Murder Is Suggested

by Frances

  They had both, he told Bill Weigand, stared at him as if he had gone out of his mind.

  “The inheritance,” Mullins said and, when they continued to stare, “in the professor’s will.”

  Faith Oldham had shaken her head, then, and looked at her mother. Then they had both looked at Mullins and both had shaken their heads.

  Now Bill Weigand raised his eyebrows.

  “I think they were leveling,” Mullins said. “Or they both oughta be on the stage. Which makes it interesting, doesn’t it? Because if the girl didn’t know, then Hunter didn’t know and—well, there we are.”

  “You told them?”

  Mullins had. It was no secret, or wouldn’t long be.

  “From the way they acted,” Mullins said, “I’d say it pretty much knocked them over. Particularly Mrs. Oldham; particularly at first. Then she came out of it enough to say something about its being the least he could do. And the girl—she started to cry and said ‘Hope!’, all broken up like, and went out of the room. Makes you feel sorta sorry for the girl. If she didn’t kill him, of course.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “If she didn’t kill him. And—if she didn’t know about the money, she didn’t have a motive, did she? Unless—”

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. “Not that hypnotism stuff.”

  “And if she didn’t have one,” Weigand said, “Hunter didn’t and mama didn’t. Unless Elwell—” He did not finish.

  “Looks like it,” Mullins said. “Be nice if it was mama. What I mean is—”

  “I know,” Bill Weigand said. “We must avoid prejudice, sergeant. Have the boys finished in the laboratory? Elwell’s office?”

  They had finished—that was, they had removed from laboratory and office all that they thought might conceivably be of value. They were going over it elsewhere. So far they hadn’t found anything that looked like being anything, except for the payments to Investigators, Inc., of which they already knew.

  “The trouble with us,” Mullins said, “is that nobody ever leaves us any clues.”

  “I know,” Weigand said. “If they’ve finished there we may as well put this with the rest of the stuff.”

  This tinkled on the desktop. This was the key to the laboratory which Weigand had taken from Faith Oldham the day before. Mullins, custodian of physical objects, picked it up and looked at it and started to clip it to a sheaf of papers and looked at it again.

  “Looks new,” Mullins said, and Bill Weigand reached for it. It did look new. Bill ran a finger along the wards. The sharpness of the cutting had not yet worn smooth.

  “We were talking about the key when Hunter almost remembered something,” Mullins said, but Weigand had already reached for the telephone. He told the operator whom he wanted to talk to, and where the wanted man was. “Of course,” he said, as he put the telephone back, “what he almost remembered may have been about something entirely different.”

  They smoked and waited. The telephone rang. A woman was saying that Mr. Hunter was under partial sedation and should not be disturbed, and then a man said, “Let me have it, please,” Hunter’s voice was, Bill thought, a little muted, as if Hunter were a little groggy. Bill said he wanted to ask only one thing, but that if Hunter didn’t feel up to it—

  “In a few minutes,” Huner said, “I’ll probably be asleep. So—what?”

  “The thing you almost remembered when we were up there,” Bill said. “Was it about the key to the professor’s lab? About a key having been lost, perhaps, and another one made and—”

  “Hell,” Hunter said, and his voice was fading, “I don’t even know if it was that. Could have been—wait a minute. Faith lost her key two-three weeks ago. She was standing over a subway grating and took something out of her purse—tissue, probably—and the key came out too and dropped through the grating.”

  “Was that what you remembered? Almost remembered.”

  “I don’t know,” Hunter said. “Seems to me that there was somthing more. Something—relevant. That losing the key was only—” Then there was a long pause. “Maybe when this stuff they’ve given me wears off—” Hunter said, and his voice was vague. And then a woman said, “Mr. Hunter must be allowed to rest now,” and put a receiver back in a hospital room. Weigand put his back, and told Mullins what Hunter had said.

  “So all it means, probably,” Bill said, “is that Miss Oldham borrowed the professor’s key long enough to have another made. Which doesn’t seem—”

  He stopped. He drummed briefly on the desktop with his fingers. He said, “Let me have that a minute,” but, when Mullins started to hand him the key, “No. The accident report.”

  Weigand flicked back the first page of the stapled two-page report. He read what he had previously skimmed. He said, “Un-huh” and, “Listen to this, sergeant,” and read:

  “‘Small evening purse on seat of car; gray silk with metal clasp. Contents: compact, lipstick, handkerchief initialed EE, coin purse containing single five-dollar bill, vial of perfume (Arpege), driver’s license No. 5280846, NY, made out to Elizabeth Elwell, Age 24—’”

  “And,” Bill said, “etcetera. What’s missing, sergeant?”

  “Cigarettes,” Mullins said, promptly. “Lighter. Social security card.”

  “I don’t know she was employed,” Bill said. “Or would carry a card in an evening purse if she were. And cigarettes and lighter might be pretty bulky for an evening purse. Particularly when you’re with a man who has pockets. Anything else?”

  “I don’t—” Mullins said, and tapped the desktop with clenched fist, self-punishing. “What we were just talking about,” he said. “Keys.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “For everybody there’s a door some place.”

  “Well,” Mullins said, “not everybody.”

  “Everybody who might conceivably drive a Jaguar,” Bill said. “To one’s own front door, sergeant.”

  “Looks,” Mullins said, “like we’d better go and talk to this Mr. Flinch.”…

  Rosco Finch was about to go out to dinner. He had a date for dinner. Also, he had told them everything—

  “Told you,” he said to Mullins. “I don’t know who hired those detectives. And, I don’t give a damn. It’s all water under—”

  He stopped and looked at Bill Weigand through narrowed eyes. He said, “Wait a minute,” and then, “You say your name’s Weigand?”

  Bill had. He nodded his head.

  “You’re Homicide,” Finch said, and spoke accusingly. “And Professor Elwell’s been murdered.” He turned on Mullins. “Which,” he said, “you were damn careful not to tell me, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Mullins said.

  “So all this business about the accident,” Finch said. “About checking up on this private detective. A lot of hogwash.”

  “Look here, mister,” Mullins said, but Bill Weigand cut through.

  “Not entirely, Mr. Finch,” Bill said. “We’re a good deal interested in the private detective who came to talk to you about the accident. Because—Professor Elwell hired him, Mr. Finch.”

  Finch said, “What the hell?” in a tone of great surprise.

  “No,” Bill said. “I think you knew. Or—guessed. Well?”

  “I told the sergeant—”

  “I know what you told the sergeant. I think you guessed if you didn’t know. Well?”

  “What difference does it make? I didn’t know. I’ll admit I—wondered.”

  “And,” Bill said, “wondered if maybe they’d found out more than they told you. About the accident. That you were driving and—”

  “They couldn’t have,” Finch said. “Because I wasn’t. And—I don’t have to tell you a damn thing more, do I?”

  He was belligerent.

  “Not a thing,” Bill Weigand said, with no belligerence at all. “All right, Mullins. We’ll take him along. Book him and—”

  “Book me? For what?”

  The belligerence remained, even increased. And sounded—Bill hoped it sou
nded—a little hollow.

  “Material witness,” Bill said. Covers a multitude of sins, Mr. Finch. And—possibilities. Material witness in connection with the murder of Professor Jameson Elwell. And then you won’t have to answer my questions. Anyway, not only mine. There’ll be a man from the D.A.’s office and—”

  “I tell you,” Finch said, “I wasn’t driving. Nobody can prove I was driving.”

  “That,” Bill said, “is what you hope. Could be, this man Flanagan would have a different story. Could be he passed it on to the professor and the professor gave you a chance to prove Flanagan wrong before he got the case reopened and—”

  “You’ll never,” Finch said, “make that stick. Anyway—who’d kill anybody for as little reason as that? Suppose I was driving. It was still an accident. Suppose something went wrong with the steering and—”

  “Suppose,” Bill said, “you had been drinking and fell asleep at the wheel. Doing eighty. Suppose it’s held vehicular homicide. You’d get a stretch for that, Mr. Finch. Wouldn’t be much of a golfer when you got out, probably.”

  Finch had been standing, as Bill Weigand and Mullins had. Now, suddenly, he sat down. They looked down at him.

  “Damn it all,” he said. “Liz was—” He stopped and pressed his forehead with the palms of his hands. “She was dead,” he said. “There wasn’t anything more could happen to—hurt her. And—” He seemed to catch himself. “She was driving the car,” he said, his tone flat, final. “She wanted to and I let her. Just as I told the police then. And nobody can—”

  “Prove,” Bill said. “Perhaps not. It’s hard to know about that though, isn’t it? And this stirring things up—”

  “I’ve told you all I’m going to,” Finch said. “All there is to tell.”

  There is no use pressing too long on precisely the same spot.

  “Miss Elwell had a purse,” Bill said. “A gray silk evening purse. It was found in the car. Mr. Finch—did you take anything out of that purse?”

  Finch stood up again, abruptly. He said, “Damn it all! Now you want to make me out a thief?”

  “Did you take anything out of the purse?”

  “I didn’t touch the purse. And if you—”

  “Mister,” Sergeant Mullins said, “why don’t you just sit down? Take it easy, sort of?”

  Mullins looked heavily at Rosco Finch. And Finch sat down.

  “I didn’t touch the purse,” Finch said again. “Something missing from the purse?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “I’d think so. Finch, did you take a key—perhaps several keys in a holder of some sort—out of Miss Elwell’s purse? Did you—use one of the keys yesterday? At about three o’clock? The key to the Elwell front door?”

  “I—” Finch began. But there was no belligerence left now.

  “Don’t,” Bill told him, “tell me you were at the golf club practicing drives. We’ve checked on that. Nobody saw you there. And—there were people about who would have. So—”

  Bill waited. Sometimes you took chances; sometimes tried a bluff. And sometimes the bluff was called.

  “I didn’t take the keys,” Finch said. “What would I want to steal keys for? She didn’t have room in the bag and—”

  He stopped.

  “What the hell?” he said. “What the hell?”

  He seemed to speak in bewilderment, in discouraged wonder at mischance. They waited, saying nothing.

  “All right,” he said. “She gave me the keys to carry, because they made a bulge with all the other things she carried in her purse. You know how they are about that?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “She gave you the keys.”

  “Will you let me tell it?” Finch said. “It’s not so good, but let me tell it. Because I didn’t kill Elwell. And I wasn’t driving the car. I’ll stick to that, captain.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “You’ll stick to that. Stick to both of them.”

  “I didn’t kill Elwell. Suppose you give me a chance to tell it.”

  “The sergeant will make notes,” Bill said. “When we get in we’ll type it up. And, as I said, you don’t have to—”

  “Sure,” Finch said, and the belligerence came back. “You badger me and this sergeant can push me around and—”

  “Nobody’s pushed you around,” Bill said. “Do you want to tell us about the keys?”

  “I’ll be—” Finch began, and then the belligerence drained out. “What’s the use?” Finch said dully, and seemed to speak to himself. “I—”

  He had, he said, been dazed after the accident, partly from shock, partly because he had got a bang on the head. He had forgotten all about the keys at the time, thought of them later and put them in a drawer, forgotten them again in the confusion of other things. “They kept badgering me,” he said. “Nobody asked me about the keys and what had they to do with it, anyway? Believe me or don’t believe me, I forgot all about them.”

  The whole accident had begun to be dim in his mind—“and thank God for that”—and then Flanagan appeared and brought it back. And then—

  “All right,” he said. “I thought maybe Liz’s father was back of it. I didn’t know. I just thought he might be. And then I did remember the keys. So—”

  The keys gave an excuse, Finch said. He would go around to see Professor Elwell, ostensibly to return the keys and to apologize for not having returned them months ago. And—if he could talk to Elwell he could, he thought, tell whether Elwell was back of Flanagan, and had sent Flanagan.

  “And,” Finch said, “find out just where I stood. I wasn’t going to bring it up in so many words unless I had to. But if it turned out he didn’t believe she was driving—I thought maybe I could convince him. Because—well, after Flanagan began nosing around, I nosed around a little myself and—all right, found out about this vehicular homicide. As I say, I wasn’t driving but—well, it was my car and the way it happened—what it comes down to, nobody can prove I was driving but I don’t know any way I can prove I wasn’t and—”

  “Mr. Finch,” Bill said. “I’m not a Connecticut policeman. Unless it ties in with Professor Elwell’s death, what happened last April isn’t any official business of mine. Were you driving?”

  Finch hesitated for a moment before answering; looked up at Weigand with slightly narrowed eyes. But when he did answer it was to repeat, with again a moment of truculence, that Liz Elwell had been at the Jaguar’s wheel.

  Bill shrugged his shoulders at that. He said, “You decided to see the professor, ostensibly to return the keys. And—got around to it yesterday.”

  “I didn’t say—” Finch was silent for several seconds. “I suppose somebody saw me,” he said.

  So that was that. And they might, of course, eventually find somebody who had seen Rosco Finch.

  “Go ahead,” Bill said. “You went to the house. Used the key, probably, and—”

  Again he was invited to let Finch tell it. All right, Finch had gone to the house. Some time around three. And—

  “Hold it a minute,” Mullins said. “When I was here before you already knew Elwell was dead. And had this story about practicing golf ready and—”

  “All right,” Finch said. “It was on the radio. And nobody wants to get mixed up in things if he can help it.”

  Which was true enough of most people; which was obviously very true of Finch.

  “Go ahead,” Weigand said. “We’ll pick up the pieces later, sergeant,” and Mullins said, “O.K., Loot-I-mean-captain.”

  “If you mean,” Finch said, “did I just use the key and walk in, no, I didn’t. I rang the doorbell, and waited and rang it again and was just about to give it up when—”

  When, from somewhere inside the house, he had heard what sounded like a shot. It had sounded distant, muffled; he had not been sure that it was a shot. But he also was not sure it wasn’t and, instead of going away as he had been about to do, he rang the doorbell again—rang it several times. And it was still unanswered.

  �
��Hell,” Finch said, “I liked the old guy. Whatever you think, captain. I liked him. And I thought—maybe he was cleaning a gun or something and alone in the house and had managed to shoot himself and needed help. So—”

  So he had got out the leather container of keys. There were half a dozen, and three of them of the type which might fit the lock of the door he faced. He tried them in order, and tried wrong twice. Inside, when the last of the three worked, he had at first called out, and then, being unanswered, begun to look into various rooms, in search of a wounded man. And he had, reasonably enough, started on the first floor.

  So it had been at least five minutes after he heard the shot—and perhaps more than five minutes—that he had found Elwell dead at his desk.

  “You knew he was dead?”

  Anybody would have known that. And—Finch had been a hospital corpsman in the navy during the Korean fighting, and had had plenty of opportunity to learn the look of death.

  “If there had been anything I could have done,” Finch said, “I’d have tried it. If there’d been anything anybody could have done, I’d—I’d have called for help. Believe me or—”

  He ended with a shrug which said he supposed they wouldn’t believe it and that there was no use arguing.

  “O.K.,” he said. “When there wasn’t anything I could do, I got out. I didn’t want to be mixed up in anything if I could help it. And, considering the accident and everything, I realized it wouldn’t—” He shrugged again.

  “Look so good,” Bill said. “Right. You lit out. Taking the keys with you?”

  He had. And now, unprompted, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a leather key container and, mutely, held it out. It did contain six keys; three of them were for locks of similar type. Which didn’t prove anything one way or another. Bill gave the keys to Mullins, who put them in a pocket.

  Rosco Finch sat and looked at them and there was speculation in his eyes and uneasiness.

  “Do you own a gun?” Bill asked him and he shook his head slowly from side to side. “So,” Bill said, “you couldn’t have carried one with you when you went to see Professor Elwell.”