Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  She reached the cross street below the apartment house. She stopped on the curb. She snapped her fingers—that was it. She snapped them again for good measure, becoming a person who had suddenly thought of something. A woman, say, who had just at that moment remembered she had left something turned on at home and had to hurry back to turn it off. Pam North walked briskly north, her heels clicking on the pavement, a look of intentness on her face. People probably would think she had absent-mindedly left the baby in the bath.

  The up-and-down-town blocks in Manhattan are short blocks. It takes hardly any time to walk one. (Particularly when you are hurrying before the baby drowns.) Almost at once, Pam found herself at the next intersection. Now what? She hesitated at the curb, as if to let traffic pass. Unfortunately, there was no traffic. If she turned into the cross street, toward Madison, she would be out of sight of the apartment house. Wyatt might come out and go away, un-tailed. Of course, she could just stand there. Stand there and—say—look at her watch indignantly from time to time, so becoming a woman waiting with lapsing patience, to be met.

  She did look at her watch. It had now been a good twenty minutes. Good twenty minutes indeed! One of the most annoying twenty minutes she could remember. Of course, there had been the time she had been locked in a closet somewhere in Westchester. And the time she had been in a glass case with a prehistoric man. But those times had not been, in the proper sense, annoying. Was it conceivable that Jerry had gone all the way back to the apartment to telephone? Was it even remotely—

  She looked down the side street, toward Madison, and there was Jerry. He was hurrying; it was hardly too much to say he was loping. At least he knew he had taken an inexcusable time to telephone Bill Weigand. Leaving her holding the bag, conducting an uncompanioned lurk. He’d better have a good ex—

  Abruptly, the air was filled with the wailing of sirens. A patrol car came through the side street, flashed past Jerry North—who checked his lope and stared at it—and at Park turned south. There was another patrol car coming down Park. And another coming up Park. And another—

  Jerry resumed his lope, and joined Pam at the corner. Together they looked down the avenue, watched four patrol cars of the New York City Police Department lurch to a stop in front of the apartment house and stand there, panting, while policemen spurted from them. And they heard, coming up Park, a siren with a slightly different tone. A squad car, screaming about it, U-turned from the north-bound roadway (going the wrong way at the cross-over) and a taxicab stopped, as if on hind legs, to let it pass—to let it nose in at the apartment house.

  “Well,” Pam said, “you certainly hit the jackpot, didn’t you?”

  “What?” Jerry North said. “Oh. I didn’t even get Bill. A detective somebody. Said Bill had just—”

  Another siren interrupted him. A convertible Buick was streaking north, and from it the siren’s wail was coming. The Buick turned as the squad car had turned.

  “—had just gone out,” Jerry said.

  “Just come in,” Pam said. “Come on!” She began to run toward the clustering police cars. “Something must have happened,” she said, panting a little. “Unless—” She checked her pace. “Jerry!” she said. “The doorman—he looked at me suspiciously. Do you suppose he decided that—oh!” She stopped. She began to move forward, but more slowly. “I’ll have to give myself up,” she said. “What will they—”

  But she did not finish. Bill and Sergeant Mullins emerged from either side of Bill’s convertible. They did not exactly run, but they did not exactly walk.

  “Bill,” Pam called. “I was just—”

  Her voice reached Bill Weigand. He looked at her for an instant; he nodded and made a quick beckoning gesture. He said something to a policeman at the door. But neither he nor Mullins waited.

  The Norths went on. The policeman at the door moved toward them.

  “You the Norths?” he said and, without waiting for an answer, “Captain wants you to wait around.”

  “But,” Pam North said. “It’s a public street. Public as any street I know. If a person can’t walk on Park Avenue without—without all this—where can she walk?”

  The policeman looked at her. His mouth opened slightly.

  Mrs. Rose Hemmins had died wearing a black dress—a respectable black dress. But she had died of a gunshot wound in the chest, and there was a great deal of blood on the dress and on the floor around her. Not all the blood was hers. Some of it had come from the shattered body of a big black cat.

  The two bodies lay on the floor of Mrs. Hemmins’ sitting room, in the rear of the apartment. The room was surprisingly cold. The air-conditioning unit in the window hummed heavily; it was set to maximum, although the night was only pleasantly warm. Bill Weigand stepped carefully through the room and reached the window and looked out through the pane above the unit. The window opened on a court—not a large court. He went out of the room and into the big kitchen, and to a window in it which also opened on the court. He opened the window. The sound of the whirring unit was very loud in the court. He closed the window and went back into the small sitting room, which was inconveniently full of men doing those things which must be done when there is violent death. An assistant medical examiner sat on his heels by the body, trying to avoid the drying blood. He stood up when Weigand returned.

  “Fairly close range,” he said. “Probably a .32. Got her through the heart.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “The cat?”

  The physician went to look at the cat. He picked the black body up and held it dangling in his hands. The long black hair was matted with the cat’s blood.

  “Same thing,” he said. “Bullet went through. You’ll find it around somewhere.”

  He put the cat’s body down on the floor.

  “How long did she live afterward?” Bill asked.

  “Didn’t,” the doctor said. “Not what you could call that. Technically, maybe a few seconds.”

  “She couldn’t have moved? Tried to stop the blood?”

  “With that?” the assistant medical examiner said, and pointed at the wound.

  “Right,” Bill said, and watched them begin to take pictures.

  “Closeup of the towel, or whatever it is,” Bill said, and the photographer looked at him with the expression of a man whose knowledge of his business had been assailed. But he took a closeup of the cloth wadded in Mrs. Hemmins’ clenched right hand.

  There were only spots of blood on the cloth. The towel had not, evidently, been used in an effort to stanch the flow of blood. If the assistant medical examiner was right, as presumably he was, it could not have been. Unless the cat had been shot first?

  “Standing when she was shot?” Weigand asked the physician. The physician shrugged. “At a guess,” Bill said.

  “At a guess, yes.”

  “How long ago?”

  “At a guess, within an hour. Not much more than that, anyway. An hour and a half, perhaps, from when I got here, of course.”

  Bill looked at his watch. It showed nine thirty-five. The assistant medical examiner had been there about ten minutes.

  “Not before, say, seven-thirty,” the doctor said. “Not later than about a quarter of nine. I’m guessing, you know. And it’s cold in here.”

  “Right,” Bill said. The doctor closed his bag; wrote in a black notebook. The doctor went.

  After a few minutes, Bill also left the little sitting room—the cold little room, which was filled with the humming of an air-conditioning unit, turned high to muffle the sound of shots.

  Samuel Wyatt was sitting, on a straight chair although there were more comfortable chairs around him, in the larger of the two big rooms between the suite which had been Rose Hemmins’ and the entrance foyer. He sat dolefully. As Bill Weigand came into the room, Wyatt looked up. He was sniffling; he held a handkerchief in his hand and dabbed his nose with it, and dabbed his running eyes. He snapped the fingers of his free hand, and did so disconsolately. A uniformed policeman stood wa
tching him.

  “All I did—” Wyatt said.

  “In a minute, Mr. Wyatt,” Bill told him, and went on into the foyer, and then out of the apartment to the small, furnished room at which the elevator stopped. Pam and Jerry North sat side by side on the small sofa, as if in a doctor’s waiting room. They stood up together when Bill came out of the apartment.

  “All right,” Bill said, “what have you been up to?”

  “I was just walking up and down,” Pam said. “I had a perfect right to. I—”

  “We were following Wyatt,” Jerry said. “From the Algonquin—from Forty-fourth Street, anyway—to here. Your men had lost him, remember? We found him for you.”

  “All I was doing,” Pam said, “was waiting to see if he came out again. While Jerry telephoned. It took him hours, but I wasn’t doing anything. Nothing for everybody to get excited—” She stopped suddenly. “What has happened?” she asked. “Not all this to pick up a—a suspicious woman.”

  “Your friend Wyatt has found another body,” Bill told them. “Two bodies, to be exact. The housekeeper’s. Her cat’s. At least he says he has.”

  “The cat?” Pam said. “Somebody killed the cat? Too? Why would anybody kill the cat?”

  “Or,” Bill said, “Mrs. Hemmins?”

  “People are different,” Pam said. “I mean—there are reasons to kill people.”

  “I don’t know, Pam,” Bill said. “When did Wyatt get here?”

  “About eight-thirty,” Jerry said.

  Bill Weigand nodded, slowly. He hesitated.

  “Wait a few more minutes,” he said. “I’ll send somebody out for you.”

  He went back into the apartment.

  “I don’t,” Pam North said, “see why anybody would kill the cat. Unless—” She paused. Jerry waited. “No,” she said, “it might seem like that, but it wouldn’t be. Or, I shouldn’t think so. He said he liked them.”

  She looked at the red door to the apartment, but she did not seem to see it.…

  “Now,” Bill said, “tell me what happened, Mr. Wyatt.”

  Wyatt looked up at him for a moment. Then Wyatt put his handkerchief in his pocket and snapped the fingers of his right hand, as if to emphasize a decision.

  “I’ve got a right not to say anything,” he said. “That’s the law, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” Bill said. He turned to the patrolman. “Get Sergeant Mullins, will you?” he asked, and the patrolman went. Bill Weigand pulled a chair near and sat down on it. Wyatt set his thin face in an expression of determination. But then he sneezed violently and clutched for his handkerchief, brought it out again. “Damn,” he said.

  “Must be a nuisance,” Bill said. “However, the cat’s dead now.”

  Wyatt started to say something, but instead sneezed again. Mullins came from the direction of the small cold room in the rear of the apartment. The uniformed man came after him. Bill Weigand stood up.

  “Oh, sergeant,” Bill said. “Mr. Wyatt doesn’t want to make a statement. Quite within his rights, of course. So, take him over to the precinct, will you? See he has a chance to call a lawyer. Then, book him on suspicion of homicide.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “Come on, mister.”

  “So that’s the way it is,” Wyatt said. “Just like that. No need to look any further, huh? Make it easy for yourselves.”

  “Talk to your lawyer, Mr. Wyatt,” Bill said. “Best thing you can do, probably. Since you have things to hide.”

  “Got me coming and going, haven’t you?” Wyatt said. He made no move to get up from the chair. He sneezed again. “Damn cats,” he said. “All right, what do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you can tell us,” Bill said. “You do want to talk? The sergeant will take down what you say. It will be put in statement form and you’ll be asked to sign. And—”

  “Used in evidence,” Wyatt said. “Hell, I’ve written this scene, captain.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Bill said. “How did you happen to be here?”

  “Rang the bell,” Wyatt said. “Nobody answered so I got hold of the superintendent and got him to unlock the door and—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “We’ve talked to the superintendent. You know what I mean. How did you happen to be here at all? You wanted to see Mrs. Hemmins?”

  “Yes. I was walking along and came by here and decided to stop in and talk to her.”

  “Why? What about?”

  Wyatt sneezed again. The sneeze, to Weigand, did not seem entirely spontaneous. Wyatt put the handkerchief he had been using back in a pocket of his trousers. He took a fresh handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. He wiped his eyes.

  “O.K.,” he said, finally. “I don’t like the spot I’m in. So, I’m not just sitting around and doing nothing. I figured Mrs. Hemmins might know something that would help. Anyway—help me to know where I stood.”

  “Investigation on your own?”

  “You can call it that.”

  “Or—you wanted to try to get her to change her story? Say that you didn’t show signs of this allergy of yours before you came into the apartment Saturday?”

  “There it is again,” Wyatt said. “Coming and going.” He snapped his fingers, this time wearily. “What’s the use?”

  “Was that it?”

  “No, that wasn’t it. Just wanted to see—well, maybe she noticed something I didn’t, when we found Fitch. Maybe—how do I know? She might know something that would be a help. Just fishing, if you want to know.”

  “You were just walking by. Thought, ‘I’ll go talk to Mrs. Hemmins.’ Came up here and when she didn’t answer, instead of just assuming she’d gone to a movie, got hold of the superintendent and got him to let you in?”

  “Believe it or not,” Wyatt said.

  “Where had you been before you walked by here?”

  “Having dinner. At the Commodore Bar.”

  Bill Weigand shook his head.

  “If I were you,” he said, “I would talk to a lawyer. Better take him along, sergeant.”

  Mullins said, “O.K. Come on, mister.”

  “Tell your lawyer Mrs. Hemmins’ story put you in the apartment Saturday earlier than you admitted you had been in it. Put you upstairs about the time Fitch died. And he’ll tell you that, if Mrs. Hemmins didn’t make a formal statement—and perhaps even if she did—what she said won’t hurt anybody in legal proceedings, because now she’s dead.”

  “So that’s it?” Wyatt said. “All worked out.”

  “You weren’t just passing here,” Bill said. “You didn’t come here from the Commodore. Nobody gets a superintendent to open an apartment house door merely because the bell isn’t answered. You’d better get a lawyer.”

  Wyatt looked at him. He looked at him for some seconds.

  “Ask the Norths to come in, will you, sergeant?” Bill said. “They’re in the outside hall.” Mullins went. He returned with the Norths, and Wyatt had said nothing, although he had sneezed again.

  “Mr. Wyatt says he came here from the Commodore,” Bill told Pam and Jerry North.

  “Why, Sam!” Pam said. Jerry shook his head, a little sadly.

  “They saw you,” Bill told Wyatt. “Near the Algonquin. In Forty-fourth Street. They knew I’d had you followed and that my man had lost you. So—they followed you instead.”

  “My friends,” Wyatt said. “My ever loyal friends. My publisher.”

  “Followed you here,” Bill said. “Watched you go in. Tried to notify me. But—by that time the superintendent had called and told us about Mrs. Hemmins, and we were on the way here.”

  “I told him to do that,” Wyatt said. “He’ll tell you I did.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “He has told me. He’s also said that you were very insistent about getting in. Said something must have happened to Mrs. Hemmins.” He paused. “Want to have another try at it, Mr. Wyatt?”

  Wyatt looked long at Bill Weigand. He looked at the Norths. He told them, with a li
ttle bitterness, that they had been a big help. He said, “All right, I left one or two things out.” He mopped his still running eyes and, in an aside, again damned all cats. He had another try at it.

  It was true, Wyatt said—and now he began to talk rapidly, a little jerkily—that he had had dinner at the Commodore Bar. It was true that, after dinner, although he had been too nervous to eat much—

  “Why?” Bill asked him.

  “My God, man,” Wyatt said. “Who wouldn’t be? You think I don’t know how it looks to you people?”

  “Go ahead,” Bill said.

  After dinner, Wyatt had walked up Park Avenue. Worrying. “Kept writing a scene about being in the death cell. One I told the Norths about.” He had been about half a block from the apartment house when he had seen “this fellow” go into it.

  “Who?”

  “O.K. Wes. Wes Strothers.”

  Strothers had gone in as if he were in a hurry. Wyatt had thought it was “funny.”

  “Why?”

  “His friend Fitch is dead. Who would he be hurrying to see?” Wyatt snapped his fingers. “Hell,” he said. “I don’t know why I thought it was funny. Except—I was looking for something funny. See what I mean?”

  “Go on,” Bill said.

  “That’s what I didn’t do,” Wyatt said. “I waited. Walked up and down and—”

  “No wonder the doorman was puzzled,” Pam said. “All evening, people lurking.” They looked at her. “It doesn’t matter,” Pam said. “I was just thinking.”

  Wyatt snapped his fingers and shrugged at the same time, dissociating himself. He had patrolled the block for, he thought, about fifteen minutes. He had been at the upper end of the block when Strothers came out again. Strothers seemed still to be in a hurry. He had stood at the curb and waved at cabs. “Including some anybody could see were taken.” He had also looked, several times, up and down the avenue. Wyatt, stepping close to a building—looking around the corner of a building, actually—had watched the tall, slightly stooped, producer of his play.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The way he acted. Fidgety.”