Labels fastened to his wife’s character and activities fixed upon her a wealth of guile that would have served a Borgia.
Nature and habit had shaped Fletcher to compete, surpass, exhibit strength, enjoy public triumph. Without these he did not care about living. The thought of suicide was inevitable. He pondered it constantly, considered various methods, suffered the pain of poison, the terror of drowning, the stink of gas, the dizziness of the long plunge, the shock of gunfire. He also thought about the availability of the various means, the quantity of pain, the matter of time, even the untidiness; he anticipated the drama of the discovery of the body, heard exclamations of shock, counted messages of condolence, envisioned the floral offerings, attended the funeral. Life held little attraction for him; he knew greater pleasure in the contemplation of death. All in fantasy, of course, conceived and carried out on goose-down pillows or behind the wheel of a car. Thus far he had satisfied the urge by rehearsals played out in the theater of revery, but there was never any doubt of his intention.
These vacillations were not caused simply by the urge for self-preservation. He had a wife. He foresaw her future too clearly. Aware of the frustrations of a young woman tied to an afflicted man, he recognized in her every sigh and silence the needs of a young woman’s passionate nature. When he had been able to satisfy her, Fletcher had enjoyed the spectacle of her charm for other men, had relished his triumph over her younger admirers. Now there was no solace for castrate pride. Several doctors had assured him that there was no physical reason for his loss of power. It was a block, mental and emotional. These learned opinions were of no help. How could theoreticians know the hopelessness of effort, the sick shame of failure?
Elaine was damnably tactful. In bed she protected his manly pride, just as in shops and restaurants she used little ruses to save him from the pity of clerks and waiters. Her patience embarrassed him. He suspected the tenderness with which she embraced him and the gallantry which pretended that mere physical contact could fulfill her. She was now twenty-eight, lovelier in ripeness than in girlish promise. Her husband could not fail to notice the jets that sparked out of men’s eyes at the sight of her rounded limbs, the rise of her breasts, the delicious curves of hip and buttock. The thought of her heat spent upon another man, the vision of her unclothed flesh close to a naked male body, tormented his days and made night unbearable. He was determined that no other man should possess his lovable wife . . .
Nor the fortune accumulated through his years of hard work. As a rich widow Elaine would be even more desirable than the working girl he had married. Prophetic specters haunted him. He saw another man, young and robust of voice, in his house, his car, his bed. Day by day these images grew sturdier. He had only to see his wife shake hands with a man and he was possessed by the will to destroy her.
There had come into his mind, nourished as it was by ghoulish newspaper photographs, the thought of a double death. He saw as through a lens the two bodies on a disarranged bed. Impossible. Every man’s strength has limits. His ended with the vision of damage to the beloved body. He wanted only to make certain that she would never know fulfillment in another man’s arms. With such assurance could he die peacefully.
Out of nightmare and brooding, out of newspaper sensations, out of the contrivance of detective stories, he made a plan of devilish ingenuity. He would commit suicide so that his death should seem the result of murder. The plot was devious and irresistible. A wealth of devices sprang to mind. With the zest and care he had once given to big business deals, Fletcher Strode planned his death. Schemes were shaped and reshaped, details altered. His mind became a theater in which the drama was endlessly rehearsed. The perfect murder: revenge and self-destruction. Evidence would be circumstantial but convincing. He did not want Elaine to be executed as his murderess; he convinced himself that her charm would save her this fate. He preferred to foresee her future in a woman’s jail where her beauty would fade, her sparkle dim, where she would grow old and stale before, if ever again, she lay with a man.
At times he weakened, rejected the whole idea, enjoying freedom from obsession until some incident . . . another man’s delight in Elaine’s grace . . . would spark the scheme to life again. With exquisite cunning Fletcher worked out tricks and ruses that would seem part of her plot to kill him. Into his diary went paragraphs of suspicion, phrases of fear, suggestions of the ways a woman would kill, nuggets of information gathered from newspaper reports and crime fiction. Begun as a means, the diary became an end, Fletcher Strode’s work of art, obsession and legacy:
One who looks for opportunity finds it everywhere. The smallest weapon, something right under your hand, could be a weapon. When I see her with a kitchen knife in her hand or turning on the gas heater at night I wonder. It would be easy for her to say that a man in my physical and mental state would take his own life. I see this in those dreamy eyes when she does not know I am watching her. When she is shocked out of one of those dreams she shivers and shakes at seeing me close to her and hearing the hell . . .
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