Untidy Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  “Drop it!” Weigand told Buford Stanton. “Drop it, Stanton!”

  Buford Stanton was standing a little beyond the center of the kitchen. He had had his back to them, and was looking down at something. Now he turned, suddenly, angrily.

  “What the—?” he began, and saw Weigand’s gun and dropped his own. It clattered on blue linoleum.

  The room held the sharp, pungent odor of gunpowder.

  Bill Weigand was beside Stanton in three long steps. He looked down at what Stanton had been looking at. The man on the floor was bleeding, apparently from a wound in the head. He was a large, rather soft man—or had been. Weigand dropped down to find out if he was or had been. And Mullins took Stanton by the arm, hard.

  “A burglar,” Stanton said. “Got him coming through the window.”

  “Yeah?” Mullins said, not relaxing his grasp. “Yeah?”

  “What the hell?” Stanton said, twisting to look at Mullins; trying at the same time to watch Weigand. “He tried to pull a gun. He was breaking in.”

  It was still a large soft man, Bill found. Not a large soft corpse. He couldn’t tell for how long, and the wound was in his head, in the right side. It might be merely a furrow along the skull. There was too much blood to tell.

  “Who’s the nearest doctor?” he demanded. He looked at Stanton. “You want him quick,” he told Stanton. “You and this man.” He looked at Mullins and Stanton. “Let him go, sergeant,” Weigand said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Why—” Stanton began, and Bill cut him off.

  “The doctor,” he said. “Tell Mullins. Go after him, Mullins. Take the car.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, and let go Stanton’s arm.

  “Telephone the State boys first,” Bill said. “Give it to them. It’s theirs. But get the doctor yourself.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, and moved.

  Bill dropped back on his knees by the large soft man. Again his fingers sought and found a pulse. He had felt weaker. Still with his fingers testing the throb in the artery, he turned up to Stanton.

  “Well,” Bill said, “let’s have it. Talk fast, Stanton.”

  Buford Stanton said, “I don’t like this, lieutenant.”

  “You don’t like it,” Weigand said. “That’s too damn bad.”

  “He was breaking in,” Stanton said. “He started to pull a gun. I’d heard someone and got my own gun. I took a shot at him and missed and he was still getting his gun out. He was almost through the window, coming in. I took another shot and got him. He fell in.”

  “That’s a story,” Weigand told him.

  “It’s what happened,” Stanton said. “It’s the story.”

  He looked steadily at Weigand.

  “He’s got a gun, hasn’t he?” he said. He seemed to be sure of the answer.

  “Right,” Bill said. “He’s got a gun. It’s still in his pocket.”

  “He was reaching for it,” Stanton said. “He was half in the window, half out. He couldn’t move freely. Was I supposed to wait?”

  “Not the way you tell it,” Weigand said. “You never saw him before?”

  “My God,” Stanton said, “he was breaking in. Why would I know him?”

  Weigand couldn’t feel that the pulse was growing weaker. The blood was seeping, not spurting, from the head wound. He stood up.

  “Right,” he said. “Tell me the rest later. I want some water—towels. We’ll stop the blood if we can.” He looked at Stanton. “You want him to live,” he told Stanton.

  A slight, middle-aged man appeared in the doorway from the dining room. He looked at them with surprise and apparent disapproval. His thin hair was standing up in wisps on his head.

  “Come here, Ford,” Stanton said. “A man’s been hurt. Get the lieutenant what he wants.”

  “Yes sir,” Ford said.

  “A burglar,” Stanton told him.

  “Naturally, sir,” Ford assured him. “I realized that, sir.” He looked at Bill Weigand and nodded, consideringly. “We’re quite isolated here, sir,” he said. “Quite away from everything.”

  “Not any more,” Bill told him, and Ford looked puzzled. “Get me something to fix this man up with,” Bill said, “till the doctor gets here.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Ford said. But he moved fast.

  And Mullins moved fast. Bill was still trying to clean the wound, to stop the blood, when Mullins came back with a spare gray man. The man’s manner was as spare as his body, almost as gray. He merely nodded when Weigand motioned toward the injured man. He got down on one knee and examined him without comment. He looked at what Bill had been doing and nodded. He stood up.

  “Can’t tell,” he said. “Alive now, obviously. Depends on the skull. Hospital.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “The State police have been notified. They’ll send an ambulance.”

  The doctor merely nodded to this. He knelt down again and peered at the wound.

  “Gunshot wound,” he said. “You knew that?” He looked at Weigand. “Who’re you, by the way?” he asked.

  Weigand told him, and a nod accepted the information. The physician stood up, brushed his hands together and looked around for something to sit on. He found a chair and sat on it.

  “Wait for the ambulance,” he said. “Not bleeding any more. Wait until we have something to work with.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. He considered. “Any harm in having some people look at him?” he asked.

  “Not unless they fall on him,” the physician said. “Or shoot him again.”

  “Right,” Bill said. He turned to Stanton. “You still never saw him before?” he said.

  “I told you,” Stanton said. “No.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Suppose you go on back to the living room. Ask Mr. Helms to come out here. Tell him to find his wife and bring her out.” Stanton looked down at his gun on the floor. “No,” Bill said. “Leave it.” Stanton looked at him and then at Mullins, and he shrugged.

  “Why not?” he enquired, of no one in particular. He went.

  “Ford!” Weigand said, and out of nowhere Ford appeared. He had smoothed his hair. He looked at the man on the floor carefully. He did not know him. “Certainly not, sir,” he said, with emphasis, with a little reproach. He went where Weigand told him to go, which was toward the living room.

  Mrs. Helms came in first. She was still beautiful. She was, as far as one could tell, unperturbed. Helms came after her.

  “By the way,” Weigand said, “where were you, Mrs. Helms, when this man got shot?”

  “In our room,” she said. “Don’s and mine.” Her voice was tranquil. “We’re staying the weekend, you know. Then I went to the living room because I was—because I wanted to find Don.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Did you ever see this man before?”

  He pointed. She looked.

  “Poor man,” she said. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Weigand said.

  “I don’t think I ever saw him,” she said. “I don’t remember him.”

  “You may have?”

  She smiled a little.

  “Of course,” she said. “He may have been a waiter, and waited on me some time. He may have been a taxi driver, and driven me. You can’t remember everybody.”

  “That’s all you meant?”

  “Of course.” She nodded. “I don’t remember ever having seen him,” she said. “Should I have?”

  “I don’t know,” Weigand said. “Helms?”

  Helms looked at the man.

  “No,” he said. “He’s a new one on me.”

  “Never waited on you? Never drove your taxicab?”

  Helms’s teeth showed faintly, presumably in a smile.

  “So far as I know I never saw him before,” he said. Consciously, he used his wife’s phrase. “Should I have?”

  Bill Weigand’s “Right” was his only answer this time. He nodded them out. He stood for a moment looking at the man on the floor. Then he tu
rned to Mullins.

  “Get Piper,” he said.

  Mullins went. Bill Weigand looked at the man on the floor again, and then at Jerry North.

  “Well, Jerry, how d’you like it?” he said.

  “I don’t,” Jerry told him. “Even a burglar—”

  Bill Weigand nodded.

  “God knows,” he said, “they’re stupid, burglars. But this one was breaking in and got shot at nine thirty-five on a June night, when it was barely dark—into a house lighted up, with people obviously awake, with—” He stopped and shook his head. “Who could like it?”

  “Stanton,” Jerry told him. “Stanton likes it.”

  “For now,” Bill said. “For now he likes it, Jerry.”

  Piper came in then, with Mullins propelling him. Mullins propelled him up where he could see the man on the floor. He looked at the man on the floor.

  “Jeez!” Piper said. “Somebody sure loused the louse up, didn’t they? The—” His description was lurid. Nobody tried, this time, to stop him. He ran down of himself, in time.

  “Well?” Weigand said. “Who is it, Piper?”

  “What the hell?” Piper said. “You mean you don’t—”

  “Who is it?”

  “Who the hell do you think?” Piper said. “That’s Farno. Who did you think?”

  “Oh,” Bill said. “I thought Farno, of course. Take him back, Mullins.”

  Piper seemed much more alert than he had, previously. At the doorway he paused and looked back and seemed pleased.

  “Somebody cooled him off, didn’t they?” he said, and he seemed very pleased.

  “Near enough,” Weigand said. “Near enough for now. Get going, Piper.”

  “And me locked to a water pipe!” Piper said. “Jeez! That’s a good one, ain’t it?”

  And now, for the first time in many hours—although none of those who could hear him realized this—Piper giggled. It was a strange sound, not a very pleasant one.

  They were all in the room. An ambulance had taken away the man Piper had identified—still breathing, still with a firm pulse and still unconscious. Bill had had an opportunity to talk to Dorian and she had told him, in synopsis, what had happened—told him and looked at him with puzzlement in her greenish eyes. “Why, Bill?” she said. “At bottom, why? What did they think I knew? And—because they killed the girl, the St. John girl—why didn’t they kill me?”

  Weigand had to shake his head to the first of her questions. They thought she had seen something; the murderer thought she had seen something. Farno and Piper, presumably, were hired hands. The plan was to keep her from the police until they found out if she did know what the murderer was afraid she knew. If she had, and Bill kept his voice steady when he told her this, probably she would have been killed. That must have been the murderer’s plan. If she had not, possibly they were supposed to turn her loose, leaving her to wonder why she had been seized at all. But it hadn’t been tidy from the first. The work of hired men seldom was, and it was always risky. And the discovery of her identity—her identity as the wife of a policeman—had made things more untidy for the hired hands, because it had made them afraid to do anything. Either—

  “I know,” Dorian said. “They said that. But the St. John girl. Then they—they didn’t wait.”

  Probably, Bill told her, it was a different “they.” Probably it was the murderer himself. Probably in the case of Vilma St. John he knew she had seen something, perhaps because she had told him so. “Innocently or otherwise,” he said. “Probably innocently. Probably there was just something puzzling her and she asked the wrong person to explain. Asked the one person who couldn’t explain.”

  “But what?” Dorian said, and her voice was strained, only partly because of her weariness. “What? I go over and over—what did she see or hear that I might have seen or heard? The flower? The cigarette? What else was there?”

  Bill had shaken his head at that. Perhaps she had seen it and forgotten, and it would come to her. Perhaps she had not seen (or heard? felt?) whatever it was. Then the whole thing had been even more untidy from the point of view of the murderer and his hired hands. He shrugged and stood looking down at her, lying now—cleaner, the rents in her clothes pinned together—on a chaise lounge in a room Stanton had indicated for them. It was as if he could not look at her long enough, fully enough. She smiled at the expression in his eyes.

  “Yes, Bill, I’m here. I’m really here.” She held up her hands to him. “I’m back again, darling,” she said. “Back again.”

  It was a little time before either spoke again, and then Dorian, faintly, as if it were not of much importance, said that something seemed very odd … strange.

  “To hire men like Piper and Farno,” she said. “To hire them to—to kill, if necessary. Isn’t it—dangerous? Don’t they—?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “It is. They do. And—people hire them. They say you used to be able to get a killing done for twenty-five dollars. The price is up now—everything goes up. It was always risky, but you could always get it done. And—people did. People who knew their way around.”

  “Who does, here?” Dorian said.

  Bill could only shake his head at that. And it was then that Mullins, knocking first (but Dorian did not stir in Bill’s arms; they turned together to look at him) came to tell the Loot that Farno had been removed, that the State cops were as thick as flies, that the people the Loot wanted were in the living room. Bill let Dorian down on the chaise lounge then, but she shook her head and twisted herself in the lithe way she had and was on her feet. Bill did not argue with her.

  They found everyone in the living room, most of them eating sandwiches. Bill shook his head when Stanton indicated a plate of sandwiches on a table; Dorian went to them unhesitatingly. Then she went, with sandwiches, to a sofa at one side where the Norths were sitting together, eating. She sat down beside Pam North who looked at her and nodded reassuringly. “You don’t show at all any more,” Pam whispered.

  The Helmses sat together too, on another sofa, and Buford Stanton was near them. Piper, still handcuffed, sat in a less comfortable chair and looked at everybody with large black eyes which seemed brighter and more concerned than they had. Bill Weigand did not sit down. He stood, his hands on the back of a chair, and looked at the Helmses and Stanton, where he could look at Piper.

  “I have one or two things I want to tell you,” he said, and his voice was easy, level. “I have also one or two questions I want to ask you. That’s you, Mr. Stanton—and you two.” The last was to the Helmses.

  “Shoot,” Stanton said.

  “Right,” Bill said. “The man you shot, Stanton, is a man named Farno. He used to be a private detective and lost his license. Now, apparently, he’s just a thug. But he isn’t a burglar.”

  “The hell—” Stanton began.

  “He isn’t a burglar,” Weigand said. “He is one of the two men who kidnaped my wife—because they thought she knew something about Wilming’s death. He’s this man’s boss.” Bill gestured toward Piper. “Right, Piper?” he said.

  “This time,” Piper said. “Yeah. He cut me in on it. He—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Skip it. Now Piper said earlier that Farno had gone to raise some money. For a getaway, Piper said. Somebody was going to pay Farno off and—Farno came here to get his money! Came here and got shot before he could get the money. Also, before he could identify the man who was hiring him!”

  The Helmses turned and looked at Stanton. And absurdly, Helms reddened. It was as if he were embarrassed for Stanton. Helms opened his mouth as if to speak, and closed it without speaking.

  Stanton got red, too, but it did not seem to be embarrassment. It seemed to be anger. He started to get up, looked at Mullins who just perceptibly moved, and thought better of it. But he swore, in a loud voice. Then he told Weigand it was a damned lie.

  “He was a man breaking into my house,” Stanton said. “I tell you—” He broke off, his flush faded, suddenly he looked
much older. He shook his head. “You won’t believe that,” he said. “What’s the use?”

  “What I’ve said isn’t a lie,” Weigand said. “If you mean you don’t like, won’t accept, the implications—well, it’s obvious you can’t. But you see them.”

  Stanton did not answer. He looked very much older now.

  “Farno isn’t dead,” Weigand went on. “He may live. If he does, eventually he’ll talk. I might add that he’s under guard in the hospital so that he’ll be on hand.” He paused. “And alive,” he added, throwing it away. He paused again, letting it sink in.

  “Now,” he said, “you realize what all this means. Farno’s coming here means that he was coming to see somebody here. Perhaps he was coming to see Mr. Stanton. Possibly he wasn’t; possibly Mr. Stanton really did think he was a burglar. In that event, he may have been coming to see either you, Helms, or you, Mrs. Helms.”

  “Wait a minute,” Helms said. “He kidnaped your wife once. Maybe … hell, maybe he was coming to kidnap her again. Maybe he followed her here?” He looked up when he had finished, and there was something like triumph in his expression.

  Bill Weigand nodded slowly.

  “It’s possible,” he said. “It isn’t likely. He knew that the burning of the house would bring, among other people, the police. If he followed my wife and Piper here he would have seen that there were a good many people here, including the police. Thugs like Farno don’t usually try one-man raids on that kind of a setup. But as you say, it’s possible. Have any of you any other theories?” He waited a moment. “He wasn’t coming to see the Norths,” he pointed out. “Or the sergeant—or me. The servants? Can you suggest a servant he was coming to see, Stanton? Your man Ford? Or—”

  But Stanton was shaking his head.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Let’s leave it open. He was coming to see one of three people. And—one of the three shot him. Whatever we think about that, it brings the murder of Wilming up to one of you three.”

  He spoke without emphasis; he spoke as if it were obvious. But he amplified.

  “Conceivably, as you said once, Stanton, anyone in New York might have got into your offices and pushed Wilming out the window. Conceivably it might have been a man named Blake—Joe Blake. That was at first. Now it’s narrowed—by Farno’s coming here. And by the trap somebody set in Wilming’s house. You see that. It was somebody who knew Wilming’s habits and—knew the setup of the house. You all see that. This doesn’t narrow it as much as Farno’s coming here. But it does narrow it. It narrows it to those who had a reasonable opportunity to get into the house and set the trap. You see that?”