Murder Has Its Points

by Frances

  “All right, Pam,” Jerry said, and reached out and put a hand on hers. “All right, girl.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pam said. “All at once I—”

  “I know.”

  The wavering of everything ended.

  “Who,” Bill Weigand said, “said that? Asked that?”

  “A man named Lars something,” Pam said. “He—wait a minute. Lars Simon. He adapted Uprising. Made a play of it. And—he was very annoyed at Mr. Payne. Seemed to be. Perhaps it was just—theater people dramatize. I met him and—”

  She told, briefly, of meeting Lars Simon; of his, perhaps dramatized, attitude toward Anthony Payne. Bill Weigand looked at Jerry.

  Jerry had heard something about it; heard from Livingston Birdwood. Simon was not only the author of the play version of Uprising. He was also directing the play. He felt that Payne had been “horning in”; interfering not only with the dramatization itself, but with the direction. Even with selection of the cast, Simon had complained to Birdwood. He had told Birdwood that, if it kept on, Birdwood might have to get himself another boy.

  “Only a squabble,” Jerry said. “At any rate, Birdwood thought so. A case of Simon getting tensed up. As, he says, Simon has a habit of getting. He did say—Birdwood, I mean—that he was keeping his fingers crossed. He said that all producers end up with permanently bent fingers.”

  “He did get one of the actors fired,” Tom Hathaway said. “Payne did. Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. Made a thing of it. Said this guy—name of Blaine something—was n.b.g. A row about it, and Birdwood made Simon give in. I don’t know why. You’d think if Simon wanted—”

  “Payne put some money in the play,” Jerry said. “I don’t know how much or whether—”

  “Blaine who?” Pam said. She spoke very quickly. “Smythe? With a ‘y’ and, for that matter, an ‘e’?”

  That sounded right to Tom Hathaway.

  “Because—” Pam said, “unless there are two of him, and there seldom are, of course, he and Mrs. Payne are very—anyway—”

  She told them of Lauren Payne on the sofa at the party; of her feeling that there was anxiety in Lauren Payne’s manner, and in her eyes. “He seemed—” Pam said, and hesitated. “So often,” she said, “people remember more than there was. When there’s reason to remember. I think now he was—seemed—protective. And that they seemed—close together. But I didn’t think that—I don’t think I thought that—until Mr. Payne was killed.”

  “I know,” Bill Weigand said. “It happens that way. Still—”

  “From what I heard,” Tom Hathaway said, “Lars Simon thought this Smythe was very good in the part. And Payne didn’t make his pitch until—well, until pretty well on. They’ve been rehearsing for quite a while. Lot of rewriting, apparently. Which louses things up.”

  “Anxious?” Bill said. “Mrs. Payne?”

  “Well—any word, I guess. Jittery. Perhaps even—” Pam hesitated. “Perhaps even frightened,” Pam said. “She’s very sensitive, I think. When I—when Jerry made me be the one to tell her—” She stopped again; looked at Jerry.

  “I thought a woman,” Jerry said. “There didn’t seem to be anybody else.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, “I know the convention. Anyway—it hit her very hard. Terribly hard. It was as if—as if everything had fallen away. So if you—all right, all of us—are drawing inferences about her and this Blaine Smythe—when she was told her husband was dead things fell apart for her. I’m sure of—” But, suddenly, she paused. “Of course that’s what it was,” she said, very firmly—very firmly indeed.

  “Unless,” Bill Weigand said, and spoke gently, “she thought Smythe had killed him.”

  “You were the one who said it, Bill,” Pam said. “That he was—was a target. Not Anthony Payne.”

  “That that seemed probable. It still does. Simon wished Payne would take a trip around the world. Or, drop dead. You felt there was a—call it relationship—between Payne’s wife and this actor named Smythe. What else, Pam? In case Payne wasn’t merely a target?”

  “It’s all—trivial. It all seemed trivial. There was a man named Self. Very contemptuous of Mr. Payne. Works in—”

  “James Self. Runs a bookstore,” Jerry said. “Does a little criticism on the side. Very select criticism for very select readers. Very—superior. Particularly to authors who sell. Harmless, so far as I know. Anyway—I can’t see him criticizing with a rifle.”

  “There was the first Mrs. Payne,” Pam said. “Faith Constable she is now. In the play—the one Mr. Simon’s doing. She said Mr. Payne had a ‘dear, dirty little mind.’ But not as if she cared.”

  Hathaway laughed, briefly. He had done publicity for Faith Constable a few years before. He doubted very much whether she minded the condition of Payne’s mind, or ever had.

  “Married years ago,” Hathaway said. “Not for long. Perhaps two years. She divorced—Reno type. I’d guess because she thought Payne wasn’t going anywhere. Thirty years ago he wasn’t.” He turned for confirmation to Jerry North.

  Thirty years before, Payne had shown no great indication that he was going anywhere. He had written one novel, about life—his life, too obviously—in a small Ohio town. Published; sale of possibly two thousand. He had, after several years—and after Faith—written another, about an actress married to a struggling young writer, and throwing him aside as an impediment. Quite bitter, in a still childish fashion. Sales not quite as good as the first. North Books, Inc., had published neither, not then being in existence.

  Payne had then, for some years, worked on a magazine staff, with a few by-lines; setting no pages afire; proffering no more novels. He had gone to Africa on an assignment; he had discoverd Africa. “Sometimes,” Jerry said, “he seemed to feel he’d invented it. Or, at least, staked it out. Willings had an earlier claim, of course.”

  “And,” Pam said, “wrote better books.”

  Nobody denied that.

  “All the same,” Jerry said, “Payne’s first African book helped when we could use help. So—”

  “He married again, along there some time,” Hathaway said. “At least, when I was getting stuff a while back for a new biography, he said something about his second wife. I thought he meant Lauren, and said something which showed it, and he said, ‘No, I don’t mean Lauren. My second.’ I waited and he said, ‘Skip it.’ So I skipped it.”

  They were finishing coffee by then. They were, by then, almost alone in the Oak Room.

  Bill Weigand regarded his empty coffee cup, without seeing it. It did appear that, at the party, there had been several people who shared Pam’s view that Anthony Payne was something of a twerp. A man who was merely “contemptuous.” A man who thought it would be pleasant if Payne dropped dead. A woman who thought Payne had had a “dirty little mind,” but had not seemed concerned about this. A woman who had appeared to Pam to be upset, possibly frightened. Of her husband? A writer who had wanted Payne to eat his words, in indigestible form, and been humiliated, made to appear ridiculous. Still—still the chances were high that a target had been hit, only incidentally a man.

  “Jerry,” Pam said, “did you do something to a busboy? To make him hate you?”

  “Busboy?”

  “Thin. Dark. Picking up used glasses. In a white jacket with a dark patch on the shoulder. From trays. A—”

  “Do something to?” Jerry ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “What on earth would I do to a busboy?”

  “There’s that,” Pam said. “So it must have been Mr. Payne. You were together—it was before Willings—and he—the busboy—stood and glared at you. At both of you, that is. As if he hated.”

  Briefly, she gave details. Jerry shook his head. Jerry hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt a glare. So far as he could remember, Payne had showed no consciousness of being glared at.

  “Of course,” Pam said, “it could be he didn’t like any of us. That all of us were just a bunch of dirty glasses. If I were a busboy I’d feel that way,
I think. With other people having fun. But still—”

  They separated outside the Algonquin, the Norths going downtown to their apartment; Tom Hathaway uptown to his.

  It was, Bill Weigand thought, now more than time to call it a day. But, since he was only a few blocks from the Dumont, since things would still be going on there, he might as well see what had gone on. Not that anything was expected. But still, as Pam North had said.

  4

  Captain Jonathan Frank, commanding, Fourth Detective District, was talking to the desk clerk at the Hotel Dumont. Weigand waited. Frank said, “Fifth floor, and you’re sure on the street side? About half an hour after the—occurrence—and was in a hurry?” The clerk said, “Yes, but I told you—”

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Catching a plane to Frisco and cutting it fine. You told me. What he said. Sure, I know that’s all you’ve got to go on. Nobody blames you. Hi, Bill.”

  Bill Weigand said, “Hi, Johnny.”

  “Twelve floors,” Frank said. “And the roof. Just in this one. Five front rooms to the floor so we come up with sixty rooms, and cross off the permanents—only why?—and you come up with fifty-four. Of which one is an old lady in a wheel chair, sure, but she’s got a companion. And across the street—” He shrugged. He spread his hands.

  “Right,” Bill said. “And nobody saw anything or heard anything, and none of the rooms smells of powder and—”

  “Snipers,” Frank said, with great weariness. “Crackpots. Some time we’ll wake up. Quit making guns except for cops. Make possession of all guns illegal. Make the manufacture of ammo illegal.”

  “And,” Bill said, “abolish roofs. Allow no windows facing streets.”

  “Very funny, Bill,” Frank said. “Your brain trust interested? In a crackpot sniping?”

  “Not if it is,” Bill said, and was told, sure it was, and then looked at.

  “This party,” Jonathan Frank said, “that friend of yours gave it? North?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Frank said. “The ruckus. Be very pat. Only, Willings’s room isn’t on the front. One gets you a hundred it was a loony.”

  “No bet, Johnny. Willings does stay here?”

  “Does now. Checked in three or four days ago. Expects to be here about a week. Didn’t bring a rifle with him, far’s anybody noticed. Of course, nobody brought a rifle with him. They all tell us that. Only, somebody brought a rifle with him. On account, nobody spit a bullet into Payne.” Frank sighed. “I was taking the wife to the movies,” he said. He scrutinized Bill Weigand’s face again, with greater care. “You got something, Bill?”

  “Bits and pieces. Odds and ends. Several people at the party didn’t like Payne too much, I’m told.”

  “By those friends of yours?”

  “By those friends of mine.”

  “Happens Willings is in the bar now,” Frank said. “I—”

  The clerk said, “Telephone call, Captain. In booth one.”

  “—was thinking of having a little chat with him,” Frank said. “You want to, Bill? …”

  “The Bottom of the Well,” so named because a writer who frequented it had once said that that was where he always felt he was, in a small, high barroom, with dark green walls. It does not at any time accommodate many, and when Bill Weigand went in it accommodated only three—a couple at a corner table; a large man with a red beard on a stool at the bar. “Only rum worth drinking,” the red-bearded man was telling the barman when Bill sat down beside him. Gardner Willings had a heavy voice, with something of a rumble in it. “Good rum,” Willings said, and sipped from a tall glass. Bill ordered scotch and water. He said, “Mr. Willings?”

  “Don’t autograph,” Willings said. “Why should I?”

  “No reason,” Bill said. “I’m a police officer. Name of Weigand.”

  “I was off balance,” Willings said. “Slipped on something. The two-bit phony couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.”

  He turned on his stool and looked at Bill Weigand. He had a square face under the red beard; he had light blue eyes. He was a very large man.

  “What’s it to you, anyway?” Willings said.

  “Payne’s dead.”

  “So I heard. Late on, for my money. Service to American letters. Like to shake the hand that fired the shot.” The pale blue eyes were very intent. It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had never seen eyes quite like Willings’s. He had the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the light blue eyes were looking into his mind.

  “Which wouldn’t be with myself,” Willings said. “People say I do. Say I pat myself on the back. Perhaps. Not this time.” He shifted his gaze, looked at Bill’s drink. “Pallid stuff,” he said. “Ought to drink rum. Virgin Islands rum.” He turned back to Bill. “I didn’t shoot the son of a bitch, he said. “Not worth the trouble.”

  “You didn’t like him, obviously.”

  “Lots of people I don’t like. Lots of things I don’t like. There are good things and bad things, and he was a bad thing. He was a fake, and I don’t like fakes. The Africa I Know.” He used a short, explicit word. He whirled on his stool toward the couple in the corner. “Sorry, lady,” he said.

  “Oh,” the girl said, “I’ve heard the word, Mr. Willings. I’ve heard a lot of words.”

  Willlings turned back to Bill Weigand.

  “There you have it,” he said. “Honest girl. Mealy-mouthed bunch ride herd. But everybody knows the words. When a word’s a good word for what you want to say, you ought to use the word. Right?”

  “Right,” Bill said.

  “You’re thinking about that review I was going to make him eat. It was a stinker. Also, it was a lousy job. The man couldn’t write. You read it, I suppose?”

  Bill shook his head.

  “I’ll be damned,” Willings said. He seemed entirely surprised. “Everybody read it.”

  “I didn’t, Mr. Willings—after this—incident. At the party. By the way, did you come to the party with that in mind?”

  “What else? Heard about the party. Thought it might be fun. Getting Payne to eat, I mean. Long as I was there, I thought I might have a couple.” For the first time he smiled slightly. “A couple made the idea seem very good,” he said. “So I had a couple more. Idea seemed fine. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t get drunk.” He finished his long rum drink. He patted the base of the glass against the bar. The barman took the glass away and began to mix.

  “After the incident,” Bill said. “What did you do?”

  “Went up to my room. Had a nap. I sleep when it seems like a good idea. Didn’t know about somebody’s good deed for the day until about half an hour ago.”

  “You’d known Payne for some time?”

  “You’re a funny copper,” Willings said. “What are you after?”

  “Anything I can get.”

  “I’m the wrong tree to bark up. But—yes. Donkey’s years.”

  “Disliking him all the time?”

  “More or less. What difference does that make? You only see people you like?”

  “I see all kinds.”

  “Probably do,” Willings said. “So do I. In some ways, ours is the same trade. Find out about people. You put them in jail. I put them in books. I used Payne a couple of times. Remember Ponsby in my Turn at the Bridge?”

  Bill remembered the title; only the title. He shook his head.

  “Read it, didn’t you?”

  Bill shook his head again.

  “My God,” Willings said. “You can read?”

  It sounded to Bill Weigand as if Willings really wanted to know, really wanted to resolve a doubt. Bill said, “Yes, I can read. Your character Ponsby was Anthony Payne?”

  “Publicly, I deny it,” Willings said.

  “Did he recognize himself?”

  “As the chaser the girls laughed at? Sure he did. So he tried to put me into Uprising. Couldn’t swing it, of course. Not up to it.”

  “He was a chaser?”

  “And how.”

/>   “They did laugh?”

  “The bright ones. Faith did. Laughed him out of her life.” He drank. “Not all,” he said. “There’re always half-wits.”

  “His present wife. Widow. She’s one of the ones who didn’t laugh?”

  Willings shrugged his heavy shoulders and turned to his drink. It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had begun to bore the—justly—famous Mr. Willings. It is the fate of a policeman to bore many.

  “No laughing matter, being married to Payne,” Willings said, into his rum drink. “How would I know? Don’t know the lady.”

  Which seemed to take care of that.

  “Met her couple of years ago,” Willings said. “Came down to the islands and looked us up. More damn people look us up. Thought, ‘Poor gal doesn’t know what she’s in for.’ Thought, ‘Too tender for the bastard.’ Thought, ‘Shame to waste her on the two-bit phony.’ Only met her that once. Had Sally use the gag, after that. ‘Willings is at work,’ with proper awe. Good at it, Sally is. Hear her, and you’d swear she believed it. Well?”

  The last seemed to toss something into the air. Bill was not entirely sure what.

  “She’s a good-looking gal,” Willings said, himself catching whatever it was he had tossed. (Sally, whoever Sally might be, or Mrs. Anthony Payne?) “Tender. Also, she’s got money. Could be why the bastard married her, couldn’t it? Not that I’ve anything against their having money. One of mine had money, you remember. Samantha, that was. Money’s a good thing to have.”

  Weigand remembered nothing about Samantha, never having heard of her before. There seemed no use in mentioning this to Willings, who clearly thought that all the world would remember Samantha, who would have acquired fame by osmosis. To those who had much to do with Gardner Willings it must sometimes be hard to remember that Willings was the institution he took himself to be, or close to it.

  “However,” Willings said, “I wasn’t thinking of Lauren particularly. He had this new one, you know. Pretty little thing and I’d guess about twenty. Tender. Half-witted, of course, or she’d have seen through him. But—tender. Too young to laugh. Not bright enough. But—pretty as hell.”