by Frances
“Still snowballing,” Jerry told him now. “See the ad in the Times this morning?”
Three columns, page depth, the advertisement had been. And the book out almost two months. Jerry knew authors who would have embraced him.
“Mighty fine advertisement,” Byron Kingsley said. “You’re being pretty swell about the whole thing, sir. I hope it didn’t cost too much, Mr. North.”
Jerry North, who had thought Kingsley could no longer surprise him, steadied himself. He told Byron Kingsley not to worry about that. He said, “Look,” and showed him the most recent figures. Byron Kingsley looked at them, and said he certainly owed Mr. North a lot. Mr. North, mentally, pinched himself. He was awake, all right, although it hardly seemed possible. Byron Kingsley leaned forward and carefully put the sales sheets back in front of Mr. North. He said he hated to take up so much time but—
“I’d sort of like to ask your advice, sir,” Kingsley said. “Know I’ve been a lot of bother already to you and Mr. Barry. But—it’s about this Miss Towne. The one who got—”
“Miss Towne?” Jerry said.
“I read about it in the papers,” Kingsley said. “It’s a pretty terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “I don’t get—”
“They’d arranged I was going to be on her program,” Kingsley said. “Miss Feldman made the arrangements.”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “Well, it’s unfortunate. But they’ll fix something else up. I’ll ask Miss Feldman to come in and—”
“No,” Kingsley said. “I mean, whatever you say, sir. But it wasn’t so much about being on the program. You see, sir, I was there last night. Just before she got killed.”
“You were—” Jerry said, and paused. “You mean, at the hotel?”
“In her room,” Kingsley said. He looked at Jerry North, his expression compounded of anxiety and trust. “In her apartment, that is. She had what you call a suite. She—”
“You were there,” Jerry said, accepting it. “Why?”
It was, explained, simple enough. Earlier in the week, after the date for Byron Kingsley’s appearance on “People Next Door” had been set for Friday, Kingsley had been interviewed by a man from Miss Towne’s staff—a man named Gray. Tony Gray, that was it. Gray had asked a lot of stuff—about his early life, and where he went to school and how he happened to write Look Away, Stranger, and what the title meant. “All that sort of stuff,” Kingsley said. “Think he was going to write a book himself.”
Kingsley had assumed that that finished it—that, with what Tony Gray had got, they would have more than enough background to provide questions, and answers, on the ten or fifteen minutes of conversation he would have with Amanda Towne. But Gray, leaving, had said that Miss Towne might think of some more things she’d want to know about. He had said that Miss Towne was thorough about things like that.
“They called me up yesterday morning,” Kingsley told Jerry. “That is, Mr. Gray called me up and said, could I come around to Miss Towne’s apartment that evening, about six-thirty, he said, because there were one or two things Miss Towne wanted to know more about. I said I would, of course. Though I sure thought by that time they knew about all there was to know. About me, anyway.”
He had gone to Miss Towne’s suite, getting there at six-thirty, punctually, and ringing the doorbell, and being let in by Miss Towne herself. “Thought there’d be somebody else there, it being her hotel room and all,” Kingsley said. “But it was just Miss Towne. Mighty fine woman. Came from back home.” He looked at Jerry North for response.
“Did she?” Jerry said.
“Talked like people back home,” Byron Kingsley said. “Like I do, sir. Not so much, maybe, because she went away quite a bit ago. She was an older lady, of course. A little older. Mighty young looking, though.”
They had talked, Kingsley said, for perhaps forty-five minutes. It had seemed to him that they went over the same things he had gone over with Gray, but if that was what she wanted he sure wanted to help out. Because he appreciated what Miss Towne, along with everybody else, was doing for him.
At about a quarter after seven, Kingsley said, the telephone had rung and she had talked to somebody, and had looked at her watch and said, “All right, if you like. In about ten minutes?”
He had said he’d taken a lot of her time, and maybe he’d better be going, if she had an engagement—and told her, again, that he sure appreciated the time she was taking.
“She said I was going to be fine,” Kingsley said, “and to be at the studio early—one-thirty or about that, so they could see if I needed anything done to me. Makeup, I guess?”
“Probably,” Jerry said. “Told you to wear a blue shirt, probably.”
Kingsley looked at Jerry North with admiration, as one looks at the possessor of abstruse knowledge. That was just what Miss Towne had told him. And with that, he had left. At, he supposed, twenty minutes after seven, or thereabouts.
“And,” Jerry said, “she was expecting somebody in five or ten minutes. There? Or was she going out to meet someone?”
“I don’t know, Mr. North,” Kingsley said. “Could have been either way, I guess. What I wanted to ask you—you think I ought to tell somebody about being there? If she was killed—” (It sounded a little, but only a little, like “kilt.”) “I thought maybe I ought to, but then I thought, maybe it would be what they call bad publicity, and after all you and Mr. Barry have done … Anyway, I thought I better talk to you first.”
He looked at Jerry, again with anxiety.
“She was all right when I left,” he said. “You think they’d get the idea—?”
“No,” Jerry said, and hoped they wouldn’t, and wished, wholeheartedly, that “they” were anyone but Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley. “That’s absurd,” Jerry said, firmly.
“You know who I ought to go to, sir?” Kingsley said. “In the papers it sounded as if you and Mrs. North had been—that is, as if you knew about things like this.” He was circumspect.
Jerry looked at his big, gentle author, wondered momentarily where in him dwelt the knowledge, the sombre awareness of mankind’s troubled life, which were reflected in Look Away, Stranger. But he had wondered much the same about many authors, and found the speculation idle. They hid themselves, by intent or accident, behind many façades; they seldom looked, and often did not talk, like authors.
“Come on,” Jerry said. “I’d better go along.”
IV
Painters are devastating; Pam North, huddled in the kitchen with Martini and Martha, was devastated. They had not yet reached the kitchen; it was a brief and precarious haven. It was also crowded, the kitchen being small and Martha large. The door to the rest of the apartment was closed, but the sounds of painters permeated everything, like the smell of paint. They conversed in hoarse shouts; they banged; it was clear that, for reasons of their own, they were tearing the apartment wall from wall. At intervals there were sounds of objects falling, and undoubtedly breaking into fragments.
Pam knew, kept telling herself she knew, that chaos did not really swirl beyond the closed kitchen door. She knew that, in some strange fashion, this noisy turbulence was only apparent; that, in reality, a kind of order prevails among painters. And that there were, after all, only three of them, plus Mr. Prentori, who stood in the center of things and, presumably, conducted. There were not twenty painters; there were not even a dozen painters. They were not, actually, armed with axes. They had lifted the minor over the fireplace down in order that they might paint behind it. They had not chopped it down.
It is one thing to know; another to believe. Pam quivered inwardly.
“Now Mrs. North,” Martha said, “you just quiet yourself. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”
“Laudanum,” Pam said. “A nice cup of laudanum, well steeped.”
“Just quiet yourself,” Martha said.
“Ya—ow—oo!” Martini said, and threw up her breakfast.
A Miltown, Pam thought.
That was the thing. A Miltown, which she would share with Martini. “It’s all right, cat,” Pam said. “It won’t last forever.”
“Yah-ah!” Martini said, wanting another breakfast.
“She’ll just throw it up again,” Pam said, when Martha, to whom Martini had spoken, asked a question with her eyebrows. “Her stomach is jumping up and down. The same way mine—”
The telephone rang. Far away, dimly, the telephone rang.
“Telephone’s ringing, lady,” Mr. Prentori shouted, apparently toward someone in Central Park.
Pam went. The living room was as she had imagined it. The mirror was gone. It did not seem to be anywhere. Presumably Mr. Prentori’s men had thrown it out a window for safekeeping. The telephone rang again. Pam looked wildly around a room she had never seen before. In the center of the room there was a pile of something, with painty canvas over it. The telephone rang again, plaintively.
“Where is it?” Pam said, to Prentori. “Where on earth is the damn—the telephone?”
Prentori pointed. He pointed at the central mound, the painters’ midden. The trapped telephone, rang plaintively—a telephone buried alive.
“Here,” Prentori said, and pulled at the canvas. “Didn’t want to get it all full of—”
There were chairs and small tables piled on a larger table. There was a vase on the top of the smallest table. It teetered and Prentori caught it. The mirror was on its face under the large table, cowering. The telephone was nowhere—yes, there the telephone was. At the far end of the pile, under the end of a sofa.
It rang again—it was exceptionally patient, for a telephone. Pam dropped to her knees; she wriggled in. “Watch the mirror,” Prentori said, and she flattened herself and crept. Whoever it was would have—
She could just, by going half under the sofa, reach the telephone, get it out of its cradle. But she could not, for a moment, bring it to ear. From a distance, huskily, the telephone said, “Hello? Hello?”
Pam rolled over on her back, her head pillowed on the frame of the mirror. She got the telephone to her ear. She gasped into it.
“What?” a man’s voice said. “Is this—?”
“The North apartment,” Pam said. “This is—”
“Could I speak to Mr. North?” the man said. His voice remained husky; it sounded tired.
“Mister?” Pam said. “This is Missis. I’m afraid Mr. North—”
“—important I get in touch with him,” the man said. “Very important. Is this Mrs. North?”
“Flat on her back under a sofa,” Pam said.
“What?”
“Never mind. You wanted Mr. North? He’s at his office, I’m afraid. Wait till I go around to the other side.”
“I’m afraid—” the man said. “Is this the North apartment?”
“Wait!” Pam said, and wriggled out. Prentori looked down at her with pleased interest. “Oh,” Pam said, and pulled her skirt down. She got up, and went around the midden, and pulled the telephone out on the other side. She could sit, now—sit on the floor, but sit.
“Let’s start over,” Pam said. “Who is this?”
“Don’t know me,” the man said. “Name’s Barnes. It’s important I get in touch with Mr. North. He’s not at his office. They don’t seem to know where I can reach him.”
“Probably just gone to lunch,” Pam said, and looked at her watch. It was a quarter of twelve, which made her suggestion seem unlikely.
“Or if they know they aren’t saying,” the man said. “Or when he’ll be back. And I haven’t got much time.”
“Why?” Pam said. “What’s it all—”
“Got to get back,” the man said. “Can’t tell through the switch-board. Tip the whole thing. See what I mean?”
“No. How could I?” She paused. “I’m Mrs. North,” she said. “If there’s a message?”
He appeared to consider this.
“Guess not,” he said. “Pretty complicated. But—important. To him, as well. You’ve no idea?”
She had none.
“We’ve got painters,” she said, feeling that something should be somehow explained.
“Tough,” the man said. “Look—you’re his wife—”
“Of course,” Pam said.
“You can get in touch with him,” the man said, in his husky voice. “I can’t get away until about five. Come around there?”
“It’s full of painters,” Pam said. “Anyway—”
“All right,” he said. “Meet him somewhere. Bleeck’s? Bleeck’s all right? It’s damned important. If I’m right, it’ll blow the roof off.”
“The roof?” Pam said. It was the last thing she wanted. “You’ll have to tell me more than—”
“Not now,” he said. “Just tell him Barnes—Russ Barnes. And that it’s as important to him as—”
“—for the next three minutes, please,” the operator said.
“Barnes,” the man said. “Bleeck’s, around five. You’ll tell him?”
“Well—”
And then the telephone clicked at her, and died in her hand.
“Well!” Pam said, to the dead telephone, and got up. Of all things. Whoever this Mr. Barnes was—
She stood up and looked at nothing. Barnes? Hadn’t she heard, or read, something about a Barnes. In connection with—? Wasn’t there a Barnes somehow mixed up—?
Barnes. Russell Barnes. The husband Amanda Towne had been separated from. Something important—too important for the telephone. Something that—what had he said?—would “tip the whole thing.” (To say nothing of blowing the roof off.)
She retrieved the telephone. She dialed. She said, “Mr. North, please,” and then, “All right, Miss Whitsett then. This is Mrs. North.” Then she said, “Jane. I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. North. Is he out to lunch, do you think? Or—”
Jane Whitsett did not know. Mr. Kingsley had come in to see him, and Jane had gone off to her typewriter. Mr. North and Mr. Kingsley—even Jane Whitsett’s voice vibrated slightly when it formed magic syllables—had gone out together; gone past her. Jerry had said, “Back in an hour or so, Jane,” but not where he was going.
“You’ve no idea?”
“No. Wait—just when they got to the door, Mr. North said something about West Twentieth Street. To Mr. Kingsley. About—wait—‘have to go to West Twentieth.’ I’m pretty sure that was it.”
“Oh,” Pam said. “Oh!” She pulled herself together. She thanked Jane Whitsett. She hung up.
“If it hadn’t been for the painters,” Pam explained afterward. “Or if I’d really taken Miltown or something, except that we haven’t got any. Or if Teeney hadn’t thrown up her breakfast, which always upsets me more than it does her. I was just—well, sort of frantic. Not myself, really.”
“Of course not,” Jerry said to that. Not that he was too sure. It was possible that, in reacting as she had, Pam had been very much herself. “I realize how you felt.”
How, at that moment, she did feel was full of turmoil, of outrage. That Inspector O’Malley. That impossible man! To drag Jerry—Jerry the lamb—down there. As if he—he of all people—could have anything to do with—As if they hadn’t already told everything they knew, as anybody with half a mind—a quarter of a mind—would have known just by—
“You’ll have to do something else for a minute,” Pam said to the painter in her bedroom. He was scraping plaster off the wall, onto the floor—onto everything—for reasons of his own. He was a small man on a ladder; he looked at her mildly. “While I get dressed,” Pam said. He looked at her. Far as he could tell, she was dressed. Hard to tell what women meant by what they said. He came down the ladder and said, “All right, lady,” mildly, and went out.
Pam changed quickly, in an atmosphere of plaster dust. In suit and stole—a pleasant by-product of death and decay in the Deep South—she went. “Two-thirty West Twentieth,” she told a cab driver, that being the headquarters of the tenth precinct, and of the Homicide Squad, Manhattan West—that
being, obviously, the place they had taken Jerry.
“—about twenty minutes before seven,” Sergeant Stein said. “That’s right, Mr. Kingsley?”
It was right.
“And she made an engagement, on the telephone, while you were there. For, say, about seven-thirty? Either there or somewhere else?”
That, too, was right.
“Probably there,” Stein said. “Since she didn’t allow herself time to go far. She didn’t seem excited? Worried? Anything like that?”
“No sir,” Byron Kingsley said. “I’m sure she didn’t.”
They, and Jerry North, were in a small and borrowed office, since in the squad room Sergeant Stein had only a desk among several desks.
Inspector O’Malley had not been at West Twentieth Street. He had gone downtown to Headquarters; he was expected to stop by Homicide West on his way to his office in the Fifties. This was all right with Jerry North; that was more than all right. Stein was a man one could talk to; a man who would listen.
“When she talked on the telephone,” Stein said. “Did you get any impression, Mr. Kingsley? It’s hard to be specific, of course, but—I mean did you feel she was talking to an old friend or, say, a business associate? To a man or to a woman?”
He smiled at Kingsley.
“Sort of thing a man like you might notice,” he said. “At least, I’d think so. Part of your—” He paused and smiled again. “Trade, call it, to notice things like that.”
“She was businesslike,” Kingsley said. “So—not an old friend. I’m guessing. I—wait a minute. Let me think.”
He put a fine, long-fingered hand to his jaw; rubbed his chin reflectively. (And looked, Jerry thought, rather like Rodin’s “Thinker,” if with more clothes on.) “Something seems just out of reach,” Kingsley said. “Something I almost remember.”