Murder Is Suggested

by Frances

  Teeney closed her eyes, as if in thought, opened them part way—partly opened they slanted sharply upward—and made a remark and waited.

  “Duh baby,” Pam North said. “Duh pretty baby.”

  Martini blinked again, slowly, basking in human speech, in affection. She did, however, look back over her shoulder at the window. She spoke briefly.

  “I know,” Pam said. “It’s very limiting to be an apartment house cat again.” Martini interrupted. “Cat,” Pam repeated, because Martini likes to be reassured by direct address, and “cat” does as well, or almost as well, as “Teeney.” “Particularly for a cat of your vigor. Duh baby. And who doesn’t have the dissatisfaction of knowing how old she is. Which must be a pleasant way to be.”

  “Mrow-ow,” Martini said, the last syllable added very quickly. She got off the window sill and came to Pam and rubbed against her legs, revolving around them, dark brown tail carried high.

  “Goodness,” Pam said. “I can’t stand around talking to you all morning. Somebody’s coming.”

  “Ur-agh,” Martini said. Martini does not really like company, thinking more than two humans—and those carefully selected—make a crowd.

  Pam sat at her dressing table and flicked her hair, and said, “No,” firmly when Martini tried to get on her lap to help. Martini sat on the floor and stared at Pam as if she had never seen her before, and didn’t like her much now. “And don’t sulk,” Pam said and powdered her nose and then, apropos of nothing in particular, stuck out her tongue at her reflection.

  Half an hour, Faith Oldham had said, and it must now, at a quarter of eleven by a small wrist watch (which Pam was almost sure she had remembered to wind), be time for her to come. Under, presumably, a misapprehension with which both Pam and Jerry North are long familiar.

  “We’re not detectives,” Pam would tell Faith Old-ham. “We’ve never been detectives. All we do is know a detective.”

  She would be, as usual, listened to politely. At least, when they had met at Jameson Elwell’s—dear Jamey. What an awful thing to happen—Faith Oldham had seemed polite. Shy, not at all certain of herself, saying little—but polite. So she would say, “Of course, Mrs. North. I realize that,” not, in fact, realizing it at all, or believing it at all.

  “It’s really true,” Pam would say then. “Oh, murder cases happen to us. I can’t deny that. But it isn’t the other way around. Whatever Inspector O’Malley thinks.”

  Only, Pam thought—getting up from the dressing table and going to the living room, with Martini trotting behind her, waiting for a lap to settle—only I won’t bring the inspector into it. The trouble with me is, I’m so likely to say the one phrase too many. So as to make things clear. And people do seem to get confused so easily.

  She was just going into the living room when the buzzer sounded. Martha popped out of the kitchen door at the other end of the room, saw Mrs. North and popped back in again. Pam opened the room, looked up at Faith Oldham and said, “Good morning.”

  “It’s so good of you—” the tall girl said—the tall, too-thin girl with startled blue eyes in a fragile face; the somehow gawky girl; the girl who seemed to live in an unfamiliar world. Pam North, who is no handshaker by habit, nevertheless reached out a slim hand to the girl’s larger, thinner, very long-fingered hand.

  “It isn’t at all,” Pam said, and drew Faith Oldham into the room, and said, “Sit there—” and then, just in time, “No. Wait a minute,” and lifted Martini out of the “there” chair. Martini sat on the floor and, indignantly, licked her left shoulder.

  “If it’s her chair,” Faith Oldham said.

  “All the chairs we’ve got are her chairs,” Pam said. “If we went by that, we’d stand all the time.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Faith said.

  Pam looked at Martini.

  “Yes,” she said. “Even with the hole in her head.”

  It is not actually a hole, although so referred to. It is more in the nature of a wart. Martini does not mind having it mentioned.

  Faith Oldham looked puzzled.

  “Never mind,” Pam said. “You know, Miss Oldham, Jerry and I aren’t detectives.” And the rest of it, as envisioned, including the inspector, although resolved against.

  “Mrs. North,” Faith said, “I’ve—I’ve got to talk to somebody. And there isn’t anybody—and—I keep feeling it’s my fault and—” She seemed, suddenly, on the verge of crying. She knotted her thin hands together in her lap.

  “I don’t—” Pam said.

  “If I’d been there when I was supposed to be,” Faith Oldham said. “Not let mother—just gone anyway—don’t you see?” Her eyes were very wide, questioning.

  Pam’s mind hurried. This tall—this touching—girl appealed for help, but appealed thinking Pam knew more than she knew, could respond more quickly. And now a question would seem—cold, unresponding. It would seem as if she did not want to help when—

  Pam’s mind hurried over what Bill had told them. Of course—

  “Of course,” she said. “Had met Mr. Hunter at the bookshop at three. But my dear—”

  “Mrs. North,” Faith said, “I know what all of you think—Captain Weigand and you and Mr. North and everybody. And—it isn’t true. Carl couldn’t do a thing like that. And—why would he? Jamey was his friend. Jamey was helping him. You don’t know how much. And to think that he’d—he’d—”

  This time she did cry. She groped in her purse blindly and pulled out a draggled bit of tissue and dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.

  “We’re so alone,” the girl said, her soft, low voice watery too, uneven. “Now with Jamey gone and—” She did not finish.

  “Listen, dear,” Pam said. “Bill—that’s Captain Weigand—doesn’t think Mr. Hunter killed Jamey. At least, I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  “I know he does,” Faith said. “And Hope’s right—why shouldn’t they think that, when he was there—or could have been there—?”

  Hope? Oh, of course. Faith called her mother by her given name. When childen did that—

  “Wait a minute,” Pam said. “Tea or coffee?”

  The girl looked at her.

  “Elevenses,” Pam said. “I always do.”

  Which is not true; which then seemed a good idea.

  Faith didn’t care which. She did not seem to think about it. She looked at her twisted hands.

  “Just sit still,” Pam said. “Here—have a cigarette.”

  The girl shook her head.

  Pam walked the length of the room, poked her head into the kitchen, said, “Coffee please, Martha,” and came back. The girl had not moved. Pam lighted a cigarette and said it wouldn’t be a moment.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” Faith said, rather suddenly. “I—I just had to talk to somebody. Somebody whose mind wasn’t already—made up. Because if I had been at the bookshop at three we could prove—”

  “Of course you should have come,” Pam said. “And nobody really thinks Mr. Hunter had anything to do with it.”

  She spoke firmly. And, she thought, I’d better cross my fingers, since I don’t know what Bill thinks. Except that, if he didn’t, Bill won’t think he did.

  “They do,” Faith said. “All of you do. And Hope—She keeps saying she told me he wasn’t—”

  “Whatever your mother’s told you,” Pam said. “She doesn’t know any more about it than anybody else.” The girl looked at her with eyes very large. “Of course she doesn’t,” Pam said, in the tone—she trusted—of an oracle. “Now—”

  Martha came in with a tray, with two cups steaming. Instant, obviously, in so little time. Well, instant was all right.

  “Drink your coffee,” Pam told Faith Oldham, and demonstrated by sipping hers. Yes, instant. Good enough, though.

  “Now,” Pam said. “So far as I know, all there is against Mr. Hunter is that he was with Jamey a little while before somebody shot Jamey. And—I suppose there’s nobody else at the bookshop who remembers seeing him?”
r />   That supposition was reasonably obvious. It seemed, nevertheless, momentarily to startle Faith. Then she said that that was just it. There had been a lot of people at the bookshop, but none Hunter knew, and he had not bought anything, or even spoken to any of the clerks. It was just a place to meet—one waited to meet, and browsed and—

  “We all do it,” Faith said. “And—get interested in what we’re reading and don’t notice other people and—”

  “Mr. Hunter’s tried to find somebody who remembers seeing him there? At the right time?”

  “Yes. And—there isn’t anybody.”

  “Look,” Pam said. “Mr. Hunter—he was one of Jamey’s—subjects? You know what I mean?”

  “Jamey hypnotized him,” the girl said. “Yes. He did—lots of people. Mrs. North—there isn’t anything wrong in that. It doesn’t—do anything to people. Weaken their wills or—or anything. All that’s—superstition.” She was anxious. “Really like—” She looked around. Martini was sitting and looking up at her, distantly. “Like the belief that cats suck the breath of babies,” she said.

  “That’s nonsense,” Pam said, warmly. “And that they’re any more sly than anybody else. And that they don’t love people and—some woman said once they don’t even recognize people. Somebody who was supposed to know. A psychologist. And I don’t believe she had ever met a cat. Why, Martini—”

  Pam North managed to stop herself.

  “About hypnotism,” she said, bringing herself back. “I’ve read a little in Jamey’s book. That is, anyway, Jerry has and’s told me. It’s nothing against Mr. Hunter that he let Jamey hypnotize him. Doesn’t mean a thing about him.”

  “Except,” Faith said—and now she was drinking her coffee, now she reached out and took a cigarette from a box—“except that he’s one of those who can be. About one in five can. Nobody seems to know why. Why the percentage, I mean. Or, actually, how it works—one man thinks it’s some kind of conditioned reflex.”

  It occurred to Pam that they were in danger of riding their respective hobbyhorses in different directions. This might, momentarily, take Faith Oldham’s mind off Hunter; it appeared that, momentarily, it had. But it did not, on the other hand, get them any place.

  “Faith,” Pam said. “You wouldn’t be so worried—I don’t think you would—about Mr. Hunter if you didn’t think he—well, that he might have had some reason to kill Jamey.”

  The girl leaned forward. She seemed about to stand up. The blue eyes changed, seemed somehow to intensify.

  “If you think that—” she said, and her voice changed too. It was deeper, more vibrant.

  “Wait a minute,” Pam said. “Wait a minute. You came here to—talk about this. Because, you said, you were—what did you say?—so alone. So, I suppose, because you wanted help. Isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl said. “You and Mr. North seemed—like people who would understand. And once Jamey said something about your having had experience in things like this. And then I thought I could find out—”

  “I know,” Pam said. “How things were going. As concerning Mr. Hunter. Well—I’ve told you what I know about that. And I’m ready to help—anyway, to talk about it. But we can’t if you won’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Faith said. “No, I don’t know any reason Carl could have had—any motive. And, I know he wouldn’t do a thing like that anyway. And—I know that that isn’t good enough. Is it?”

  “No,” Pam said. “Faith—did you know that Jamey—wasn’t well? That, actually, he didn’t have much longer to live?”

  The girl looked at her. The full blue eyes seemed, to Pam, to narrow a little. She said, “Why?”

  “You did, didn’t you?” Pam said, taking a chance.

  Faith hesitated.

  “I didn’t—know,” she said. “I was, from things he said—not definite things but—as if he were resigned—yes, I was afraid of it. But—why?”

  “Oh,” Pam said. “I—wondered if you knew. In a way, it makes what’s happened—well, easier to accept, doesn’t it? You were fond—very fond—of Jamey. I know that. Even Jerry and I, although we only knew him a few months—”

  It wasn’t, Pam thought, particularly good. But it was as far as she wanted to go. Unless the girl herself—

  “That really isn’t why you brought it up, is it?” Faith said. She was much steadier now; that, at any rate, had been gained. “What you meant was—Jamey didn’t have any real reason to live. It was going to be—painful?”

  “I think so,” Pam said.

  “That he could—have arranged for somebody to make it—quicker? Easier? By—using hypnotism?”

  “I don’t think it’s possible,” Pam said. “I think that all of the authorities think it isn’t—Faith!”

  The girl had dropped her face in her hands. Her body shook. She said, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid.”

  And, Pam North was startled; obscurely upset. The night’s theory had become, with morning, only a theory of the night, grotesquely contorted, as are the thoughts of night. At breakfast, only a few hours before, she and Jerry had agreed on that, and been somewhat amused at themselves. And Jerry had, again, explained to both of them that all the authorities Jameson Elwell, who was himself one, cited agreed that there was no proof a person in hypnosis would not reject, out of hand, instruction to perpetrate any serious crime. And here the girl—

  “There’s no reason to be afraid,” Pam said. “Not of that, anyway. At least I—”

  Now the girl changed again; she was a changeable girl.

  “They don’t really know,” she said. “Oh, for years all the authorities were pretty much agreed that a person couldn’t be made to commit any crime. Let alone to kill. But lately—well, they’re not so sure. I’ve been helping—had been helping Jamey with research. Getting quotations and things like that. From—” She named names Pam North had never heard—Wells, Rowland, Estabrooks. A good many now thought merely that certain things were unproved, not that they were impossible.

  “Take this man Salter,”* Faith Oldham said, and Pam shook her head slowly, being unable to take something she had never heard of. “He’s very certain a good subject could be made to do—anything. And Professor Estabrooks,† although he doesn’t go as far, says that while he doesn’t claim that all good subjects would commit crimes, it seems ‘highly probable’ that many would.”

  “Oh,” Pam North said. Faith was looking at her with very wide—clearly, Pam thought, very frightened—eyes. And Pam, if not precisely frightened, was definitely uneasy. It proved, she thought briefly, the folly of shooting arrows into the air, not knowing where they might come down. “Well,” Pam North said. The girl waited.

  “Even if he could he wouldn’t,” Pam said. “Jamey, I mean.” And waited, with growing uneasiness, for an echo—for corroboration from a person who clearly knew a good deal about this mysterious matter—of her own grotesque theory of the night.

  And—it did not come.

  “Of course he wouldn’t have,” Faith said. “Anybody who knew him would know that. Only—they wouldn’t have known him. All those people—your friend Captain Weigand and—I don’t know—lawyers and people on a jury and—he would just be a name and Carl would—would be another and nobody would really know.”

  “I—” Pam said.

  “I know,” Faith said. “You think I’m frightened because—because I think Carl was hypnotized and made to kill Jamey. I don’t. I don’t and I never will, because Jamey wouldn’t do a thing like that to anybody and Carl wouldn’t—I don’t care what they say—if everybody in the world said—”

  Then, again, she buried her face in her hands. Pam started to get up from the chair, to go to her, and Faith’s hands went down and she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m all right. It’s—not that I’m afraid about what has happened. That’s all right—about Carl it’s all right. I’m afraid of what can happen. Because—they’ll think of this, won’t they? Even peo
ple who don’t know anything about hypnotism—think it’s something that used to go on on the stage, and a man with glittering eyes swinging a watch back and forth—” There was contempt in the young voice; the contempt of young knowledge for ancient myth. “—even they’ll think of this. Because now even doctors are beginning to understand it, and magazines to print articles about it.”

  “I imagine,” Pam said, “that they’ll—well, try everything else first. Because, you take a jury—”

  She paused, considering.

  “Jurys like things simple,” Pam said. “Nobody gives them a thing that’s hard to believe if there’s any other way.”

  (Bill must have told me that, sometime, Pam North thought.)

  “But this isn’t hard to—” Faith said, and did not finish.

  “Not for you,” Pam said. “You obviously know lots about it. Helping in Jamey’s experiments and everything—working with him. I wonder—how does it feel to be hypnotized?”

  “How?” Faith said. “Oh—Jamey never hypnotized me, Mrs. North. Not because I wasn’t willing. I just wasn’t one of those who can be hypnotized. Maybe I’m not bright enough.” She almost smiled; a watery almost-smile. “There’s probably some correlation between intelligence and susceptibility,” she said. “Anyway, the feeble-minded can’t be hypnotized, or almost never can. Oh—he could get me to relax and feel sleepy. And then he’d say, ‘Your eyelids are locked tightly together. You cannot open them.’ And—I’d open them. Every time. So—”

  She stopped talking and stood up. She looked at her watch and said she must go now.

  She said, “Mrs. North. It was good of you to let me talk. I—I guess I just needed to talk to somebody. And—I know there’s no way you can help us but—”

  Pam stood too.

  “Only,” Faith Oldham said. “I don’t know how to ask this. Probably I shouldn’t. But—almost the worst thing is not knowing. What they—what they’re thinking, planning to do. I don’t ask you to—I know Captain Weigand’s a friend. I know you can’t—”

  She found it hard to say, obviously. And there was no clear answer, obviously.