Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s all true. About Mr. Latham. His sister. It’s—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Say it’s all true. Or—say there’s truth in it. Why did you want me here?”

  “Because—”

  “What happened between the time you called me and the time you came to the door and let me in? To make you give this very excellent—performance?”

  “I don’t perform,” she said. “I’m an actress. Anyway—”

  A man laughed. The laughter was brief, it was heavy, it was more derisive than amused. Bill Weigand whirled in his chair; his right hand made an instinctive movement toward the revolver which New York policemen are required to carry at all times. Bill saw the man’s legs, first, as the man came down the narrow flight of stairs in the corner of the long room. Then he saw the man—a man of medium height, a rather stocky man. The man’s hands were in full view.

  The man reached the foot of the staircase and started toward them. After a few steps, he said, “I’ve seen you better, Mary.”

  She was on her feet. The movement was quick, lithe, for all its haste, infinitely graceful.

  “You!” she said. “Don’t call me that.”

  “All right, Mary,” the man said. “I’ll call you Naomi. You still didn’t get very far, did you? All that trouble for nothing.”

  “You spoiled it,” she said. The beauty was still in the voice. “You—you spoil everything.” The little hesitancy, the little catch, was there. “You always did. Always—always—always.”

  She formed two slender, graceful hands into tight fists, and shook them, both together, at the stocky man. At which, he laughed again.

  6

  Sunday, 12:20 A.M. to 4:20 P.M.

  The stocky man’s laughter was brief. It seemed to Bill Weigand that, this time, there was amusement in it.

  “Act one, scene two,” the man said. “Impotent rage. Or—is it petulance, my dear?”

  “Get out of here,” Naomi Shaw said. “Just get out of here.” Her voice went up somewhat. It was still a lovely voice, but it was not quite the same voice. There was, Bill thought, suddenly a trace of Missouri in it—the merest trace of Missouri.

  “Pear-shaped tones, Mary,” the man said. “Where are the pear-shaped tones?” He seemed suddenly to remember Bill’s presence. “For two years,” he said. “Almost two years, I heard about pear-shaped tones. You know what they are?”

  Bill had heard the term.

  “Never could visualize it,” the man said. “Not that she doesn’t talk right nice. Don’t you think she does?”

  “Sometimes,” the girl said, “I could kill you, Bob. Sometimes I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “Now, honey,” the man said, “I didn’t give you a chance, remember? Anyway, you aren’t big enough. Don’t you remember what a little girl you are?” He smiled, then, and the smile momentarily broke the squareness of his face. “And,” he said, “you didn’t want to, honey. You never will want to.” He turned to Weigand. “She was stringing you along,” he said. “But I guess you got that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Bill said.

  “Matter of fact,” the man said, “I thought she was pretty good, didn’t you? Not convincing, maybe. But, hell, she didn’t have much time. And, like she said, nobody wrote the words for her.” He nodded his noticeably square head. “Pretty good act.”

  “You always do things like this,” Naomi Shaw said. “Always. Always.” But, now, her voice was softly down again; now the accents of Missouri were smoothed out of it. Naomi Shaw went a few steps, seemed to flow the few steps, and sat in the corner of a sofa. “He always did,” she said, to Bill.

  “Suppose,” Bill Weigand said, “we make this a little less private. For one thing, who are you?”

  “Name’s Carr,” the stocky man said. “Robert Carr, construction engineer. The lady’s ex.”

  “Not enough,” Naomi said. “Not enough by half.”

  “Talks British, don’t she?” Carr said. “Not arf she don’t. Gets ideas in her pretty head, too. Don’t you, honey?”

  “A year and eight months,” Naomi said. “The longest year and eight months ever.”

  “That’s right,” Carr said. “Gave me the best year and eight months of her life, the lady did. But Chile—nope. Not for Mary Shaftlich Carr. Not Chile.”

  “He’s not fair,” Naomi said, to Bill. “He’s never fair. And, there’s no secret I changed my name. Everybody does.”

  “You have to get used to that sort of thing,” Carr said. “Everybody’s in the theater. You know that, captain? So everybody changes his name. Or her name.”

  “Suppose,” Bill said, and his tone was mild, but it was a policeman’s tone. “Suppose we shorten this, shall we? Miss Shaw tells me this theory about a man named Latham. Tells it, and at the same time throws it down. You listen. Sit on the top step?”

  “Thereabouts,” Carr said.

  “Until I indicate I’m not buying the story,” Bill said. “Then you come down.”

  “And,” Carr said, “you start to reach for your gun.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “It’s just as well you didn’t. Have you got a gun, by the way?”

  “Me?” Carr said. “You’re as bad as the lady, captain. Same things, probably. She acts melodrama. You probably run into it. Why the hell should I tote a gun?”

  “I don’t,” Naomi said. “I’m a comedienne. Even in Timbuktu you ought to have heard that.”

  “Pakistan,” Carr said. “You know, in Pakistan you miss some of the most important news, honey. About girls from Kansas City getting to be stars on Broadway. Backward place, Pakistan.”

  “I’m sure,” Naomi said. “You’ll fix that. Fill it all full of dams.”

  “You played a gangster’s moll in Second Precinct,” Carr said. “Got shot for a second-act curtain. Before that you were a maid in This Mortal Coil. You screamed in that one. Didn’t get shot. All very comic.”

  “Oh, God,” Naomi Shaw said. “Always. Always!”

  “I said, suppose we cut this,” Bill reminded them. “Miss Shaw gets me here to listen to this—this afterglow of a dream. You, Carr, listen to see how it goes over. When it doesn’t go over, you come down and start this—whatever it is. Now—you let me in on it. Right? And—now”

  “I—” Naomi said.

  “You,” Bill said, and pointed at Carr. “You rest that pretty voice, Miss Shaw.”

  “Why—” she said, and Bill looked at her. “Oh,” Naomi Shaw said.

  “O.K.,” Carr said. “She got it into her head I killed Fitch. Then she got it out of her head—or I got it out. But she’d already telephoned you, so she could turn me in. Then—”

  “That isn’t it at all,” Naomi said. “I wasn’t—”

  “Miss Shaw,” Bill said, “will you try to keep quiet? For five minutes?”

  “Won’t do you any good,” Carr told him. “Used to say that myself and—”

  “And,” Bill said, “will you skip all that, Carr? She thought you’d killed Fitch?”

  “Said she did. Thought I got jealous, after all these years. If I couldn’t have her, nobody could have her. Gets things like that out of these plays she acts in.”

  Bill looked at Naomi Shaw, and just in time. She closed her lovely lips with exaggerated care.

  “Well,” Bill said, “were you jealous?”

  And then Carr hesitated. He looked at Naomi Shaw, and she looked at him, through wide dark eyes.

  “All right,” Carr said. “She gets under your skin. Also, she didn’t love that polo player. Just kidded herself. Wouldn’t have—”

  “I suppose,” Naomi Shaw said, “I really love you?”

  And Carr looked at her for some seconds and then, quite slowly, in a tone almost matter of fact, said, “Yes. You can’t get away from it.” Naomi said, “Oh, God,” in a voice dripping with hopelessness. Carr turned back at once to Bill Weigand.

  “She got this idea,” he said. “She called me
up at my hotel, just as I was turning in. She was—well, pretty upset. She told you she hadn’t been able to cry, but she was crying then, all right. Kept saying I’d killed him and that they’d find out—they’d be sure to find out. Meant you people. I told her, hell, I hadn’t killed anybody—not for a long time, anyway. Not since the war. If then. Seabees didn’t kill people much. But—I couldn’t get her to listen. Finally, I said I’d come around and talk sense to her and she said no, I mustn’t. So—”

  So, he said, he had come, and been let in, and found out that Naomi had already called the police. Because, she had told him, she was hysterical, was frightened. Frightened, he had gathered, of him. He’d have thought she would have had better sense. Although, thinking it over now, he didn’t know why he had thought that. She was always the impulsive type. Had been since she was a kid.

  “You convinced her you hadn’t killed Fitch?”

  Carr seemed surprised at the question. He said, “Sure.” He added, “That was the easy part.”

  “Convince me,” Bill Weigand told him.

  That would be easy, too. Fitch was killed this morning. Carr looked at his watch. Yesterday morning. Carr hadn’t been in town. He had been in Chicago. “That’s where the company headquarters are,” he said. “People I work for.” Told this, Naomi realized how absurd her suspicion was. “You see,” Carr said, “she thought I was still in town.”

  “Still,” Bill said. “Then you had been?”

  Carr had come to New York from Chicago, getting in on the Century Thursday morning. Did Weigand want to know why he had come? Weigand nodded. He had come on business; to see a man about a dam. A dam in South America, this time. “We build a lot of dams,” Carr said. He had conferred, with the first man and then with others, until late Thursday evening, and had had dinner, and then decided to see “my old girl friend,” before he went back to Chicago. It had been almost midnight; he had gone to the hotel; found that Naomi was not at home, and had talked to her maid. The maid had told him about “this big party.”

  “So,” Carr said, “I took a chance and called Snaith. You know Snaith?”

  “No,” Bill said.

  “Flesh peddler,” Carr said. “That the right term, honey?”

  “Always,” Naomi said. “But always. Mr. Snaith is an artists’ representative.”

  “Caught him just as he was leaving,” Carr said. “Said how about taking me to this shindig and he said, sure, why not. I met him there and he took me in. Although, far as I could see, anybody could’ve walked in. We were in time for the big scene. ‘Going to steal your girl—’”

  “That’s like you,” Naomi said. “Exactly like you.”

  “O.K. Let’s say I’m sorry,” Carr told her. “Anyway, it seemed like a good time to get out of there. I got out of there.”

  “Like a little boy with the sulks,” Naomi told him. “Oh, I saw you.”

  He had been tied up the next day, and into the next evening. He had taken a late plane back to Chicago; had, early in the afternoon, read of Fitch’s death and had flown back to New York. He had telephoned Naomi at once, but he had got only the maid, who had said that Miss Shaw was not talking to anyone. He had tried persuasion, and got nowhere. “I never got anywhere with these maids of yours,” he said, to Naomi. “You know that. They seem to think I’m bad for you.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Naomi asked.

  “O.K.,” Carr said. “Anyhow, I said I was in town, and where I was, and asked this biddy to condescend enough to tell Miss Shaw that her former husband had called, and would help in any way he could.”

  “How?” Naomi asked.

  Carr paid no attention to that. He said apparently the biddy had condescended, since his former wife had called him up. “To accuse me of murder,” he said.

  “I came over here,” he said, “and, like I told you, convinced her I didn’t poison Fitch. Then she said she had called the police because—because she was afraid. I said—”

  “You said a lot of things,” Naomi Shaw cut in.

  “All right,” he said. “I was sore. You could always make me sore. Got a lot of fun out of it. Then I said, all right, we’d both wait until the police came and she could tell her story and I’d tell mine. And then she got this notion. This notion about not wanting to drag me into it. Anyway, that’s what she said. Said to leave it to her. About then, you rang the bell.” He paused and looked at Naomi, and away from her. “Probably just wanted to give this performance,” he said. “The part about keeping me out of it—” He shrugged.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Don’t give me any credit. That’s right. Just another chance to show off.”

  “I’d rather have it the other way,” he said. “You know that.” He waited a moment. She said nothing. “So I listened,” he said to Weigand. “I thought, actually, it was pretty damn good. Red herring, but not too red. But—you didn’t buy it, so I decided there was no use in letting her get in any deeper, specially when I didn’t have anything to worry about, so—” He paused for a moment. “Well,” he said, “that’s the size of it. We’ve wasted your time.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “If you can prove you were in Chicago. You’ve wasted a lot of time.”

  “Oh,” Carr said, “I can prove that.” He spoke with confidence. Weigand looked away from him, looked at the girl on the sofa. Naomi Shaw was looking with an odd intentness at her former husband. It was, Bill Weigand thought, as if she were waiting for him to say more; almost as if she were willing him to say more.

  “No trouble about that,” Carr said, and did not look at Naomi.

  “Until then, you believed them?” Pam North said.

  The Weigands and the Norths were having breakfast in the Norths’ apartment, although it was somewhat after Sunday noon. It was not to be called “brunch,” because Pam wished it not to be called brunch. She said it made it sound like such a noisy meal. They had had strawberries and then eggs benedict, which Jerry prepared, it being an established thing that Pam could not make hollandaise, that it always separated.

  “I thought they were probably telling the truth,” Bill said. “Even now—” He lighted a cigarette, and said yes to hot coffee.

  “Why?” Dorian asked him. Bill looked thoughtfully at his wife, whose eyes were greenish, who had moved with her coffee to a sofa and sat with one long leg tucked under her, and so made a lap for the cat named Sherry—and often, because of the way she clung to laps, referred to as “The Limpit.” “Since,” Dorian said, “it doesn’t sound too terribly probable. I mean, the whole feel of it.”

  That, Bill told her, was precisely it. Granted that, retold—of necessity summarized, since he had, finally, been with Carr and Naomi Shaw in her apartment for almost two hours—the interview seemed theatrical, even concocted. But—at the time, it had not felt that way. At least, not until Naomi Shaw had looked with such intensity, such an air of expectation, at her former husband. Grant, further, that she had playacted, and Carr had played along—still, what Dorian called “the feel of it” had been authentic. Part of the feeling, Bill said, was that they had never got over each other; that when they were together there were special currents between them. And that, he thought, they did not act. He was not, further, at all convinced that Carr had acted at any time. Also, he said, Carr had had a reservation on a late plane to Chicago Friday night, and he had had one on a plane back Saturday afternoon. He granted that such matters could be arranged.

  “By a stand-in,” Pam suggested.

  That would, certainly, be the most simple way. Although it might also prove to be the most risky way. But they had no evidence about that, one way or another. They would get it.

  “It was merely,” Pam said, “that all at once you had a hunch they’d left something out? Something important. Even before Jerry and I told you?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “That she expected him to tell more than he did. Or was afraid that he would. It looks, now, as if what he didn’t tell about was this meeting you and Wyatt saw.
”

  “If Fitch did leave her money,” Jerry said. “If she and Carr were in cahoots.”

  It appeared he had left her money. At least, he had told her he was leaving her money. Weigand had asked about that, and Carr had stared at him coldly, and Weigand had been unaffected by the stare. Fitch had told his fiancée that he planned to change his will. That had been several weeks before. A few days later he had told her that he had changed his will. So, at any rate, Naomi Shaw had told Weigand.

  “I didn’t want him to,” Naomi Shaw had said. “I said money wasn’t the point at all and we were going to get married so soon, anyway.”

  Fitch had laughed at that, according to Naomi Shaw. He had told her she was no businesswoman; had, lightly, told her she would, now, have to learn to be. He had explained. As things stood—had stood—the money would go to relatives—relatives all right enough in their way, but only that. After he and Naomi actually were married, the law would insure her dower rights. But, there remained an interval—an interval in which something might happen. (Would not, of course. Still might, of course.) “He—he said he might fall off a horse. He laughed about it.”

  She had not, she told Bill Weigand, really understood why it was so important. That, she thought, had surprised Bradley Fitch. He had been, for one of the few times she had known him, painstakingly serious. There was a great deal of money. He had not made it. But he was responsible to it. He had said it so—responsible to the money. He had—this Bill Weigand gathered from what the girl said—to see that, even if only for a few weeks or days, the money was taken care of. So, he had made a new will. After they were married, he would make another will, in which Naomi Shaw, known also as Mary Shaftlich, and as Mary Shaftlich Carr, would be more simply designated as “my wife, Naomi Shaftlich Fitch.” Things would be kept in order.

  He had not told her the exact provisions of this interim will. Whether he had told his relatives of it, she did not know. The only relative he saw much of was a cousin, Alicia Nelson. Perhaps he had told her. Captain Weigand should find that easy enough to discover. He had agreed.