by Frances
“Which,” Bill said, and finished his drink and looked at an empty glass with absent-minded reproach, “gives us two of them. Thanks, Jerry.”
“One in the grass we weren’t to find, weren’t even to look for,” Bill said. “Another in the car—Self’s car—which we were to find. A thorough man, Smythe. Thought of almost everything.” He stopped, looked with absent-minded surprise at his replenished glass, sipped. “They’ve filled you in?” he said, to Dorian. “Up to now,” Dorian said.
“Having gone to the trouble to get Self there,” Bill said, “he didn’t really leave any holes. A little put out, probably, to find you and the others there, Pam, but that needn’t have been fatal. If, of course, his shot had been. Fired a shot from his rifle on the way up. It was his, incidentally. The other rifle was just—a prop. It was safe enough to fire. It’s hunting season. He retrieved the casing and put it in his pocket. Reloaded, of course. After he knocked Self out, tossed the casing into the car.”
“The trouble he went to,” Pam said. “You jump around.”
Bill looked at her in some surprise. He said he thought it obvious enough. When Smythe decided—it probably was decided reluctantly—that he had to kill Lauren, he decided also to provide the police with a murderer. A James Self, already complete enough with motive. So, he telephoned Self, pretending to be Lauren—
Bill interrupted himself. “She has a very deep, rather husky voice,” he said. “Symthe is an actor; Lars Simon says a good one. Good actors can mimic. Right?”
“Nobody’s quarreling,” Pam said. “Told Mr. Self Jo-An was there, got him to come, shot Mrs. Payne after Self arrived, rushed over and pretended to take the gun away from him while actually giving it to him. That’s clear enough.” She considered. “Now,” she added.
“Right,” Bill said. “Then it’s all clear.”
He seemed to consider the matter ended. He lighted a cigarette and leaned back; he blew smoke into the air and watched it.
“Don’t tease the animals,” Dorian told him. “Wouldn’t it have been merely one word against another?”
“No,” Bill said. “Lauren had called Smythe, asked him to come up. From the Dumont. There’s a record of the call, complete with number. With her dead, he could quote her as he liked. Actually—I think still trying to think she had dreamed, still pushing reality away—she said—she can’t remember her exact words—‘I couldn’t have seen you, could I? Not where I—I dreamed I did?’ He reassured her, she says; almost convinced her. But—‘He was too ready,’ she said. ‘I—I suppose then I really knew.’
“She must have revealed that—revealed she was not convinced. He made his decision then.”
“Still—” Dorian said.
“At the time Self got the phone call,” Bill said, “Lauren was in a garage in New Canaan, waiting for her car. She made no call from there. Nor was any long-distance call made from the house. So—a lie against Self. So—no explanation of his presence there. Except, of course, the one Smythe would provide. Along with the cartridge case in the car. Oh, I think it would have worked. With Mrs. Payne dead.”
“You had this bandage gadget,” Jerry pointed out. “With a streak on it. It was oil?”
“Yes. It was oil. I had that. Enough for a hunch. Not for proof. I’d have kept on worrying. Smythe wouldn’t have needed to worry much.”
“I don’t,” Dorian said, “see how he knew Mr. Payne would come out and stand on the sidewalk waiting to be shot at. If he hadn’t, all this for nothing. Plus the chance somebody would see him—somebody who knew him—and want to commiserate about the broken leg or whatever.”
“As for that,” Bill said, “he could merely say he was getting the feel of the bandage gadget. Explain as much as necessary. He might, of course, have decided, under those circumstances, to postpone his sniping. The sniping, incidentally, because there’s been a rash of them. And nobody caught. Another—well, say another tree in a woods.”
“If you must,” Dorian said, gently. “Now, darling—how he knew Mr. Payne would come out instead of having dinner at the hotel and going up to his room?”
Bill said, “Well—” He said, “I don’t say everything’s wrapped—”
“String,” Pam said. “I save string, did you know? And wrapping paper. Payne thought the food at the Dumont was ‘terrible.’ They never ate there. Mrs. Payne told us that yesterday. Not you, Bill. He probably told everybody or—or she did. Of course. She and Blaine were—what were they, Bill? Anyway, she would have, wouldn’t she?”
Bill thanked her for the string. He said it was a very nice peice of string, a very useful piece of string. Or, if she preferred, wrapping.
“Bill,” Pam said. “Why? Because they were lovers? He and Lauren? Even then, why?”
Bill emptied his glass. Jerry got up, and Bill put his hand over the glass. He said he would let the rest catch up.
“I don’t think they were, Pam,” he said, and spoke slowly. “She says not. She says that now she’s glad—very glad. She says she doesn’t know why they weren’t. She said, ‘I just couldn’t bring myself—’ and didn’t finish. Not a matter of morals, I suspect. Of—” He shrugged. He said a psychiatrist might have a dozen reasons. He said that the word “revulsion” might sum it up. Revulsion instilled by other things; revulsion probably temporary.
“She talked a good deal about her husband,” Bill said. “Nothing very—explicit. She’s still—excited, upset. Not as coherent as she might be. I think because she’s not very sure in her own mind. You see—she loved Smythe. Thought he loved her. But—about Payne. It seems he was something of a rat, as Self called him. In a—in a number of ways. What’s called mental cruelty. She gets vague after that. But, I suspect it didn’t stop there. That, somehow, he—well, left her in a kind of shock.”
“Bill!” Pam said. “She’s not up there all alone? Tearing herself to pieces alone?”
He looked surprised. He said he thought he had told her. Gladys Mason was with her. And the boy, too. “She seems,” Bill said, “to have turned to Mrs. Mason. As to—oh, call it an elder sister.”
“Hmmm,” Dorian said. “As to the sister business.” She sipped from her own drink.
“Call it what you like, then,” Bill said. “Anyway, she’s turned to her. And Mrs. Mason is—protective.” He smiled faintly. “Shooed me out, in the end,” he said. “Seems to have taken over, in a very helpful way. I’ve a feeling she may keep on with it.”
“The ill wind,” Pam said “But again—why? I realize I’m persistent.”
“When she couldn’t any longer believe in—in her dream,” Bill said. “She thought he had done it to protect her. To—free her. Because he loved her.” Jerry made a gesture, started to speak. “No,” Bill said, “it’s quite possible that that entered into it. At one time, anyway. She—in a way she’s defenseless. It may even have started with that, only with that. She still wants to believe that that was at the bottom of it.”
“He tried to kill her,” Jerry said. He went to the bar and began to mix drinks. “And let’s not quote Wilde, please.”
“Also,” Bill said, “Payne got him fired. Quite unjustly. Partly, at any rate, because that would hurt Lauren. With Payne dead, he had his part back. Very good part. Might have done a lot for him, Lars Simon says. If the play had clicked.”
“I like that better,” Jerry said, and poured.
“Also,” Bill said, “Mrs. Payne is quite a rich woman. With Payne dead her—revulsion might well have been overcome.”
“I,” Gerald North said, “like that best of all. And in the end, of course, he was trying to save his own neck.”
He brought drinks on a tray.
“You’re dour today,” Pam said. “It’s all those things you have to read. Reaction.”
“I’m dour,” Jerry agreed. “You might have answered the door, Pam. You and Lauren are pretty much of a size.”
“Jerry!” Pam said, “it was her door.”
He looked at her doubtfully. H
e started to refer to the sticking out of necks, but changed his mind. After all, nothing had happened to Pam’s neck.
“As for the motive,” Pam said. “It doesn’t have to be just one, does it? It can be a scramble.” She accepted a martini. “Things so often are,” Pamela North said.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries
1
Gerald North woke up and said, “But pelicans are birds.” He said this firmly, as one might who planned to have no argument about it. He heard each word, and each word distinct, even emphatic. He had announced, to an unfamiliar ceiling, that pelicans were birds. There could be no doubt of this. He rather wished there might be.
He turned on his side and looked at the next bed, in which Pamela North should be lying. She was not. I will go back to sleep, Gerald North thought, and wake up again and start it all over—start it in a room which is not strange, with a wife where she ought to be, and certainly with no announcement about pelicans. Pelicans, for the love of God! What are pelicans to me or I to …
There was, he began to realize, something in his subconscious. It squirmed; it was rather like a tickle. It was not a pelican; too small for that. But it was, on the other hand, not not a pelican. A dream about a pelican? About, perhaps, a pelican who had carried away Pamela North? He leafed over such dreams as he could lay his mind on. If Pam had been carried away by anything, look under “Nightmares.” If …
Gerald North’s subconscious said the hell with it, and opened enough to be peeked into. Its interior was dim, foggy. But there was something moving in it. For some seconds, what was moving kept slipping back into the fog. But then …
It was Pam moving, lightly, quickly. It was Pam putting on shorts and a pull-over shirt. He was—
“Go back to sleep,” Pam said, in the fog of a dream which was not quite right for a dream. “It’s early yet. I’m going out to fish for pelicans.”
Jerry North sat on the side of his bed and ran the fingers of both hands through his hair. That was it, all right. Pam had got up and partly awakened him and said she was going out to fish for pelicans. Jerry had a momentary wish he had left that bit in his subconscious where, if anywhere, it belonged. Had he then told Pam a fact about pelicans and, contented at having set her straight, gone back to sleep? Or had he, himself sleepily satisfied, said only, “Mmmm,” or some such thing, before he was asleep again? He was inclined to think the latter. A few words would have saved Pam from disappointment, and he had not spoken the words. Somewhere—probably out on the pier—Pam was hopefully fishing for pelicans.
Jerry released his head and stood up, and finally did waken. He was in their room in The Coral Isles, city of Key West, state of Florida. That sharded brightness so painful to the eyes came from the Atlantic Ocean, with the morning sun on it. The time was eight-fifteen, the date the fourteenth of February, the temperature was already in the seventies. From the window of their room, Jerry could not see the fishing pier. He had better, he decided, dress and go find Pam and tell her she hadn’t a prayer, because pelicans are birds.
The Coral Isles was barely half awake. In the lobby a man was pushing a vacuum cleaner back and forth; on the deep porch on the ocean side the chairs were in an orderly row, their backs to the wall. A man was sprinkling the crab grass. (No. Mustn’t be impolite. The Bermuda grass.) At the far end of the two-hundred-foot pier there was a small figure.
Jerry took the path to the pier. Larry Saunders, the tennis pro, was dragging a heavy brush back and forth across the near court. He flicked a hand in greeting; he said it was going to be another warm one; he hoped it wasn’t going to be so windy. Jerry went past the swimming pool. A very tanned young man in white trunks was cleaning it. Jerry went past the sunning enclosure in the lee of the bathhouse—and, according to the brochure, the solaria and the new and fully equipped gymnasium. Nobody was sunning yet.
He went out onto the long, narrow pier—a wooden structure on piles above the glittering water of the Atlantic. (Unless, by this time, the Atlantic had become the Gulf?) The crepe soles of his Keds made little sound on the planking.
It was Pam, all right. She was on the platform at the end of the pier—the stubby crossing of an elongated T. Her back was to him, and she was unquestionably fishing. And—
Jerry stopped in midstep. And—she had caught pelicans!
There was a pelican to the right of her on the platform, and a pelican to the left of her. They were large and motionless; crouching pelicans, with preposterous pouches under their bills.
Damn it all, Jerry thought. They are birds. You don’t—
Pam pulled up her line. If she’s caught another, Jerry thought, I’ll—I’ll—He put a hand on the nearer rail to steady himself.
A small bright object dangled at the end of Pam North’s line. One of the pelicans got up, and extended its big wings, as if it were stretching. It waddled a step nearer Pam North.
Pam detached a small fish from the hook, and turned to the pelican and said, “Here” and tossed. The little fish disappeared into the large pelican. The pelican moved back and sat down.
All right, Jerry North thought. Language is a clumsy thing, full of knobs. “For pelicans.” All right. “For” pelicans if one liked. “In behalf of pelicans” would, certainly, have made things clearer—a little clearer. He went on, joined Pam.
“That Miss Brownley left yesterday,” Pam said. “She’s been fishing for them every morning. They’re so trusting, the poor things.”
Jerry looked from pelican to pelican.
“I can’t,” Jerry North said, “say they look it. Are they sick or something?”
One of the pelicans made a somewhat guttural noise at him. It was the one who had not got the last fish.
“Why sick?” Pam said. “I don’t think they’re sick. They have fine appetites. All right.” The last was, Jerry gathered, to the more talkative of the pelicans. Pam dropped her line in again.
“Is there,” Jerry said, “some reason they can’t do their own fishing?”
“Probably forgotten how,” Pam said. “Would you if you didn’t have to?”
The pelican which had spoken stood up, stretched wings, and advanced two steps. It had, Jerry thought, a definite let’s-get-on-with-it attitude. “I know it’s your turn,” Pam said. “As soon as—” She pulled her line in sharply, and another bright fish twisted in the sunlight. Pam North said “Here,” again, and tossed again.
“And,” Pam said, “the soup kitchen is closing for the day.” She reeled her line in and both pelicans watched her through red eyes. Then the pelican who had eaten last said something rather like “awrk” and made a small hop and extended wings and went off, looking like an old-fashioned flying boat. The other pelican watched and it occurred to Jerry its eyes had a bet-I-could-do-that expression. It looked at Pam. “No,” Pam said. “Maybe tomorrow.” The pelican flew away.
“I,” Pamela North said, “smell like a fish.”
They walked back along the pier, which extended north and south from sand to ocean, and over ocean. Jerry walked on Pam’s left; at Key West the trade winds are easterly.
“A little,” Jerry said. “Down here almost everything does. Are you going to adopt those pelicans?” He paused briefly. “Birds,” he said. He still felt vaguely that that ought to be kept straight.
Pam has a tendency to extend protection to all creatures, whatever their plumage, the number of their legs, she feels may be in need of it. Jerry could, offhand, think of no special reasons why pelicans should be excluded.
“They look healthy enough to me,” he added.
“Heavy flyers,” Pam said. “As if they were too big for themselves. Of course, they do like early breakfasts.” Pam yawned, and covered yawning. She looked at her hand reproachfully. “Very like a fish,” she said. “I expect as I get adjusted.”
One learns by experience, of which Gerald North has had considerable. Pamela’s last remark was therefore, to him, entirely comprehensible. Of rece
nt months, Pam had developed a habit of waking early. It was to be expected, and by Jerry greatly hoped, that the soft air of the South, the listlessness of vacation, would return her to more reasonable ways. If it did, the pelicans could awrk for their breakfasts. (As long, of course, as they remained in health.)
“Awrk,” Jerry said, experimentally. It did not sound much like a pelican asking to be fed. Pam, reasonably enough, said, “Huh?”
“Worked with the pelicans,” Jerry said. “Say ‘awrk’ and get your breakfast.”
“It didn’t sound like ‘awrk’ to me,” Pam said. “But have it your own way. I’ll have to shower and change first.”
They reached the shore end of the pier and Pam leaned her rod against the bathhouse. There was still no one in the sunning place. At the fresh-water pool, the tanned young man in white trunks was putting pads on wooden chaises. Larry Saunders was brushing the second tennis court. The man was still watering crab grass. Mr. Grogan stood at the head of the steps which led up to the porch of The Coral Isles. Mr. Grogan had the red face of a man who, by choice and profession, spends most of his time in the sun and who does not tan. He had snowy white hair; a wave of white hair crested from forehead to nape of neck.
“Beautiful morning,” Mr. Grogan told the Norths. “Going to be a fine day. Probably get to eighty or thereabouts.”
The managing director of a resort hotel is concerned with such matters, keeping one eye on the thermometer and the other on the guest roster.
“Been feeding Teddy and Freddy?” Mr. Grogan said.
Pam said, “Pelicans?”