Puzzle for Pilgrims (26 page)

BOOK: Puzzle for Pilgrims

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But I didn’t speak. Perhaps that was part of my love too. Perhaps its whole existence was based on the fact that I had known from the beginning it could never reach attainment.

A sardonic twinge of humor mocked me. I had not told the truth about the deaths to save Iris from Martin. As a result I had lost Marietta. But it wasn’t really as tidy as that. Marietta would have gone anyway. I saw it now. She had always been tied to Martin as irrevocably as the mermaid is tied to the sea.

She said, “I love you, Peter.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, yes.” Her face was without sunlight, forlorn. “Yes, Peter.”

I looked at her, almost impersonal now, and feeling a pity for her that was stronger than my pity for Iris—or for myself.

“You can’t help it, Marietta?”

She shook her head.

“It’s gone that far?”

She buried her face against my shoulder. “Don’t, Peter. Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk. Kiss me.”

Her lips stumbled to mine. They clung. They were cool and wet as if with ocean spray. Even then, while she kissed me, she had gone from me.

“Remember me, Peter.”

“I’ll remember you, Marietta.”

She slipped out of my arms. In a moment she was gone.

I stood still, the morning sunlight striking warm on my face. I felt as if somewhere in me was a wound. But I felt oddly tranquil too. Did the fisherman feel that way when there was a flash of silver scales and the shore was suddenly empty?

I went to Iris’s room. My wife was combing her hair at the mirror. The domestic triviality of the act brought a queer constriction to my throat. She turned, the comb in her hand, shaking back her hair.

“Marietta’s going with Martin, Iris.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She moved toward me. “And you?”

“Me?” I shrugged.

She said, “It feels bad, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

She was trying to be bright and casual. She was terrified of having me think she would make demands on me now. I knew that.

She said, “And what are you going to do?”

“Iris.”

I put my hands on her arms. She was trembling.

“Don’t, Peter. You don’t have to. Please, you don’t have to think of me.”

“It’s happened before,” I said. “People going back.”

My fingers knew her skin so well. There was nothing strange. It was like touching myself.

“You can go back a long way. New York, for example. Is New York too far for you? Together?”

She was still trembling, but her face was alight.

“No, Peter. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s too far…”

FIN

PATRICK QUENTIN

Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelley (30 April 1906 – 2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 1931 Richard Wilson Webb (born in 1901 in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, an Englishman working for a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia) and Martha Mott Kelley collaborated on the detective novel
Cottage Sinister.
Kelley was known as Patsy (Patsy Kelly was a well-known character actress of that era) and Webb as Rick, so they created the pseudonym Q. Patrick by combining their nicknames—adding the Q “because it was unusual”.

Webb’s and Kelley’s literary partnership ended with Kelley’s marriage to Stephen Wilson. Webb continued to write under the Q. Patrick name, while looking for a new writing partner. Although he wrote two novels with the journalist and
Harper’s Bazaar
editor Mary Louise Aswell, he would find his permanent collaborator in Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934.

Wheeler’s and Webb’s first collaboration was published in 1936. That same year, they introduced two new pseudonyms:
Murder Gone to Earth
, the first novel featuring Dr. Westlake, was credited to Jonathan Stagge, a name they would continue to use for the rest of the Westlake series.
A Puzzle for Fools
introduced Peter Duluth and was signed Patrick Quentin. This would become their primary and most famous pen name, even though they also continued to use Q. Patrick until the end of their collaboration (particularly for Inspector Trant stories).

In the late 1940s, Webb’s contributions gradually decreased due to health problems. From the 1950s and on, Wheeler continued writing as Patrick Quentin on his own, and also had one book published under his own name. In the 1960s and ’70s, Wheeler achieved success as a playwright and librettist, and his output as Quentin Patrick slowed and then ceased altogether after 1965. However, Wheeler did write the book for the 1979 musical
Sweeney Todd
about a fictional London mass murderer, showing he had not altogether abandoned the genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As Patrick Quentin