“It might be this: Shortly after he landed the job, he began going out with a girl in the office. All I know about her is that her name was Gwladys, which she spelled with a w. She fell head over heels in love with him, they had an affair, and she soon became a nuisance. They quarreled and he stopped seeing her. And then she committed suicide. Of course, she was a hopeless neurotic, and it wasn’t Dirk’s fault, but from that time on he had nothing to do with women.”
Dirk’s editorial job had required him to read a great many mystery stories. They stirred his imagination, so he began to write again, this time attempting a detective novel. To his surprise, his own firm accepted it for publication. It sold just under four thousand copies, but the notices were good.
“That was the one he called Dead Is My Love,” Martha said. “Ellery, what did you really think of it?”
“For the work of a new hand, it was surprising. The plotting was amateurish in spots, and the story had a wry quality, but it was different. I questioned Dirk about the morbidity of his writing when I first met him at a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America. His only comment was that murder is a morbid subject. That’s when he quit his job and devoted all his time to the typewriter, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Martha. “He turned out three more detective stories in the next twelve months.”
“I remember,” Ellery nodded, “that Dirk would open up to me in that period when at MWA gatherings he’d utter hardly a word to anyone else. He was hurt at the small sales of his books while what he felt to be inferior products earned two and three times as much. He covered up by being defiant. When I suggested a brighter, less Gothic, approach, some compromise with popular taste, Dirk replied that that was the kind of stuff he wanted to write, and if people didn’t like if they didn’t have to buy his books. I thought at the time it wasn’t a very grown-up reaction. I wasn’t surprised when he stopped writing detective stories.”
“That was my doing, I’m afraid,” Martha said with a slight tightness. “You know, I chased Dirk. I decided to marry him three days after we met.”
“You never told me that,” said Nikki accusingly.
“There’s lots I’ve never told you, Nikki. I used to write him daily mash-notes. I was perfectly shameless about it. I was the one who encouraged him, after we were married, to try a serious novel.
“And maybe that was my big mistake,” Martha said. “He was so happy, he worked so hard. And when the book came out and got an even smaller sale than his detective stories, and most of the critics panned it brutally...”
“The Sound of Silence was a bad book, Martha,” said Ellery gently. “Souped-up realism that only succeeded in being slick melodrama.”
Martha was silent. Then she said: “We had a time of it for a few weeks, but I finally loved some self-confidence back into him and he started on the next novel. And that turned out even worse...
“After the second book there wasn’t a thing I could do to snap Dirk out of his depression. The harder I tried, the more I seemed to irritate him. When he went to work on his third novel, he locked himself in the study. And that was when I suppose I made my second mistake. Instead of hammering the lock off and pounding some sense into his thick head, I... well, I looked around for something to do. That’s when I produced All Around the Mulberry Bush. The flop it took taught me a lot, and I knew I’d found the spot in the theater I’d been groping for before I met Dirk.
“I also thought,” continued Martha in that dreadful calm, “that my fiasco would bring Dirk and me together again, on the theory of the sociability of misery. It only seemed to shove us farther apart. He accused me of going the route of all rich dilettantes, and we had a really bang-up row. I suppose I was terribly hurt for the second time... Anyway, back he went to his typewriter to sulk, and I bought my second play. And that’s when this jealousy business showed up.”
“Exactly how,” asked Ellery, “did Dirk first manifest it?”
“You’ve met Alex Conn. It was my second production and Alex’s first. There’s never been an author more respectful of his producer. Poor Alex wouldn’t dream of making love to me; he’d sooner try to embrace the Sphinx. Besides, he has a broad streak of lavender.
“Alex’s play had to be rewritten before we went into rehearsal. I had definite ideas about how I wanted certain scenes to run, and I got into the habit of dropping into the hotel where Alex was working, a dirty flytrap off Times Square. Alex works best in his undershirt, with his shoes off, and one night Dirk burst in on us and, to my absolute amazement — and Alex’s — accused us of having an affair. We thought he was joking. But the beating he gave poor Alex in that horrible hotel room was no joke...
“Nothing Alex or I said to assure Dirk he was imagining things had the least effect. He was — he looked — well, you saw him tonight, Ellery. Only that night he wasn’t tight.”
“I hope you told him off!” said Nikki.
“Well, I told him I wasn’t going to act as if I’d committed a crime, because I hadn’t, and I said a lot of other things, too, about mutual trust and faith and love, and the result was we wound up with our arms around each other and what seemed like the dawn of a new understanding. But the very next week, when I was talking over the role of Michael in Alex’s play with Rory Burke, who eventually played it, Dirk made another scene — and that one got into the columns. And that’s the way it’s been ever since, and I don’t know why, why, why!”
And suddenly everything gave way and Martha was sobbing. “If Dirk doesn’t stop... I can’t take it much longer! He needs help, Ellery. I need help. Is there anything you can see to do? Anything?”
Ellery took her hand. “I’ll try. I’ll try, Martha.”
Ellery put Martha Lawrence into a cab — she insisted on going home alone — and he went back upstairs to find Nikki filling the coffeepot from the kitchen tap viciously.
They had their coffee like two strangers in a cafeteria.
But then Nikki put her cup down with a bang. “I know I’ll hate myself in the morning, but I’ve got to sit up and beg.” After a moment, Nikki said, “Ellery. I’m begging.”
“For what?”
“Oh, don’t be obtuse! What can you do?”
“How should I know? You know the idiot as well as I do. Better.”
Nikki frowned. “Personally, I think Martha’s the idiot. But then, as she said, I’m not in love with him. Mar’s done a lot for me, Ellery — things I’ve never told you and probably never will. And I not only love her, I like her. There’s something so awfully clean about Martha. Like a little girl in a starched pinny...
“Maybe that’s it. She’s the last woman in the world, I should think, whom anyone would accuse of sleeping around. Especially her husband! That’s why I’m so worried, Ellery. It isn’t natural. There’s something wrong with Dirk.”
“Of course there is.”
“And I’m scared.”
“With reason.” Ellery fingered his jaw unhappily. “But what can I do? It’s a doctor Dirk needs, not a detective.”
“Doctors don’t know everything.”
“They know more about this sort of thing than I.”
“He’s committing a crime!”
“So is the soda jerk who doesn’t wash the glasses properly, but I’m not expected to solve that kind of mystery. Nikki, I’d like to help, but it’s not my kind of problem.”
“It might turn into your kind of problem!”
“All I can do is see Dirk tomorrow and try to help him help himself. Although, after tonight, I don’t think I’m qualified to do even that!... Nikki, would you see if there’s any codeine in the medicine chest?”