The Long Skeleton

by Frances

  “Take your time,” Stein said.

  “‘All right, if you like,’” Kingsley quoted. “‘In about ten minutes’—and then, something else. “Like a name—I wasn’t trying to listen. I was trying not to listen. You know? And she turned away, to put the telephone back.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes a little narrowed. “Trying to remember,” he said, and that seemed obvious to Jerry, to Sergeant Stein. “Wait,” Kingsley said. “‘Judd’? Could it have been ‘Judd’?”

  “Or,” Stein said, as Kingsley looked at him, questioningly. “Or—judge?”

  Then Kingsley nodded slowly.

  “I can’t swear to it,” he said. “It could have been that.”

  “—instead of doing what you’re paid to do.” A clear voice, a high, excited voice, came from squad room, through door, into borrowed office. “Bullying people. Badgering people. Hauling people who’ve told you everything—and some things you didn’t think to ask, too—down here at all hours of the day or night and—”

  Stein looked at Jerry North. “Yes,” Jerry said, “there’s no doubt of it, sergeant. It’s—”

  “Wait a minute,” a heavy voice, and a louder voice—and a voice full of excited rage—answered the other. With this voice, the door between seemed to tremble slightly. “Just wait a minute! What I do, young woman—”

  “Don’t call me that. As if I were—”

  “Yes,” Stein said. “Well—”

  Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley had come from a conference at Headquarters; a conference which had been unexpectedly agreeable. He had decided to stop by the squad headquarters to see how things went, in the matter of Amanda Towne and other matters. He had been, for a choleric man, in an unusually relaxed mood. He had encountered Mrs. North in the squad room. And Mrs. North was unrelaxed.

  It had taken Inspector O’Malley several minutes to discover precisely what it was he had done which he was not supposed to do, and during those minutes his relaxation had ebbed. It had, indeed, not so much ebbed as rushed away, as if it had been held by a dam and the dam had collapsed.

  He towered above Mrs. North; his rambling voice dominated hers. (Which, after seconds, was one of the reasons he did not really understand what this was all about.) Another reason, of course, was that he had no idea whatever that Jerry North was in the office. He had told Mrs. North that.

  “He’s not here,” he told her. “And if I do want him, I’ll damn well send for him. You understand that?”

  “Incommunicado,” Pam North said. “You think I don’t know? And if you’re using lights, and rubber hoses, we’ll make you—”

  “Listen!” O’Malley yelled at that point. “If you think you and that husband of yours are immune to—”

  “So you are!” Pam said. “Third degreeing. Because you don’t know how to—”

  Jerry took two quick strides to the door, and opened it, and said, “Wait a minute, Pam!”

  “If you think for one minute—” Pam North said. “Jerry! What have they been doing to you? If this big Cossack has—”

  “And what the hell,” Inspector O’Malley said, “are you doing here anyway? Who sent for you?”

  “Nobody,” Jerry said. “And quit yelling at my wife, will you?”

  “I’ll yell at anybody I—” O’Malley said, and stopped, and took a deep breath. “Well, Mrs. North,” he said, “see any bruises on him?”

  “Having the nerve,” Pam told him, “to deny he was here. When all the time—”

  Stein appeared at the door.

  “Stein!” O’Malley said, in a great voice, “did you bring these people here? Did you?” He paused momentarily. “I just want to know,” he added, in a voice of jagged iron. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “And,” Pam said, “don’t shout at Sergeant Stein, either.”

  O’Malley clutched his head.

  “You two,” he said, “get—who might you be?” This was to Byron Kingsley, who appeared behind Stein, who, on being spoken to said, “Well, sir, I—” in the mildest of voices.

  Stein took his life—and he suspected his sergeancy—in his hand.

  “This is Mr. Kingsley, inspector,” he said. “An author who—”

  “Author?” O’Malley said. “Author? You mean one of these guys who writes?”

  “Yes,” Stein said, quickly, to get that out of the way, to sweep it under a rug. “Mr. Kingsley had some information to give us. Very interesting information. Mr. North was kind enough to bring him along and—”

  “Kind enough,” O’Malley said. “Kind enough!”

  “Well—”

  “All right,” O’Malley said. “You’ve got this—interesting information? Written down and signed?”

  “Well,” Stein said, “it’s being typed.”

  “These—” O’Malley said, “these Norths? You need them any more?”

  Stein shook his head.

  “Then—” O’Malley said, and looked at Jerry North. He looked, also, more briefly, at Pamela North. He looked away.

  “We were just going,” Jerry said, and they went.

  Fifteen minutes later, having duly signed—and thanked them all around, and hoped he had helped—Byron Kingsley went too. And then O’Malley came out of the office, which he had preempted, in which he had sought refuge, and said, “Come here, Stein.”

  Stein went there. O’Malley sat at the desk. He was eating a cigar.

  “I’m sorry if—” Stein said.

  “All right,” O’Malley said. “O.K. Keep me filled in after this, but O.K. Weigand’s in Washington?”

  “With those fibers,” Stein said. “Waiting for the FBI to run them through the—”

  “I know,” O’Malley said. “Sent him there, didn’t I?”

  It was a moot point. Stein did not raise it. He nodded.

  “What I want,” O’Malley said, “is you to go down there and do the waiting. Get it? And wire Weigand to get the hell back here. Tell him—” O’Malley paused. “Tell him his friends are lousing things up again. Tell him to get the lead out.”

  “Yes sir,” Stein said.

  “Tell him to fly,” O’Malley said, and ate half an inch of cigar.

  V

  Both Norths reached Bleeck’s, in West Fortieth Street, at a little before five. Pam went along because, as she pointed out, there was no place to sit down in the apartment, and because what Russell Barnes might have to say—if he was the husband of the late Amanda Towne; if what he had to say was connected with her death—concerned her as much as it did Jerry. “Suspects together,” she explained. “Divided we fall. Also, I’ve no intention of letting you out of my sight, with that O’Malley around.”

  And this was quite unnecessary, since Jerry had all along assumed that she would go with him. They went past the bar, and Jerry nodded to an author of his who was clinging to it, and into the dark and pleasant, and then not heavily populated, inner room. They found a table and, since one does not sit empty-handed in a restaurant, drinks. They sipped, and watched the entrance to the inner room. There was, Jerry pointed out, only one trouble with it—they had no idea at all what Russell Barnes would look like, when he came.

  “A newspaperman,” Pam said. “A copyreader.”

  That was probable, Jerry agreed. If all newspapermen, subspecies copyreader, had a special way of looking, it could be assumed that Barnes would have it. But Jerry had no conviction that there were such special stigmata. And, in addition, a great many of the patrons of the Artists and Writers Restaurant, which is seldom called that, are workers on newspapers.

  “He’ll know us,” Pam said. “Because our pictures were in the papers, except not very good ones, of course. But all we have to do is to look expectant. When the right kind comes in, by himself, we’ll look expectant. That will do it.”

  The right kind began to come in, although most often not singly, at a little after five. The Norths sat and looked expectant, and sipped. When, at a quarter after five, they had sipped to bottoms of glasses, th
ey ordered more. They continued to look expectant.

  They turned expectancy on a heavy-set man in his middle years—Russell Barnes might be expected to be in them—who stopped in the passage between bar and inner room and looked around, in search of someone. He looked at them. Pam’s expectancy brightened to a glow. He shook his head and turned and went back to the bar.

  “It’s possible,” Jerry said, “that you’re carrying it a bit too far. I’d rather not know what he thought.”

  “I’ve got to do it for both of us,” Pam said. “You don’t look expectant at all. Just sort of dazed. There’s another. You do it, if you don’t want me to.”

  Jerry looked, or hoped he looked as expectant as possible. The new one looked around the room, smiled and raised a hand and came toward them. Jerry moved forward in his chair, preparatory to getting up. The new one went past their table, his smile increasing, and joined the friends he had come to join.

  “Ask somebody,” Pam said, at five-thirty.

  “Well,” Jerry said, with doubt, but he went to the bar and asked the bartender. The bartender knew Russell Barnes. Barnes had not been in. Sure, when he came, he’d tell him where the Norths were.

  “Hi, Jerry,” the clinging author said. “What d’ja know?”

  “Hi,” Jerry said. “That your delivery date on the new one was two weeks ago yesterday.”

  “What you need,” the author told him, “is a drink. That’s what you need, boy. Give my friends here a—”

  “No,” Jerry said. “Thanks. Two weeks ago yesterday.”

  “What it is,” the author said, “you think I’m just here pouring it down. And all the time, ’way down there, my subconscious is writing its head off.”

  “Fine,” Jerry said. “Tell your subconscious what week it is, Charlie.”

  “You’re a fine one,” the author said, without animus, and pushed his glass across the bar. Jerry went back to Pam. He shook his head. It was twenty of six.

  “Newspapermen,” Pam said, “have no sense of time. It’s notorious.”

  They work to most exact times, Jerry pointed out. Their trade is one of timing.

  “When they’re not working, then,” Pam said. “That must be him. Look expectant.”

  They looked expectant for a gray-haired man in his sixties. He looked at them thoughtfully; he came to their table. “Thought I knew you,” he said. “Never forget a face. How’ve you been, Braithwaite?”

  “Sorry,” Jerry said. “Not Braithwaite. North.”

  “Sorry myself,” the gray-haired man said. “Maybe it’s names I never forget. Thought you were Braithwaite. Looked like you knew me, too.”

  “Sorry,” Jerry said.

  “Perfectly all right,” the gray-haired man said. “Can’t all be Braithwaites, can we?”

  “It’s nice to have that settled,” Pam said, as the gray-haired man smiled cordially and left them. “Do you suppose he isn’t coming?”

  It had, now at almost six, begun to look as if Russell Barnes were not coming.

  “But,” Pam said, “he made it sound so urgent. Of course, my being under the sofa and everything—”

  Jerry looked at her. He shook his head.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “when you think it’s going to stop ringing before you get to it, you know it’s urgent. Because afterward, if you don’t, you’ll be sure it was. So, if you do, you assume it is urgent. It’s perfectly clear, really.”

  Jerry ran a hand through his hair. Their waiter, misinterpreting the gesture, said, “Yes sir,” and went off to the service bar.

  “Probably all it was,” Pam said, “is that Mr. Barnes has a manuscript. Jerry!”

  Jerry North jumped slightly.

  “There!” Pam said, and pointed.

  A lean man of medium height stood in the passageway between bar and room.

  “Bill!” Pam said, and her voice carried. But he had seen them already, was smiling already and coming toward them.

  He said, “Right, Pam,” and sat down.

  “You,” Jerry told Captain William Weigand of Homicide, Manhattan West, “are supposed to be out of town. On another case.”

  “Right,” Bill said. The waiter brought two martinis. “Thanks,” Bill Weigand said, and took one of them. “What I call service.” Jerry held up a finger to the waiter, who said, “Yes sir,” and went.

  “Very good,” Bill said, after sipping. “I was. I was called back. It seems the inspector—”

  “He,” Pam said, “has been very hard to get along with, Bill.”

  Bill Weigand grinned at her. He said he had gathered that—from Inspector O’Malley.

  “We couldn’t have been more co-operative,” Pam told him, with a semblance of indignation.

  “Your helpful selves,” Bill said. “I know. The inspector found that he lacked time to give his full attention to the Towne case. Continue to supervise, of course.”

  “In other words,” Jerry said, “he told you it was your baby. Did he say, ‘It’s a screwy one. Those Norths—’?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “In effect. You do seem to find rather more than your share of bodies, don’t you?”

  “It’s not because we look,” Pam said. “People just seem to—well, leave them around. Where we are—”

  She stopped.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s odd, a little. How did you know we were here? Waiting for a man who hasn’t come?”

  “I told Miss Whitsett,” Jerry said. “In case something came up. Like O’Malley, for example.”

  “This man—” Bill began.

  “Miss Towne’s husband,” Pam said. “He had something very important to tell Jerry. Only—well, it’s after six. And five was when he said, unless, because I was more or less under the sofa—”

  “Wait, Pam,” Bill said. “One thing at a time.”

  “Beginning with the sofa?”

  “Any place,” Bill said. “We’ll put it in order later.”

  When she wishes, Pam can be as succinct as any, and clearer than most. Now she was both.

  “You assumed,” Bill said when she had finished, “that he wanted to get in touch with Jerry, as he put it, about Miss Towne’s murder?”

  “Wouldn’t you? What else? I did think it might be only about a manuscript, but not really.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “I would. But—why with Jerry? If he knows something, and wants to help, why not us? The police?”

  Pam shook her head.

  “He kept saying it was important to Jerry, too,” she said. “As if—” She shook her head again.

  It was conceivable, Bill thought, that Mr. Barnes might think he had something to sell the Norths. It was conceivable, but not likely. Unless—

  “I suppose,” he said gravely, “that Mr. Barnes didn’t see you—er uh—smother Miss Towne? Want to be paid off.”

  “All right, inspector,” Jerry said. “We’ll go noisily.”

  Pam merely said that this was serious.

  “Or,” Bill said, “he might know something that would clear you. Might have seen you having dinner, sat behind you in this movie you say you went to.”

  “Went to,” Pam said. “As you perfectly well know, if we say we did. Anyway, nobody really thinks we had anything to do with it. Not even O’Malley. You know that.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Not even the inspector. But all the same—important to Jerry. Something that would blow the roof off. As if—” He considered. “He thought finding out who killed Miss Towne would have some special interest for you two. Be of some special advantage to you. I suppose—”

  He finished his drink. He said there was no sense sitting there supposing. He said he would be back, and went to a telephone. Pam spent the few minutes of his absence looking expectant, but nothing came of it, as she had not supposed anything would. Bill came back.

  “Not at the paper,” he said. “Nobody much is, now, since it’s a p.m. Somebody’s dropping around to his apartment.”

  “Mullins?” />
  “Mullins,” Bill told her, “is familiarizing himself with the case. For both of us, as it happens.”

  “This judge,” Jerry said. “The one she may have made the appointment with, if Kingsley heard her right. You know about that?”

  Bill did. And former Judge Roger Parkman did, of course, leap to the mind. Former Judge Parkman would be given an opportunity to deny he had been talked to. Judge Parkman was already up to his lips in denials. One or two more would be child’s play. All the same—

  “It’s pretty tenuous,” Bill said. “Looks that way at the moment, anyhow. What damage there was was done. Killing wouldn’t undo it. All he can do is to deny that what he said meant what it sounded like.”

  “Off the record,” Jerry said, “did it? Mean what it sounded like meaning?”

  “I don’t know Judge Parkman,” Bill said. “From what I hear—his subconscious probably sprang a leak.”

  “Or,” Pam said, “was punctured.” They looked at her. “By Miss Towne, of course,” Pam said.

  That was possible; almost anything was possible. What Bill wanted now was everything they could remember that might touch on Amanda Towne’s murder, from the time they checked into the hotel until the police arrived. He knew they had been over it before.

  “Over and over,” Pam said. “The inspector doesn’t absorb very well. However—”

  They went over it together, pieced it together; again told everything, not forgetting Martini’s pan of shredded newspapers, and her denial of access of it. They gave their theory as to how someone—Amanda Towne or her murderer—might have slipped into the suite while the maid was turning down beds in the other room, and hidden in the bathroom until the maid had gone out.

  Bill Weigand said, “H-mm” to that, a little doubtfully. It would have been, he thought, taking a chance. Suppose the maid had returned to the bathroom.

  “Well—” Pam said.

  “Merely,” Jerry said, “have pretended to be the one the suite belonged to. The maid wouldn’t have known. He—or she—wouldn’t even have had to use a name. In this case, our name.”

  Bill supposed so. It was unclear. Apparently, Amanda Towne had been killed in the North suite. Witness the lipstick smear on the pillow slip. It was, incidentally, definitely lipstick; it was of brand and color Amanda Towne had used.