Murder Has Its Points

by Frances

  Captain William Weigand, at his desk in the squad offices in West Twentieth Street, stamped the word “Closed” across his mind and the telephone rang on his desk. That would be Mullins, Sergeant Aloysius, reporting the results of cooperation with detectives of the Charles Street Station in connection with a suspicious death in a furnished room in Bank Street. (Probably suicide, but one or two things didn’t check.) Weigand picked up the receiver and said, “Weigand.”

  Not Sergeant Mullins. Captain Frank, commanding, Fourth Detective District. Surprised to find Weigand around so early. (Weigand had been at his desk for some forty-five minutes.) In re this Payne kill.

  “I thought—” Bill Weigand said.

  “Sure. So did I. Only—this character on the roof. Turns out to be an old client. You know Brozy?”

  Weigand did not know Brozy. It would do Bill good to get around more. Bill didn’t doubt it. So?

  “Ambrose Light,” Frank said and Bill Weigand, not unnaturally, said, “What?”

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Great little jokers his parents were, some Mr. and Mrs. Light. Turn a psychiatrist loose on Brozy and you’d probably come up with something. But—”

  Ambrose Light, called Brozy, was a professional hotel thief, making a modest but fairly consistent living by visiting the rooms of hotel guests, preferably in the absence of the guests. A little here and a little there, it turned out to be Brozy, who owned a useful collection of general keys, and a few other instruments of value in his profession.

  Brozy had been following his trade the previous evening in the Hotel King Arthur, the location being purely coincidental but the time a matter of selection. Brozy preferred, naturally, to make his little visits when guests would be most likely to be elsewhere, at this hour at dinner. Brozy liked the quiet hour.

  This hour had suddenly, and to him inexplicably, ceased to be quiet at a little after eight the previous evening. Brozy had been trying out a key when, clearly in that very street, all hell broke loose. All hell, to Brozy, was most quickly identified with police sirens.

  Brozy found a hall window and looked down from it, and had never seen so many cops spilling out of cruise cars. Nothing like that had ever happend to Brozy before. Hotel detectives, yes. Now and then an unfair guest who pretended to be out while actually being in but the whole lousy force—

  “Jeeze,” Brozy said, simply, explaining to Detective Foley in the West Fifty-fourth Street Station House, after he had regained the consciousness lost when he had tried to make a run for it, and had run into a fist. “What I thought was what the hell? On account of, I hadn’t touched off no alarm.”

  As he had looked down, he had seen several cops disappear under the marquee of the King Arthur. That had been enough for Brozy, and he had begun an ascent, by fire stairway. He had been on the third floor when he heard the racket, and the King Arthur was twelve stories high. It was quite a climb for Brozy, whose trade seldom required violent exercise. He went up a final ladder to the roof and made himself inconspicuous in the lee of a parapet.

  This had been a mistake, and he freely admitted as much to Detective Foley. If he had got himself into a room and hid out there, under a bed if necessary, he might have got away with it. “I was a nut,” Brozy admitted frankly. “How’d I know who you were looking for? Jeeze, Sergeant, I never shot nobody.”

  “No record of violence,” Frank told Bill Weigand. “Just a small-time regular who’s been in and out for years. About as likely to kill somebody as—” He paused to consider. “A maiden aunt.” He considered again. “Less than some I’ve met,” he added. “Which doesn’t prove anything, of course.”

  “Light heard nothing? Saw nothing?”

  “He says not, and I guess he didn’t. Matter of fact, I’ve never seen such an astonished little man. You can’t blame him, actually. Oh, we got the wrong man, Bill. Which doesn’t prove there wasn’t a right man we didn’t get, does it?”

  Bill agreed it didn’t.

  “Still a sniper for my money,” Frank said.

  Bill Weigand said, “Right.”

  “Only,” Frank said, “the old man says for you to get cracking, on your side of the street.”

  Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, commanding detectives, Borough of Manhattan, had spoken. Bill was mildly surprised he had not heard O’Malley, who after all was only some thirty-four blocks away. He would hear. He would also have to tell O’Malley that the Norths were in it, and listen and say, when opportunity presented, “Yes, chief. Again. I know, chief—”

  Sufficient unto the hour.

  Bill said, “Right, Johnny,” and hung up.

  Amost at once the telephone rang again. This was, it appeared, the hour. Bill Weigand picked up the telephone and held the receiver at a suitable distance from his ear. He said, “Weigand” and then, “Oh,” and put the earpiece against his ear. He said, “Hello, Pam.”

  “You didn’t sound natural at first,” Pam North said.

  “I thought you were the inspector,” Bill Weigand said, and it was Pam’s turn to say, in a most understanding fashion, “Oh.” Then she said that something had happened that she thought he ought to know about.

  “Pipeline,” Pam said. “Or should it be listening post?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “What, Pamela?”

  “Me. Being used as. To you, of course. It’s happened before, you know.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “What’s happened before, Pam?”

  “People come to us to find out what you’re up to,” Pam said. “Are you sure you’re all right, Bill? First you thought I was O’Malley. Do I sound like O’Malley?”

  “No. Who wants to find out through you what I am, as you put it, up to?”

  “Mrs. Payne. The Widow Payne. Only that wasn’t all of it, I don’t think. I think she’s afraid she’s let some cat out of some bag. Stilts! Quit that! Scratching a sofa. Where was I?”

  “Cat out of bag,” Bill said.

  “Of course. Listen—”

  Bill listened. When Pam had finished he asked questions. She was sure that Lauren Payne had not said, to her, anything that revealed anything? Pam could remember nothing. Sure that she had called Blaine Smythe a friend of her husband’s, not of hers? Yes, and Pam didn’t believe it for a minute. Bill should have seen them—

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “I don’t doubt you’re right.”

  Nor, knowing Pam, did he doubt. Pamela North has now and again put two and two together and come up with odd sums, but two was each time two, and only the addition wrong.

  The woman who, after the doctor had given sedation, had stayed with Lauren Payne?

  “A housekeeper. Or assistant housekeeper. She thought her name was Mason. Something like Mason. Why?”

  “If I,” Bill said, “were afraid I’d let a cat out of a bag, I’d look everywhere the cat might have gone, wouldn’t you? If I was afraid I’d talked out of turn—”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “I should have—” She paused. “Never mind,” she said.

  “You left her with the impression that we still think it’s—what the News this morning called ‘Mad Killer’?”

  “I tried to. I don’t know why, exactly. Or whether it worked exactly. Do you?”

  “It’s still probable,” Bill said. “Only, the boys uptown thought they had the man and didn’t. Not the man. Only Brozy.” He told her, briefly, about Brozy.

  “The poor man,” Pam said. “So like Eve, in a way.”

  Bill merely waited.

  “You pick an apple,” Pam said, “and the heavens fall. Ambrose must have felt that. So much commotion about such a little thing. What else, Bill?”

  Lieutenant John Stein opened the door of Bill’s office. He widened his brown eyes. He pointed upward and shook the pointing hand.

  “Sorry, Pam,” Bill said. “The inspector’s trying to get me.” He hung up. He remembered he had forgotten to tell Pam not to get herself in trouble, as she always did, as Jerry always did. Usually to
no avail. He took the telephone up. He said, “Put the chief on, please,” and held the receiver well away from his ear. He listened for a time. He said, “Yes, Inspector, I’m afraid so. Again.”

  6

  Pamela had expected to have lunch at home, alone, contesting with cats for morsels. She had not, certainly, expected to lunch at Sardi’s and not only at Sardi’s, but with Alice Draycroft. She had, on the telephone, said, “Well, I don’t know whether—” and Alice had said, “Darling! It’s been years and years. Seeing you yesterday made me realize.”

  It was not entirely clear what, with such impact, Alice Draycroft had realized. Certainly not that, since school—umpteen years ago, Pam thought, putting the telephone back in its cradle—she and Pam had met only now and then, as an actress, usually with a part, may meet the wife of a publisher. Even in school they had not been close. Alice had been ahead of Pam in school; Alice had been a star in productions of the Dramatic Club and once, once only, Pam had played a maid with a duster. (And a few lines of background comment on the people she dusted for.) It was not an adequate basis for a lifelong friendship. Not that Alice, met now and then, wasn’t fun. I’m a pushover, Pam thought, and changed from the gray-blue dress to another—blue-gray—more suitable for Sardi’s. She decided that Sardi’s justified her mink stole.

  “Darling!” Alice said, at only a little after one. (Pam had waited hardly ten minutes.) “So wonderful you could. Henri, darling.”

  Henri darling (Henry Perkins at home) said, “Ah, Miss Draycroft. If you will, please?” They would, please. The table was in a corner. “A stinger, darling?” Alice said.

  “Martini,” Pam said. “Please.”

  “So brave of you,” Alice said. “Martinis always—”

  “Very cold, very dry, lemon peel,” Pam said, taking no chances, even at Sardi’s.

  “And a bloody mary,” Alice said. “Wasn’t this a wonderful idea of mine?”

  In fact, it began to seem a very pleasant, if not entirely wonderful, idea. It had to be said—it was gladly thought—of Alice Draycroft that she lifted you up. Sometimes, afterward, you were a little tired, but up you had been. Pam, more the Algonquin type, went seldom to Sardi’s, and change is pleasant.

  “Wonderful,” Pam said. “Such a nice place to visit.”

  “Darling,” Alice said. “You’re wonderful, darling. And how’s Jerry?”

  Pam said Jerry was fine, curbing a slight inclination to say that he was “wonderful.” She knew she should continue; should ask about the condition of Alice’s husband. She was almost sure that Alice had a husband; Alice almost always did have. But, “How’s yours?” seemed hardly a graceful query.

  “Betwixt and between, darling,” Alice said. She had always been quick on the uptake, Alice; she never embarrassed without cause. “Such a lovely party you and Jerry gave for everybody.”

  “Well,” Pam said.

  “Up to a point of course,” Alice said. “Do you still see that wonderful policeman of yours? Such a lamb, I thought he was.”

  Pam checked her memory quickly, seeking the opportunity obviously at some time presented Alice Draycroft to discover lamb-like qualities in Captain William Weigand. It came back—the four of them, she and Jerry, Bill and Dorian, at dinner somewhere. Celebrating something? Because “21” came to mind as the somewhere. And Alice, at first across the room, saying “Pam darling” and then with a man—a current husband—briefly at their table.

  “Yes,” Pam said. “You mean Bill Weigand, don’t you? Quite often, as a matter of fact.”

  “I suppose,” Alice said, “he’s up to his ears now about poor Mr. Payne.”

  So that, Pam thought, was that. The inside of things was as precious to Alice Draycroft as to John Gunther. This was part of an innocence which was, probably far more than she herself suspected, part of Alice. “I oughtn’t to tell you who told me; but the real truth is—” Nevertheless, in all innocence. This time, “I happen to know the police think—” But without pretension, in all innocence.

  “I suppose so,” Pam said and, before Alice uttered a diminished “Oh,” thought herself unkind. “I thought, since it was Jerry’s party it happened at—” Alice said, hope dying slowly.

  “They think probably it was just a crazy person with a gun,” Pam said. She considered; there would hardly be any secrecy about Brozy. “They caught one,” Pam said, “but they’re having to throw him back, Bill says. A hotel thief named—”

  She told Alice Draycroft, who was understandably delighted with his name, about Ambrose Light.

  “He must have felt he’d hit the jackpot without even pulling the lever,” Alice said. “The poor darling. But they still think it was somebody like that? I mean—” She let it hang, looked beyond Pam. Her expressive face expressed delight. She said, projecting, “Faith. Faith darling. We’re over here.”

  For the second time within less than twenty-four hours, Pam was surprised when she looked at Faith Constable, walking toward them—shimmering toward them. At the center of her surprise was the conviction that Faith Constable should be bigger. On stage she was, somehow, never small—rather, she seemed to be any height she chose to be, needed to be. But she was, coming now between tables at Sardi’s, surely not more than five feet tall and she moved as if she weighed nothing whatever. And, it was preposterous for her to be the age she so obviously had to be.

  There was a second reason, a quite different reason, for Pamela North’s surprise. It was that Faith Constable, onetime wife of the late Anthony Payne, was not herself at all surprised, but shimmered toward them precisely as if she had expected to find both of them there, waiting, at a corner table at Sardi’s. Pam looked quickly at Alice Draycroft, who looked back with surpassing innocence. “Isn’t this nice, darling?” Alice said. “The nicest things just happen, I always think.”

  Chance met at Sardi’s. How actors love to act, Pam thought. How much more likely things are to happen if properly nudged. Why?

  Pam had indeed met Faith Constable. Of course Faith remembered Pamela North. There was indeed room at the table for a third; Henri (darling) would see that the daiquiri was very dry.

  “We were talking about poor Tony, darling,” Alice Draycroft said, and Faith continued to look entirely unsurprised. She nodded her head.

  “Who isn’t?” she said. “He’d be so pleased. Under other circumstances, of course. Or shouldn’t I say that?”

  The question appeared to be directed to Pam North, who could think of no answer better than a smile and a slight lifting of the shoulders.

  “The police still think it was what they call a sniper,” Alice said, bringing her chance-met friend up to date. “They got one but he wasn’t right, darling. He was named Ambrose Light.”

  Faith Constable smiled in a slightly abstracted fashion.

  “Ambrose Lightship, darling,” Alice said, and Faith nodded mild appreciation, and seemed to remain at some distance. The daiquiri came. She sipped it, and looked over it at Pam.

  “We’re not taking you in, are we, Mrs. North?” Faith said. “I asked Alice to arrange this. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Well,” Pam said, “you didn’t seem astonished to find us here.”

  And she was again surprised. On stage, Faith Constable was notably oblique. “Mrs. Constable’s attack is never frontal,” one critic had written, rather recently. “This is one of the charms of her highly individual method. All effects are, as it were, outflanked. As a result even what should have been evident often comes as a surprise to delight the mind.” It appeared that Faith Constable, offstage, had other methods.

  “Mrs. North,” Faith said, “I know that you and your husband sometimes”—she hesitated momentarily for a word—“help the police. Everybody knows that.”

  She ought to say that to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, Pam thought briefly. He’d tell her a thing or two. On the other hand—

  “It’s—just happened,” Pam said. “Only because once a long time ago
we found somebody in a bathtub.” She considered the structure of her explanation. “Somebody’s dead body,” Pam said. “So we met Bill Weigand and—” She felt herself drifting. “All right,” Pam North said. “And what, Mrs. Constable?”

  But she was quite certain she knew what. “Occupation: Conduit.” She would put that down next time, instead of “Housewife.” Or, perhaps, “Go-between.”

  “If you want to know what the police think,” Pam said, “shouldn’t you ask the police? If—”

  “Mrs. North,” Faith said, “please don’t be cross with me.”

  She said this very simply, as one might ask a favor. She looked at Pam steadily, and there was simplicity in the way she looked at Pam. Pam was sure it was—Of course, she was an actess and—

  “I’m sorry,” Pam said. “I’m not cross. I don’t really know what the police think. Bill—that’s Captain Weigand—” Faith nodded her head. “Says that probably it was only a sniper. That your—that Mr. Payne—was a target. Not anything more. But—”

  “My former husband,” Faith Constable said, “had an ability to get himself disliked. I know that. I ought to know. I learned, very rapidly, to dislike him heartily. Mrs. North, Willings is a great writer.”

  People of the theater use the word “great” with easy familiarity. But Faith, using it in this connection, used it as if she meant it. It was not, however, entirely clear what she meant by it.

  “I don’t know him,” she said. “Oh—I’ve met him. That isn’t it.” She smiled suddenly, and the smile changed her face, brought the shimmer back to her. “Kids want autographs,” she said. “They wriggle and titter and go eek! and they’re rather a nuisance and, sometimes, rather sweet. I’d like to be a kid and wriggle and titter and say, ‘Please, Mr. Willings?’” She paused and the smile changed. “Not really,” she said. “A way of putting it. They’ll suspect him, won’t they? Because of this childish brawl. And—the indignity.”