Murder Is Suggested

by Frances

  “It takes,” she said, “three rackets and a serious expression. Here he is again.”

  Jerry looked where she looked.

  “I begin to feel I’m being followed,” Pam said.

  John Blanchard, authority on cats and, it now appeared, tennis, was not alone. With him was a slender and sprightly girl in white shorts and blouse and sweater—a very pretty girl, who seemed to sparkle as she walked beside the much taller, much older man; a girl with deep red hair. They turned from the path and passed quite close to the Norths on their way to a table. “—ought to apologize,” the girl said, smiling up to the man. Blanchard shook his head at her and shrugged slightly, square shoulders moving under dark jacket. As they passed the long table of men who talked tennis with their hands, one of them—who had, as far as one could guess, been demonstrating the proper forehand—broke it off to salute Blanchard and to say “Hiya, Johnny?” At that there was a low chorus of “hiyas” and one “You can lose your head thataway, Johnny,” at which there was general laughter.

  Blanchard waved and did not answer, but his regular features moved into a regular smile. He touched the girl’s brown arm, guiding her to a table under an umbrella.

  The waitress came to the Norths’ table, and said she was sorry to have been so long, and deposited gins and tonics and said “Thank you” for a tip and went. From his table, Blanchard beckoned to her, and she went there. The Norths sipped, sitting in the sun. From beyond the fence—from the grandstand, probably—there was hand clapping. Somebody had done something which could be approved. The Norths sipped on.

  And then a rangy young man in tennis shorts and sweater, carrying rackets, came down the path. He came without looking to either side, his expression set—his expression angry. When he was at a place where he could see all the tables in the garden bar he stopped, and looked at all of them. And then, his face more set than ever, he walked over grass, walked to the table at which Blanchard and the girl were sitting. When he got to it he stopped and glared down at Blanchard. After some seconds, he looked at the girl, and then back at Blanchard.

  Everybody in the small enclosure stopped talking. Somebody put a glass down, and the sound of the glass on the metal table top was like a tiny explosion in the silence.

  “Well,” Doug Mears said, and spoke loudly, with a grating in his voice. “It worked out fine, didn’t it, Blanchard? Mr. Blanchard.”

  There was a peculiar emphasis when he said “Mr.” It was as if he derided the appellation as applied to the man he spoke to.

  Blanchard merely looked up at him, as if he looked through him. He lifted his glass and drank from it, and put it down on the table.

  “Doug!” the girl said. “Doug!”

  The rangy man looked at her again, and looked away again.

  Everybody watched. One of the men at the long table stood up, and started to move around the table toward Doug Mears and Blanchard and the girl.

  “Got just what you went after, didn’t you?” Mears said, and his voice was still loud, harsh. “Think you did, anyway. Got it sitting right here and—”

  Blanchard stood up, then. He moved very quickly when he moved.

  “I’d stop there, Mears,” Blanchard said. His voice was not as loud as the younger man’s—the much younger man’s. But his voice bit in the silence. “I’d stop right there.”

  “You’d like me to,” Mears said. “You’re a prize son of a bitch, Mr. Blanchard. A lousy, creepy old—”

  Blanchard came around the table then. And then the man who had started seconds before from the long table came up behind Doug Mears and put a hand hard on the blond man’s shoulder and said, “I’d knock it off, son.”

  The pretty girl put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, and the dark red hair streamed down around her face.

  Doug Mears wheeled, his face working.

  “I’ll—” he began.

  “You’ll knock it off,” the man who held him said. “You’re off the beam, son. Way off. So far off that—”

  He did not finish, but looked steadily at Doug Mears. And, after some moments, Mears shrugged and the man removed his hand from Mears’s shoulder. He said, “Thata-boy.”

  “What you mean is,” Mears said, but his voice was lower. “What you mean is—be a good boy, take it lying down or—or get suspended. Ruled off the—”

  “Now son,” the man said, and spoke like a father. “Why don’t you just run along? Probably nobody’ll remember hearing anything.” He looked across at Blanchard, still standing, flush showing under the tan of his face. He looked and seemed to wait, and after some moments Blanchard nodded his head briefly, and sat down. The girl did not move, still hid her face in hands and soft, dark-red hair.

  Doug Mears looked for a moment at the man who had intervened. Then he looked once more, his face dark, at Blanchard, who met his gaze; whose face showed no expression of any kind. Mears wrenched free of the restraining hand then, and walked across the grass to the path, looking at nobody, and then walked away along the path. Everybody watched him—everybody except John Blanchard and the girl with him. Blanchard was talking, his voice inaudible, to the girl, who, after a time, began shaking her head slowly, without moving the hands which hid her face.

  The loudspeaker in the stadium was even louder here, it seemed, than within the enclosure itself. It spoke now. “Linesmen ready?” it inquired, asking the rhetorical question—and, evidently, being greeted by the traditional silence. “Play,” the loudspeaker roared.

  Pam finished her drink and said, “Come on,” and stood, and Jerry finished his and went with her across the grass to the path. “Although,” Pam said, “almost anything will be an anticlimax, won’t it? What’s all this about its being only a game? And I want a hot dog.”

  They stopped under the stadium for hot dogs and carried them up the steep stairway. “Game, Mr. Farthing,” the loudspeaker said. “He leads, one game to love, first set.”

  Again lithe young men raced on green, performing prodigious feats with rackets and with balls. The Norths munched and watched, and then, after wiping mustard from faces, merely watched. It was a better match than the other, and nobody seemed especially enraged, although there was the usual amount of hopeless headshaking over shots gone wrong and, from Dennis Farthing an occasional admiring and audible “Wow!” in appreciation of an opponent’s ace. Mr. Farthing, being an Australian, won, but it took him five sets and only the last was easy.

  John Blanchard did not officiate and, although Pam thought she saw him sitting under the marquee, she could not be sure. If the man was Blanchard, he was alone.

  They stayed for several games of the mixed doubles match which followed, on Pam’s theory that they might learn something. But when the members of one team found themselves simultaneously in a distant corner of the court, imperiling each other with swinging rackets, Pam said she thought they had learned enough. “After all,” she said, “we could do that. And have.”

  “When we could run faster,” Jerry agreed, but agreed also that it was time to go.

  Driving home, Pam North kept remembering young Doug Mears.

  “Grant he was disappointed,” she said. “Grant he was mad. Still—to get as mad as all that? Of course, I suppose the girl is mixed up in it, somehow. They tend to get. Particularly when—did you think she was pretty, Jerry?”

  “I didn’t,” Gerald North said, gravely, “notice especially.”

  “What a lie,” Pam said. “And how nice of you to bother to tell it. Makes me feel so—nurtured. Unless you’re slipping?”

  Jerry said, “Mmm?”

  “I didn’t say you were,” Pam said. “Is Mears an especially temperamental player, do you know?”

  “Never saw him play before,” Jerry said, clipping words because of trucks. “Hadn’t heard that. Did blow up.”

  “Did he really mean to hit Mr. Blanchard with that smash?”

  “How’d I know?”

  “It looked like it,” Pam said. “And afterwa
rd, with his fists. Is it that important for them to win?”

  “Some of them,” Jerry said, “damn it all, stay in line.” This was to a truck, which had not. “This Mears—supposed to beat Wilson easy. Good chance against Farthing, who’ll gobble Wilson. Mears had won, probably got pro offer. Now nope. For God’s sake make up your mind.”

  Pam sorted correctly, since she had had practice. She said, “Even a pro offer?”

  “Depends,” Jerry said. “Guarantee’s gone as high as fifty thousand for the first year. Could be, Mears lost that in less than a couple of hours. Irritating, sort of.”

  “It would me,” Pam said. “And blamed Mr. Blanchard. Who seems to get a good deal of blame. Speaking of cats—”

  They spoke of cats, when Jerry was not speaking to other drivers, for some time. They decided to be resolute against pointed ones.

  3

  Al Laney, writing in the Herald Tribune, hit the nail most precisely on the head, Jerry North said, and read applicable sections aloud to Pam, who was reading the Times and displayed forbearance and a modicum of attention.

  “Doug Mears, one of the most promising of our younger players, lost a good deal yesterday,” Jerry read from the works of Mr. Laney. “He lost a match he should have won easily, his temper and, probably, whatever chance he may have had of a bid to join the professional ranks this year. He revealed that he lacked the one essential of a really good player—the ability to concentrate on the point in play and to remain unruffled by adverse decisions.”

  That there had been cause for young Mr. Mears to become upset, Mr. Laney admitted. More foot faults had been called against him in a single set than against any player in Mr. Laney’s memory, with the possible exception of one famous incident, which Mr. Laney did remember. On the other hand, the calls had been made by John Blanchard, an official of long experience—although more often seen in the umpire’s chair than on a line—and unquestionable impartiality. Relaxed as the foot rule had become, it remained a rule, and not one which could be ignored. “It is the opinion of most observers,” Mr. Laney wrote, “that Mears has for a long time ignored it flagrantly, and that he is not alone in this.”

  It was, admittedly, unfortunate that the calls came on crucial points, at moments when Mears had been close to running out the first set. But this did not justify the young man’s open display of anger, culminating in what looked uncomfortably like a smash directed intentionally at the linesman in question, nor the subsequent collapse of his game. Mr. Laney did not wish to detract from the excellent play of Ted Wilson, but—

  Pam had burrowed back into the Times. Jerry finished the account of the semi-finals at Forest Hills, but finished it to himself. They sat in their apartment, a typical American couple, knee deep in Sunday newspapers. Jerry put the sports section aside and regarded his wife. He could guess about where she was.

  “How’s Reston this morning?” he asked her.

  “Wonderful,” Pam said. “It’s one of the translations of public statements ones. Sssh.” Jerry sshed. “Simply marv—Jerry!” Pam said. “Here he is again!”

  Jerry ran a hand through his hair.

  “Reston?” he said, without much hope. “James Reston?” He did not know that the use of Mr. Reston’s given name would bridge this utter gap in relevance. It was worth the try.

  “Reston?” Pam repeated. “I just finished Reston. Why would I say he was here again? Why again, I mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said, keeping it as simple as he could.

  “Blanchard,” Pam said. “In letters to the editor. The ones they save for Sunday because—listen!”

  Jerry listened.

  “‘The writer of the following letter, a prominent New York attorney, is widely known as an authority on cats and has written about them extensively,’” Pam read. “At the bottom it’s signed ‘John Blanchard.’ And—”

  “Read it,” Jerry said. “He certainly does seem to—crop up.”

  “‘Many readers of the Times,’” Pam read, “‘must have been shocked, as I was shocked, by its acceptance of the recently published advertisement of the organization calling itself “The Committee Against Cruelty.” Even in its advertising columns, it seems to me and must seem to many, a newspaper of the stature of the Times owes a responsibility to society as a whole, and is required to consider the public interest.

  “‘No one questions the right of Floyd Ackerman, who lists himself as chairman of this “Committee,” and others associated with him to hold whatever views they wish on vivisection, and to seek to promulgate them. But what they are doing in this advertisement is, in effect, crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater. It is there, as one of our most distinguished jurists long ago pointed out, that the right of free speech ends.

  “‘I refer, of course, to the advertisement’s disparaging references to the value of the vaccine which has already done so much to curb infantile paralysis, and this at a time when health authorities are bending every effort to bring about universal inoculation. And this because the development of the vaccine has cost the lives of many monkeys! It is difficult to believe that sentimentality has ever been carried to more dangerous lengths, and that the Times has abetted an attitude so essentially immoral.

  “‘I cannot, I think, be accused of indifference to animal sufferings. Rather notoriously, I am addicted to cats, and have written a good deal about them. I am a member of several organizations which seek more humane treatment of all our animal friends. But I cannot understand anyone who sets the life of a monkey—yes, or even the life of a cat—above that of a child. I am rather glad I can’t.’”

  Pam stopped, looked up and awaited comment.

  “A little heavy-handed,” Jerry said, speaking as an editor. “But rather a nice sting in the tail, I think. Ackerman’ll be boiling, if I know Ackerman.”

  “All right,” Pam said, after blinking twice, “do you know Ackerman?”

  “Oddly enough,” Jerry said. “He brought us a book a while back. ‘Criminals in White Coats,’ he wanted to call it. Very upset when we said we guessed not. If you’re through with the sports section, I’d like to see what Danzig—”

  “In due time,” Pam said. “Ackerman first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Pam said, “all at once everything’s full of Mr. Blanchard. I’m beginning to have feelings.”

  “Not that!” Jerry said. “But, all right. About Ackerman—”

  Ackerman had come, in person, to the offices of North Books, Inc., several months before—some time, as Jerry recalled it, in late June. He had come bearing manuscript, a thing which happens even to the best of publishers. He had been—it was to be assumed he still was—a pale and intense man in his middle forties; a very thin man; a man who wore large glasses and, when excited, trembled. He was already excited when, after subterfuge had been exhausted, he was admitted to Jerry’s office. He put the manuscript on Jerry’s desk and stood on the other side of the desk, shaking with fervor.

  “We get all kinds,” Jerry told Pam, with resignation. “Ackerman was a bit—excessive. So damned excessive he’s a splinter group more or less by himself.”

  He had, for one thing, suggested that he, then and there, read the book aloud to Gerald North. Jerry had pleaded the pressure of other duties. Ackerman had, then, offered to read sections. He had begun to untie the manuscript—it was loose-paged, and bound with string—and, it seemed to Jerry, his eyes had begun to glitter behind the large glasses.

  “Fanatics are one kind,” Jerry told Pam. “He is. Vivisection is a sin against the life force, among other things. Research men who perform operations on animals are sadists. They only pretend to seek knowledge; that their goal is the relief of human suffering is a hoax. It’s all a conspiracy.”

  “Goodness,” Pam said. “On the other hand, I didn’t care for the two-headed dog business. Because—what’s the use of people having two heads? And if not—”

  Jerry waited politely. Pam did not continue, having made
her point.

  “Anyway,” Jerry said, “that’s it—that was it in about four hundred typed pages, complete with examples, all of them horrid. Including, as the advertisement did suggest, as I recall it, that most of the discoveries which have resulted from animal experimentation are hoaxes too. There were some pictures—I don’t know how he laid hands on them. Very unpleasant pictures.”

  “None,” Pam North said, “of children in iron lungs? Or wheel chairs?”

  That was it, Jerry said. Sentimentality was a vicious thing, Jerry said. Grant Ackerman was honest—

  “Don’t,” Pam said. “You sound like Mr. Garroway, asking people if Russians are honest. The people usually look so blank, the poor things—so ‘so-whatish?’ You didn’t accept the book?”

  “Good God no,” Jerry said. “Can I have Danzig now?”

  “Did this Mr. Ackerman take that calmly?”

  Ackerman had not. The book had been sent back by messenger, with a note of regret. Mr. Ackerman, shaking more than ever, had arrived by return mail. “Quicker.” He had demanded to see Jerry; he had said, loudly, that either the book had not been read or that “they” were paying to have it suppressed. Jerry could hear him in the reception room, shouting. Jerry had closed his office door.

  The last words he had heard, through the closed door, were “I’ll see about this!”

  “It sounds,” Pam said, “as if he ought to be locked up somewhere. But—he’s got enough money to get this advertisement printed. And apparently there are others who feel as strongly. Enough for a committee, anyway.” She paused. “I thought,” she said, “that that kind of thing had sort of—died out.”

  “Old fanaticisms never die,” Jerry said. “Can I have Danzig now?”

  “Mr. Blanchard has made another enemy,” Pam said, and shuffled papers, seeking the sports section of the Times. “He’s enemy-prone, isn’t he?” She handed Jerry the sports section. “Hmmm,” Jerry said. “I’ll do the crossword, then,” Pam said.