by Frances
William Weigand gazed at a wall with a crack in the plaster and thought about men and women, and waited for the Connecticut State Police to pass along information which would, in all probability, prove irrelevant. If Mrs. Lauren Payne preferred her home to a hotel room while she wrapped grief around her—always assuming she had grief to wrap—there was no reason to suppose it would mean anything. Or, for that matter, would it mean anything if she were not in a house on a road called Nod. She might have gone anywhere—to friends or relatives; to another hotel less memory-haunted. Nobody had told her to stay put.
The trooper who had driven from the Ridgefield Barracks to Nod Road to see whether Mrs. Payne had come home was only one of a good many men busy that November afternoon turning over stones to see what might be under them. Two men went through files of the Supreme Court, State of New York, seeking records in the case of Payne vs. Payne, handicapped by the fact that the year of the hearing was not precisely known and of the two who could have precisely given it, one was dead and the other missing. A man with a sketch pad in hand sat with a large pink woman in a small office at the end of a long, dim corridor and made pencil lines on paper and said, “Is this more like it, Mrs. MacReady? Or are the eyebrows more like this?” When he had finished with that, he would go to another part of the hotel and say much the same things to someone else, most probably a busboy. “Begin to look like him now, would you say? Different about the mouth, huh? More like this, maybe?”
Men blew dust on objects in a room on the seventeenth floor of the Hotel Dumont and blew it off again, and did the same in a tiny, almost airless room in a tenement in the West Forties. And men also used vacuum cleaners in both rooms, sucking dust up once more.
Men from the Third Detective District, Eighteenth Precinct, had the longest, the most tedious, job. At the Hotel Dumont there had, at the time in issue, been twenty-three overnighters, counting couples as singular. These included, as one, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Payne, who had checked in a little after noon the day before, and had not checked out together. But Gardner Willings was not included; he had been at the Dumont for almost a week. There was, of course, no special reason to believe that the man or woman they sought had stayed only overnight at the hotel. The twenty-three (or twenty-two with the Paynes themselves omitted) provided merely a place to start, and their identification was the barest of starts. With names and addresses listed, verification came next. It would take time; it would, almost inevitably, trouble some water. (“I certainly was not at the Dumont last night and my husband couldn’t have been. He’s in Boston, Of course he’s in—”)
The Hotel King Arthur across the street provided almost twice as many problems. The King Arthur offered respectable and convenient lodgings to people from the suburbs who wanted to see a show and didn’t want—heaven knew didn’t want!—to lunge anxiously through crowded streets to railroad stations and, at odd hours of night, drive from smaller stations to distant homes, probably through rain or, in November, something worse. The King Arthur was less expensive than the Dumont. The King Arthur had fifty-four overnighters, again counting rooms rather than people.
Check the overnighters out. Failing to find what was wanted, as was most likely, check out other guests, with special—but not exclusive—attention to those with rooms on the street. (Anyone active enough can reach a roof, wherever his room may be.) And know, while all this went on, that there was no real reason to suppose that the murderer had been a guest in either hotel. It was not even certain the shot had been fired from either hotel. There were other roofs, less convenient but not impossible. It is dull business, detecting, and hard on feet.
There was also the one salient question to ask, and ask widely: Did you notice anything out of the way? Like, for example, a man carrying a twenty-two rifle, probably with a telescopic sight attached?
There was, of course, no hope it really would be that simple. The sniper, whether psychopathic marksman or murderer by intent, would hardly have walked to his vantage point with rifle over shoulder, whistling a marching tune. Anybody carrying anything that might hide a rifle? Long thin suitcase? Or long fat suitcase, for that matter? Shrugs met that, from room clerks, from bellhops. Who measures? But nothing, it appeared, long enough to attract attention. Cases, say, for musical instruments? None noted at the Dumont. Several at the King Arthur. A combo was staying there. And had been for a week. Anything else? Anything at all? Shrugs met that.
(Detective Pearson, Eighteenth Precinct, thought for a time he might be on to something. A refuse bin at the Dumont turned up a florist’s box—a very long box for very long-stemmed flowers. Traces of oil on green tissue? The lab to check. The lab: Sorry. No oil.)
Anything at all strange?
Well, a man had tried, at the King Arthur, to register with an ocelot. At the Dumont, a guest had come in a collapsible wheel chair. At the King Arthur one guest had had his head heavily bandaged, and another had a bandaged foot and had walked with crutches. There had also been a man who must have had St. Vitus or something, because he kept jerking his head.
As reports dribbled in, William Weigand tossed them into the certrifuge which had become his head. Mullins came in. There was no sign of Mrs. Lauren Payne at her house on Nod Road, Ridgefield, Connecticut. The house was modern, large, on five acres. Must have cost plenty. The State cops would check from time to time; pass word when there was word to pass. Weigand tossed this news into the centrifuge. Sort things out, damn it. Sort out the next move.
Try to forget motive for the moment. Consider opportunity. Only those actually with Payne when he was shot, or who had left the party within not more than five minutes (make five arbitrary) positively had none. The Norths; Hathaway, Jerry’s publicity director; Livingston Birdwood, producer of Uprising. They had been with Payne when he was shot, could not therefore have shot him from above.
Take Gardner Willings. He had left after the scuffle; had been seen to leave. He would have had ample time to go into a blind somewhere and wait his prey. Consider him seriously, therefore? Intangibles entered, then—hunches which felt like facts. Willings would ambush, certainly; Willings undoubtedly had. Willings was, presumably, a better than average shot. But—hunch, now—Willings would not ambush anything which went on two legs instead of four. Because, if for no other reason, Willings would never for a moment suppose he was not bigger, tougher, than anything else that went on two legs. Ambushes are laid by those who doubt themselves, as any man may against a tiger.
Faith Constable had had to “go on” from the party and had, presumably, gone on. To be checked out further. Forget motive? No, motive is a part of fact. Nobody in his right mind punishes a quarter-century-old dereliction. Grudges simply do not keep that well in a sane mind. Faith Constable had accomplished much in a quarter of a century. Jeopardize it now to correct so old a wrong? Bill shook his head. Also, he thought, I doubt if she could hit the side of a barn with a shotgun.
Lauren herself? She had left the party early, pleading a headache. No lack of opportunity, presuming she had a gun. She might, conceivably, have brought one in in a large-enough suitcase. (Check on the Payne luggage.) She might now have taken it away again. Motive—her husband wandering? Bitter, unreasoning jealousy? Heaven knew it happened and hell knew it too. But—it happened, almost always, among the primitive and, usually, among the very young. (Call it mentally young; call it retarded.) There was nothing to indicate that Lauren Payne was primitive. She did not move in primitive circles. She was young, but not that young.
It occurred to Bill Weigand that he was, on a hunch basis, eliminating a good many. He reminded himself that he had an unusual number of possibilities.
The Masons, mother or son, or mother and son? Opportunity was obvious. Motive. Here, too, the cause to hate lay well back in the years. But bitterness had more cause to remain, even increasingly to corrode. With the boy, particularly. The boy had, apparently—if Mrs. MacReady was right in what she had told Mullins—only in recent months been forced to give up college, t
o work as a busboy. Seeing the man he blamed for this made much of—youth and bitterness and—
Bill picked up the telephone; got Mullins.
“Send out a pickup on Mrs. Mason and the boy when you’ve got enough to go on,” Bill said. “Right?”
Mullins would do.
A man named Lars Simon, playwright-director, had expressed a wish that Anthony Payne drop dead. He would say, of course, that he had not really had any such wish; that what he had said was no more than one of those things one does say, lightly, meaning nothing. Which probably would turn out to be true; which he obviously had to be given the opportunity to say.
A man named Blaine Smythe, with “y” and “e” but pronounced without them, had been fired at Payne’s insistence. He was also, if Pam North was right, a closer acquaintance of Lauren Payne’s than she, now, was inclined to admit. He might deny the latter; would certainly deny any connection between the two things, or any connection of either with murder. He would have to be given the opportunity.
Mullins? It was evident that Mullins was the man to go. It was evident that a captain should remain at his desk, directing with a firm hand and keeping a firm seat. Bill Weigand was good and tired of the wall opposite, and the crack in the plaster. Let Mullins keep the firm seat; let Stein.
When Siamese cats are intertwined it is difficult to tell where one leaves off and another begins. Stilts and Shadow, on Pam’s bed, appeared to be one cat—rather large, as Siamese cats go, and, to be sure, having two heads and two tails. On the other hand, they, or it, seemed to have no legs whatever. Pamela North said, “Hi,” to her cats, and added that proper cats met their humans at the door. Of four dark brown ears, one twitched slightly at this. “All right,” Pam said. “I know it isn’t dinnertime.”
But at this the one too-large cat suddenly became two cats, stretching. Shadow, the more talkative, began at once to talk, her voice piteous. Stilts, a more direct cat, leaped from the bed and trotted briskly toward the kitchen. Shadow looked surprised, wailed, and trotted after her. The hell it isn’t dinnertime, two waving tails told Pam North.
It was not, whatever tale was told by tails. Martha presumably would cope. She might be firm. It was most unlikely that she would be firm. They want to be fat cats, Pam thought, and lighted a cigarette and leaned back on a chaise and considered pulling her thoughts together. After a time, it occurred to her that her thoughts were not worth the trouble. A vague feeling that Anthony Payne had had it coming was hardly a thought and was, in any event, reprehensible. Had Faith Constable’s explanation of her confidence, so uninvited, been a little thin? That was more like a thought, but not a great deal more. Had that tall dark boy, carrying trays too heavy for him, found what he might have considered adulation of a man he probably hated more than he could bear? And possessed himself—how?—of a rifle and killed? Pam found she had no answers; had only a hope. The poor kid—the poor, frail kid. Some people have luck and some have no luck and that, whatever people who prefer order say, is the size of it. The poor, unlucky—
The telephone rang. Pam realized, to her surprise, that she had been almost dozing. At four o’clock in the afternoon. Two martinis for lunch—that was the trouble. I ought to remember. Don’t pretend. You do remember. You just—“Hello? Yes, this is she? What?”
The voice had music in it. Even with words coming too fast, they came on the music of the voice.
“I said I would,” Pam said. “They won’t talk about who gave the information. Not unless they have to. They don’t, Mrs. Constable. Not unless they have—”
She was interrupted.
“Call this a cry for help,” Faith Constable said. “It’s unjustified—perhaps it’s inexcusable. But—somebody has to help. And I—I just don’t know how. She’s come to me and I—in this sort of thing I’m nothing. Nothing at all. And—she’s so frightened. So frightened and so helpless. You—maybe you’ll know how to help. I know we’ve no right. No right at all. But—”
“Who?” Pam said.
“Gladys Mason. The boy—she can’t find Bobby—Will you come and help?”
This is entirely preposterous, Pamela North thought, in a taxi, traveling uptown. Just because once we found a body in a bathtub. I should just have said, “Oh, excuse me,” and closed the door. If I had, people wouldn’t now keep on thinking, whatever we tell them, that Jerry and I are some sort of detectives and I wouldn’t, now, with my sympathies all stirred up—the poor kid; the poor lost kid!—be in this taxi; be sticking my neck out again. I’d be home, having a long shower, and telling Martha that Captain and Mrs. Weigand may drop in for a drink and—
On the other hand, Pam thought, we wouldn’t know Bill and Dorian, and I can’t think of any two people we’d rather know. There is really no sense in trying to make sense out of things. “The moving finger,” Pam thought and, unknowingly, said. To which the cab driver said, “What you say, lady? Moving as fast as I can. This time of day—”
“I know,” Pam said.
“Seems like it gets worse every day,” the cab driver said. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s all these private cars. You’d think they’d have enough sense to—”
Pam agreed. She agreed that somebody ought to do something. She agreed that, in addition to being too numerous, most private drivers oughtn’t to be allowed to have licenses. She agreed.
“Here we are, lady,” the cab driver said, and stopped, as near to the curb as he could get, in front of a tall and narrow house in the East Sixties.
A maid in a gray uniform answered the door while Pam’s finger still was on the bell-push. She said, “Mrs. North?” before Pam could say anything. She said, “Mrs. Constable is expecting you, Mrs. North. If you’ll come up?”
The maid led the way up narrow stairs which hugged a wall. On the second floor she led only a few steps to an open door, and said, “Mrs. North, Mrs. Constable,” and stepped back to let Pam go into a long, high room. At the end of the room dark curtains were drawn to cover two high windows; a fire was bright in a fireplace under a black marble mantel; tall table lamps lighted the room softly. The room’s carpet was soft under Pam’s feet.
Mrs. Constable sat behind a table, and behind a tea service—a silver service which glowed in the soft light. She stood up when Pam came into the room and said, “My dear. So good of you.”
It was all most unexpected, although Pam would have found it difficult to say what she had expected. Only, somehow—not this. Not this quiet serenity; this soothing dignity. A guest welcomed to tea in surroundings which could only, if reluctantly, be called elegant; an expected guest with unhurried, assured, graciousness. How uncouth of me, Pam thought briefly, to picture myself as sticking my neck out. How, in a word, vulgar.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Constable,” Pam said, and looked again around the room. “Such a lovely room,” she said. Then, in response to smile, the most delicate of directing gestures, Pam sat in a chair beside the fireplace, facing Faith Constable. “This is Mrs. Mason,” Faith Constable said. “This is Mrs. North, Gladys.”
The woman who sat, deeper in the room, in a chair which faced the fireplace repeated Pam’s name. And her voice shook.
“There, dear,” Mrs. Constable said, gently, and poured tea. The maid had come into the room, moving very quietly. She took tea to the woman who faced the fireplace; to Pamela. She offered thin sandwiches. In the dim light to which her eyes were growing accustomed, Pam could see that, as she took the cup, Gladys Mason’s hand shook a little. A little of the tea spilled into the saucer. Pam looked up at the maid and smiled and said, “Thank you.”
Gladys Mason wore a black dress; a very plain black dress which had, somehow, the appearance of a uniform. Pam, again, sought words in her own mind. A “serviceable” black dress. She wore a small black hat on light hair—hair a grayish blond. Her face was round. From its shape, it should have been a comfortable face. It was drawn. Lines dipped from the corners of the small, pretty mouth. When she was younger she must have had a lovely figure,
Pam North thought. Must have had a pretty face.
“It begins to get dark so early now, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Constable said and then, “Thank you, Norton.” The maid said, “Yes, Mrs. Constable,” and went out of the dignified room. There was a little pause, a little sipping of tea.
“It’s hard to know where to begin,” Mrs. Constable said. “We need—advice. Gladys came to me because—”
“I shouldn’t have,” Gladys Mason said. Her voice, Pam thought, was raised a little above its ordinary pitch. “I realize I shouldn’t have. Only—” She stopped. She swallowed as if muscles ached from swallowing. “There isn’t anybody,” she said, and now her voice was lower; now her voice was dull. “There never has been. Never—never anybody.”
“Dear,” Faith Constable said. “Don’t say things like that. They’re not—”
“Oh,” Gladys Mason said. “It’s true. I’ve no right to come to you. Least of all to you. You did so much when—when you had no reason to do anything. When you had reason—”
“Nonsense,” Faith said and for the first time the subdued atmosphere was altered. Faith did not speak sharply, yet the effect was of a word spoke sharply. “Come to that, we were birds of a feather. Plucked. Mrs. North—” She paused. “Last names are awkward,” she said. “For me. In the profession we’re so—” She raised expressive shoulders.
“Pamela,” Pam North said. “Although, usually, just Pam.”
“Gladys’s son has disappeared,” Faith said. “She’s worried. She can’t—and she really can’t—go to the police. It’s not as it was with me. Not just—not wanting to.”