A Key to Death

by Frances

  “I said?” Fitch repeated. “Said what?”

  “To come around,” his visitor said. “Talk it over.”

  “I did?”

  He was asked not to say he had forgotten. He was told that it had, after all, been his idea. “You said you’d been thinking it over, and there might be a way to work things out. Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” Fitch said. “I’m sorry, cousin.” He pressed his hands against his temples. “Seems to be a lot I don’t remember,” he said. “But—come on in.”

  The visitor came in.

  “Fact is,” Fitch said, “I seem to have tied one on. I’ve got the granddaddy of all hangovers.”

  The visitor was sympathetic.

  “Tell you what, Brad,” the visitor said. “I know a thing will fix you up.”

  “Coffee,” Fitch said. “I’ll have Rosie fix us up—”

  “Better than coffee,” his visitor said. “Tomato juice and—oh, several things. Tabasco. First you think you’re on fire and then—like that—you’re all right.”

  “God,” Fitch said. “Sounds repellent, doesn’t it?”

  He was told to sit right there; just to sit right there and relax. He was told that his visitor knew where everything was—ought to, by now.

  “All right,” Fitch said, and sat in a deep chair. He leaned forward in it, his head in his hands. (At least, he supposed it was still his head.)

  He tried to remember, and did not. Apparently, he had invited this. Got carried away, probably; got to feeling friends with the world. Said something he hadn’t meant to say, the way people do. Tried to make everybody happy, the way he sometimes did when he’d had a few more than usual. Well, he hadn’t committed himself to anything, and nobody was going to make him believe he had. He—

  “Here, Brad,” his visitor said. “Drink this. Don’t taste it. Just drink it.” A tray with a glass on it was held within Fitch’s uncertain vision. “Be a new man when you get that down,” his visitor promised.

  Fitch reached out a hand which trembled slightly and took the glass. He raised it, hesitantly, toward his lips.

  “Drink up,” his visitor told him. “That’s the only way.”

  Fitch took a deep breath and let it out. He put the glass to his lips, and put his head back, and swallowed until there was nothing more to swallow. He almost choked over the last swallow.

  “Think you’re on fire is—” Fitch began. He did not finish. Surely, nothing could burn like this! If it was all tabasco—if it was—it can’t burn like this. It can’t be meant to—

  “Afraid I—” he managed to say. But he leaned forward in the chair. He vomited on the floor.…

  The black cat looked at Fitch. The cat’s whiskers flattened along his jaw, and the sensitive nostrils quivered. The cat laid back his rounded ears, and the cat’s lips drew back so that sharp white teeth glinted into sight. But there was no one to see the cat.…

  It was funny the mister didn’t ring. Half an hour, now, since she’d heard him walking up there, after the doorbell rang. Usually he couldn’t get his coffee fast enough. Probably whoever it was—and pretty early whoever it was—was holding things up. Maybe—maybe he’d gone out to breakfast with whoever it was. If that was what it was, he might have told her. It wasn’t like him to—

  She heard the downstairs doorbell. Now what?

  She had been in the kitchen. She had to walk through two large rooms to reach the entrance foyer. At the stairs she paused momentarily, since Toby was coming down them. Toby’s tail was large. “You,” she said. “You’ve been up to something, haven’t you?”

  It was apparent that Toby had. He completed his descent hurriedly, making himself small. On the floor, he ran, a cat hugging the surface—obviously, Mrs. Hemmins thought, a guilty cat. Or perhaps a frightened one. You might have thought that Mr. Bradley, finding him unwanted, had been harsh with him. Except that Mr. Bradley was not ever harsh with anyone. Better for him, probably, if he sometimes were. Then—

  She went on through the room in which there had been dancing, in which Bradley Fitch, a little boyish in manner, had announced his plans for marriage. She went through the larger room, where so many had waited the entrance of Naomi Shaw, and through the foyer. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door to a slight man in a dark suit, a man with a long, sad face; a man who said, “Is Mr. Fitch in?”

  Got a summer cold, Mrs. Hemmins thought, and said, “Expecting you, Mister—?”

  “Wyatt. No. I can’t say he is. But—”

  “Not even sure he’s up,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Hasn’t had his breakfast, anyway.”

  Sam Wyatt snapped fingers on his right hand.

  “Didn’t think,” he said. “Well, I can—”

  “Matter of fact,” Mrs. Hemmins said, “he’s awake, anyway. Somebody came earlier than you. Upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?” Wyatt said.

  “Best way,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Takes in two floors. Another door up there.” She indicated with a thumb. “He lives up there, mostly. But come on Mister—what did you say?”

  Wyatt said it again. He hesitated, and went in.

  “Call and see,” Mrs. Hemmins said, and went to a telephone and peered at it, and chose a button from among several, and pressed it. She pressed it again, and lifted the receiver.

  “Don’t answer,” she said. “Guess he went out after all. Only—”

  She put the receiver back and stood, looking at the telephone as if she expected an explanation from it. Of course, Toby might merely have done something he shouldn’t. He often did, and—if apprehended—showed guilt. But the more she thought about it, the more she thought that Toby had acted as if—well, as if someone had frightened him. But if Mr. Bradley wasn’t upstairs, nobody was upstairs and—what had Toby been afraid of?

  “It’s rather important.” Wyatt said. “I could try later. But—”

  “I’ll tell you,” Mrs. Hemmins said. “Chance is he’s taking a shower. In that glass thing. In there he can’t hear goodness, I don’t know what he could hear. If it’s important—Gesundheit—I can take you up and show you where—” She hesitated; made up her mind. “Come on,” she said. “We may as well find out.” She led toward the stairway, and Wyatt went after her.

  The door to the second-floor study opened off a hallway, and stood ajar. Mrs. Hemmins rapped on it and said, “Mr. Fitch? Mr. Fitch, sir?” in much the same voice she had used earlier in calling the missing Toby. Behind her, Sam Wyatt sneezed. He’s really got a bad one, Mrs. Hemmins thought, and pushed the door open and looked into the study. And screamed.

  Bradley Fitch had got out of the chair, but he had not got far—not more than halfway across the room. He had fallen, then. Lying face down on the floor he had vomited again, and then, clutching himself, he had rolled to his side. He had died so.

  Everybody leaves New York City over summer weekends. Everybody goes to the beach, or to Long Island or Westchester or near-by Connecticut, or to the New Jersey hills or shore. Subway trains run infrequently; buses hurry along uncrowded avenues; taxi drivers, in considerable numbers, may be found not in the city, but driving on country roads, uneasy to find so much space around them. Except in the theater district, and even there on Sundays, it is often possible to find a place to park a car. (On Sundays, it is less possible to find a place to eat, since the best restaurants do not open.) In the offices of afternoon newspapers a few sit sleepily on Saturdays, or play bridge or poker, since there is no news on summer weekends.

  It is true that a few millions remain, for one reason or another. It is true also that some thousands come into town, and may be seen walking dreamily along Fifth Avenue and elsewhere, the men usually in sports shirts and equipped with cameras. There are always some people in New York, even when everybody has left.

  It is not usual for Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North to be among them. The Norths have, and for years have had, a weekend place where grass grows—and where Jerry, in adventuresome moments, has sought to make
vegetables grow, and Pam flowers. This weekend, however, they were in town, because Jerry had no choice and where Jerry stays Pam, in the ordinary run of things, stays also. Their confinement was due to a man named Braithwaite, who wrote books, who was leaving in a week for Europe, who had got his newest manuscript to North Books, Inc., a month late and who pointed out that if anybody was going to ask for changes—not that he supposed anybody would be so foolish—they had better ask fast. So Jerry, who found he was going to ask for a good many changes, turned typed pages with reasonable steadiness—and wished, rubbing tired eyes, that Braithwaite’s typist would remember to change her ribbon occasionally. Pamela read and talked to cats—in low tones, so as not to disturb Jerry. The cats, who hate to be taken to the country in boxes, were evidently gratified by this turn of events.

  At five-thirty, Pam, having filled a container with ice, put cocktail glasses in the freezing compartment and sliced lemon peel—and her left index finger, but very slightly—opened Jerry’s door and said, “Hey!”

  “Why,” Jerry said, “can’t Braithwaite ever remember what his characters look like? Here on page two hundred and sixty-one he says—”

  “I know, dear,” Pam said. “It’ll be time for cocktails when you’ve showered. Everything’s out.”

  Jerry looked at her. He said he saw she had sliced the lemon peel. “Oh that,” Pam said. “It’s nothing, really. I just put it on to keep the air out. If you don’t hurry, we’ll miss the news. Even if it isn’t Banghart on Saturdays.”

  Jerry, within reason, hurried. It was five minutes before six when he poured martinis into frosted glasses and twisted lemon peel over them, and caressed the rim of each glass with the bruised peel. In such matters, he is ritualistic. It was precisely at six that he turned on the radio, at six-sixty on his dial, and was promised the news, which would be brought to him by a cigar.

  It was not, however, until six-eleven that the announcer, who was not Mr. Banghart, said, “Now for some names in the news. Bradley Fitch, whose engagement to Naomi Shaw, the star of Broadway’s hit play, Around the Corner, was just announced, was found dead today in his Park Avenue apartment. Mr. Fitch, who was the only son and heir of the late Cyrus Fitch, was an internationally known polo player. Death apparently was due to natural causes.”

  “Oh!” Pam said, “how dread—” and was interrupted by Jerry’s commanding right hand.

  “—has just come in,” the announcer was saying, “from the NBC news-room. The police report the death of Bradley Fitch as suspicious and have started an investigation. The weather and our windup story after these few words about—”

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “How—awful. They were so happy and—oh, Jerry.” And then Pam began to dab her eyes with the nearest thing available, which happened to be a tiny cocktail napkin.

  Jerry moved to her and patted her shoulder and, for want of anything better to say, said, “There. There.”

  “Such dreadful things happen,” Pam North said, and reached up and held to Jerry’s hand.

  It was much later that Pam said, after a considerable period of abstraction, that, if it had to happen, it was too bad it had happened on Park Avenue.

  “Because that’s Homicide East, isn’t it?” she said. “So Bill won’t be in it.”

  “Nor,” Jerry said, and was firm, “will we.” But his firmness lessened. “Unless Sam’s—” he began, and the apartment bell rang. Jerry went to the door.

  Acting Captain William Weigand, Homicide, Manhattan West, looked, to Jerry, a little grave, and also a little puzzled. Sergeant Aloysius Mullins, standing behind Weigand, appeared to be worried.

  “Come on in,” Jerry said. “You’re just in time for—”

  “Well,” Bill said, “this isn’t entirely social. That is—”

  He and Mullins came in, and greeted Pam and were greeted by her.

  “What it is,” Bill Weigand said. “We found a belonging of yours—I’m pretty sure it’s yours—in an odd place. And the inspector knows about it, so—”

  He produced a small, white square, a little crumpled—a small square of linen. He held it out to Pam.

  “Why,” Pam said, “it’s one of my cocktail napkins. Like this one.” She showed another square of white, even more crumpled. “Except I’ve been crying into this one,” Pam said. “See? They both have the ‘N’ in the corner. And the Siamese cat.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I did see that, Pam. How do you suppose it got in Bradley Fitch’s apartment? In the room he died in?”

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  Copyright © 1961 Frances and Richard Lockridge

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3139-4

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