Death on the Aisle

by Frances

  Alberta James spoke to Humphrey Kirk.

  “It’s all right, Humpty,” she told him. “They’re not doing anything. But—”

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirk,” Weigand cut in, still in a patient, quiet voice, “you may stay if you like. Now you’re here.”

  “Well—” said Kirk.

  “Sit down,” Weigand said. “There may be some questions for you, too. For example—what made you late in meeting Miss James for dinner this evening?”

  “Oh, that,” Kirk said. “I got tied up—with Smith. I lost track of time. I wasn’t more than a quarter of an hour late, anyway.”

  Weigand looked at the girl, who looked down and reddened slightly.

  “Well,” she said. “Perhaps it was a quarter of an hour. There wasn’t any clock.”

  Weigand said he saw.

  “Did you use that fifteen minutes to kill Miss Grady, Mr. Kirk?” he asked. His tone was entirely conversational.

  “What the—” said Kirk. “No! Why should I?”

  “We assume,” Weigand said, “that whoever killed her did it because she knew something about the Bolton killing. Did you kill Dr. Bolton, Mr. Kirk?”

  “Listen,” Kirk said. “What the hell goes on?”

  A police investigation, Weigand told him. The asking of questions to get answers. Had he, to repeat, killed Dr. Bolton? Kirk said, “Hell, no!”, violently.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “And don’t ask me why you should. Because I could make a guess about that. It would concern Bolton and Miss James here.”

  Weigand’s voice was still low, but much harder. Kirk pushed the dangling lock of hair violently from his forehead and stood up.

  “Sit down,” Weigand said. Kirk hesitated. Mullins half rose from his chair, but Weigand’s fingers flickered at him. “Sit down, Kirk,” Weigand said. “You won’t get anywhere jumping up and shouting. I’m telling you why you might have killed Ellen Grady. She might have known you killed Bolton. You might have killed Bolton because you were jealous of him. You might have been jealous of him because he was—how do you say it nicely on the stage?—taking her away from you.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Bolton,” the girl said quickly, her voice low but with a vibrating quality in it. “Humpty knows that.”

  “Of course I know that,” Kirk said, almost too quickly. He glared at Weigand.

  “Can’t a girl go to her doctor?” he demanded.

  Weigand smiled at him. He transferred the smile, which was not a warming smile, to Alberta James.

  “The relationship of patient and doctor is a relationship, Miss James,” he said. “Or had you just forgotten it?”

  The girl looked up at him, her hair swinging back from her face. Her expression was one of innocence—“young girl misunderstood,” Weigand said to himself. “These actors!”

  “But Lieutenant,” the girl said, “I thought of course you meant something different. Of course he was my doctor. I have—almost everybody has, you know—a little sinus trouble. But it’s important for an actress, and Dr. Bolton was very good. And I knew people he’d treated. So naturally I went to him. But do you call that a ‘relationship’?”

  You could, Weigand told her. And why had she thought he meant anything more?

  “You said,” he reminded her, “that—read it back to her, Sergeant.”

  Mullins back-paged in his notebook.

  “‘Relationship?’” he read, his voice a remarkable parody of the girl’s. “‘There wasn’t any—’ Then this guy busted in.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “What did you think I meant, Miss James?”

  He waited, and Kirk waited. But Miss James, looking down at her twisting finger, said nothing.

  “Listen,” Kirk said. “You know what she thought you meant. We all know Bolton was a chaser.” He spoke contemptuously.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Was that it, Miss James?”

  The girl nodded.

  “And why,” Weigand said, abruptly, “did you jump at the conclusion I meant that, Miss James? Because other people had suggested it? And sit down, Kirk!”

  Still the girl didn’t speak.

  “For God’s sake,” Kirk said. “You can hear anything. If a girl spoke to Bolton, Winchell heard about it.”

  “All right,” Weigand said. “That answers it. And you still insist you weren’t jealous, Kirk?” Kirk spluttered. “All right,” Weigand said. “We’ll make a note of it. Now—how serious was this sinus condition of yours, Miss James?”

  Both Kirk and the girl looked surprised, and then relieved. The girl said that Dr. Bolton seemed to feel it was rather serious. At any rate, he had talked about the possibility of a minor operation and, recently rather urged her to have one.

  Weigand said he saw.

  “And were you going to?” he asked, in a tone of slight interest.

  “I hadn’t decided,” the girl said. “But probably it will have to be done, some time. I’d have gone right ahead before now, only Aunty—Miss Fowler, you know—didn’t want me to. She said that I should never ‘let any doctor poke around in my sinuses.’ She said it was dangerous. But of course that’s all nonsense.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “that’s out of my sphere, obviously. But I like to get a full picture. Now, Miss James—did you ever work in a department store? Or in a clothes shop, or some place like that?”

  Both Kirk and the girl looked completely surprised and puzzled, Weigand decided. And she answered without hesitancy.

  “Why,” she said, “yes, I did. Last year, and a while the year before. I modeled the first time and then I sold for several months. When I was ‘resting.’” Her voice put quotation marks around the actor’s euphemism. Weigand said “Right.”

  “I suppose,” he said, “that both of you know how to get to the basement, or whatever you call that area under the orchestra? Know you can get to it from both the lounge and the stage-door passage?”

  They both nodded. They weren’t puzzled this time.

  “Of course,” Kirk amplified. “So does everybody in the theatre.”

  Weigand said he supposed they did.

  “Now,” he said, “let’s see. You say you don’t know what happened to the piece of orange silk between the time you showed it to Miss Fowler before lunch and the time it was found in Bolton’s hand. Is that right, Miss James?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Now if I say anything which isn’t as you remember it, stop me. You knew Bolton. He was your doctor, and as your doctor you naturally saw him frequently. You had lunch with him today at an Automat. Or”—(he held up his hand)—“coffee, anyway. You didn’t see him after that until Kirk here found his body. You hadn’t been seeing him, you say, except as a patient sees a physician, but even that may have led to talk in connection with a man like Bolton. You went to see Ellen Grady this evening and she was alive when you left and—” He checked himself.

  “Something I’d forgotten,” he said. “Can you describe the bedroom as it was when you left? You were in it a few minutes. I don’t mean the room so much—not the permanent things. But—oh, other things. I don’t want to lead you.”

  The girl looked puzzled and then, when Weigand waited, considering.

  “Things were scattered around,” she said. “Shoes and things. I remember one shoe on the dressing-table bench, standing up. And a girdle on the floor. And the dress she had just taken off over the back of the chair. And stockings somewhere. I think on the chair, too. I remember that when she sat in the chair she struck a match and part of the head flew off and I was afraid it was going to burn the dress. But it didn’t. I think that’s all. Is that what you meant?”

  Did she remember rather too well? Weigand wondered.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s what I meant. I’m glad you remember so clearly, Miss James. Now, to get on—you met Kirk, who was fifteen minutes late, at the Algonquin. You came back here with him. You didn’t kill Miss Grady or Dr. Bo
lton. Now let’s see. Your aunt objected to your having Bolton operate.”

  “To having anyone operate,” the girl corrected. Weigand said, “Right.”

  “You have worked in a dress shop, as model and salesgirl. You parted from Ellen Grady on good terms; at her request, you left the door to her apartment so that it could be opened from outside without bothering her if she were still in the tub, when the visitor she expected came. You know—you both know—about the area under the orchestra, and the two ways of reaching it. And—” His fingers drummed on the desk for a moment. “I guess that’s all. Do you want to add anything?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “We’ll have you sign this when it’s ready. That’s all for now.”

  Kirk and the girl stood up. They moved, as if instinctively, closer together. Weigand watched them.

  “By the way, Kirk,” he said, suddenly. “Have you got a match? I don’t seem to have any.”

  “Sure,” Kirk said. His hand went to his pocket and came out with a folder of matches, and tossed the folder to the desk. Weigand picked it up, pulled loose a bottle-shaped match and looked at it. Then he looked at Kirk, who seemed only puzzled.

  “Where did you get this,” Weigand said, abruptly.

  “What?” said Kirk. “The match? God knows. Around somewhere. In a restaurant, or a cigar store, or borrowed it from somebody. Probably I borrowed it. People say that’s where I get all my matches, and cigarettes too, for that matter. Why?”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “if you don’t know—we found one, earlier … under conditions we thought were interesting. But if you just borrowed it, it doesn’t matter, unless you remember who you borrowed it from?”

  Kirk shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea.”

  Weigand let them go, then. He stared after them, his fingers drumming on the desk.

  “Whata you think, Loot?” Mullins said, after a moment.

  Weigand looked at him.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said. “Things begin to fit. Let’s talk to Mr. Ahlberg.”

  XIII

  WEDNESDAY—12:15 A.M. TO 12:55 A.M.

  Max Ahlberg’s round face sagged; his plump optimism seemed to be settling. He looked at Weigand and began shaking his head, dismally.

  “I should have such luck,” Mr. Ahlberg said. He was very sad. “First somebody kills my angel,” Mr. Ahlberg told Weigand, and was almost accusing in his gloom. “Then somebody kills my leading lady. Next somebody should kill me, only it ain’t worth it.”

  Weigand started to speak and Maxie Ahlberg held up a dissuading hand.

  “You should ask did I kill Ellen,” Maxie said. “Why should I kill Ellen?”

  “I don’t know,” Weigand said. “Why should you, Mr. Ahlberg?”

  “Don’t joke,” Maxie said. “All I ask it, don’t joke!”

  Weigand said he wasn’t joking. Why should Mr. Ahlberg kill Miss Grady? Why should Mr. Ahlberg visit Miss Grady at, to put the best light on it, a few minutes before she was killed?

  “Yes,” Maxie said. “I should have such luck. I go to see Ellen and then somebody kills her and you think that Max Ahlberg, he kills her.”

  Mr. Ahlberg thought this over and groaned audibly.

  “Would I kill my partner?” he demanded. “Would I kill the best actress we got, a week before opening?”

  Weigand persuaded Mr. Ahlberg to sit down. He drew out the story.

  Ahlberg admitted without argument that he had gone to see Ellen Grady, and had seen Ellen Grady. He had gone to her for a very simple purpose: to raise money. It had been, he indicated, an appeal more or less of desperation. Because, it became clear, Mr. Ahlberg was up against it. The death of Dr. Bolton had put him up against it.

  “Insurance?” he echoed, when Weigand made the suggestion. “Of course there was insurance. Until three days ago there was insurance. And then I figured we were in and why should I pay any more premiums on the Doc?” He sighed deeply. “How should I know he hadn’t paid for the scenery?” he asked.

  He had assumed the scenery paid for, as scenery in the show business comes only for cash. But Bolton’s backing was as good as cash; to give him credit, his word was as good as cash. Dr. Bolton had been about to pay for the scenery—this afternoon or tomorrow he would have written checks. But dead men write no checks. Ahlberg had taken a chance which was, in reason, no chance; he had let the insurance on Bolton’s life, for which he was paying, lapse when the last day of grace came and went. It had looked like the saving of a few hundred dollars. Now it looked like bankruptcy.

  Because now Mr. Ahlberg had no money. Unless he could find money, “Two in the Bush” would remain in the bush. And Mr. Ahlberg would, reluctantly, secede from the theatrical business, in which he had spent his life. Mr. Ahlberg had been for several seasons on the down swing, in that pendulum beat which affects all but a scant half-dozen Broadway producers. Now the pendulum was at nadir, and seemed about to stop.

  “For five thousand I got a hit,” he assured Weigand. He looked at the Lieutenant with sudden interest. “You got five thousand?” he enquired, affectionately. Weigand shook his head. Ahlberg’s hope, a tiny thing, withered.

  “Who’s got five thousand?” he demanded. “The Government,” he added. The thought evidently depressed him. Weigand pulled him back to the subject.

  He had gone to see Ellen Grady, Ahlberg said, and put it up to her. He was pretty sure she had five thousand, or could get it. He put it to her that it was five thousand or no show, and he stressed the acclaim she was certain to win in the part.

  “For her it was important, I told her,” Ahlberg said. “Maybe after this show she would be a star. And where, I asked her, would she get another part like it for this season? Answer me that, I told her.”

  Miss Grady had, Ahlberg indicated, been impressed. She did not deny she had, or could raise, the money. She had confidence in the play, and liked her part. But she hesitated.

  “She said she should think it over,” Ahlberg explained. “But I thought she’d put it up. I thought we were going to be okay.”

  She had, Ahlberg said in answer to the Lieutenant’s questions, talked to him in the living room of the suite. He was still arguing the numerous advantages of putting up the money when she looked at her watch and suddenly stood up.

  “She said I would have to go away,” Ahlberg said. “She said she would think it over, but now I should go away. She had to take a bath and dress and get dinner if she was to get back to the theatre. She said, ‘Don’t worry, Maxie. I think we can work it out.’”

  Ahlberg stared at Weigand.

  “Don’t worry, she says to me,” he repeated. “And so somebody kills her!”

  She was wearing the negligee when he talked to her. He did not notice anything particularly in the bedroom, although from where he was sitting he could see into it. She had started toward the bedroom as he went out, and he closed the door behind him. So far as he knew, the snap lock worked. But he had not tried the door from outside. Then he had gone to Dinty Moore’s and had dinner, and then to the theatre. And then he heard that somebody had killed his star who was, moreover, beginning to sprout the wings of an angel.

  “I should have such luck,” he said, returning to his starting point. Then he looked at Weigand.

  “You’re thinking: ‘That Max Ahlberg, he thinks only of the money,’” he said. “You think: ‘What’s it to Max Ahlberg that a beautiful little girl gets killed? To Max it ain’t nothing but five thousand!’” He shook his head.

  “Believe me, it ain’t so,” he said. “I gotta heart, Lieutenant. Ellen I liked—she was an actress, but I liked her. About it I’m very sad, but about the money, just now, I’m crazy. Because what should I tell Becky, Lieutenant?” He looked at the Lieutenant and shook his head, and as the extent of his impending ruin impressed itself more deeply upon him, Max Ahlberg gained in dignity.

  “Wit
hout this, I’m sunk, Lieutenant,” he said. “Max Ahlberg is out of the theatre.”

  Saying that, Weigand thought, Max Ahlberg did not mean that he would be out of a job, with those things happening which happen to men who are out of jobs. He meant that he would be out of life. And then Weigand remembered, suddenly, recalling a phrase out of something long ago read or overheard, that this Max Ahlberg had been for a good many years Max Ahlberg, Jr. And that before him there had been a Max Ahlberg—in Berlin, was it? or Vienna?—whose name reached even those who thought little about the theatre, so that when you read it in the phrase “A Max Ahlberg Production” you thought with a kind of vicarious pride of superlative accomplishment and with a kind of personal bitterness of changes which made continuation of such achievement impossible.

  The present Max Ahlberg, now standing up and looking at Weigand, and waiting for Weigand to let him go, would do almost anything to stay in the theatre. To do that, if it came to it, he might very well kill. But it seemed, so far as they had got, that murder was pushing him out of the theatre, not keeping him in. If that were true, they would have to look beyond small, round, unhappy Mr. Ahlberg for their murderer.

  Ahlberg had not seen Alberta James in Ellen Grady’s apartment, or in the building, or on the street outside. Ahlberg had come out, and got into a taxicab and driven to the Astor, and had been full of hope.

  Weigand waved him out, and sat drumming with his fingers on the desk.

  “Are we getting places, Loot?” Mullins wanted to know.

  “Maybe, Sergeant,” Weigand said. “Maybe. Get this guy Tilford, will you?”

  Weigand watched Mullins go to the door and then stared a moment at the telephone. Suddenly he pulled it to him and dialed a number. He identified himself to Dr. Jerome Francis at the other end of the wire, and asked a question. It took Dr. Francis some time to answer, much qualification apparently being required. Weigand had thanked him and pushed back the telephone when Mullins returned with Tilford.*

  No descriptions could have been less appropriate than “this guy” applied to F. Lawrence Tilford. When Mr. Tilford entered the office he filled it with his presence. Mr. Tilford was stately and when he spoke his voice rolled—perfectly pitched, perfectly modulated, almost perfectly artificial. In a world of type casting, of ingenues famous at twenty, Mr. Tilford was an actor. And if there had once been a thin, wavering line between Mr. Tilford, himself, and Mr. Tilford, actor, that line had long since been obliterated. He stood before the detectives and acted the dignified gentleman, politely curious; the good citizen, ready to be of help. If any of his earlier uneasiness remained, manner blotted it out, as Mr. Tilford saved the surface and, with it, everything.