Payoff for the Banker

by Frances

  “Wicky?” Ann said. “Not Wicky?”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Burnwood said. Nobody else said anything for a moment and Captain Sullivan stood up. Bill Weigand nodded.

  “Yes, Captain,” he said. “Your bailiwick, definitely. In the cottage down by the beach.”

  Sullivan went among the chairs, striding, and around the corner of the house.

  “The poor little guy,” Laurel Burke said. Then she stood up suddenly. “Listen,” she said, and her voice was no longer artfully deep. “I’m getting out of here. The hell out of here.”

  “No,” Bill told her. “Nobody’s getting out of here. Not now.”

  “But,” she said.

  “Nobody,” Weigand repeated. “Captain Sullivan will want you all here. Until he takes over, I want you all here.”

  “Really, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Burnwood said. “Really. You speak as if—” then she stopped and her eyes were surprised.

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “That’s just the way I speak. One of you—one of you here—killed Mr. Potts. Also Mr. Merle and Murdock. Mr. Potts, because he knew which one of you killed Merle. Is that clear enough?”

  “Too damned clear,” Jameson said. “And Potts did know. He told me he knew.”

  Weigand had a hunch and played it.

  “I think,” he said, “that he told each person here that he knew the identity of the murderer. He was—playing a little game.”

  “It was a damned dangerous game,” Joshua Merle said.

  Weigand nodded.

  “Yes, Mr. Merle,” he said. “It was a very dangerous game. Because, you see, he did know. And the murderer knew he knew. To one of you he said something more than he did to the others—too much more.”

  “But,” Ann said, and her voice was doubtful, “how could he know? He was here all day yesterday. I’m sure of that.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “Right,” he said. “As far as evidence went, I don’t think Mr. Potts could prove anything. But I think he knew, just the same—for a very simple reason. He knew all of you very well—he was very interested in people. He knew things—little things and big things—which it would take an outsider years to learn. Among the big things he knew was the identity of the person who killed Mr. Merle.”

  12

  WEDNESDAY, 7:15 P.M. TO 9:05 P.M.

  Lieutenant Weigand made a little dot with his pencil after each of the names on the sheet of paper before him. He looked at the names and the little dots and then he looked across the desk which had been George Merle’s and shook his head at Captain Theodore Sullivan of the Criminal Identification Division of the State Police.

  “So,” Sullivan said. “It isn’t very helpful, Lieutenant.”

  It wasn’t, Weigand agreed, helpful at all. It left them where they had started. No one admitted having been near the beach cottage at around ten minutes to six, which was, as nearly as they could reconstruct it, the time Pam North was slugged. Everyone was sure that he was somewhere else—and no one could prove that he was somewhere else. Mary Hunter and Joshua Merle had been talking then—or about then. They had not particularly noticed the time. But about that time—they thought without conviction that it was a little later—they had parted and Merle had gone in search of Weldon Jameson. He said he merely “wanted to talk to Jameson.” He had, by his own account, been unsuccessful in finding Jameson. Mary Hunter had sat where he left her. “I just sat there. I wasn’t thinking about the time. I didn’t care what time it was!”

  It did not sound, Weigand thought, as if there had been the reconciliation between the two that Pam North had expected—that had, he guessed, brought the Norths and Mary with them to Elmcroft. Why, he wondered, had there been no reconciliation? The presumptive reason was that neither believed the other—or that one did not believe the other—when they talked, as surely they had talked, of that summer afternoon two years earlier when George Merle had called a girl who looked very young in a white play dress into his study and looked at her coldly across the desk. This desk—Weigand’s fingers tapped it.

  He thought he knew the answer to the question he had to answer. One stuck out, unreconcilably. But if he did not know the answer—if that discrepancy could be reconciled—then any continuing antagonism between Mary Hunter and Joshua Merle might be interesting.

  He put that aside, and returned to his list. Jameson—and his pencil hovered over the name as he recapitulated for himself and Captain Sullivan—had not been able to understand why Josh Merle could not find him. He had been in plain sight. Or, if he had not actually been in plain sight from all angles, he had certainly not been hard to find. He had been sitting, he said, in a deck chair down by the pool, his back to the terrace—hidden from the terrace, no doubt, by the canvas of the chair. But from the pool, he told the detectives, he had been in plain enough sight for anyone. He had seen no one by the pool.

  Laurel Burke had been, she indicated, practically everywhere. “Just looking around,” she told them with a certain emphasis. “Just sizing things up, Miss Burke?” Sullivan had asked her, and she had smiled at him without answering. She had been through as much of the house as she could get through unobtrusively, which seemed to mean that she had not actually forced locked doors. She had been down by the pool, but she did not remember that she had seen Jameson there. But she did not remember that she had not seen him there.

  “I wasn’t looking for Donny,” she said, and corrected herself quickly. “For Mr. Jameson.”

  The point was interesting, and they went into it. She stuck for a little while to the argument that she had merely used a nickname—a nickname she thought appropriate—facetiously. But after only a little questioning she gave that argument up as hardly worth the trouble. Very well, she had known Weldon Jameson before. Very slightly. She had met him one night at a night club when she was there with Murdock. No, not with George Merle. Yes, Jameson had a girl with him. No, she had never seen the girl before—or since. She was a—

  “—oh, a Miss Jones for all I know,” she said. “What did I care who she was. I’d heard about Mr. Jameson, of course—I knew him—he was a guest at Mr. Merle’s. And Murdock knew him and he and the girl came over. We all had a few drinks and the girl called him Donny. So I called him Donny.”

  “That,” Sullivan said, “doesn’t wash, Miss Burke.”

  “Doesn’t it,” she said, with only a mockery of polite interest. “So what?”

  There was no immediate answer to that one, but it was still one to be answered. They put Miss Burke aside.

  Mrs. Burnwood had gone to her room to lie down. She had locked the door behind her—“to keep out intruders,” she explained, a little balefully—and she had lain down. She had got up again and been ready to come down when Weigand sent for her. Her voice curled reproachfully over the word “sent.” She assumed she had been lying down from around five thirty until after six. She couldn’t prove it.

  “None of them,” Sullivan pointed out, “can prove anything.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “A disability they share with us.”

  “Yeah,” Sullivan said.

  Not even Ann Merle and Stanley Goode had been together uninterruptedly through any period which certainly covered the time of the attack on Pam North and the killing of Wickersham Potts. Ann had seen her aunt go into the house, had thought she looked distraught, and had gone after her to see whether there was anything she could do. She had arrived just as her aunt turned the key in the lock. She had decided there was nothing she could do; she had stopped by her room to redo her hair and when she went back to the terrace, Stanley Goode was no longer there. He had come out of the house a few minutes later—how many minutes, what time it was then—those things were anybody’s guess. Ann’s guess was that it was a little before six.

  Goode had sat for a few minutes after Ann left him and then had gone to a lavatory in the house. He had been gone perhaps ten minutes, come back and found Ann still missing, had sauntered down toward the pool and then had dis
covered that he had left his watch in the lavatory where he washed his hands. He went back and got the watch and came out again, this time finding Ann.

  “And what time was it by your watch?” Weigand wanted to know.

  Goode looked at him and shrugged.

  “Personally,” Weigand commented to Sullivan, “I never put a watch on without noticing what time it is, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Sullivan said. “I never thought about it. Probably not.”

  Jerry North had been talking with Mullins, had had a drink or two with Mullins, standing somewhere near the bar, and then had suddenly become convinced that he had left the car ignition turned on. He had gone out to the car circle to look.

  “And had you, Jerry?” Bill Weigand asked.

  “No,” Jerry said. “Of course not. But, as Pam would say, it’s a thing like leaving the water turned on. Or the oven going. You know better, but there you are.”

  He had come back and Mullins was gone.

  “With me,” Sullivan explained, at that point. “We—we went out and looked at the garden.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?” Bill Weigand asked him.

  “I like gardens,” Sullivan explained simply. “So does the sergeant. Didn’t you know?”

  “No,” Weigand said. “He lives in Brooklyn.”

  “He still likes gardens,” Sullivan said. “So we went to look at the Merles’—it’s down beyond the pool.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “How is it?”

  “It needs water,” Sullivan said. He reflected. “All gardens always need water,” he added.

  Weigand finished his list and looked at Sullivan. He said you would think that, with so many people around, some two of them—excepting Mullins and Sullivan himself—would have been together. You’d think somebody would have known what time it was.

  “Why?” Sullivan said. “What time is it now? Without looking.”

  “About seven thirty,” Weigand said, without looking. Then he looked. It was seven twenty-eight.

  “All right,” Sullivan said. “Have it your own way. But these people didn’t.”

  “Or,” Bill told him, “they say they didn’t. For reasons of their own.”

  There was, Sullivan agreed, always that. He asked Weigand what the discrepancy was, and Weigand, with enough background to make it comprehensible, told him. Sullivan thought about it and nodded. He said maybe it would do the trick but that he’d hate to go to court on it. He wanted to know the motive, and Bill Weigand told him that—guessed at that for him. Sullivan said he still wouldn’t want to go to court.

  “My God,” Bill said, with some irritability. “Do you think that if I had a case to take to court I wouldn’t make the pinch? Do you think I’d be waiting for another move out of our murderer?”

  Pam North leaned back in the lounge chair on the terrace, her head turned toward Jerry sitting beside her. This was partly so she could look at Jerry, but it was largely because there was a tender bump on the back of her head. Her head ached a little, but not too insistently. She sipped a long rum collins and her mind went around and around. It was worse than the headache.

  “Think, Jerry,” she directed. “What kinds of things are there?”

  “Sounds,” Jerry told her. “Smells. Touch—did you touch something? Involuntarily—the clothing of the person who struck you? Did you feel—oh, say heavy rough tweed—and identify somebody who was wearing a tweed jacket?”

  “Nobody is,” Pam told him. “Nobody’s wearing any jacket at all.”

  It was, Jerry told her, merely an example.

  “It would,” Pam said, “be a much better example in October. Anyway, it’s an obvious example. This must have been more subtle, like—oh, the dampness of a bathing suit.”

  “What?” Jerry said. “What’s subtle about a damp bathing suit?”

  The way she meant it, Pam said, there might be a lot. Because there might be a dampness—a coolness—to be felt by merely being a few inches away from a damp bathing suit, even without touching it.

  “That,” she explained, “would be extremely subtle, I think.”

  “Well,” Jerry said, “was it that?”

  Pam looked at him in surprise. She said of course not. She said it was merely an example. “Like,” she said, “a brown and green jacket out of very heavy tweed. Like one in—”

  “No,” Jerry said, firmly. “I don’t like women in tweed. So don’t tell me where one was.”

  She smiled at him. She said tweed wore forever, but all right.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I don’t think it was—what is the word?—at all.”

  “Tactile,” Jerry told her. “If you don’t know what it was you can’t remember about the person who hit you, and by which you could identify him or her if you could remember, how do you know it wasn’t tactile. Or tactual.”

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly,” Jerry said. “How, Pam?”

  “Because,” Pam said, “it doesn’t—oh, feel right. It doesn’t feel as if it were something I’d touched. Maybe it was a smell or a sound. I’ll just have to wait for it to come back. Only—and this is odd—I have a feeling of dread that it will come back. What do you think that means, Jerry?”

  Jerry said he was afraid it meant that whatever it was she could not remember would, when she remembered it, identify somebody she liked as the person who had killed Potts.

  “And,” Pam said, feeling her bump, “hit me. I hope not.”

  There was a considerable pause, while both sipped their drinks. Then Jerry said, idly, that something would happen to bring it back to her.

  “You’ll hear something,” he said, “or smell something or taste something and it will all come back to you. Things do.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “I’m almost sure I didn’t taste anybody. There wasn’t time and anyway—but probably you’re right. Probably the condition—whatever it was—will repeat itself and then—” She broke off and sipped again. Then, suddenly, she sat up.

  “Jerry!” she said. “I can’t. You know I can’t. Because Bill doesn’t know and if we just sit whoever it is will do it again. Because somebody else knows, or because he wasn’t through the first time and needs another murder to make things come straight. I’ve got to try to bring it back, whatever it was.”

  She couldn’t, Jerry told her, do it that way. She couldn’t force it. Pam listened and shook her head. She said she could try.

  “How?” Jerry wanted to know.

  “I can smell people, to start with,” Pam said. “I can smell everybody here.”

  Jerry said, “Pam!” and started up, but she was up before him and when he started to go with her she made furious motions of negation. He would spoil everything, the gestures meant, and when he still hesitated, she came close and whispered with great emphasis:

  “Jerry!” she whispered. “Two people can’t go around smelling people.”

  A little weakly, after that, Gerald North sat down. He consoled himself that most of the others were on the terrace and that Pam, even while engaged in smelling them, would be in plain sight. It also occurred to Jerry that never before had he seen anybody going around and smelling other people, with malice aforethought.

  There were four people at the next table and Pam started, because he was nearest, with Stanley Goode. She hesitated a moment behind him, evidently uncertain how to go about it, and decided—it appeared to her fascinated and somewhat awed husband—on the direct approach. She simply leaned over and sniffed Mr. Goode, rather as if he were a piece of doubtful meat.

  Ann Merle, who was sitting to the right of Goode, looked at Pam North and shook her head slightly and blinked. The light, although the sun was setting and the shadow was now far out on the lawn, was good enough for Jerry to see her blink. Stanley Goode also saw her blink and looked at her inquiringly. He also, Jerry thought, looked as if he were uneasy. Apparently being smelled had the same effect on a sensitive person as being sta
red at. It made them feel something was wrong.

  Pam, who had evidently not noticed Ann Merle’s surprised observation, leaned over and sniffed again. Then she stood up, apparently to consider the odor.

  “What?” Stanley Goode said suddenly. “Did you—who is—what?”

  Apparently, Jerry decided, Pam must have sniffed audibly.

  “What?” Pam said, with quick presence of mind. “Did you say something, Mr. Goode?”

  Mr. Goode shook his head slightly, in a puzzled sort of way.

  “No,” he said. “Oh, Mrs. North. I thought you said something.”

  “Me?” Mrs. North said. “I?”

  “I,” Ann Merle said, a little darkly, “thought so too, Mrs. North.”

  “No,” Pam said. “I didn’t say anything. What would I say?”

  “It sounded,” Stanley Goode said, “as if you said, ‘Uh, uh’ in a whisper.”

  “Why no,” Pam said, “why would I say ‘uh, uh.’ I mean—is it a joke, or something? I mean, I was just—just walking around.” She looked at Stanley Goode, and Jerry North could imagine that her eyes were round and surprised. “I don’t say ‘uh, uh’ when I’m just walking around,” Pam pointed out. She paused and considered. “If ever,” she said. She put her head up, as she waited for an answer to that one, and it occurred to Jerry that she was sniffing again, in plain sight this time. She seemed to have her nose trained on Ann Merle.

  “Oh,” Stanley Goode said. “I seem to—I seem to have got things mixed up. I’m sorry, Mrs. North.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, “that’s all right. It might happen to anyone.”

  That, Jerry decided, was an exaggeration. What had just happened to Stanley Goode was not really likely to happen to anyone.

  Pam moved on and Jerry, fascinated, got up and moved on behind her. To all appearances, he hoped, they were merely sauntering. Pam moved on to Mary Hunter, who sat at the left of Stanley Goode, and hardly paused. Apparently, Jerry decided, she already knew what Mary Hunter smelled like. Jerry tried to remember and succeeded—she smelled of a Chanel, not No. 5. Very pleasantly. Jerry, as he thought this, came up behind Stanley Goode, and as he did so he felt a disturbing compulsion coming over him—an alarming curiosity. What did Stanley Goode smell like? Before he had time to stop himself, Jerry North realized he had to find out.