Murder Out of Turn

by Frances Lockridge

  “Probably,” he thought, “I shouldn’t be.”

  He opened the last drawer in the desk, and was comforted to find less than the perfect order of an efficient executive. Perhaps there, he thought—and found his mind returning to the calendar pad. Lieutenant Weigand, who felt that hunches had value, listened to his hunch.

  “All right,” he said to himself, “suppose we break it up. Suppose we say that it refers to today.”

  He waited for his mind to take this bait. His mind blinked at it. Then it brightened. “1” could refer to one o’clock, of course, and, say, indicate a luncheon date. Then—

  “Damn,” said Weigand, aloud.

  Mullins, occupying the doorway and looking every seventy-four inches a policeman in plainclothes, gave a gloomy rumble of agreement.

  “Screwy, ain’t it?” said Mullins, darkly.

  “What?” said Weigand. “What do you think’s screwy?”

  “Whatever’s screwy,” Detective Mullins said. “You look like it was screwy.”

  On the contrary, Weigand assured him. It had just straightened out a little.

  “Miss Corbin was going to have lunch with someone named Fil. at one o’clock today at Club 21,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

  “Who’s Phil?” said Mullins. “Is he in this?”

  Weigand decided that sounds did not convey. He beckoned Mullins, who stared at the memorandum pad.

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “Like you said. And, like I said, who’s Fil.?”

  That, Weigand admitted, they didn’t know. Most probably he was nobody they were interested in, or who would do them any good. Mullins looked troubled.

  “I thought you said it was straightening out,” he protested. “Now you say we don’t know who Fil. is and that he probably ain’t nobody.” He looked at Weigand suspiciously. “Like I say,” he said. “Screwy.”

  “Right,” said Weigand, and turned his attention to the open drawer. It was agreeable to have solved even this simple and unimportant cryptogram. And, as Mullins indicated, it left them nowhere. But as he turned to the open drawer, he pulled away the Monday sheet from the pad and put it in his pocket. You never knew.

  Jean Corbin evidently had maintained a catchall in the bottom drawer, letting flutter into it such matters of transitory, or uncertain, or merely puzzling, importance as could be committed to paper. There were invitations which she had, Weigand could guess, put off answering and forgotten; there were samples of some material, which might appertain to personal or advertising life. There was a catalogue from a silversmith’s, with a cocktail-shaker checked and questioned. There were one or two evidently personal notes, and through them Weigand ran quickly. Then, over one, his eyes moved more slowly, and several times. Then he said, “Well,” and showed the note to Mullins. It was addressed: “Dear Jean.”

  “Dear Jean,” it read, “I feel, don’t you, that we had better call it off, since evidently it can come to nothing; since neither of us is really willing for it to come to anything? I hope that you will feel this way about it, since I do—quite unmistakably.”

  It was an odd note and it was signed “J.H.A.” This wasn’t, Weigand decided, cryptic. It was James Harlan Abel breaking off, rather academically and obscurely until the end and then—“unmistakably.”

  “Who’s this guy?” Mullins said when Weigand pushed the note across the desk to him. “Do we know him?”

  Weigand said they did, and named him.

  “What was he trying to say?” Mullins wanted to know.

  “Well,” Weigand said, “he’s an English professor, but what he was saying was that he wasn’t having any, and no fooling. He was suggesting that she go peddle her papers.”

  “Yeh,” Mullins agreed, after study. “That’s what he was trying to say, I guess.”

  “And,” said Weigand, “there’s a theory around that if something stuck to Dr. Abel where he didn’t want it he’d—well, brush it off. And not care where it fell.”

  Mullins said it sounded like a screwy theory to him, and whose was it?

  “Mrs. North’s,” Weigand told him. Mullins nodded over the note, in thought.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe it just sounds screwy, then. I guess we’ve got our guy.”

  Weigand’s lips crinkled over Mullins’ translation from hopelessness to certainty, and said only, “Um-m-m.” Then he went on through the desk, and found odds and ends which did not seem to apply. Mullins sat and watched him. Finally Mullins cleared his throat and said he thought it was this Abel guy, all right.

  “She was right the other time,” Mullins said. “We gotta remember that.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “We’ll remember it.”

  He lifted the telephone from its cradle on the desk and inquired as to the present condition of the second Mr. Bell. The second Mr. Bell—Mr. J. K. Bell—had recovered from conference and could see Lieutenant Weigand.

  Mullins, looking heavily abstracted, started to go along, but he was stopped as, his expression revealed, he had all along feared. He was not to accompany Weigand into the precincts of the second Mr. Bell. He was to go through the desks of Thelma Smith and Helen Wilson and return with what he thought interesting.

  “You’ve read about this case, haven’t you?” Weigand inquired, doubtfully.

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “On the subway.”

  He went off to desks, and Weigand went to an even lighter and even larger office, which had corner windows and a large desk facing out from the corner. Mr. Bell, however, was a small man with ruddy cheeks. Funereal gloom overspread his features, appropriately, as Weigand entered. Mr. Bell said it was very sad, wasn’t it? Weigand said it was very sad. Mr. Bell immediately smiled and suggested that Lieutenant Weigand would, perhaps, care for a cigar. Lieutenant Weigand indicated that, while deeply appreciative, he would not care for a cigar. Mr. Bell hoped that the lieutenant had found the desks undisturbed as directed. Lieutenant Weigand had.

  “Can you,” he said, “tell me anything about this?”

  He slid the sheet torn from the desk calendar across smooth wood to Mr. Bell, who applied pince-nez and considered.

  “No,” said Mr. Bell, and slid it back.

  “It refers, apparently, to a luncheon engagement at ‘21’ with some person whose name can be abbreviated as ‘Fil.,’” Weigand explained. “Do you know any ‘Fil.’?”

  “No,” said Mr. Bell. Then he stopped and the smoothness of his face rippled with cogitation.

  “Unless Fillmore,” he said. “Jonas Fillmore. But it could hardly be Mr. Fillmore.”

  “Why?” Weigand wanted to know.

  It could hardly be Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Bell explained, because Mr. Fillmore was advertising manager for Carbonated, Incorporated, and Carbonated was not one of their customers. So there would, obviously, have been no reason for Miss Corbin to see Mr. Fillmore.

  “Carbonated?” Weigand repeated.

  “A soft drink concern,” Mr. Bell admitted, with distaste. “Not one of our clients, however.”

  Something remembered scraped in Weigand’s mind, found a door and was admitted.

  “They don’t make a drink called ‘Quench,’ do they?” Weigand asked.

  Mr. Bell nodded, rather disparagingly.

  “And they were clients at one time, weren’t they?”

  Mr. Bell nodded again, even more disparagingly.

  “But there would be no reason whatever for our Miss Corbin to see Mr. Fillmore,” Mr. Bell assured him. “No reason whatever.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “And now can you tell me something about Miss Thelma Smith?”

  It took time to get Mr. Bell moving where Weigand wanted him moving, but Weigand took the time. Miss Smith had been with the firm for several years. Yes, she had joined at about the time Miss Corbin accepted a position with them. Yes, certainly Miss Corbin had done rather better with them; she had become an account executive while Miss Smith remained “junior.”

  “A junior executive?” Weigand
asked.

  Mr. Bell pursed his lips, thought and nodded. He thought that the term defined Miss Smith’s position with the firm; her former position. She was, technically, an assistant office manager, which was, Mr. Bell wanted it clear, a very comfortable position to be in with Bell, Halpern & Bell. But—

  “There was some dissatisfaction with her work on the part of several of the executives,” Mr. Bell admitted. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘with her personality.’ Mr. Curtis found her very difficult to work with, and some of the others. So we decided that she might be happier elsewhere and—er—accepted her resignation.”

  “Yes,” Weigand said, “as you said. She was fired.”

  Mr. Bell flushed slightly, looked at Weigand, and finally nodded.

  “And how did Miss Corbin feel about that?” Weigand asked. “They were old friends, weren’t they?”

  “Well,” Mr. Bell said, “I suppose they were, in a way. But Miss Corbin quite understood. In fact—”

  “In fact, Miss Corbin was one of the executives who had difficulty with Miss Smith’s ‘personality,’ wasn’t she?” Weigand suggested. “One of those who recommended that Miss Smith be fired, to be flat about it?”

  “Well,” Mr. Bell said, “yes. As a matter of fact, she was rather insistent toward the end. Quite surprisingly insistent, some of us thought, since nothing could, after all, be said against Miss Smith’s work. But Miss Corbin was much more valuable to us, of course, and when she rather made it an issue—”

  They were, Weigand decided as he left Mr. Bell’s office a few minutes later, certainly getting on. They were getting on, rather unfortunately, in several different directions, but nobody could deny they were getting places. He remained of this opinion even when Mullins reported that he could discover nothing in either Helen Wilson’s or Thelma Smith’s desk which seemed to bear. The Smith desk was, in fact, bare of all but undefaced office equipment. In Helen’s there was, so far as he could determine, nothing which had personal application. Weigand nodded, and looked at his watch. It was almost twelve-thirty, and it might be a time to catch Mr. Fillmore.

  Downstairs, Weigand found a telephone book and afterward a booth, and caught Mr. Fillmore of Carbonated, Inc. Mr. Fillmore was in his office around the corner, and would wait for Lieutenant Weigand if there was something important. About Miss Corbin? He could not imagine how he could help, but he would wait. Weigand and Mullins went around the corner to another formidable building, and rose smoothly in an elevator. Mr. Fillmore was long and thin and looked, Weigand thought, as if his soft drinks disagreed with him.

  But he was readily helpful. Miss Corbin had called him the Friday before and suggested lunch that day; when Mr. Fillmore admitted a previous engagement, she fixed Monday. She had not said, directly, why she wanted to lunch with him.

  “But you could guess, of course,” Weigand prompted.

  Fillmore looked at him, and his long face furrowed in a wise smile. He said that he could, certainly, make a guess.

  “They wanted to get Quench back, I’ve no doubt,” he said. “Miss Corbin was, I take it, to have been an advance scout. The agencies keep track of contracts, you know, and our contract for Quench advertising is expiring in a month or so. They may have heard that there is some uncertainty about our renewal.”

  “With a man named Saunders?” Weigand said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Fillmore agreed. “With Saunders.”

  “And is there uncertainty about the renewal?” Weigand asked, while Mullins, sitting in a chair in the corner of the office, nodded wisely. Fillmore stared at Weigand, with lifted eyebrows.

  “That isn’t properly a police matter, I should suppose,” he said. “It is not a matter for general circulation, certainly. But—”

  “It won’t be circulated, if we can avoid it,” Weigand said. “And if we find we can’t avoid it, circumstances will have made secrecy unimportant, I imagine.”

  Fillmore nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I can guess at the meaning of that. Very well—there is considerable uncertainty about our renewing with Saunders. Very considerable uncertainty.”

  “And so Miss Corbin might have—made progress?” Weigand asked.

  Fillmore was cagey, there. Many things would have entered in; many terms. But, pinned down, he agreed that Miss Corbin might, quite possibly, have started progress.

  “Bell, Halpern & Bell is a very good firm, of course,” Mr. Fillmore said. “It is certainly one of those we would have considered if we had decided to make a change. Particularly if they had agreed to assign Miss Corbin to the account.”

  Weigand took it that Miss Corbin was very good.

  “Extremely good,” Mr. Fillmore said. “She’s just done a very strong campaign for Wash-it. A very strong campaign. Quite the talk of the profession, in fact.”

  Could Weigand take it, then, that the possibility of the account’s leaving Saunders for Bell, Halpern & Bell did depend, to a considerable degree, on the assignment of Miss Corbin to the account? Fillmore thought and nodded. And with Miss Corbin dead, the chance of the account remaining with Saunders was, at the least, enhanced? Fillmore hesitated over that one. Finally it appeared that the point was not one on which he would care to commit himself. There were various elements, of which that was, he would go so far as to say, one. “But only one,” he assured Weigand. He hoped Weigand would not jump at any conclusions.

  “Right,” said Weigand. “We’ll try not to jump. And thank you.”

  He collected Mullins, who shook his head gloomily over the situation, said that he had known in advance that it was going to be a screwy one, and inquired if this was one of those they didn’t eat on? Weigand saw no reason why it should be. They sat at the counter in the Grand Central and watched oysters bubble in hot milk and butter, consumed well-bubbled oysters contentedly. Mullins said it was sure swell to get back to months with R’s in them.

  14

  MONDAY

  1:10 P.M. TO 4:45 P.M.

  Sometime, Weigand thought as he turned the Buick uptown, he would like to have a case which would settle down reasonably—one of those comfortable cases in which suspicion points once, and only once, and all gratified policemen need to do is to prove what they know. Suspicion was a trickster here, more wanton than a weathervane, which at least answered to the wind of the moment. Suspicion whirled with her finger out, pointing everywhere and—nowhere. Unless they all did it together, which was fantastic.

  “We’ve got too many suspects again,” he told Mullins. “And too many murders, when you come to that. You read the papers. Which was the essential murder?”

  “The essential murder?” Mullins echoed. “Huh?”

  “Which came first?” Weigand clarified. “Helen Wilson? Jean Corbin? Whose turn was it, and who merely got in the way?”

  “Yeh,” said Mullins. “I see what you mean. The Wilson one, I guess. You found it first.”

  “But the other could have been started any time,” Weigand reminded him. “You can set a trap any time.”

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “I guess that one came first, all right.”

  Mullins was even less than usually helpful, Weigand considered, as he turned through the park. But you couldn’t fairly blame him. Weigand wasn’t sure that he was being very helpful himself, and wondered how Heimrich was getting on. Was Heimrich being helpful? he wondered. They came out at 110th Street, turned west, then north on Broadway and parked on a street that pierced Columbia University. The office could direct him to Professor Abel’s office, and did. Professor Abel’s secretary was an earnest young woman in glasses, absurdly what one would have expected. She was sorry that Professor Abel was not in. Weigand expressed sorrow, also. Would he be in today? The secretary thought not. Weigand sighed.

  “I wonder if you can tell me where he is?” he asked. The girl looked at him sharply.

  “In the country, somewhere,” she said.

  “Up at Lone Lake, isn’t he?”

  Weigand
was chatty. She looked even more sharply.

  “Who are you?” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  The defensiveness came too quickly, Weigand decided. If Abel wanted an actress, he should hire an actress.

  “William Weigand,” he said. “A police lieutenant.” He decided to attack. “Dr. Abel telephoned you this morning, didn’t he?” he said suddenly.

  “No,” she said. “That is—yes, I think it was this morning.”

  “Certainly it was this morning,” Weigand told her. “He wanted you to do something for him, didn’t he?”

  “No,” she said. “That is—he merely wanted me to put off some appointments. He told me he might not be back in town for a day or two. He was worried about some appointments.”

  Weigand wanted to know if she was sure that that was all. He looked rather hard, and she wavered.

  “Yes,” she said, “of course that was all. What else would there be?”

  “All right,” Weigand said. “I’ll tell you. He has been seeing a good deal of a Miss Corbin lately—Miss Jean Corbin. Does the name mean anything?”

  He watched her try to pull herself together, and watched her fail. She nodded, dumbly.

  “I thought it might,” he said. “She was killed, you know. And Dr. Abel had been seeing her frequently, and telephoned you to deny it if you were asked. Isn’t that true?”

  “No,” she said. “That isn’t really true—that is—”

  “Well?” said Weigand.

  “It was only that he didn’t want to be drawn into anything he didn’t have a part in,” she said. “He knew it wouldn’t help, and his position—Faculty members can’t be drawn into things like that, you know. It—it is very important to them. And particularly with former students.”