Rich Man, Poor Man

He went alone, Rudolph Jordache was thinking; he came into the cabin where I was sleeping and closed the door softly and left alone. Left for what was to become his death, disdaining my help, disdaining me, disdaining my manhood or what he would think of, if he ever thought, as my lack of manhood, in a situation that required a man.

Down below, Kate Jordache was packing her bag. It didn’t take long. On top of her other things she first put the white jersey with the ship’s name on it that had made Thomas laugh when he saw what her full bosom had done to the lettering, then the bright dress he had bought her for their wedding just eight days ago.

She had nagged Thomas into marrying her. That was the word—nagged. They had been perfectly happy before, but then when she knew she was pregnant— Proper, bloody little well-brought-up, lower-class, obedient, English working girl … Here comes the bride. If there had been no wedding, that awful, twittery, smart-talking woman, that fancy wife of Rudolph’s, would never have had the excuse to get drunk, would not have gone off with a Yugoslav pimp, would have kept her expensive pink pants on her, would not have needed rescuing or a man fighting for her, and a man a lot better than her husband would be alive today.

Enough of that, Kate thought. Enough. Enough.

She closed the bag with a snap and sat down on the edge of the bunk, her solid brown body just begi

Thomas, she thought, Thomas, Thomas.

“Who was Clothilde?” she had asked once.

“She was a queen of France. She was somebody I knew as a boy. She smelled like you.”

Absent from the small company of mourners on the vessel heading for the coast of France was Jean, Rudolph Jordache’s wife. She sat on a bench in the park of the hotel watching her daughter playing with the young girl Rudolph had hired to take care of the child until, as Rudolph had put it, she was in condition to handle Enid again herself. How long would that be? Jean had asked herself. Two days, ten years, never?

She was dressed in slacks and a sweater. She had not brought along clothes suitable for a funeral. Rudolph had been relieved when she said she wouldn’t go. She could not bear the thought of stepping aboard the Clothilde again, of facing the silent, accusing stares of the wife, the son, the beloved friend.

When she had looked at herself in the mirror in the morning she was shocked at what the last days had done to the small, pretty, girlish face.

The skin of her face, her entire body, seemed to be stretched unbearably on some invisible rack. She felt as though at any moment her body would explode and her nerves erupt through the skin, snapping and crackling like wild lines of wire, crackling under fatal electrical charges.

The doctor had given her some Valium, but she was past Valium. If it weren’t for the child, she thought, she would go down to the sea and throw herself off the rocks into it.

As she sat there in the shadow of a tree, in the spicy fragrance of pine and sun-warmed lavender, she said to herself, Everything I touch I destroy.

«  »

Hubbell sat over a coffee on the terrasse of a café in the main square, thinking over what the policeman had told him. The policeman obviously knew more than he was telling, but you had to expect that from the police, especially with an embarrassing unsolved murder on their hands. The sister-in-law might be able to help you more than I can, the cop had said. The sister-in-law. The naked lady, the wife of the promising young mayor. Definitely worth a couple of hundred words. The harbor could wait.

He paid for his coffee and walked over to a parked taxi and got in and said, “The Hôtel du Cap.”

Madame Jordache was not in her room, the concierge said, but he had seen her go out into the park with her child and the child’s nurse. Hubbell asked the concierge if there was a telex in the hotel and was told that there was one. He asked if he might use it that evening and after a moment’s hesitation the concierge said he thought that could be arranged. The hesitation Hubbell rightly interpreted to mean that a tip would be involved. No matter. Time Magazine could afford it. He thanked the concierge and went out to the terrace and the steps leading to the long avenue through the noble park down to the bathing pavilion and restaurant and the sea. He suffered a moment of envy as he thought of the small room in the noisy little hotel on the highway in which his wife was taking her siesta. Time Magazine paid well, but not well enough for the Hôtel du Cap.

He went down the steps and into the fragrant park. A minute later he saw a little girl in a white bathing suit throwing a beach ball back and forth with a young girl. Seated on a bench nearby was a woman in slacks and a sweater. It was not the sort of scene that you would ordinarily associate with a murder.

He approached the group slowly, stopping for a moment as if to admire a bed of flowers, then smiling at the child as he neared the group. “Bonjour,” he said. “Good afternoon.”

The girl said, “Bonjour,” but the woman on the bench said nothing. Hubbell noticed that she was very pretty, with a trim, athletic figure, that her face was drained and pale, with dark circles under the eyes. “Mrs. Jordache?” he said.

“Yes?” Her voice was flat and toneless. She looked up at him dully.

“I’m from Time Magazine.” He was an honorable man and would not pretend to be a friend of her husband’s or of the murdered man or an American tourist who had heard about her trouble and wished, in his frank American way, to offer his sympathy. Leave the tricks for the young fellows fighting for by-lines. “I’ve been sent down to do a story on your brother-in-law.” A white lie, but permissible within his code. If people thought you were assigned to do a job, they often felt some small obligation to help.

Still the woman said nothing, just stared at him with those lifeless eyes.

“The chief of police said you might be able to give me some information about the affair. Background information.” The “background” had an i

“Have you talked to my husband?” Jean asked.

“I haven’t met him yet.”

“Haven’t met him yet,” Jean repeated. “I wish I hadn’t. And I bet he wishes I hadn’t.”

Hubbell was taken aback, as much by the intensity with which the woman had spoken as by what she had said.

“Did the policeman tell you why I could give you information?” the woman demanded, her voice harsh and rasping now.

“No,” Hubbell lied.

Jean stood up abruptly. “Ask my husband,” she said, “ask the whole goddamn family. Just leave me alone.”

“Just one question, Mrs. Jordache, if I may,” Hubbell said, his throat constricted. “Would you be prepared to lay criminal charges against the man who attacked you?”

“What difference would it make?” she said dully. She sat heavily on the bench, stared at her child, ru

Hubbell got out of the taxi and walked along the port. Not a fitting place to die, he thought as he went toward the port captain’s shack to find out where the Clothilde was berthed. The port captain was a weathered old man, sitting outside his shack, smoking a pipe, his chair tilted against the wall as he took the afternoon sun.

The port captain gestured with his pipe toward the mouth of the port, where a white boat was slowly coming in. “There she is. They’ll be here for a while,” the old man said. “They chewed up their starboard propeller and shaft. You American?”