Murder Has Its Points

by Frances

  If we could find the boy first, Pam thought. Talk to him. The poor, unhappy kid—the lost kid. Running now. But—running from the police? Or, from everything—from defeat and loneliness; perhaps even from his own mother’s inability to believe? Find him and—

  My neck again, Pam thought. Stuck out again. Oh, damn it all. “Lame dogs over stiles,” Jerry would say—had so often had occasion to say. “Show Pam a lame dog,” he had told Bill Weigand once, “and she’ll find a stile to help it over. Hell, she’ll build one. And sly dogs begin to limp when they see her.” All right, Pam thought, I’m the way I am.

  It was she, now, who was looking toward the fire, not at it. The other two waited, now, for her, Faith looking at her, Gladys, still leaning back in her chair, seeming to look at nothing. Merely waiting to be told.

  Only, Pam thought, we can’t find him. How can we find him? So, what can we really—

  “Of course,” Pam said, “we don’t really know whether there’s anything in this, do we? Because we don’t know what Mrs. Payne meant to say. We’re only—guessing. Perhaps she was talking about somebody entirely different. Perhaps about something entirely different. Not about the murder at all.”

  They listened. Gladys even leaned forward in her chair to listen.

  “She came to me this morning,” Pam said. “She thought she might have said something; that she didn’t remember what she had said. When she was groggy from the stuff. She hadn’t, to me. And she didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell me, what kind of thing she was afraid she’d said. I thought afraid. As if she thought she might have incriminated somebody. Wait! Somebody important to her. And your son, Mrs. Mason, wouldn’t have been that. At least—would he?”

  “No,” Gladys Mason said. “Only—only to me.”

  “So,” Pam said, “all we have to do is to call her up and ask. Because not remembering what she said is one thing, and what she saw is another, isn’t it?”

  Faith Constable’s expressive eyes flickered for a moment. But then she nodded. “Over there,” she said, and pointed toward shadows.

  There was no question—except momentarily in Pam’s own mind—that Pamela North would be the person to telephone and ask Lauren Payne what, if anything, she had seen the evening before. She found the telephone in the shadows; dialed the number Gladys Mason gave her, heard “Hotel Dumont, good afternoon,” and asked for Mrs. Anthony Payne. She heard “One moment, please,” but it was more than a moment. Then Pam listened again, and said, “Oh,” and hung up.

  Mrs. Anthony Payne had checked out of the Hotel Dumont. It was rather like reaching a foot up for a final stair-tread which isn’t there. Pam went back to her chair and sipped tea which was no longer warm at all. I don’t, she thought, really like tea. The idea of tea is wonderful but tea, when all’s said and done, is only tea.

  “They have a house in a place called Ridgefield,” Gladys Mason said. “There was a picture of it in a magazine. Anthony in sports clothes.” She paused. “Trying,” she said, “to look like a man who likes roses. Ridgefield, Connecticut.”

  It took longer to find a telephone number, through information—through information which at first reported no Anthony Payne listed in Ridgefield, New Jersey, and said, “Oh,” with some indignation and, after what seemed a longish time for research, reported an Idlewood number with detachment, and in a tone of considerable doubt. (The doubt, Pam realized, was of the mental capacity of someone who did not know the difference between New Jersey and Connecticut.)

  Pam dialed and waited and listened to the signal which meant the distant ringing of a telephone bell. She waited for some time, knowing that people who live in country houses are often out of them. Mrs. Payne might be out in the garden. It was difficult to guess what, late of a November afternoon, she might be doing in a garden. But still—

  Pam put the receiver back, finally. She went back to the fire. She said that, of course, there was no reason really, to suppose that Mrs. Payne had gone back to her house in Ridgefield. She might, of course, have gone anywhere. She might—

  Pam went back to the telephone and dialed again, and listened again to distant ringing. Sometimes country people hear a bell ringing from some distance, and hurry in only to be too late.

  The telephone was not answered. Pam went back across the room and, midway, felt something which was rather like a physical chill. This time, she did not sit down. She stood in front of the fire, which was now only a nostalgic flicker. But it was not the failure of a needless fire in a warm room which had caused a contracting chill.

  “Mrs. Mason,” Pam North said, “does he know where they live? Your son, I mean. Where the Paynes live?”

  “Why yes,” Gladys said. “He was the one who showed me the picture. He said—it doesn’t matter, does it, what he said?”

  It did not. But that he had known—

  “You told him what she said? About seeing someone?”

  “Of course. That was what—” She did not finish, but her body stiffened; there was a sudden fixation of the eye muscles, so that her eyes turned starey. And Faith said, “Oh. He wouldn’t—”

  It did not need to be said; it would only hurt to have it said. But it was a chill in the room. A murderer is seen and no good may come to the person who sees him.

  “You were to meet him at Grand Central,” Pam said. That much had to be said. “Trains run from there to Connecticut. Not to Ridgefield, I don’t think, but to somewhere near—near enough.”

  Mrs. Mason did not say anything. Faith said, “But, dear—” and did not finish.

  “He wouldn’t,” Gladys said. “I know he—”

  But she stopped with that. She didn’t know what the boy would do or wouldn’t do. She had told them that already.

  11

  Bill Weigand parked his car in the upper West Fifties and told the Telegraph Bureau where the car was, and that for some time he wouldn’t be in it, and where he would be. He walked a quarter of a block and looked at his destination and involuntarily shook his head.

  It had been a very foolish place to build a theater, even in the twenties, when it had seemed that New York could never have enough theaters. Probably it had been a “jinx house” even then, which was only a way of saying that it had been, usually for a few nights at a time, occupied by plays which couldn’t find better lodging and that usually because they deserved none. And “The Excelsior” is not really a name anyone in his right mind would wish on a theater.

  The name of the theater was still lettered across its façade. It was lettered now in the empty sockets of light bulbs long since shattered. The brick of the façade had once been painted white. That had been a mistake, too.

  The theater into which Livingston Birdwood’s production of Uprising, a play in three acts by Lars Simon, based on a novel by Anthony Payne, was to open during the holidays, was ten blocks south, where theaters belong. It was by no means new—no theater in New York is really new—but it was bright with paint, and lights sparkled on it. It was also occupied by a musical which only now, after rather more than two years, was beginning to dwindle away.

  Plays must rehearse somewhere. The Excelsior was a hulk, but it still had a stage of sorts. Electricity could be turned on when needed, and if ancient wiring started fire, those within could always run and the reluctant owners of the building could chortle. The insurance company might sigh, but with resignation, since it had long since got its own back.

  From the sidewalk, the theater looked as dead as the empty sockets of its sign. Bill Weigand looked at it and felt doubt; wondered whether, conceivably, Livingston Birdwood had directed him up a blind alley. It was a cobweb of a thought, and he brushed it away and went into the lobby. Plaster had fallen off the lobby ceiling and not been brushed up. There was no one in the lobby. There was no sound except that of his shoes gritting on plaster dust. It was getting on in the day. Perhaps they had packed up and gone home.

  The doors from lobby to orchestra were closed against him, flatly, offering no handholds. Go
ne away and sealed the place up after them? No—a single door with a knob on it. Bill turned the knob and pulled and the door opened, and he went in. They had not packed up and gone home.

  The auditorium was not really large. The Excelsior had been built for “intimate” productions, which had turned out to be intimate to the point of disappearance. But now it looked like a dark cavern—a dark and extremely cold cavern. Bill buttoned his topcoat and resisted the inclination to turn its collar up.

  The stage seemed far away, and the center aisle sloped toward it. Over the stage a single bright bulb dangled from a cord, threw down harsh light. In seats nearest the stage half a dozen people sat, dark blobs against the light. Under the hanging light, a man sat on a wooden chair, beside a wooden table, his right leg resting on another wooden chair. Toward the rear of the stage, and to the left as Weigand faced it, a woman in a mink coat stood with her back to him and faced a brick wall.

  The man, seen in profile—he was looking at the woman in the mink coat—was young and handsome and dark-haired. A smaller man, whose hair was also dark but was noticeably scant, walked from a canvas flat leaning against a wall (the flat was marked “Laura Darling Scene 2”) toward the man in the chair. The walking man said, “Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

  The handsome man wheeled quickly to face the newcomer.

  “Not I, Sybil,” he said, and laughed lightly. “I—”

  “Damn it all, Blaine,” the smaller man said. “How often do I have to tell you? It’s hot as hell. It’s got all of you, the heat has. Also, damn it to hell, you’ve got to start wearing it. Otherwise, you’ll be skipping all over the damn place when we open.”

  “I’m sorry,” the handsome man said.

  Nobody had paid any attention to Bill Weigand. He sat down in an aisle seat. A broken spring pronged him. He moved to the next seat.

  “Blaine.” Blaine Smythe. Back in the cast, apparently. Which was mildly interesting, and certainly convenient.

  The woman in the mink coat turned. She was pretty, with the highly visible face of an actor.

  “Lars,” she said. “I still think there ought to be drums. Thump-thump, thump-thump. They’re natives, aren’t they? I’m looking out this window because I hear the drums—boom-boom-boom, boom. I’m scared out of my wits because of the damn drums.”

  “No drums,” Lars—Lars Simon, he would be—said, His tone was weary. “These natives haven’t invented drums, darling. Also, they’re sneaking up through the jungle. Slither, slither, slither. That’s what you hear, darling. Not boom, boom.”

  “The audience can’t hear slither,” the girl in mink said. “But it’s your play, darling. Slither, slither. God, it’s cold in here.”

  “Button up your overcoat,” Lars Simon said, with no sympathy in his voice. “All right. Sybil comes in left.” He went back to the flat and then walked away from it, as he had before. “Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

  Blaine Smythe seemed to stiffen when he heard the voice. This time he turned slowly, twisting his body but leaving his right leg extended on the chair.

  “Not I, Sybil,” he said. And laughed lightly. “I—”

  The woman in the mink coat turned from the “window.” She turned abruptly.

  “If not you,” she said, “who? That’s the question, isn’t it, George? Who? If not you—”

  “Too fast, darling,” Lars Simon said. “Look, darling. The three of you have been cooped up in here for two days, and they’re coming through the jungle.”

  “Slither slither,” the girl said.

  “You’re very funny, darling,” Lars said. “You’ve got on each other’s nerves. O.K. But it’s hot as hell and you’re tired. Beat down. Do it tired, darling. Do it hot.”

  “With my teeth chattering,” the girl said. “Ing gives us a barn to work in and—”

  Lars looked at her.

  “All right, darling,” the girl said. “Cue me, Blaine.” She turned and faced the brick wall. Damn it all, Bill Weigand thought, she looks precisely as if she were looking out a window. Even under all that coat.

  “O.K.,” Lars said. “From Sybil’s entrance. Yackety yackety yackety it was you who began it.”

  Blaine Smythe turned even more slowly in his chair. As he turned, he used one hand to lift his right leg a little. He spoke as he turned. “Not I, Sybil. I—”

  The young woman turned. Now there was a kind of slump in her slender body, weariness in her slower movement; weariness, yet with hysteria under the weariness, in her voice as she spoke. “If not you,” she said, “who? That’s the question, isn’t it, George? Who—”

  She broke. In quite another voice, she said, “Listen, Lars. It’s your play. But do you really want me to say ‘if not you’ again? When it’s slowed down this way? To me, darling, it doesn’t hold.”

  Lars Simon said, “Hmmm,” thoughtfully and then, “Could be you’ve got—read it again, darling.”

  Darling read it again.

  Lars nodded. “All right,” he said. “Stop with the second ‘who.’ Only, lean on it a little. Let’s take it again. Sybil comes in and yackety yackety yackety—”

  They took it again. The girl “leaned” just perceptibly on the second “who.”

  “O.K.,” Lars said. “Faith’s cue is the second ‘who,’ then.”

  He looked at his watch. “All right, children,” he said. “We’ve got that in the works. No use trying to set the rest without Faith. Joe?” From some place a man’s voice said, “Yeah.” “Light this crypt up, will you, Joe?” A few lights came on—two where a cluster once had been; half a dozen dimly outlining the arch. “All right, children,” Lars said. “Ten o’clock tomorrow.” He came across a runway built over the orchestra pit and down steps. Bill Weigand got up and walked down the center aisle. “And Blaine,” Lars Simon said; turning back to the handsome man still sitting by the table. “Tomorrow you bring it along, O.K.? And wear it?”

  “Sure,” Blaine Smythe said, and stood up. And as he stood, Bill Weigand saw, for the first time, that a rifle was lying across the wooden table. It had been shielded, before, by Blaine Smythe’s body.

  Smythe moved quickly, with grace, across the stage to the runway. The half dozen dark blobs stood up from their seats and became two women, one middle-aged, the other hardly more than a girl, and four men, one of them a remarkably tall and obviously muscular Negro. “And Tommy,” Lars said, “do you mind putting on the choppers, tomorrow? So you can learn to talk with them. And not, buddy, look so goddamn Harvard?”

  The tall Negro laughed. He had a low, musical laugh.

  “You Amherst boys,” he said. He talked Harvard, Weigand thought. “All right, Lars. Tomorrow, ferocious native with pointed teeth. Trouble is, Lars, I bite myself. But—O.K.”

  Bill Weigand had almost joined the group before anyone seemed to notice him. Then they all turned and looked at him. There was nothing impolite in the way they looked at him. But they looked at an alien.

  His identification of himself did not change that, but Blaine Smythe raised his eyebrows, and Lars Simon said, “My God. Who goes willingly?”

  Bill Weigand looked as amused as he could manage. He mentioned routine.

  “All right,” Lars said, “I shot my mouth off. Said he was a pain in the neck and—oh my God, I told somebody he ought to drop dead. I can hear myself. He ought to drop dead, I said. And dead he dropped.”

  He held out his hands, wrists close enough together. Bill Weigand did not try to look amused. Lars Simon looked at him a moment. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said, in quite another voice. “It isn’t funny, is it?”

  “No,” Bill said. “It’s not very funny, Mr. Simon. But it is routine. A couple of questions for you. A couple for—it is Mr. Smythe, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Smythe said. He looked at the watch on his wrist. “I have got a date,” he said. “Will it take long?”

  There was no reason why it should take long. And certainly no rea
son why the others should wait. The others looked rather as if they’d like to. “Run along, children,” Lars Simon said, very much as if he talked to children. They went up the aisle. At the head of it, the young woman in mink stopped and called back. “You really mean ten, darling?” she called. “You’re damned right, darling,” Lars Simon told her up the length of the aisle. “And Tommy. Don’t forget the choppers.”

  “Grrr,” Tommy said. He did two steps of what appeared to be a tribal dance.

  The three sat in orchestra seats, Simon and Blaine Smythe in one row with a vacant seat between them, Bill Weigand in the row in front, twisted (somewhat uncomfortably) so that he could look at them.

  The first was simplest, as it always was. Smythe had, he sad, left the cocktail party shortly after the brawl between Willings and Payne. He had gone to his apartment, which was in the Murray Hill area. He had stayed in it until about seven-thirty, when he had picked up a friend and gone to dinner. “Same friend I’ve got a date with now,” he said, and looked at his watch again. Weigand looked at his own. It showed twenty minutes after four. He said, again, that he’d try not to keep Mr. Smythe long. “Girl friend,” Smythe said, without being asked. “They don’t like to be kept waiting, Captain.”

  When it was his turn, Lars Simon was not so quick, nor did he seem so assured. He said that he had still been at the party—what was left of the party. He had not known Payne had been shot until, apparently, about fifteen minutes after it happened. When he had gone out, the police were already there. Somebody had told him Payne was dead, and he had gone home. Home was in Brooklyn Heights.

  Probably, while still at the party, he had been with people who would remember that he was with them?