Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

Of course, they knew each other; that’s not the story. At best, it’s an old story. Margaret’s a wonderful producer, a workhorse, shrewd as they come, and calls were not uncommon, not during working hours, because my Linda always had a sense of entitlement. No time was sacred for her, and calls on any number of trivial subjects could be expected as a way of showing the flag and pulling rank.

But these! Do you see these? Evenings. Evening calls. She was suspicious, you say. She was calling to check up on Margaret, on Margaret’s company. No, no, Linda was not so curious, and, here’s the thing. They were calls made when I was home! On her cell phone.

I think I saw her at it once. I was at the farm for the weekend, in the study done up with old barn boards, leather chairs, and sporting prints by the decorator of the moment, a swishy thug named Javier. I’m working up one of the little monologues I’m so famous for, when I look out onto the terrace. Linda’s standing with her cell phone in the dappled evening shade, half hidden by lilies in porcelain tubs like the serpent in the garden. I think I was suspicious even then.

“Who were you calling?” I asked. Casually, sure. No heavy, jealous husband. “I thought we were going to leave the phone off the hook this weekend.”

“Just Javier,” she said. “I want some new drapes.”

She lied about that. I’ve consulted the phone records and credit card bills, and I’ve seen no new drapes, and neither has any of the staff. I’ve checked with them, every single one. She wasn’t calling Javier, the gold plated decorator; she was calling Margaret.

Margaret Ainsley. Six feet tall if she’s an inch, an Amazon, a golfer, a swimmer, a sailor. Some days I miss her. I do. At the beach in the late afternoon when it’s probably too late for Shelley but too early for meal call, I miss Margaret. She is not as pretty as Shelley, not as elegant as Linda, but smarter than both. Humorous and quick, very quick. The one who loved me. The sky darkens over the water in late afternoon, and I think of sailing on the Sound and remember how she made me laugh.

Twenty years we worked together. She produced the show for the last fifteen, and we were an item for most of that time. Wonderful companion, Margaret, with only one blind spot: She expected me to divorce Linda, which was not on at all. In my job, you can run around, but divorce cuts your credibility, not to mention your bank account.

Besides, Linda was useful to me in her own way, a star on the charity circuit, a dynamite organizer, a stylish consort. She wasn’t interesting but she wasn’t unreasonable. If she spent money, she spent it well, and she didn’t ask for anything else from me. I could live with that.

Margaret wanted both passion and permanence. I declined; there would have been demands. Even when I got her to accept the advantages of the arrangement as it was, she still expected fidelity. I have her letters here. Margaret wasn’t as careful as Linda. E-mails, too, I saved. Did me no good at the time, but I haven’t given up, not even in my present difficult circumstances, because you never know.

When the thing for Shelley developed, I made a big effort with Margaret. Do you suppose she gives me credit for that? Did she take that into her calculations? I sent her flowers, gave her better jewelry, a bigger stake in the company — a fatal error there. But my good intentions came to nought. Shelley was so pretty, so young, a believer, too.

With Margaret, talk radio’s a business; with Linda, a racket. That’s how she referred to my work: The Racket. Shelley believed in what I was doing, saw the glamour in it, loved it, admired me. I couldn’t resist.

Office phone records: I’ve got them in my hand. Calls — pay attention now, here’s the crucial thing, the thing I haven’t been able to get anyone to credit — calls from Margaret to Linda. How do you like that? Brief. Seconds only. Careful, but not careful enough; Troyman can see they were up to something. Here, look back three years, four years of records.

Are there any calls from Margaret’s personal phone to Linda Donnelly? Exactly one a year acknowledging receipt of annual birthday potted orchid and Godiva chocolates. And then — look at this — five calls, six calls, a total of eleven calls in three weeks. When? Just before the catastrophe.

Suggestive, right? Oh, they had excuses. I’d been acting erratically, they said. The two of them, those two Medeas, had been concerned. The obsession — their word, not mine — with Shelley Phillips, so uncharacteristic, so troubling. To Ms. Phillips as well. She was in tears one day right in the studio about Troy’s advances. Et cetera, et cetera. My advances! If I was advancing, Shelley was retreating like Pickett’s charge. The damn hypocrites!