He told Heimrich the rest of it.
“She thought she recognized the voice of the man who called first? Before she got there? After you had mimicked it?”
“As the voice of the man who had called her the day before, yes,” Cunningham said. “As like that voice.”
“You are good at reproducing the voices of others? Imitating them?”
“People think so. Say they think so.” He smiled faintly, for the first time. “I have delivered many sermons, Captain. Too many, I sometimes think. I am a servant of our Lord, Captain—a true servant. Of that I am sure. But one serves with what talents one has. Even with the inflections of the voice. There is no falsity in that, no insincerity.”
“How would this man who said his name was Knight know your daughter was coming to see you? Had you told anyone?”
“My housekeeper. No one else. All I can think of, she told someone who told Mr. Knight.”
“Two Mr. Knights,” Heimrich said. “When you imitated the first one who called yesterday she thought it was the voice of the man who had called her the day before. To…?”
“Make an appointment to be shown a house. The Weaver house. He was to stop by and pick her up at her own house. Because it is easy to find and the Weaver house is not. He never did, she said.”
For the first time, Heimrich looked intently at Cunningham, and looked with slightly narrowed eyes. Did the priest meet his gaze a little too intently? Because he was protecting his daughter by misquoting her? Or had she lied to her father?
One can guess. But guesses are not admissible in evidence.
“The voice of the man who called her at home the afternoon Mrs. Weaver was killed—she thought it was familiar? The voice of someone she knew? But could not be certain?”
“Yes.”
“And that when you imitated the voice of the man who called first yesterday, it was not only the voice of the man who had called the day before and said he was J. K. Knight but also a half-familiar voice?”
“Yes. And—” Cunningham paused. “My impression yesterday,” he said, “was that the first man who called was trying to disguise his voice. That is only an impression.”
“The second man?”
“No. I didn’t feel that about the second man.”
“Your daughter didn’t tell you who the voice reminded her of?”
“No.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Perhaps because of my attitude. And her acceptance of it. Perhaps because she was not really certain, although she said she was. At one time I thought she was about to, but she didn’t.”
“Father Cunningham,” Heimrich said, “you know your son-in-law’s voice well, probably. Could he disguise it so you wouldn’t recognize it?”
“No. And certainly not from Leslie. The voice was not in the least like Jim Brennan’s.”
It was all very tenuous, Heimrich thought, and there was a fair chance he was not being told all of it.
“Imitate the voice for me,” Heimrich said.
Cunningham was not sure he could now. It had been fresh in his ears when he had done so the day before. But—
“Is Mrs. Brennan there yet?” Cunningham said, in a voice not his own. “This is Mr. Knight. She’ll …”
The voice was not in any way familiar to Merton Heimrich’s ears.
“I’m afraid I’ve missed it entirely,” Cunningham said. “I heard it only that once, and briefly. Yesterday it was fresh. Now the vowel sounds are, I’m afraid, quite wrong.”
“The voice you heard wasn’t at all familiar to you?”
“No.”
“Bishop Cunningham, this thing you felt she had thought of telling you, perhaps had started into town to tell you—you’ve no idea what it might have been?”
“None, Captain.”
“Could it have concerned her husband?”
Cunningham shrugged his shoulders.
“Anything—” he said, but stopped with the one word. He looked intently across the desk at Heimrich.
“That is not honest,” Cunningham said. “Oh, that she gave me no inkling—that is true. But you ask more than that, don’t you? You ask my thoughts. Very well. I did have a feeling that it might concern Jim.”
“Involve him?”
“No,” Cunningham said. “About that I will not guess.”
And, Heimrich thought, implied a guess in denying one. And, Heimrich wondered, was it to bring this implication that this subtle priest came to me?
“If there’s nothing else,” Cunningham said, “I’ll go back to the hospital. Wait with Jim.”
There was nothing else. Heimrich stood behind his desk and reached a hand across it. Cunningham took his hand and then turned, and Heimrich watched him walk, erect, with almost an athlete’s balance, to the office door.
Heimrich sat in a small projection room high up in an office building on Madison Avenue and looked at a television screen. Getting there had been much more of a bother than he had supposed it would be and he was not certain it had been worth the bother. The picture on the screen was in color and the color became Annette Weaver, except that one of her ears was violently pink.
Heimrich had begun with one of the broadcasting companies and explained who he was and that he wanted to look at some commercials done by the late Annette Weaver, presumably under the name of Annette LeBaron. He had been shunted. He had been shunted slowly and laboriously through a maze of “onemoment-pleases” and people who were only the secretaries of other people and not able to make decisions and he had been blocked by “conferences.” And finally he had learned that what he had better do was to “contact” an agency. Heimrich does not believe that the word “contact” is a verb.
Heimrich opened the door of a telephone booth for a breath of air. The air he got stuck in his nostrils. He closed himself into the booth again and used his dime and his credit-card number, making the call he should have made to start with. Sergeant Charles Forniss was at the barracks. He knew the name of the advertising agency his friend Clement Brothers worked for. Should he call Brothers and pave the way? He need not bother. Was there any change in the condition of Leslie Brennan?
“Mumbled a few words half an hour or so ago,” Forniss told him. “Nobody could make any sense of them. Then she went back in. Encouraging she said anything, the doctors think. But still only a guess when she’ll come out of it. Her husband’s standing by. So is her father. So is Trooper Carter. Outside her door.”
Nobody had tried to get in to see Leslie Brennan. Several people had telephoned to inquire about the unconscious woman. “Your wife was one of them.” Mrs. Drake had called. A man named Robert Phipps had called, concerned spokesman for the Realtors’ Association. Oliver Drake had called. So had Ralph Weaver. All had learned that Mrs. Brennan was doing as well as could be expected.
Heimrich’s dime had returned to him. He used it again and his card number again and got “Lenihan and Keeler, good afternoon” and looked at his watch and discovered that it was twelvethirty. He asked for Mr. Brothers, please—Mr. Clement Brothers, and felt that he requested communication with a religious order rather than with a man. He got, “This is Mr. Brothers’ secretary. Can I help you?” He was as patient as he could manage in the hot confines of the booth.
“Mr. Brothers is in con—no, he’s just come into the office. If you will hold on a moment.”
Clement Brothers had heard a lot about Captain M. L. Heimrich. Including what Captain M. L. Heimrich wanted.
“Forniss call you?” Heimrich asked and got, “No, Captain. Grapevine.”
“Well?”
“Can do, but it’ll take a while to set up. This time of day, everybody’s having lunch. Start coming back maybe two-thirty or so. Arduous profession. Say three?”
“If that’s the best you can do, Mr. Brothers.”
It was. Brothers told him where; said he would meet him there.
Heimrich went out of the booth, wiping his forehead. He was near the Hippodrome Garage,
where he had parked his car. He crossed Forty-fourth Street and went into the Hotel Algonquin, and went into coolness. He went also into a lobby which was almost filled with people who were, clearly, waiting for other people; who looked at watches and craned necks. They sat at small tables and most of them had glasses in front of them. Yet for all the looking at watches, for all the quick standings when people awaited finally arrived and for all the pleased greetings, there was a curious feeling of relaxation about the Algonquin’s lobby. It was a little as if a very large family gathered there amicably.
Heimrich did not have a reservation for a table for one. Perhaps ten minutes. Or a quarter of an hour. If he would care to wait in the lobby?
It was not turning out, Heimrich thought, to be a day in which things were done quickly. He found a table in the lobby. There was a bell affixed to the table and Heimrich tapped the bell and its tinkle brought a waiter. “Bourbon and—” Merton Heimrich said, but it was a different kind of day. “Make it a martini,” Heimrich said. “Very dry. Straight up. Lemon peel.” It was a different kind of day.
He sat in coolness, one of a shifting family. Women from the suburbs, and showing it, met other women from the suburbs with shrill delight. But for the most part those sitting in the lobby, passing through it, congealing in front of the door marked “Restaurant,” were men. Heimrich, sipping, felt that he should know a good many of the men. Which was absurd, but it was a different day for a policeman whose jurisdiction stopped at city lines. He let a small moth flutter in his mind. He welcomed air conditioning and sipped a drink.
Ralph Weaver came in from the street, two other men with him. He saw Heimrich, said something to his companions, crossed the lobby to Heimrich’s table. He was dressed as he had been the day before. His silk shirt was of a different color. It still had a monogram. He did not, Heimrich thought, really look like a man whose wife had just been murdered. But there is no special way a man should look.
He stood in front of Heimrich and looked down at him and said, “Hard at it, I see.” His voice grated. “Following a lead, I take it?”
There was ridicule in his voice. It had, Heimrich thought, been put there carefully, by exact intent. Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, ” ’Afternoon, Mr. Weaver. Meeting a man. Yes.”
“Who’ll walk in and say, ‘By the way, Captain. I killed a lovely woman by shooting her through the throat’?”
With that, his voice was bitter. It was the voice of the man who, at the bar of the Old Stone Inn, had asked Heimrich if he was waiting for a murderer to walk up and buy himself a beer.
Heimrich opened his eyes. They were very hard blue eyes now, and this, also, was by intent.
“Getting jumpy again, aren’t you, Mr. Weaver?” Merton Heimrich said, and his voice was as hard as his eyes.
“Damn it all—” Weaver said, but stopped with that and stood for a moment, looking down at Heimrich. “All right,” he said, after the moment of silence. The bitterness was out, or almost out, of his voice. “Jumpy again is right. Reason enough, wouldn’t you say? God damn it, man, reason enough.”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Naturally, Mr. Weaver.” And he closed his eyes again, as one might lower a curtain to end a scene.
“All right,” Weaver said. “Sorry again. I hope your man has something new to tell you.”
“So do I.” With eyes still closed.
“Hear something happened to Les Brennan,” Weaver said. “Damn sorry to hear it. Called the hospital about her and got the usual brush-off. Does it tie in with—with what happened to Nettie?”
Heimrich opened his eyes.
“Now, Mr. Weaver,” he said. “We don’t know yet.”
“Think you ever will?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Oh, yes. I’m quite sure we will. Did you make it to the bank in time yesterday, Mr. Weaver?”
“What the—” Weaver said, and broke off. “You’re a nosey bastard, aren’t you?” he said then, but there was no resentment in his voice, and no ridicule. His voice sounded as if Ralph Weaver were amused.
“Yes,” Weaver said. “I got in under the wire, Captain.”
He stood for a second longer, as if awaiting comment. Heimrich said nothing, and Weaver said, “Well,” and went to the restaurant door, where the other two waited. There was still a knot of men and women at the door. Heimrich tapped the bell again. It was a different day….
“And now,” a male announcer cooed from the television screen in front of Heimrich in a small, cool room, “here is Annette LeBaron with a word about new and improved Lave, a facial treatment in itself.”
The announcer disappeared. Annette Weaver, who had been Annette LeBaron, took his place. She was sitting at a dressing table, from the lights ringing its mirror a make-up table in an actress’s dressing room. She turned, smiling. It was then that her left ear became a surprising shade of pink. She spoke and was most dulcet. As she spoke she held up a jar, bright yellow on the color screen. Across the jar the word “Lave” appeared in angular and distinctive lettering.
“Yes,” Annette LeBaron said, “I do use Lave. I would not be without it. My skin depends on it.” She touched the dependent skin, caressed her face gently with the hand which did not hold the yellow jar. “So many studio lights,” she said, and her voice caressed. “So many, many hours on location, with sun and wind doing their drying worst. But now—” She paused, evidently overcome by the immediacy of “now.” She repeated it. “Now my skin is soft and moist as a young girl’s. Since a dear friend, who is also in the theater, introduced me to Lave—to the new and improved Lave, to the miracle of Lave.” She spoke the word “miracle” with emphasis and also with a kind of reverence. She turned to face the camera more directly. Her right ear turned pink; her left ear picked up the yellow of the jar she held.
“Damn it to hell,” Clem Brothers said, in the chair beside Heimrich. “Damn thing all the time gets out—”
“Sh-h-h,” Heimrich said.
“… at night as a cleansing cream,” Annette said, her voice throbbing in wonder. “After the make-up is removed, as a night cream. And again, if your skin is as delicate as mine has always been, in the morning as a foundation cream. There is, you see, no limit to the care Lave will take of your skin—the new and improved Lave, with a special ingredient you will find in no other cream. Lave is designed especially for those, like me, with delicate skin. You, too, can experience the miracle of new and improved Lave—know the assurance which comes to all women with the consciousness, the certainty of a lovely youthful skin.”
She turned back to face the mirror on her dressing table. Until then the mirror had reflected nothing. Now, for the final instant, there were two Annette LeBarons glowing on the screen. The one with her back to the camera had pink hair.
“Damn thing gets out of adjustment,” Brothers said, and went to the console and fiddled with knobs and pressed buttons. Annette disappeared and a colored test pattern took her place. Brothers fiddled on and the colors deepened, stabilized. He turned another knob and went back to sit beside Merton Heimrich.
“… her own experience with Spring Shower,” a male announcer cooed. “The new and improved shampoo for problem hair. Miss LeBaron.”
She was not, this time, at a dressing table. This time, swathed in toweling, she opened curtains and stepped from a stall shower, the towel parting only enough to show, discreetly, an entirely symmetrical, if somewhat greenish, left leg. A towel was wrapped around her hair. She lifted lovely arms and released the towel and hair fell softly around her face, to her shoulders. She caressed it back and smiled exultantly at Heimrich and Clement Brothers.
“So soft,” she said, her voice low, as caressing as her hands had been. “So lustrous. One would never believe that I have just come from a beach—from the sand and the breakers and the sun I love so much. And which, if one is not careful, rob the hair of its natural oils. Leave it dry. Unmanageable. An actress cannot afford to have her hair parched by harsh shampoos. They only increase t
he damage caused by sun and wind and salt spray. My hair is by nature soft, fine.” She touched the hair under discussion with noticeable affection. “Only after a dear friend had told me about Spring Shower—the new and improved Spring Shower Shampoo—only after I had used it and felt how my hair responded to its gentleness, to its utter freedom from harsh alkalies, did I dare really to enjoy the tonic of breezes from the sea I love so much.”
She lifted her hands gracefully to her hair again, and tossed it in her hands. She was still tossing it as she faded from sight.
“Same manufacturer,” Brothers said. “No conflict of interest. Idea is, you use Lave or Spring Shower, and you turn up looking the way she looks.” He said, “Looked, damn it to hell.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They make a bath soap, too,” he said. “New and improved. See her first outlined behind a shower curtain, but after that it’s just head and shoulders. Want to see it?”
Heimrich said, “What?” He was listening to another voice, trying to fix another voice in his mind. He heard Brothers and said, “No, I guess not” and went back to listening to the voice he had heard when it was a living voice but had never before really listened to.
A special quality in it. At once depth and light in it; the suggestion of throatiness in it. A caress in it. But nothing in it really to be put into words. A quality to be remembered by the aural nerves, and stored in their memory. A voice no one at all familiar with it would be likely to confuse with another voice. And for that very reason a voice another woman, her own by nature similarly pitched, might imitate? If the use of many voices was her trade?
I’m wasting my day, Heimrich thought. A hundred to one it’s as obvious as it looks. Brennan had an affair with her and she threatened to tell his wife and he killed her so she couldn’t. And his wife was there because a man named Knight asked her to be. There is a J. K. Knight, even if we haven’t found him yet. Coincidences do happen. She saw Jim Brennan there or, at the least, heard that car of his. That’s what she went to tell her father and probably, for all he says now, did tell him. Brennan knew she had gone to see her father, and guessed why, and tried to stop her before she could get to the police. I’m wasting my time listening to a voice from the dead.
17-Murder Roundabout Page 16