by Frances
“As to the characters of all these people,” Weigand said, “you’ve all seen them; seen about as much of them as I have.”
“And you think—” Pam North began.
Weigand, apparently ahead of her, shrugged.
“—one of them did it?” he finished, for Pam. “I don’t know, of course. It’s a place to start. You heard them as to where they were when Sneddiger was killed. They’re not much more definite about last night; they all seem to have been out and around. Brian was working, he said—working at home. Whiteside says that, after dinner, which ended earlier than they expected, he’d gone to his club for a rubber of bridge. Mrs. Whiteside stayed at home, alone. Mrs. Halder was ‘with friends.’ She didn’t want to go further; we haven’t required her to, as yet. Jennifer Halder—”
“Mrs. Junior,” Pam said. “Isn’t that simpler?”
Mrs. Junior, if Pam preferred, was at home in her apartment, also alone. Junior himself had, unexpectedly to her—“and not very convincingly to me,” Weigand said—gone downtown to his office. But his wife supported him when he said that he had had to leave some work unfinished to get to dinner and, when the dinner ended early, had seized the opportunity to return to his office and get on with it.
“You keep talking about the dinner,” Pam said. “As if it were special. Was it?”
“Well,” Bill Weigand said, “the old man was there. As a matter of fact, he seems to have arranged it.”
“Not,” Pam said, “not to tell them he’d changed his will? Not that!”
“Why no,” Bill said. There was amusement in his voice, momentarily. “Whatever made you think of that, Pamela?”
Pamela North made a small, quick face at him.
“It could be,” Jerry North said, with detachment, “something she’s read.”
But Lieutenant Weigand was sober again. Actually, he said, all of the members of the family—and they had all dutifully shown up—denied knowing why Halder had arranged the dinner. He had asked—“asked” was as good a word as any other—his wife to invite the others. She had done so. They had arrived at the Sutton Place house around seven, Halder himself a few minutes later than the others; they had had a drink or two and had sat down to dinner at a quarter of eight. They had finished, had coffee; the old man had seemed more relaxed than usual, to have nothing on his mind—“actually,” Weigand said, “there seems to have been nothing particularly eccentric in his normal social behavior”—and, until about nine o’clock it had been an uneventful, apparently not too interesting, family gathering.
“And then, unexpectedly, the old man got up and left,” Weigand said. “They all agree on that. One minute he was talking, or listening; the next minute he stood up, said, in effect, ‘Well, good night’ and went away. All of them say they haven’t the faintest idea why and admit they wondered at the time, since abruptness of that sort wasn’t the form his eccentricity usually took.”
“And he never said why he had arranged the party?” Pam said. “After—after going to all that trouble?”
The trouble Halder had gone to apparently amounted to sending a telegram to his wife, Bill Weigand told them. However—that was the way it had been. “The way they all agree it was,” he qualified.
“But look,” Pam said. “Somebody must have done something. Said something.”
Bill agreed that one would suppose so.
“But,” he said, “none of the others admits to having seen anything, or heard anything.”
“Admits,” Pam repeated.
“Admits is the word, of course,” Bill Weigand said.
“What was the matter with the telephone?” Jerry asked, and they all looked at him for a moment before Pam said: “Of course! What was? Temporarily disconnected, or something?”
“Oh, that,” Weigand said. “Why did Halder send his wife a telegram instead of telephoning her? Well, apparently he usually did. I suppose because it was more impersonal, avoided—lessened—contact. Anyway, he did. Mrs. Halder gave me the wire. Wait a minute.” He took a yellow Western Union form from his pocket and read aloud from it. “‘Please arrange all family to dinner seven Monday,’” he read. “‘J. K. Halder.’”
“Succinct,” Pam said, and Bill Weigand, putting the telegram back in his pocket, said, “Right.”
“And, of course, it proves Mr. Halder really did make the arrangement,” Pam said. “If somebody wanted to prove it. Only, of course, it doesn’t really, does it? Because usually they merely count and don’t even look up.”
There was the slight pause which was, Liza was beginning to realize, the customary tribute to Pam North’s syntax. And yet it was not difficult: the actuality of the telegram might be supposed to prove the validity of the arrangement; it need not because someone other than Mr. Halder might readily have sent it and signed Halder’s name; it would be difficult to identify the person, Halder or another, who had handed in the message, if it had been handed in, since Western Union clerks usually counted, without looking up at the sender, the words in a message. It wasn’t, Liza decided, really clearer phrased so; it was merely longer.
“Anyway, there’s always the telephone,” Liza heard herself saying. “To, I mean—”
“Of course,” Pam said. “Much more likely. Only, easier to trace, wouldn’t it be, Bill? A record so they could charge?”
“Right,” Bill said. “We’re checking. I think we’ll find Mr. Halder actually sent the wire. We may not.”
“Nobody admits knowing why?” Pam asked.
“Nobody,” Bill said. “After all, he may merely have wanted to see them about nothing in particular.”
They seemed to come to dead end. There was a pause.
“And nobody admits to knowing Sneddiger?” Jerry North was saying.
“Except Brian Halder,” Weigand said. “He met him once. As a matter of fact, he seems to have kept a little more in contact with his father than the others did. But Brian denies having seen Sneddiger for a couple of weeks. And the others say they never saw him before, although Mrs. Halder—Brian’s mother, I mean—admits she had heard of him.”
“They all—looked?” Pam said.
“Right,” Weigand said. “After Miss O’Brien made the identification they all—looked. All normally upset, so far as one could tell. Nobody more than that.”
“All the same,” Pam said, “one of them should have been.”
“Oh yes,” Weigand said. “Yes, I think so. It’s hard to see it any other way.”
6
Tuesday, 11:40 P.M. to Wednesday, 1:35 A.M.
Lieutenant Weigand drove Liza home, in a convertible Buick which looked like any other convertible Buick, except that there were red-lensed lights where fog lights might have been. During the short drive through comparatively uncrowded streets, Weigand did not talk of the murder. He asked how long she had known Dorian, how they had met, in the casual tones of acquaintanceship. “Dorian’s wonderful, she’s tops,” Liza said and, without taking his eyes from the way ahead, Bill Weigand smiled and said that sort of remark was one for which he had never found an answer. “Except,” he added, “‘Right,’ which never seems particularly responsive. I do agree, of course.”
“She put me on to this chance with the cat book,” Liza said. “With Mr. North. He said he likes the sketches, incidentally. Do you—do you suppose he does?”
“Of course,” Weigand said. “Otherwise he’d hardly have—also, I saw them. I like them myself. I even recognized the cats, you know. Whereas, in life, I’m constantly confusing Martini and Gin.”
“Oh, there’s lots of difference,” Liza told him. “The eyes, the expression, to say nothing of Gin’s being so much longer and having a tail like a whip.”
He could see it in the drawings, Weigand told her. That’s why he thought they were good. And, while he remembered it, here they were. He gave her the wrapped drawing pad as he stopped the car in front of the apartment building. He started to get out to open the door for her, but she had it open and smiled and
shook her head. “Good night,” she said, and Weigand said, “Good night. Take care of yourself.” She smiled and nodded and went into the building, carrying the package.
Weigand watched her for a moment and then put the Buick in gear. She’ll be all right, he decided, particularly as eyes were being kept on the others. He did, he thought, letting the clutch in, wish there were more eyes available. But he did not think anything would happen tonight. The pressure wasn’t on yet. He thought it wasn’t on.
Liza went up in the elevator, down the corridor to the door of her small apartment. She tried to keep her thoughts at the level they had reached in the car. There was no good brooding about it, hitting herself in the head with it. There was nothing she could do; there was—She opened the door and went in and flicked on the lights. Then she found that, anxiously, almost fearfully, she was looking around the little living room. But it was empty, as it should have been; undisturbed, as it should have been. So was the kitchenette in its closet; so the bedroom, into which she and a chest and a three-quarters bed fitted with such nice precision. She got herself a glass of milk from the refrigerator and sat down to drink it, pushing off her shoes. She unwrapped the pad and began to look at the drawings. They are good, she thought; pretty good, anyway. I can make them—
But she still had to make studies of ordinary cats—of grocery store cats, and drug store cats and cats with only back fences to their names—and of long-hairs, like the little black cat at the shop. Like Electra. (Electra, Aegisthus, Electra—she forced her mind away.) She hoped the little cat, all the animals, were being taken care of, being fed. She took a sip of milk. Particularly the tiny kittens Mr. Halder had shown her, because kittens, she thought, had to be fed—And then, in an odd way, she recognized her own thoughts and sat up suddenly. She hoped the animals were being fed. But were they?
For heaven’s sake, Liza, she told herself, what a thing to get upset about! Of course somebody’s feeding them. And the responsibility isn’t yours. The responsibility is—But she could not finish that, she found. Who had the responsibility? The police? She doubted it. The members of the Halder family, of course; in a sense the animals had, now, become their property. But with all this—with grief, fear, shock, whatever it was they felt, together and as individuals—which of them would remember a few very small kittens, a black, long-haired young cat with a pink mouth, a half-grown Siamese with a strident voice? And, actually, wouldn’t everybody just assume that the responsibility was that of someone else; wouldn’t everybody merely hope, idly, as she had hoped, that somebody else would remember? Whereas, Liza thought, uncomfortably, I have remembered.
It was five minutes before she gave up the compulsion which she considered, with all the logic she could summon, to be entirely ridiculous, and which was none the less compulsive. (Why, the little kittens might die! Just lie there in that funny little pile of kittens and starve to death. They might cry their funny, quavering little cries, and never understand—) Oh, for God’s sake, Liza told herself, go down and do it, then. If you’re going to be so utterly silly, keep yourself awake about a bunch of animals, probably fed hours ago at that, go down and see. Whereupon she put her shoes back on, put the empty glass which had held milk in the sink, and went down to look for a taxicab. She found one quickly, which was lucky or not, as you looked at it. She gave the cab driver a point of reference near West Kepp Street. You are a fool, she thought and leaned back in the cab and lighted a cigarette. And then she sat up again and repeated the accusation with increased vehemence. And, she thought, whatever makes you think you can get into the shop? Don’t you know it will be locked up?
She almost abandoned it then; almost told the cab driver to take her back to Murray Hill. But they had gone so rapidly through the almost traffic-free streets, were so clearly only a few blocks from her destination, that to go back seemed more foolish than to go on. After all, she thought, there probably will be a policeman guarding the place, and he will let me in when I tell him why. He can come in with me, to see—to see that it’s only for that.
The cab slowed and the driver looked around.
“The next corner’s all right,” she said.
“There was some trouble down here today,” he said. “Somebody got knocked off.”
“Did they?” she said. “This will do, thanks.”
It did. She left the cab, watched it drive away, walked another short block and turned into West Kepp Street. She could see to the crook in the middle of West Kepp, and for a distance beyond, before the angle cut the sight line. It was empty as far as she could see. But then—was it? Wasn’t that a man—or was it only a shadow?—in front of the shop, standing on the sidewalk, bent a little and seeming to peer in? Of course, Liza thought, there is a policeman; there would be. She went on, feeling that she had been right, after all, to come, because there was a policeman to let her in. She went more quickly, her heels clicking on the pavement.
But when she was nearer the shop, there was not really any man in front of it. There was a shadow, thrown by the standard of the street lamp, which might have seemed, from a distance, to be a man. There were other shadows in the inadequately lighted street; between the shop and the house next door there was, she now saw, a narrow area-way. She hesitated, momentarily, and went on, more slowly. It was to be a fool’s errand, after all.
But having come so far, so foolishly far, she might as well try the door, Liza thought. It would, of course, be locked; it was absurd to think it would not be. But it was even more absurd to come a couple of miles downtown to do something and to stop, in the last twenty feet—fifteen feet now; five, now—without even trying to do it. Liza O’Brien, small and quick (and inwardly very contemptuous of herself), went down the three steps to the shop level and tried the door. It opened at once.
This was so surprising, and at the same time so disquieting, that Liza stopped with the door only ajar and looked carefully into the shop. It was dimly lighted by a single bulb near the rear of the room and, at the instant, the animals were quiet. But then the cockers in the window barked together and then the room was full of sound, and this was cheering. What’s happened, actually (she thought), is that the policeman was standing in front of the shop, looking into it, and now for some reason has gone in, leaving the door unlocked behind him. Probably the policeman is in the rear room, in which Mr. Halder had lived—and might, if Lieutenant Weigand was right, have died. Perhaps the policeman has even—
But that thought died as she looked into the pen which held Electra. The little cat’s water bowl was empty and there was no sign of food; Electra looked up and, wistfully, hopefully, complained about this. The cockers, when Liza went to their pen, were less wistful, more emphatic, equally unprovided for. And the Siamese cat in the first of the pens arranged down the right wall spoke his grievance with harsh, almost jungle fury. “You poor things,” Liza O’Brien said, generally, to the occupants of the room and, on her way to the rear room, walked down the row of pens against the wall. None of the animals had been fed. The sick boxer was gone, so that now there were, one after another, three empty pens. Liza passed the last of these pens quickly, not looking at it.
The five tiny kittens got up as she stopped in front of them, got up out of their defensive pile, and wabbled to the front of the pen, and their complaints were tiny, worried squeaks. Liza squatted until her face was level with the faces of the kittens and said, “Now just wait. I’ll fix things.” One of the kittens made a tiny gesture toward her face with a forepaw, the fumbling suggestion of a cat’s quick jab. Unbalanced by the effort, the tiny cat fell down. Then it squeaked more loudly than the others.
The little kittens first, Liza decided, and went to the door leading to the back room and opened it. The room was unlighted; with the door open, some of what little light the larger room had to spare seeped into the back room. It was enough to help Liza find a wall switch and then the back room was brighter, gave back with interest the light it had borrowed from the shop. But the shop still was dim
.
The room was as she had seen it before, except that someone had opened the barred window. Liza found milk in the refrigerator, tasted it and found it sweet, warmed what she thought might be enough and put it in a flat dish she thought might do. This she carried in to the small kittens; around this they gathered, tails in the air, snuffling, getting milk in their noses, getting some—she hoped—into their stomachs. Then she filled a pitcher of water and, from it—as she had done those hours before while she waited for Brian, done then because it was something to do—filled the drinking vessels in the pens. Then she went back to the refrigerator, found meat for the cats, hoped the dogs would be content for the time with prepared food, filled pans with each and turned back toward the shop. She was busy, now; preoccupied with the task, thinking of nothing else. She stepped quickly into the shop room, stepped confidently; had stepped too far before she realized that the single bulb which had grudgingly illuminated the room had gone out.
She half turned to retreat, the movement involuntarily, too quickly, made for more than the beginning of fear to rise. But the movement was not completed. There was, with no warning, a great, numbing pain in the back of her head, a great swirling of darkness and she felt herself falling. As she fell she thought, dazedly, Why, I’ve fainted again! I’ve— Then the blackness surged over her thoughts.…
“Liza,” a voice said. It was a faint voice; it came from an immeasurable distance, whispered across stretching darkness. “Liza!” It was stronger, now. “Liza!”
She was lying on her back on the floor, on the hardness of the floor. But there was a pillow under her head. She moved, resenting the hardness, the discomfort. “Liza!” She opened her eyes; a face was near her own, looking down at her.
“Hello, Brian,” she said, and smiled. “Where did you—” Then she remembered, partly remembered, and tried to sit up. “Lie still,” Brian said. “You’re in the shop.”