Killing the Goose

by Frances

  Sergeant Mullins followed the conversation from speaker to speaker. He followed it anxiously, as if it were an elusive ball.

  “Listen,” he said, as if it were an entirely new point. “Dames like that kill other dames. Queer dames.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Weigand said. “That could be on the cards. And the killing of the other girl a coincidence. He was talking more to himself than to anyone. Dorian, who was more herself than anyone, answered.

  “And the dress, Bill?” she said. “Two girls who were linked somehow, killed the same day, or almost the same day? A few blocks apart? Two girls who were connected, somehow? All coincidence.”

  Bill Weigand looked at her, thoughtfully. He said it wasn’t a big coincidence. Ann Lawrence had given Frances McCalley a dress and Frances had been killed in it, ten hours or so after Ann Lawrence had been killed. If she had given her the dress.

  “You mean,” Martinelli broke in, “somebody killed the Lawrence girl? Miss God Almighty?”

  They all looked at him.

  “What do you know about Miss Lawrence?” Bill Weigand asked him.

  Franklin Martinelli glowered at them. He said he knew plenty.

  “She was another one,” he said. “Trying to tell Franny what to do. Trying to break it up between us.”

  “Why?” Weigand asked.

  “I wasn’t good enough,” Martinelli said. His voice was bitter. “I was just a wop laborer. I wasn’t good enough for any of those dames—except Franny. And they wouldn’t leave us alone. See?”

  “No,” Pam said. “Not entirely. What did she do? Miss Lawrence, I mean?”

  It was difficult to get it out of him, because the thought of Ann Lawrence made him angrier than even the thought of Cleo Harper. He was angry at the world, young Franklin Martinelli. Even after they got him to sit down he sat on the edge of a chair, with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his cupped hands, his’ black hair falling over his forehead, his words spilling with fury, and then freezing up with fury. And it was not, in any case, tangible.

  Ann Lawrence had not done anything that even the boy could put his hard fist on. And his words were not built for nuances. She had influenced Frances McCalley, and influenced her against the boy. She had upset Frances, as Cleo Harper had never done.

  “She would talk like Lawrence sometimes,” Martinelli said. He reserved prefixes and first names for one girl, and her dead. “Sometimes you’d think it was Lawrence talking.”

  You could build something on that, if you thought about it. An alien attitude showing through familiar words; new standards, to the boy inimical standards, appearing and disappearing among accustomed things.

  “That one I could have killed,” he said. “She was spoiling things. And for nothing. She didn’t give a damn, really.”

  You could visualize one girl, educated and serene and without the world’s ordinary worries, noticing another girl and—what would be the phrase?—“taking a fancy” to her. No more than that, nothing deeper. And trying to “improve” her; to bring her “up.” Pam could visualize something like that—some light-hearted meddling, with the fingertips, in another life. And with the best of motives; with only casual kindness meant. The results would remain, probably, intangible and impermanent. But to other people—to Franklin Martinelli, who was likely to be insufficient by Ann Lawrence’s standards—inimical.

  It would be a gradual thing, the estrangement which might result from that; gradual and subtle. It would be hard for a very young, very violent, boy to understand; difficult for such a boy to combat. Except—

  “That one I could have killed,” Pam heard the boy saying, as if in an echo. “That one I could have killed.”

  That would be irony, certainly. If half-meant kindness, utterly casual interference—and interference hardly realized by the one who interfered—if that could lead to the violence of a poker’s point in the brain—that would be a strange thing. But no stranger than other things. All over the world it had come to that; extermination had been the answer to the subtlety of the mind, to intricate thought and motive, formed in the web of the brain. Brain tissue had spilled out of skulls for that; out of skulls as young as Ann Lawrence’s. Pam had stopped listening to what the boy was saying, and thought of all the horrible things in the world at war; things so much more horrible than this one small horror of a girl killed with a poker and another girl with a knife. The quietest second in the world brought death more horrible than either.

  “Pam!” Jerry said. His voice was uneasy and he was beside her. “What is it, dear? Your eyes—what are you thinking about, Pam?”

  At first his voice was a long way off. Then it was nearer; then it was Jerry’s voice, quite close to her.

  “Oh,” she said. “About—about everything, Jerry.”

  He looked at her and nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “About that. Yes. Only—”

  Pam said she knew. And that she was all right, now.

  “Only,” she said, “it’s an ugly world,” Jerry. Except a little of it; except the little parts of it.”

  They were all, she found, looking at her. Dorian Weigand spoke again, from deep in the chair.

  “So,” she said, “the little parts can’t be broken. Not without protest. Not without some sort of action. You have to keep the little things. And so—and so you can’t have murder. Even in a world of murder. Isn’t that it, Bill?”

  Bill Weigand nodded. He said that that was part of it, at any rate. And also that it was simpler—you had to have law, even in a lawless world. A little law, somewhere; a little order. Among other things, murder was a violation of order—of society’s order, most simply. And of the order of ideas.

  Franklin Martinelli was staring at the floor, in a world of his own. As soon as they had stopped listening to him, his mind had gone away.

  “All right,” Pam said, “I’m sorry. I’m all right, now. Where were we?”

  They were, Bill Weigand said, at an odd place. Martinelli had just indicated that Ann Lawrence was somebody he could have killed; someone for whose murder he felt he had a motive.

  “Perhaps he did kill her,” he added, as if Martinelli were not there, his hard chin propped in his hard hands, glaring at them. Martinelli glared, then, particularly at Weigand and spoke rapidly and with venom in Italian.

  “No,” Weigand said, “I’m not. And talk English.”

  Martinelli said it again in English. Mullins got up and started for him, not angry, not excited, extremely formidable. Bill Weigand told him to sit down.

  “Where were you this morning, Martinelli?” Weigand asked, as if Martinelli had said nothing.

  There was a definite wait before Martinelli answered.

  “In my room,” he said. “Asleep. Where the hell did you think?”

  Weigand said he hadn’t thought. He had asked. He kept on asking. Martinelli had been alone in a room he rented in a tenement in Carmine Street. He had gone to his room about eleven o’clock the night before, after going to a movie with Frances McCalley; he had gone home early because they both were tired.

  “Because we’d been working all day,” he said. “Ever hear of people who work all day?”

  Nobody rose to that, although the boy gave them a chance. He seemed a little surprised. Weigand kept at it. He had gone to bed almost at once and slept until around seven. He always woke up around seven. He had dressed, got coffee and doughnuts at a lunchroom and gone to work. He had got to work in time to ring in at 8:30. And he could prove none of this. Weigand let him see that he could prove none of it. He let it sink in. He sat across from the boy and looked at him and waited, letting it sink in.

  The boy wilted under it; the toughness softened and collapsed. He looked at Bill Weigand out of dark eyes which held fear.

  “I didn’t go near there,” he said. “Where she was killed.”

  “Where was she killed, Martinelli?” Weigand said. “Just where was she killed?”

  “Why—” the boy said. “In her hous
e.” He looked at all of them, then, and looked wildly. “You said in her house!”

  Weigand shook his head. Nobody, he told the boy, had said she was killed in her house. Nobody had said anything about where she was killed, or how. Weigand said that and waited again.

  “I guessed it,” the boy said. “I just guessed it. Like anybody would.”

  “Maybe,” Weigand admitted, in a tone which admitted nothing. “Maybe you were there. Maybe you did kill her—because she was turning your girl away from you. Maybe you got mad and killed her.”

  The boy shook his head, with violence.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  He stuck to that; stuck to it endlessly. And Weigand had, and knew he had, too little to go on. He let up after a time and asked other questions—about Frances, about the people she knew. She knew only the people you might expect, except for Ann Lawrence; nobody hated her; nobody, except the boy, seemed to have had strong feelings about her.

  “How,” Bill Weigand said, “did she come to know Miss Lawrence?”

  “A guy named Elliot,” Martinelli said, with the innocence of one who does not know his answer is loaded. “Franny was a sort of relative of a guy named Elliot. A cousin, maybe—some kind of a cousin. And he was a friend of the Lawrence dame and I guess he asked her to do something for Franny. That was way back—two years ago anyhow.”

  Weigand wanted to know why Frances McCalley had needed something done for her. The boy was vague as to details; it happened before he knew Frances McCalley. But there was something about Frances’s having been sick and Elliot’s having heard of it, and thinking she needed help. And Ann Lawrence had helped.

  “Like Franny was a stray cat, I guess,” the boy said, bitter again.

  So then they had a link, for what good it might do them. It was a link to test, but looking at his watch, Weigand decided it was a link to test tomorrow. Weigand used the telephone in Mr. North’s study and, ten minutes or so later, told Franklin Martinelli he could go—and to stay in town, and home at nights, so they could get him if they wanted him.

  Mrs. North was surprised at that and, when the boy had left, said so.

  “On a string,” Mullins told her. “Didn’t you see the loot telephone? He’s on a string; we can pull him in if we want to.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, and thought. “Was he there?” she said. “How did he know where she was killed?”

  He might have guessed, Weigand told her. Or he might have been there, inside or outside; he might have seen something; he might merely have seen her and, knowing she had been home—rather late, perhaps—had assumed she was still at home when she was killed. He might have gone to see her in a rage, or not in a rage—or not at all. He might have blamed her for the other girl’s hesitancy about marrying him; there might have been more wrong between him and Frances McCalley than he now admitted, and he might have blamed it on Ann Lawrence.

  “Might,” Pam said. “Might. Might.”

  Bill Weigand nodded and smiled faintly and gathered up his wife. They stood in the doorway and Bill Weigand pointed out that tomorrow was another day. And a busy one.

  “As far as might goes,” Pam said, “Franklin Martinelli, who isn’t as nice a boy as I thought, might have killed Ann Lawrence. And John Elliot might have killed Frances McCalley. Except that it would be upside down. But it would balance.”

  “A perfect balance is a worthy thing,” Bill told her, pushing Dorian ahead of him gently. “Good night.”

  The Norths stood side by side and watched their guests go down the stairs. Jerry North yawned widely. He said that murder certainly kept people up late.

  VIII. Wednesday, 9:15 A.M. to 9:35 A.M.

  Bill Weigand sat at his desk, looked at the papers on it, and tapped its surface gently with his fingers. There were too many papers, representing too many things. There was too little that was tangible, too much that almost certainly meant nothing. And there was more to be got; men were getting it. They were getting it, with care and patience, knowing that almost surely their work was time and effort wasted. But they would get it and put it on Weigand’s desk and he would, in effect, pat them and they would go away. And he would try to make sense out of it.

  Mullins came in and he had some of it. It was about a man named Wilkins—a man named Herbert Wilkins. Thirty-seven years old Wilkins was, and 4F because of something which did not, evidently, impede him greatly in civilian life. In civilian life he did publicity for a department store. He was five feet eight inches, about, and rather heavy and had receding blond hair and he was the subject assigned to one Detective McKenney, who had gone to work on him only about half an hour before. He had gone to work on Wilkins half an hour after Detective Stein had got from Mrs. Florence Pennock, who regarded with outspoken contempt this indication that the police were not fully content with John Elliot as murderer, a list of the men and women who had been at Ann Lawrence’s party the night before.

  He was one of those who had dropped in after dinner. He had dropped in, had a drink or two, met some old friends and been introduced to some people he didn’t know, and dropped out again. He had then gone home to his apartment in the east Fifties and gone to bed and to sleep. He had known Ann Lawrence for a couple of years, casually; he had wished her well and was sorry she was dead. He had no idea who killed her and he had, when interviewed, had some dictation to get out.

  Weigand read the report through and put it down and sighed. Eight at dinner, he remembered. Four or five after it. People who had known Ann Lawrence, well and not so well. People of whom, but for the chance that they were free on the night of the eighth of March and had gone to see Ann Lawrence in her home, he would never have heard. People from whom, almost certainly, he would derive no profit now that he had heard of them. Because there was no reason to believe, particularly, that Ann had been killed by someone who had been at her smallish, gay and casual party. If someone had poisoned her food at dinner; if someone had stabbed her with a fruit knife and one was missing after the meal; if—but there was no sense in the ifs. She had died of a broken skull, crushed by a poker in someone’s hand. And her dinner guests were no more suspect than—well, than anyone.

  It didn’t, Weigand thought as he tossed all that he knew about a man named Wilkins into a wire basket, boil down to anything. He drew a sheet of paper toward him and drew a picture of a house on it, for no reason. It was a child’s picture of a house. Carefully, Bill Weigand put a child’s picture of a tree in front of the house. Then he drew a path from the front door of the house down to the edge of the paper. The path widened as it approached the edge of the paper, presenting a child’s version of perspective. Bill Weigand drew a curl of smoke from the chimney of the house and looked at the result carefully, with apparent interest. Then he folded the paper methodically, again and again, until it was a packet a couple of inches square. Then he dropped it into the wastepaper basket. He was not really conscious of doing any of this.

  Two young women murdered; their names and stories in the morning newspapers. But grouped only by newspaper makeup, as representing similar tragedies, and not written together as facets of a single crime. And not played prominently, because of the war. And with the account of Frances McCalley’s murder much shorter than the account of Ann Lawrence’s, and run under it like an afterthought. For reasons which would surprise no newspaper reader and displease no amateur of murder. The newspapers did not, as yet, suspect any link but coincidence.

  There were two possibilities, as to that. The newspapers might be right, in spite of the facts nobody had told them. The facts were insufficient proof of anything; two girls might know each other and be killed the same day and their deaths be unconnected. It was not, of necessity, an orderly world. That much Weigand was prepared to admit, as theory. But he was not prepared to act upon it, because he believed the newspapers were not right. He believed the two had died within a single pattern of crime.

  “Sit down, Mullins,” he said.
He pushed cigarettes toward the sergeant, who sat at the end of the desk. Mullins said, “O.K., Loot,” and took a cigarette. He took a lighter out of his pocket, opened it and twirled steel against flint. Fire appeared.

  “Mrs. North,” Mullins said, taking a long drag.

  “What?” Weigand said.

  Mullins waved the lighter.

  “Gave it to me,” he said. “This. For my birthday.”

  Weigand said he didn’t know Mullins had had a birthday.

  “Yeah,” Mullins said. “I had a birthday. Mrs. North gave me this. I don’t know where she got it, nowadays.”

  “I do,” Weigand said. “Don’t use it when Jerry’s around, Sergeant. He gave it to her. She could never remember to fill it.”

  “Oh,” Mullins said.

  Conversation languished momentarily.

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said after a time, “who—?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill Weigand said.

  Mullins looked disappointed. He looked more disappointed when Weigand said that eight men and women who had dined at Ann Lawrence’s and the four or five who had dropped in later would be assigned to the Mullins province. Mullins was delegated to think about them. Mullins said “O.K.” without enthusiasm.

  “Routine,” Weigand said.

  “Ain’t it?” Mullins agreed.

  So far, Weigand said, it all was. He talked for Mullins to listen and advise, getting facts straight in his own mind. He drew another sheet of paper to him and wrote names on it.

  He wrote the name “Lawrence”—he printed it clearly as a headline. He wrote “1—3:30,” which indicated the time limits between which, on medical evidence obtained during the night, she had probably been killed. He wrote “skull,” to fill out the record.

  That was what they knew. He wrote down “John Elliot.”

  Elliot, he told Mullins, who nodded, was still the most likely, if for the moment you arbitrarily rubbed out his alibi. Mrs. Pennock would swear he had quarreled with the girl; she would swear there had been a scuffle. Elliot had come around the next day to keep an appointment with the dead girl, but that would be an obvious step for an intelligent man to take. Elliot had hit a policeman and escaped, which was the obvious thing for a guilty man to do. But it was not—and here was an evident flaw in logic—the obvious thing for an intelligent man to do.