A Key to Death

by Frances

  The telephone rang. Jerry answered it, handed the instrument to Bill Weigand. Bill listened, said “Right” twice, and made finger gestures for pencil and paper.

  “Dr. Aaron Arn,” he repeated, and repeated an address on Park Avenue, writing. He said, “Thanks, sergeant,” and hung up.

  “Ingraham made an appointment with a doctor,” he said, and indicated the name he had written down. “For this afternoon. An appointment he couldn’t keep, as it turned out.”

  They waited.

  “Apparently,” he said, “not as a patient. At least, the doctor got that impression. Ingraham seems to have been—well, a little cryptic.”

  They waited. They were told that that was all.

  “What does it mean?” Jerry asked.

  Bill Weigand said he hadn’t the faintest idea. He said he thought he had better try to find out. He said, “Come on, Mullins,” and they went.

  “Well,” Pam North said, “don’t you agree about Mrs. James?”

  Jerry hoped not. He hated, as a matter of general principle, to see anything happen to authors who sold well. Authors sometimes grew dissatisfied with publishers that they had, and flew to others that they knew not of.

  “As,” Pam said, “in the famous case of the frying pan and the fire.”

  Dr. Aaron Arn was a man of sixty-odd, rather narrow-shouldered, gray-haired, and he looked at Captain William Weigand and Sergeant Aloysius Mullins through very alert gray eyes. Bill was fleetingly conscious, as one often is when observed by physicians, that his life expectancy was being shrewdly, if more or less instinctively, gauged. He resisted an impulse to say, “Well, doctor, how do I look?” He identified himself, instead.

  Dr. Arn had received them in his office. He did not wear a white coat, nor have a stethoscope around his neck nor a mirror on his forehead. He said that, now he had thought it over, he feared he had brought them on a wild-goose chase. He said that his wife, however, had felt strongly that, although the significance of what he had to tell was by no means apparent, he should get in touch with the police about it. He placed considerable confidence in the judgment of his wife.

  “I can’t say,” he told them across an uncluttered desk, “that I expected such a prompt response.”

  They tried, Weigand told him, to waste no more time than they had to. They tried to pick up everything. Much that they picked up did not appertain, and that was the lot of a policeman. “You must often examine patients and find nothing,” Bill suggested.

  “Now and then,” Dr. Arn said. “But that, of course, is also something.”

  To a degree, it was the same with the police. So?

  At about nine-thirty that morning, before Dr. Arn left the living area of his suite for the office, a telephone call had come through and been switched to him by his secretary. The caller identified himself as Forbes Ingraham, and asked for an appointment. Dr. Arn had said that he had regular office hours—from ten in the morning until noon, in the evening from five to seven. “Which usually means eight, sometimes nine,” he added, with a moderate sigh.

  That did not satisfy Forbes Ingraham. He wanted an appointment outside office hours; some time in mid-afternoon, if that was possible. And he did not want to see the doctor as a patient.

  Dr. Arn had hesitated, then.

  “Normally,” he told Weigand and Mullins, “I would have told him that I did not make special appointments, except under very unusual circumstances, and then only with patients. Or personal friends, of course. Or for consultations. But there was something about this man. You knew him, captain?”

  Bill shook his head.

  “He spoke very softly,” Dr. Arn said. “Without much emphasis—none of this I’m-an-important-man sort of business. No—what do they say?—no throwing his weight around. And yet you felt you were talking with somebody of importance. Do I make it clear at all? Importance is an absurd word, of course, but it does come to mind.”

  “He was a very able man,” Bill told him. “Very widely known in his profession. You hadn’t heard of him?”

  Dr. Arn could not remember that he had, or had not remembered when he was talking to Ingraham.

  “But perhaps, subconsciously, I did remember having heard his name.”

  In spite of this feeling, Dr. Arn had still hesitated.

  “It is quite important, doctor,” Ingraham had said then, in his soft, oddly compelling voice. “I’ll need only a few minutes of your time.”

  “I asked him to give me some idea what it was all about,” Dr. Arn said. “I asked him what all the mystery was. I felt there was some mystery, although I don’t precisely know why. He said he would much rather not take it up on the telephone. The upshot was, I agreed to see him at three. Usually, that would be impossible—I’m usually at the hospital during the afternoon. But I’d just got back from a conference and things are a little quiet. At the hospital, that is. Anyway—As you realize, of course, he didn’t come. I was annoyed, naturally. Then I read—”

  “He gave you no idea what he wanted?”

  “None, captain. It’s not very tangible, is it? Or, helpful, I’m afraid.”

  On the face of it, Bill agreed, it was difficult to see how it helped. But, one never knew. “Among other things,” he said, “we are interested in anything out of the way. Any unexplained action, by anyone concerned.”

  “My wife thought you probably were,” Dr. Arn said. “As symptomatic, in a sense.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “By the way, you’re a specialist, doctor?”

  “I’m an internist,” Dr. Arn said. “Say I specialize in general medicine. Diagnosis.”

  He looked at Weigand.

  “I suppose that doesn’t help, particularly,” he said.

  “No. You got no inkling at all of what he wanted? Can’t guess?”

  Arn shook his head.

  “Except that he did not want to see me as a patient. Puzzling, isn’t it? Of course, if it weren’t in this—this context—still, I don’t know. It would still be odd.”

  It was. Bill shook his head over it. Why would a man, not a patient or planning to become one, make an appointment with a physician to discuss something which he could not—Bill’s thoughts focused.

  “If I gave you some names, doctor, would you tell me whether they are patients? Just that, of course. I realize you couldn’t go further.”

  “Under the circumstances,” Dr. Arn said. “Yes.”

  “Then,” Bill said, and named names—Reginald Webb? Mary Burton? Phyllis Moore? To each Arn, after a moment of thought, shook his head. “Francis Cuyler? Saul Karn?” Again the gray head was shaken in the negative. “Phoebe James?” Arn started again to shake his head. But then he said, “Wait.” He opened a drawer of his desk, and checked on a card file. “Yes,” he said. “About a year ago. She was here once. Is she—?” He did not finish.

  “Ingraham and she were friends,” Bill told him. “A man named Halpern? Matthew Halpern?”

  “No.”

  Bill was running low. Who else?

  “A Mrs. Schaeffer? Mrs. Samuel Schaeffer?”

  “I don’t think—yes, I believe she was in once. Sent over by—” He stopped. He looked at his file again.

  “Yes,” he said. “Once. And her husband too. He was—” He stopped. He snapped his fingers. “That’s why I felt Ingraham’s name was familiar,” he said. “Schaeffer, Ingraham and Webb, the paper says. I must have put it together without realizing it.”

  “Probably,” Bill said.

  “But,” Dr. Arn said, “is it anything that helps you? I can’t, of course, tell you any more about patients. You realize that?”

  “Oh yes,” Bill said. “Since—”

  “Since,” Dr. Arn said, “Mrs. James and Mrs. Schaeffer are alive. And Mr. Schaeffer died accidentally. If he’d done as I—” He shrugged. “Well,” he said, “I’ve given you all I can, captain. So—”

  It was, politely, a suggestion of dismissal, by a man who had done his civic duty, and had had a long da
y. “Unless there’s something else?”

  There was not. Weigand and Mullins left the office, walked out into Park Avenue, and to their car.

  “I don’t see where it gets us,” Mullins said. “What Ingraham died of, a doctor couldn’t do anything about.”

  It was, Bill Weigand agreed, difficult for a physician to include gunshot wounds in his prognosis; would have been, even if Ingraham had been a patient. They would go back to West Twentieth Street, and see whether anybody else had got further.

  “‘—the big rock candy mountain,’” Pam North sang, moderately in unison with Burl Ives. “‘Oh, the buzzzzzzzing of the bees and the cigarette trees’—Mr. Ives can buzz longer than I can.”

  Mr. Ives, Jerry told her, could buzz longer than anyone.

  “Except another bee,” Pam said. “‘And the soda water fountain. Where the—’”

  Martini had had enough. On Pam’s lap she growled warningly; she turned, extended herself up Pamela, and put a dark brown paw firmly on Pam’s parted lips.

  “Well!” Pam said. “So that’s the way you feel.”

  “Ruowruh,” Martini said, not loudly but with conviction.

  “Sometimes,” Jerry said, “it occurs to me we rather spoil that cat.”

  Martini, without removing her paw from Pam’s lips, turned her head and looked flatly at Jerry, from blue eyes. The tip of her tail twitched.

  “That’ll teach you,” Pam said, around the paw. “I—”

  The telephone rang; it was very sudden and loud in the apartment. “Hell,” Jerry said, and stood up, the other two cats pouring from where his lap had been. “At this time of night.”

  It was eleven-fifteen, which is not particularly a time of night, unless one is sheltered before a fire, with cats about, with Mr. Ives singing. (It was “Foggy, Foggy Dew” by now.) Jerry turned off the record player; he said, “Hello,” with no enthusiasm in his tone.

  “Mrs. North!” a woman’s voice said. The voice was high-pitched, strained.

  “Wait,” Jerry said. “She’s here. If—”

  “Oh!” the woman said. “Hurry—please hurry!”

  Pam was already beside Jerry. She took the telephone. She said, “Yes. Who is it?”

  “Nan Schaeffer,” the voice said. It seemed near hysteria. “Oh—I was so afraid you wouldn’t—”

  “What is it?” Pam said.

  “You’ve got to help me,” Nan Schaeffer said, and her voice, although it was not loud, had the texture of a scream. “I can’t make the police under—”

  There was a momentary pause, then. Pam held the telephone a little from her ear, and Jerry leaned closer.

  “No!” Nan Schaeffer said, and now her voice did rise, now was a scream in Pam North’s ear. “Don’t—I—don’t—oh—please—”

  And then the voice stopped. There was the silence—the strange, hollow silence—of an open telephone circuit.

  “Mrs. Schaeffer!” Pam said. “Mrs. Schaeffer!”

  There was only the hollow silence, for a second. Then a click filled the emptiness and the line was dead.

  Pam called once more into the dead telephone, stood holding it, turned to Jerry.

  “You heard?” she asked.

  Jerry had heard. He ran a hand through his hair. “What the hell?” he asked, of nobody who had an answer.

  Pam was dialing, by then. In the matter of seconds, she was answered. “Homicide, Stein.” In seconds more, she had learned that Weigand had just left, calling it a night. Pam spoke rapidly, telling of the call; said, “I don’t know, sergeant. I haven’t any idea” when Stein asked whether there had been any indication as to where Nan Schaeffer had called from.

  “She lives in a hotel,” Pam said. “The—” She stopped. “I almost know,” she said. “It was the—” But she stopped again, memory snagged. But surely Nan Schaeffer had named the hotel? “I can’t remember,” she told Sergeant Stein. “But—I don’t think it came from a hotel. Not through a switchboard. Of course, Jerry answered first and—wait.” The wait was momentary. “No,” she said. “Not through a switchboard, he thinks too. What do we do, sergeant?”

  “We’ll pick up Bi-Captain Weigand,” Stein said. “I don’t know there’s anything you can do, Mrs. North. We’ll get on it.”

  He hung up.

  “The East Plaza!” Pam said, memory freed. “The—He’s hung up.”

  She dialed again, but this time the telephone rang unanswered. Only after almost a minute did a flat voice say, “Homicide, Flaherty.”

  “Pamela North,” Pam said. “Sergeant Stein?”

  “Not here. Got a call and went out to—who did you say this was?”

  “North,” Pam said. “Mrs. North.”

  “Huh?”

  “Isn’t there anybody?” Pam said, her voice desperate. “Sergeant Stein? Mullins?”

  “Look, lady. Stein’s gone out of the office, like I said. Mullins went home hours ago. What do you want, lady? Sergeant Stein’s all tied up. If you want something—”

  “The East Plaza,” Pam said. “Will you tell the sergeant that? The East Plaza.”

  “East Plaza,” Flaherty said. “That mean something, lady?”

  “A hotel,” Pam said. “It’s—will you just tell him, Mr. Flaherty? East Plaza. Mrs. Schaeffer.”

  “Have to ask you to spell that, lady,” Detective Flaherty said. “I just came in.”

  “S—” Pam began, and stopped. “Please,” she said. “Please. Just tell somebody. It’s important and—”

  “Sure, lady. Don’t get excited. Soon as I see the sergeant I’ll—”

  But Pam North hung up, then.

  “There’s nobody there,” she told Jerry. “He keeps calling me ‘lady.’ Come on.”

  Jerry started to ask, “Where?” but decided he knew. There was no stopping Pam, in any event. She fled along a corridor, seeking coat. “We’re the ones she called,” Pam said, her head in a closet, but the words none-the-less clear. “That man will never get it straight.”

  Taxicabs grow less numerous, except in the theater district, as midnight nears. It took the Norths time to find one in the windy street. But, once found, the cab went fast. It was a little after twelve when the cab swerved to the curb in front of a marquee lettered, discreetly, “The East Plaza” and the driver said, with triumph, “Here you are.”

  The clerk was immaculate. He was also talking on a telephone, with great charm, but little speed. Pam tapped nails on the counter, and he nodded and smiled over the telephone, and made lip movements of encouragement. Finally he finished.

  “Mrs. Schaeffer,” Jerry said. “Mrs. Samuel Schaeffer.”

  “Mrs.—” the clerk began, and stopped. He looked at them with a rather odd expression, which included narrowed eyes. “Mrs. Schaeffer,” he said. “Yes. Twelve-oh-four.”

  “We can—” Pam began.

  “Go right on up,” the clerk said. “Yes.”

  They went, but agreed, on the way, that it was odd. “A very funny hotel,” Pam said, and then went down a carpeted corridor. They rang a bell.

  The door opened instantaneously, as if a hand had been ready on the inner knob.

  “Oh,” Bill Weigand said. He looked at them. “Well, now you’re here,” he said, and let them in. There was, Pam thought, disappointment in his voice, and surprise at this was reflected on her face. “Thought you might be somebody more felonious,” Bill said, and grinned briefly at both of them. “When the clerk telephoned you were coming. Just said, ‘Man and woman on the way up.’” Bill Weigand held the door open. “She’s gone,” he said.

  Nan Schaeffer was not in it, but the suite of living room, bedroom and serving pantry was by no means empty. It was occupied by Mullins, by several other men in civilian clothes; by two uniformed patrolmen.

  And all the rooms, the bedroom particularly, had evidently been searched. Drawers had been emptied, and clothing from them piled neatly on one of the two beds. Dresses had been removed from a closet and laid carefully on the other bed. I
n the living room, the contents of a desk had been treated with less consideration. Papers from it were strewn widely.

  “Tell me about the call,” Bill said. They told him.

  “Like I said, Loot,” Mullins said. “It’s a snatch.”

  “Looks like it,” Bill said. “It looks like she had come back and found somebody going through the place. And that whoever was doing it, decided to take her along when they left. That she got loose somewhere long enough to make a telephone call—you say she had called the police first?”

  “Yes,” Pam said. “She said something about not being able to make them understand.”

  Bill said, “Hm-mm,” doubtfully, to that. But, if she was very excited, she might have failed to make herself clear. They would check. Then, she had called the Norths.

  “Stein got me on the way home,” Bill said. “He got onto Mullins, who’s got everybody’s address in his little book. And then onto the precinct, of course.” What they had found was what the Norths saw.

  Mrs. Schaeffer, according to the elevator man who had brought her up, had returned to the hotel a little after ten. She had gone up alone; whether, as far as the lobby, she had been with someone was unknown. No suspicious persons were remembered as having gone to the twelfth floor, but that meant nothing. The hotel was large; for a residential hotel busy. People briskly came and went, rode up and down.

  “Door wasn’t forced,” Bill told them. “Somebody had a key that worked, apparently. That’s not too hard to come by, if you’re in the business.”

  “Burglars,” Pam said. “But—”

  Bill shook his head. He advised Pam to look around her. She did. She shook her head.

  “Stuff from the drawers in the bedroom,” Bill said. “Taken out, but stacked neatly. So things could be put back as they were. But, out here”—he indicated the living room, the rifled desk—“no effort to cover up. So?”

  He waited.

  “All right,” Jerry said. “We’re dumb, Bill.”

  “It looks,” Bill said, “as if somebody had been searching for a specific thing. Had planned to leave things as they were found, so that nobody would know of the search. But, after Mrs. Schaeffer interrupted, there was no point in that, and reason for hurry. So—after the bedroom, they just dug in.” He looked at them, seemed to study their faces. “A theory,” he said. “So—”