Payoff for the Banker

by Frances

  Alarmed at himself, but quite unable to do anything about it, Jerry North found himself approaching Stanley Goode from behind, a little as if he were stalking him. Mr. Goode, already somewhat unnerved, apparently felt his approach, because when Jerry was still a stride or two away he moved his shoulders a little nervously and started to turn. There was only one thing to do, and Jerry North did it. He advanced resolutely and clapped Stanley Goode heartily on the shoulder, at the same time bending over him in what must be, Jerry fleetingly realized, a rather awful parody of extreme friendliness.

  “How are you, old man?” Mr. North demanded, heartily, using of all locutions that which he always, in his rational moments, found most offensive.

  Stanley Goode jumped convulsively under his hand. He said, “What!” in a sudden, loud voice and started up. Then he said, “Oh,” and sat down again. But he sat tentatively, and he looked around at Gerald North with disturbed surprise. “All right, I guess,” he said. “Why?”

  “That’s good,” Jerry said, with a kind of horrible heartiness. “Well—be seeing you.”

  Pam had passed, and no doubt smelled Joshua Merle, who made the fourth at the table. Jerry, staggering a little with embarrassment, went after her.

  Stanley Goode smelled of tobacco, some kind of talcum and rye whiskey. Ann Merle smelled of some kind of flower toilet water and hardly at all of rum. Jerry did not stop to smell Joshua Merle—never, he told himself, would he smell anybody again if he could help it. It was the sort of thing which led to misunderstandings. Jerry paused at that thought. He decided, after the pause, that misunderstanding was the best thing it could possibly lead to. It might, it occurred to him, lead to understanding, which would obviously be worse.

  Pam had gone to join Weldon Jameson at the bar. She was standing much closer to him than she usually stood to other men than Jerry, and even from a distance Jerry thought he could detect her nose vibrating delicately. Jerry found he was near a chair and, with a small groan, he sat in it. He sat in it and wished it would get dark.

  He was still sitting in the same chair half an hour later when Pam found him. She sat down on the grass behind him and looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Well,” she said, “I smelled everybody. Mr. Goode and Ann and Mary and Mr. Merle and Mr. Jameson and the Burke girl—my!”

  “Yes,” Jerry said.

  “Just ‘my’,” Pam told him. “Something very remarkable—something people would call ‘Torrid Night’ or something. And gin of course.”

  She paused and thought.

  “Of course,” she said, “everybody smells of something to drink, which is confusing. Mrs. Burnwood smells of sachet, lavender sachet. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Is it?” Jerry said. “I never thought so, particularly.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “maybe ‘appropriate’ is better than nice. It was a very correct way for her to smell. And she hardly smelled of anything to drink at all.”

  “And—” Jerry began, and then Bill Weigand came up. He sat down on the other side of Pam.

  “And what,” Bill said in a considered tone, “have you been up to, Pam? You’ve been talking to everybody here, and standing close to them and, so far as I could tell, feeling the material in their clothes. Is it—a new game or something?”

  “She’s been smelling them, too,” Jerry said. “She’s smelled everybody on the place, except you.”

  “Oh,” Pam said. “I smelled him, too. He’s tobacco, chiefly.”

  Bill Weigand looked at them, and shook his head slowly. He waited. Pam told him. He was amused, but he was not wholly amused.

  “If I saw you,” he pointed out, “other people saw you. They may have wondered, too, what you were up to. One person may have wondered a great deal.”

  Pam shook her head. She said it was because Bill knew her, and she wasn’t acting as he expected her to act. To people who didn’t know her, she probably seemed perfectly normal.

  “Really,” she said, “I made it all look like nothing at all, unless you were looking for something.”

  Somebody among those present, Bill pointed out, was looking for something. That was precisely it. Somebody was looking for anything—somebody was seeing suspicion in every movement, somebody was starting each time leaves rustled in a breeze; somebody had the wary watchfulness of the hunted.

  “And,” Jerry said, “if you really think you didn’t look as if you were up to something, Pam—well.”

  “By the way,” Pam said, “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Goode, Jerry. Not well enough to—hit him.”

  “What?” Bill said.

  Pam looked at Jerry, who looked back at her.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “nothing. Just a little joke—a little family joke.”

  Bill Weigand did not look as if he believed either of them, but he let it lie.

  “Well,” he said, “since you did do it—did you find out anything? Was it an odor—or the sound of a voice—or the feel of something?”

  Pam shook her head slowly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Things came back. Mrs. Burnwood’s sachet made me remember a rainy day when I was a little girl and I was playing with the sewing machine and the belt came off. And Laurel Burke made me remember the opening of an awful play with an ocelot in it, because the woman who sat next to me smelled like that. And Weldon Jameson’s coat—he is wearing a coat now, Jerry—made me remember something not very clear about a boy and an ice cream cone. And—and that sort of thing. But nothing made me remember anything more about the person who hit me and killed Mr. Potts.”

  She paused and looked at Jerry first and then at Bill.

  “Only,” she said, “something brought it nearer. Not enough nearer—just a little nearer.”

  “Good,” Jerry said. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” Pam said. “It was sort of—sort of delayed. And then I couldn’t remember what it was. But I don’t think it was a smell.”

  She paused again.

  “It’s very exasperating,” she said. “It’s just on the tip of my mind.”

  Jerry told her to forget it. He told her that it would come back most quickly if she didn’t try to force it; he told her, urgently, that Bill was right—that whoever was being hunted was alert and uneasy; that anything she did which was odd, which forced the issue, might frighten him into violence. And that if it did, she might be in the path of the violence.

  “After all,” Jerry said with finality. “Once is enough. You’ve been knocked out for getting in the way. For God’s sake, darling, stay out of the way!”

  “But—” Pam started, and this time Bill Weigand interrupted her.

  “Anyway, Pam,” he said, “I know—I’m pretty sure I know.”

  “Who?” Pam said.

  Bill Weigand shook his head. He said not yet. He shook his head again when Pam asked why, if he knew, he did not arrest whoever it was.

  “Because,” he said, “I haven’t a shadow of a case. I’ve a discrepancy—and a hunch.” He smiled at her. “Neither of which,” he said firmly, “am I going to share with you, my dear. Because probably you would go up and ask him—or her—why he did it, and that might make him mad.” He paused and smiled again. “Or her mad,” he added. “And we don’t want a murderer mad at you, Pam—not this time.”

  It was almost dark, and for an hour Pam North had been going over the case in her mind, looking for the discrepancy. She had not found it and Jerry had not been helpful. She had taken up, one after another, the people involved in the case and she had tried to remember all that they had said—all that Bill had told her they had said and all that she remembered—and nothing had come out.

  It was not that she lacked theories—she had an overabundance of theories. She had a theory to fit Joshua Merle and another to fit Mary Hunter and yet another, which she liked even less, to fit them both together—a theory which involved conspiracy, and pretense of estrangement and murder for money. It was a theory which she could not flatly disprove; it was a
lso a theory in which she could not believe, because she did not think it fitted the people. But there was always a chance that the people did not fit what she thought about them.

  It was easier to imagine that Laurel Burke was the murderer, if you granted her remarkable effrontery, because only remarkable effrontery would explain her pushing herself—as she was pushing herself—into the middle of things when she might as easily have remained outside them. It was not possible at all to imagine Ann Merle as the one they were looking for because Ann Merle seemed outside so much of it. “But of course,” Pam told herself, “that is really because I’ve just met her, so naturally I feel that she has just come in. But really she has been in all her life. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “Jerry,” Pam said, “have you gone to sleep? And where is everybody?”

  “No,” he said. “But I thought you had. I thought you were all tired out from smelling people and had gone to sleep. Everybody’s around some place. Bill and Sullivan are down at the cottage, with a lot of other State cops. As a matter of fact, you must have been asleep.”

  “No,” Pam said. “Anyway, not much. Why don’t we go home?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said. He had got a waterproof cushion shaped like a wedge and was leaning against it, with a glass in his hand. “Why don’t we go home?”

  Pam did not answer him. It was not dark yet, but the sun was far down and the shadow was almost at the swimming pool. The light was fading slowly, as if it had all summer to fade in.

  “What was the discrepancy, Jerry?” Pam said. “Bill’s discrepancy?”

  “Something about the check?” Jerry said. “Something about the gun? I don’t know.”

  Jerry spoke as if he, like the light, had all summer to fade in, and were going about it in a leisurely fashion. He spoke as if he were thinking about something else.

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “How many drinks have you had?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said. “About the right amount.”

  Pam reached over with her foot and kicked him gently. He said, “Hey!” but not as if it really mattered. Pam asked him again where everybody was.

  “Ann and her tennis player went off somewhere,” he said. “Down by the pool, probably. And Mary went down that way too, about half an hour ago, when you were sleeping. About Jameson I don’t know, unless he’s paired off with the Burke.” He paused, took a drink and reflected. “Which wouldn’t be healthy, I shouldn’t think,” he said after he had swallowed.

  “Healthy?” Pam repeated and Jerry said, “Yes, healthy.”

  “Because,” he said, “either she killed Merle, in which case she isn’t a healthy person to be around, or she didn’t. In which case she still isn’t a healthy person to be around. She knew Jameson before, you know.”

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “How did you know? I mean—how did you know?”

  Jerry sat up and looked at her and said, “Really, Pam,” and said that of course he knew—or guessed. “Even before Bill told me,” he said. “She was talking at him when she lugged in the Zero Club.”

  “Why?” Pam wanted to know. “Why was she talking at him? She was talking at anybody. At everybody.”

  “Intuition,” Jerry told her. “My intuition. Masculine intuition. Or did you think there wasn’t any?”

  Pam said of course she didn’t think there wasn’t any. She said everybody had intuition and that it didn’t matter about sex. Jerry looked up at her and she said that he knew perfectly well what she meant. She said he was always catching her up when he knew perfectly well she was already up.

  “My intuition usually consists in understanding you,” Jerry said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “Intuition,” Pam said, “merely consists in not going around Robin Hood’s barn. It’s not taking all the steps. Which doesn’t mean that the steps aren’t there. They’re understood. Like nouns.”

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “Like nouns,” Pam said. “Anyway, I think it was nouns. The noun is understood. Or was it the verb? In grammar.”

  Jerry said he didn’t know.

  “Anyway,” Pam said, “that’s what intuition is. Yours or anybody’s. It’s merely taking a short cut through the woods because you’ve already been around by the road and know the way. You knew it was Jameson that Burke was talking at because you’ve seen people talk at people and you know how it looks and sounds. So when you saw it again you took a short cut through the woods instead of going around the barn. Why Robin Hood’s, incidentally?”

  Jerry said he didn’t know.

  “Well, anyway,” said Pam, who was sitting up now and even leaning forward a little so she could look at Jerry. “That’s how you knew it was Jameson. It’s perfectly simple.”

  Jerry said, “Oh.”

  “Perfectly,” Pam said. “Only of course you were wrong. You got lost in the woods somewhere. If it was anybody, it was Josh Merle. Only I’m not sure it was anybody. I think she was just fishing.”

  “Fishing?” Jerry said. “For what?”

  That, Pam said, she did not know. Any more than she knew what it was she remembered, but had forgotten, about the person who struck her and killed Mr. Potts.

  “It’s very exasperating,” she said. “Here Bill knows and if I could remember we’d know too, or if we could work it out the way he did.”

  “We could use intuition,” Jerry said.

  Pam shook her head. She said that Bill hadn’t used intuition, or at least she didn’t think he had.

  There were footsteps on the flagstones behind them and the footsteps ended and Stanley Goode came across the grass toward them, the sound of his steps lost in the grass. He stopped and he spoke lightly. He asked if they had happened to notice where Ann Merle had got to. And then he looked down at Pam and seemed surprised at the response to his question.

  The response was unquestionably surprising. Pam North did not answer—she did not speak at all. But she looked at him with eyes which grew round and startled and it seemed to Jerry, watching her, that something had happened which to Pam was frightening. He started to speak, but then Pam spoke instead.

  “Mr. Goode!” she said. “Did you walk across the terrace just now? The—the hard part? The flagstones?”

  “Why,” Stanley Goode said, and his words came slowly and the note in his voice was odd. “Yes, I guess I did. I came from the living room, so I must have walked across the terrace. Why, Mrs. North?”

  “Oh,” Pam said. “So that—” She broke off. “I’m afraid I don’t know where Ann went, Mr. Goode,” she said. “I thought she was with you.”

  Pam stood up as she spoke and Jerry, not knowing precisely why, stood with her. He was surprised, but pleased, when she put her hand in his.

  “Perhaps she’s down by the pool, Mr. Goode,” Pamela North said, very politely. “Perhaps you would find her if you looked down there.”

  Mr. Goode looked no less puzzled, but he accepted the change in Pamela North with politeness. He said that that was a jolly good idea and that he would go down and have a look. He went off, not hurrying, and Pam waited a moment before her grip on Jerry’s hand tightened and she was pulling him toward the terrace.

  “Jerry,” she said. “Jerry! We’ve got to hurry!”

  “Hurry?” Jerry said. “Hurry where, Pam?”

  “Anywhere,” Pam said. “Where everybody is. We’ve got to find people, Jerry. Because if we don’t it will be Mr. Murdock all over again.”

  She started off. Jerry held her a moment. He told her, not quite as a question, that now she knew.

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She was impatient.

  “But,” Jerry said, “apparently it was something Goode did that tipped you off. And Goode went down toward the pool.”

  “Goode?” Pam repeated. “Oh—Goode! But Jerry, he’s just—what’s the thing that makes other things come together?”

  “That makes—?” Jerry said. “Oh, a catalyst. A catalytic agent.”

  �
��Of course,” Pam said. “Now will you hurry?”

  13

  WEDNESDAY, 9:05 P.M. TO 10:15 P.M.

  Mary Hunter wore a bathing suit which was shorts and a bra, which was white and which she had borrowed from Ann Merle. She had swum the length of the pool and back again just as the light faded and then she had stood irresolute a moment and pulled a light coat around her and had looked toward the house and apparently thought better of it. She sat in one of the canvas chairs which was still warm from the sun and seemed to look at the pool and looked at nothing. And after a few minutes, Joshua Merle came down from the house and stood looking down at her. He looked down at her and said, “Hello, Mary.”

  “Hello,” she said.

  “It’s a funny party,” he said. “Do you want a drink? Or anything?”

  She said, “No,” still looking at nothing across the pool.

  He sat down on the grass beside her. He said, “I’m sorry as hell, Mary. About everything.”

  “So am I,” Mary said. “About Rick. About your father. About everything. About little Mr. Potts.”

  “Yes,” Josh Merle said. “But mostly I’m sorry about us. About me.”

  “I suppose,” Mary Hunter said, “that it sounded reasonable enough. He was your father. You hadn’t been around much.”

  “I’d been to Princeton,” Josh said.

  “Oh, Josh!” the girl said. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  He laughed a little, without amusement. He said he appreciated her defense. He said there was nothing in it.

  “I’m not defending you,” the girl said. “Why should I defend you? You’re somebody I used to know.”

  “All right,” he said. “I can still be sorry about it. I can still be—oh, what the hell.” His voice was suddenly tired.