The Long Skeleton

by Frances

  She looked at him; her eyes asked if he was sure he needed another martini.

  “Oh,” Jerry said, “that murder,” and spoke as if there were many to choose from. “What about it?”

  “Only,” Pam said, “I don’t see how this scheme you’ve ferreted out—and it was clever of you, dear—ties in with killing poor Miss Towne.”

  “There’s no use kidding ourselves,” Jerry said. “Probably there wasn’t any scheme. Why does it have to tie in with murder, anyway? Except of North Books, Inc.?”

  “Neater,” Pam said. “When things come up at the same time, it’s much neater if they are tied together. Of course, the world isn’t very neat, for the most part. Still—”

  The drinks came. They looked at them despondently. Jerry reached for his and Pam said, “Wait.” He waited.

  “It could be,” Pam said, “that Miss Towne found out about this scheme somehow. Because of something in the past. Or merely from recognizing that “Carl Connington” was really Carl Cunningham. It could be that she was going to bring it up in the interview with Kingsley. And that she was killed so she wouldn’t.”

  It was Jerry’s turn to say “h-mmm.” He said it. Then he said that the trouble with that was obvious. If there had been a scheme concocted by Kingsley and Cunningham, circumstances had made it unprofitable. As Pam herself had just pointed out. With this said, he sipped, unhappily.

  “I suppose so,” Pam said, but then, once again, said, “Wait, Jerry.” He put his drink down and waited.

  “Something we haven’t thought of,” Pam said. “Suppose she had found out. Was going to—well, trick Mr. Kingsley into admitting it on the air. Don’t you see? Then Mr. Cunningham would have to sue. Or admit that he was “Connington,” and had done whatever “Connington” was supposed to have done. What was it, by the way? I never did get it clear.”

  “Murder,” Jerry said. “At least, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Then,” Pam said, “he couldn’t not sue. But if he did, and won—he would win?”

  Jerry didn’t see how he could fail to win, if the Cunningham they had been told about was an actual person, and “Connington” his image in fiction’s mirror.

  “And if he won,” Pam said, “they would lose heaven knows how much. A lot more than they could actually get out of you, because—”

  “I know,” Jerry said. “Because it’s a lot more than we’ve got. And—killed Miss Towne because she could have put them in a position where Cunningham had to sue? And Barnes because he made the same identification? Or, she’d told him about it and what she planned to do. You know, Pam—”

  “See how much neater it is?” Pam said, pleased.

  Which brought Jerry down again—down from the pleasures of abstract logic to the jagged rock of fact. All they really knew was that a man named Carl Cunningham had almost certainly been libeled, and flagrantly, in a novel published by North Books, Inc., and would have the recourse the law permits. In other words, bankruptcy.

  “It’s very neat, Pam,” Jerry said. “Maybe we can get a settlement out of court. One that will let us keep our cat.”

  She patted his hand. She said she’d like to see anybody try to get their cat. She said that, anyway, it would be something to take up with Bill that evening.

  Jerry raised eyebrows.

  “Don’t you remember?” Pam said. “It’s their Saturday.”

  It was late afternoon before they found out where Carl Cunningham had gone after he checked out of his hotel in the early morning.

  By that time, they had found out, by slow and methodical work, that Judge Roger Parkman had had dinner on Wednesday evening with a blonde. At least, they had found a blonde who said he had, and seemed to have no special reason to lie about it (although about that nobody could be sure) and fixed times which, if accurate, proved Judge Parkman no murderer of, at any rate, Amanda Towne. His whereabouts at the time of the murder of Russell Barnes was still not established.

  They had found out that the late Russell Barnes had made a telephone call on Thursday from a lunchroom where he was known—because he went there five days a week, and always early—and the estimated time of this call coincided with the call Pam North had answered while under a sofa.

  A Mr. Lovelace had reached his home in Galveston that morning, having tarried on business, and had turned in his key to the suite subsequently occupied by the Norths at the Hotel Breckenridge when he checked out. And had certainly not had it copied while in his possession and what the hell was it all about? By that time, it was about nothing of interest.

  Alice Fleming had cheerfully made Amanda Towne’s financial records available to the police, and Orson Bart, Amanda’s agent, had made his records, in so far as they concerned Amanda, available too, although not as cheerfully. But he was not, generally, in a cheerful mood, having just lost ten per cent of a lot. James Fergus had done his usual news broadcast on both Wednesday and Thursday evenings and had, as usual, gone out for a drink or two after each. He might have killed Amanda before his newscast and Barnes after it.

  Nothing had been found out about the present whereabouts of Byron Kingsley or about the friends with whom he had gone to wherever he had gone. Bill Weigand, sitting in his office in West Twentieth Street, waiting a break, waiting a hunch, had hardly supposed there would be—not yet. Nor did he suppose that Byron Kingsley, a man suddenly famous, much photographed, distinctive in appearance, would long be missing.… Amanda Towne’s brother had flown in from Seattle, and had said he had no idea who inherited Amanda’s money and that he didn’t, furthermore, give much of a damn and would they please leave him alone?… The State police of Arkansas were, as requested, trying to find out anything there was to be found out about one Carl Cunningham, and had so far discovered only that his resignation from the periphery of the State University faculty had been quite voluntary.

  In short, the files grew—a monument heaped patiently over murder.

  It was after five when the report came, by telephone (to be followed, in due course, by the stipulated report on the form prescribed), that a man giving the name Carl Cunningham had been a passenger on that day’s 8:40 A.M flight of American Airlines to Little Rock, Arkansas. His name had not been on the original passenger list. He had gone to the airport on the chance, and picked up a “no show.” (The “no show” had been one Arthur Knight.) The plane had some time since set down in Little Rock and the crew had scattered. So, at the moment, no further identification was possible. The “Carl Cunningham” of Flight 115 might well not be their Carl Cunningham. Nothing could be taken for granted.

  Captain William Weigand is aware of this rule of police work, and in agreement with it. It is nevertheless often necessary to take certain things for granted, provisionally. He took for granted that Cunningham, their Cunningham, had returned to Little Rock. He notified the Little Rock police and the State police of Arkansas, asking open eyes.

  Then he went home.…

  “It doesn’t sound as good now as it did when I first thought of it,” Jerry North said, at a little after nine o’clock. They sat in the Weigands’ living room and drank coffee, with the lights low in the room and the curtains drawn back on the big window which faced the river. The weather had worsened; an east wind drove a misty rain against the window, and the lights outside were blurred in the rain, seemed to flicker through the rain-washed glass. In the channel, vessels moved slowly, unhappily, and sounded sad horns.

  Jerry, aided at intervals by Pam, had advanced his theory of collusion between Cunningham and Kingsley. Jerry had progressively lost faith in his theory as he advanced it.

  “It sounds fine,” Pam said, while Bill still looked thoughtfully at Jerry North and Dorian held her chin in a cupped hand and looked at him too. “Very ingenious.”

  No more than that, Jerry was afraid, and said so. An invention—not impossible, not even implausible. Merely a little too intricate, a little too devious, for life. But at that, Bill Weigand shook his head.

  “We come acr
oss some honeys,” he said. “A good deal more complicated than yours. It could have happened that way.”

  “Too neat,” Jerry said, arguing now against himself.

  “I don’t,” Bill said, “say it happened that way. But—” He paused, drank coffee, put his cup down.

  “I think,” Dorian said, “that it’s like the shadow of what really happened. Distorted, somehow. Or, a picture made by a cloud. The picture is half in the mind. But the cloud is there.”

  “You think in shapes,” Bill told her.

  “Of course,” she said. “How else? In shapes, and colors.”

  “All right,” Pam said, “what is it a shadow of, then? A distortion of?”

  “It’s no good,” Jerry said. “As a matter of fact, we don’t know that Cunningham comes into it at all. Into murder. Into my bank account, yes. God yes. But—”

  He stopped, because Bill Weigand shook his head at him. Bill said they knew—at least could strongly believe—that Carl Cunningham came into at least part of it, and that that part of it included Amanda Towne. Which was not to say that it included the death of Amanda Towne.

  “You see,” Bill told them, “Cunningham obviously entered her mind while her interview with Kingsley was pending. She asked people in Arkansas to find out about both of them, coupled them.”

  “She might,” Pam said, “only have had Arkansas brought into her mind. Because Kingsley comes from there. And then thought, ‘I wonder what ever happened to poor old Carl, who’s down there some place.’ And killed two birds with one stone.”

  Bill doubted it. He thought the connection more direct. He thought the connection came from the book.

  “I—” he said, and then said, “Wait a minute.” He went to the telephone, and talked and waited and talked again, and waited again. Finally he said, “Gray? Weigand,” and listened, and said he was sorry and that what he had to ask would only take a minute.

  “You said you read Look Away, Stranger,” Bill said. “And marked certain sections for Miss Towne to read. Because she wouldn’t have time to read the whole book, and would need to show some familiarity with it. Do you remember what you marked?”

  He said, “Oh, I don’t expect page for page. Generally.” As he listened once more, he held his fingers in the air and rubbed tips together. Dorian flowed out of her chair, found a pencil, and flowed back into it. Bill made notes on the telephone pad. Finally, he said, “Thanks,” and then, “Right. If it turns out to be needed,” and hung up.

  “I’m sorry,” Dorian said. “I was doing a double crostic. I forgot to put it back.”

  Bill grinned at her. He consulted his notes. He reported.

  Tony Gray, in the course of preparing Amanda Towne for her interview, had read—at any rate, had skimmed—Look Away, Stranger. He had marked certain passages he thought would, in the time she had for reading, give Amanda the “general feel” of the book. One of the passages evidently, although Gray could not precisely remember the pages covered, had been the foggy description of “Carl Connington” in his swamp (or mountain?) cabin, haunted by demons of the past (or future?). There had been several other passages, later in the book. At least one of them had, also, been concerned with “Connington.”

  “We’re safe,” Bill said, “in thinking that it was the book which brought Cunningham to Miss Towne’s mind, prompted her enquiries about him. Connected him with Kingsley, so they were coupled in her mind.”

  “Recognized him in the book,” Bill Weigand repeated. “Yes, it could have been that.” He nodded slowly. “It could have been that,” he said again.

  “And got killed,” Pam said, “just as Jerry thought. Because if she let the cat out of the bag, Mr. Cunningham would have to sue.” She paused. “Or was I the one who put that in?” she asked, of anybody who had an answer.

  “You did, I think,” Jerry said. “It’s sometimes hard to tell.”

  Pam agreed with that. “Sometimes,” she said, “we act like a mosaic.” She considered. “I mean,” she said, “where does one of us end off and the other begin? It’s very nice, really.”

  There was a brief silence of agreement. Then Bill said that, if they settled on Cunningham, there was a simpler explanation, and one which did not so immediately involve Byron Kingsley.

  “It’s possible,” Bill said, “that something in what she read tipped Miss Towne off to something else. Gave significance to something she remembered. Perhaps proved something to her that it wouldn’t have proved to anyone else. About Cunningham.”

  “What?” Jerry said, and, with something like excitement in his voice, answered himself. “That he was a murderer,” Jerry said. “In real life, as in the book. Wait—in Chicago. In the old days. Is that what you mean?”

  “It could have been that,” Bill said. But there was something in the tone of his voice.

  “You don’t think it was that,” Pam said, as a statement.

  Bill smiled faintly. He said she jumped. As she so often jumped. He did not say it wasn’t that.

  “Your voice did,” Pam told him.

  He shook his head. He said, if that was true, his voice spoke out of turn. He did not reject murder to cover murder—murder uncovered, by some association in a woman’s mind; murder to be covered up again.

  “Only,” he said, “there could be something even simpler. It rather leaps into the mind.”

  He looked at his wife, at Pam and Jerry North. There was nothing in their faces to indicate their minds had been leaped into.

  “I guess it doesn’t,” he said. “Well—” He shrugged slightly, as if in dismissal of a fancy. He spoke in a different tone. He asked Jerry whether he had heard anything of Byron Kingsley’s whereabouts.

  “No, damn it,” Jerry said.

  “Nor we,” Bill said.

  “I do hope,” Pam said, “that nothing’s happened to him.” She looked at Jerry. “All right,” she said, “even now.”

  She stretched the maternal instinct far, Jerry told her.

  It was an hour later that the telephone rang. They had got no further; they had even drifted to other matters. International politics had momentarily diverted Jerry’s mind from impending bankruptcy—personal bankruptcy, in any case. “No!” Dorian said, of the telephone. “Oh—no.”

  “Yes,” Bill said, into the telephone. “Right. Put him on.” There was a long pause. “Hello, sergeant,” Bill said then, and the others sat silent, heard an indistinguishable scratching of words from the receiver. “The hell you say,” Bill said, and, after a time, “No, I didn’t.” He listened again, briefly, to the scratching sound. “No,” he said. “Not enough to go on.” Again he listened. He said he appreciated that; said they would have to take a chance on that. He said, after listening again, “Thanks. It may come to that,” and then replaced the receiver.

  He looked at the others for a moment, and there was a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” Dorian said. “Is that it, Bill?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “Something I didn’t expect, I’ll admit. Cunningham seems to have shown up. In Arkansas. At the cabin up in the hills. At least—”

  At least, there was a light in the cabin, and smoke was rising from its chimney. The Arkansas State police had been keeping a general eye on the place, on request. It appeared that Cunningham had returned from his wanderings. Presuming it was he and, although he had not actually been seen, it could be presumed it was.

  “Not a tramp?” Jerry said. “Somebody holing up for the night?”

  Bill shook his head. There was more than that. The day before a letter had come for Cunningham, and that day another. He had not called for his mail, but it was evident that he had let somebody know in advance of his return.

  “Why,” Pam asked, “don’t the police go up to the cabin and say, ‘Mr. Cunningham, I presume?’”

  “Because I asked them not to,” Bill said. “We’ve nothing to hold him on, obviously. The police might—annoy him. Lead him to take off agai
n. I don’t want that.”

  “Bill,” Dorian said, “don’t tell me that—”

  “I’m afraid so,” Bill said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take a little trip. The inspector disposing.”

  They looked at him.

  “Because,” Bill said, “he oughtn’t to be there. In fact—he oughtn’t to be anywhere.”

  XII

  The cab had taken them almost home when Jerry broke a long silence to announce that he thought he, also, would take a little trip—the same trip Bill Weigand planned to take. There was, he said, no use sitting around worrying. He might as well see Carl Cunningham and find out. See Cunningham and, if necessary, grovel. It could do no harm.

  “Phil wouldn’t agree,” Pam said.

  Jerry supposed not. Phil viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm the tendency of clients to rush into things without their hands in his. It was by such precipitate action clients got themselves into the troubles they expected Phil to get them out of. There was no use in having a lawyer if—

  Jerry agreed. He had often said he agreed. But all the same, he was going to fly out—fly out on the morning plane Bill was taking, if he could get a seat—and ask Cunningham what he had in mind doing. Sometimes the personal approach helped; if Cunningham realized that North Books, Inc., was very, very sorry about everything, and most, most anxious to make amends, he might consent to leave North Books with its corporate shirt. Man to man, Jerry said, and cards on the table—and, of course, such gentle waving of the costs and uncertainties of litigation as might be appropriate.

  “And Phil,” Pam said. “We can always wave Phil. People think twice when we wave Phil at them.”

  The cab stopped. On new instructions, it started up again, backtracked toward the consolidated ticket office of the air lines. If Jerry wanted a seat—and to get a check taken in payment—personal appearance seemed best.

  “Two seats,” Pam said, and was looked at. “Two,” she said.