Untidy Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Well—it’s your house, Stanton. You live near it. At least, you spend a certain part of your time in this house, which is near it. You could go across any evening, set the trap, and be fairly sure that nobody would notice it, or think anything of it. Because you own the house. You’re the landlord. It would be natural for you to visit it, even when Wilming wasn’t there. You agree, Stanton?”

  “What’s the use?” Stanton said. “It’s obvious.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “It’s obvious. I want you all to get the picture. Now, Helms. You could have driven out here any evening. You’d have run more risk of being noticed, but not too much. And you must have known the way, since you were coming out ahead of Wilming last night. That was the plan, wasn’t it? How did you expect to find the place?”

  “Paul gave me a map,” Helms said. “I—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Probably some days ago, when you first discussed it. So—you could have used the map. You could have taken your car—”

  But Helms was shaking his head, and again he looked pleased.

  “Haven’t got a car,” he said.

  “You could have rented a car,” Bill said, unperturbed. “You could have driven out any evening and—”

  “I didn’t have a chance,” Helms said, and he was insistent. “Bee will bear that out. We were tied up every night. Bee can—” He stopped, because Bill was smiling faintly and shaking his head.

  “Mrs. Helms wouldn’t be enough,” he said. “Not if it came to a trial, or even formal questioning by the D.A. You say you didn’t come here and set the trap. Mr. Stanton says the same. I suppose, Mrs. Helms, you say the same?”

  “Me?” Beatrice Helms said. She seemed surprised, rather detached. Bill nodded.

  “I do,” she said. “It’s as Don said. We were together and—” She stopped. Bill Weigand said he saw.

  “By the way, Mrs. Helms,” he said, “what were your plans for this weekend?”

  “I was coming here,” she said. “After I got back—oh!”

  “From where?”

  “Well—I went to Philadelphia Thursday night. To see an aunt, who’s ill. I was coming back Saturday morning as far as Trenton. They were going to meet me there, but—” She paused and Bill, after waiting a moment, told her to go on.

  “After Paul … after Paul fell, Don telephoned me,” she said. “He said to come back to New York instead. And I came at once, of course. I … I knew how cut up Don would be.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “You can prove you didn’t leave Philadelphia, take a train to Trenton, hire a car and drive to Wilming’s cottage? Or that you didn’t stop off at Trenton Thursday evening, do that, fix the trap and go on to Philadelphia?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Will I have to?”

  Weigand did not answer that. Instead he asked another question.

  “Originally,” he said, “Mr. Helms and Mr. Wilming were coming out here together Friday evening. That was the plan Thursday, when you left.” He looked at Helms and raised his eyebrows. Helms nodded. “Later,” Bill said, “the plan was changed, so that Mr. Helms was coming out alone Friday and Mr. Wilming was joining him Saturday. Now—did you know about that change of plan, Mrs. Helms?”

  Beatrice Helms hesitated an instant, and seemed to seek advice from her husband. But if he gave advice it was imperceptible to the others, and after only a second she nodded and said yes.

  “I telephoned Don Friday morning,” she said. “Quite early. I … I wanted to talk to him. Just … you know, hear his voice. As an excuse, I asked if the plans for the weekend were the same. He said they were, as far as I was concerned. But he told me about the change they had made. As he said, it didn’t make any difference in my plans. But I did know about it.”

  Weigand nodded. Now he seemed pleased.

  “You say you didn’t know anything about the trap in the cottage, Mrs. Helms,” he said. “So this is theoretical—what lawyers call a hypothetical question. If you had known—known your husband was in danger of walking into a trap set for somebody else—you’d have tried to prevent it, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Helms?”

  She merely looked at him. She did not answer. Bill Weigand did not seem concerned over her silence. He did not seem to feel that an answer was necessary.

  “Obviously, as Mr. Stanton says, you could have come to New York at once after you heard of the change of plans and … done something to prevent it.” This time he obviously did not expect an answer, and he got none. He looked at the three of them, and nodded slowly.

  “So now,” he said, “we all know where we stand. A good many things point to the probability that one of you killed Wilming. I’m inclined to think that any of you could have. Does anybody want to say anything?”

  Nobody did for a moment.

  “Right,” Bill said. “I suppose you all know how it looks. You realize, don’t you, Stanton? You had the best chance to cut a metal tube leading to Wilming’s stove, so that the place would go up when somebody turned on the gas at the tank outside.” They looked at him. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s how it was done. It’s not a surprise to—one of you.” He looked at Stanton. “Is it, Stanton?” he asked.

  Stanton looked ahead of him. He did not answer.

  “You had the best chance, Stanton,” he said. “Also, you shot Farno, before he could talk. That was very convenient for—one of you. If you really thought he was a burglar, Stanton, it was very convenient for Mr. Helms, or Mrs. Helms. Surprisingly convenient. Do you want to say anything, Mr. Stanton?”

  “Why didn’t I kill him and make sure, if that was what I was doing?” Stanton said. “I had the chance, didn’t I? You say he may recover, as it is, and talk, don’t you?”

  Weigand nodded.

  “I wondered,” he said. “But—wouldn’t two wounds, either of which would have stopped him, make your burglar story a little thin, Stanton? Didn’t you think of that? And after all, he looked pretty bad as it was, didn’t he? Probably you thought he was already dead, or dying.”

  Suddenly Stanton stood up. He stood up quite straight and looked at Weigand.

  “Get done with it!” he said. “Arrest me and get done with it! What’s the idea of all this?”

  Helms was on his feet, too. He turned toward Stanton.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t believe it, Stanton. I tell you—” He was very much worried in manner, very much upset. He turned on Weigand. “You’re wrong,” he said. “You must be wrong. You—” And then, slowly, he seemed to lose vigor, lose confidence. It was as if, Pam North thought, the weight of the evidence against Stanton was only then becoming a weight of conviction in Helms’s mind. Beatrice Helms seemed to feel something of the same thing. She reached up and took her husband’s hand, and the gesture was that of one who comforts. I hadn’t realized he was so fond of Stanton, Pam thought; so fond of anyone but his wife and, of course, himself.

  11

  SATURDAY 11:20 P.M. TO SUNDAY 12:55 A.M.

  It was, Pam North pointed out, perfectly coherent, entirely logical. It went from a given point to another given point; it accounted for everything. Or, if that presupposed they knew more than they did, at least it did not conflict irreconcilably with anything they did know. She supposed that Bill could even persuade the district attorney to take it to court. There was interrogation in this last remark, and Bill nodded affirmatively.

  “He’d want it filled in,” Bill said. “He’d like a clear motive. But he’d like its shape.”

  “And,” Pam said, “you’re not arresting him.”

  He was not arresting Buford Stanton, Bill agreed. On the other hand, he was not letting him go. He was not letting any of them go—Stanton, Beatrice Helms, Donald Helms. He looked at Dorian.

  “It would help if you could remember,” he told her. “It would help a lot.”

  Dorian opened her eyes and looked at her husband and asked him what he thought she was try
ing to do.

  “I’ve been sitting here trying to make a picture of it,” she said. “Trying to make it come back; trying to make it include every corner of the room—the cigarette in the ash tray, the curtains moving in the wind, the open window, the blue flower. I can see the cigarette now, as it was when we first came in, before it burned down so far. It looked … oh, as if someone had taken only a few drags, just enough to get it going well, and had laid it down. But is that it?”

  If that was it, Bill told her, he missed what it was. Unless it timed something.

  “Have you burned a cigarette to see?” Jerry asked, and Bill said he had had Mullins do it. He had had Mullins take three or four deep drags and tilt the cigarette up in an ash tray.

  “And?” Pam said.

  Bill grinned.

  “The first one went out,” he said. “The second one fell over without our noticing it, and then went out. The third one burned down to about the right point—the point it had reached when Flanagan looked at it, in something like twenty minutes. But it’s too variable. The defense could kick it around. The angle at which the cigarette is standing counts; if it’s in a draft it burns faster.” Bill shrugged. He looked at Dorian. He told her to keep on trying. And then he looked at Pam North and said, yes, it was coherent. The pieces fitted; the picture grew out of them.

  The motive was the most doubtful piece, the most hypothetical. Actually, they were shaping it to fit their need out of hints and guesses. The hint, which perhaps was more than a hint, that Wilming had been in love with Beatrice Helms; the guess—Pam’s guess with Jerry’s hesitant corroboration—that Buford Stanton might also be in love with her; the arbitrary deduction from these two possibilities that part of Stanton’s motivation might have been the elimination of a rival. Bill Weigand held it up for the Norths, for Dorian, and they shook their heads at it, in doubt.

  “There ought to be more,” Pam said. “More that we’re sure of, more that’s heavier. It would be better, say, if Wilming were blackmailing Stanton. Or even if he had been blackmailing Mrs. Helms. Or … or something. Killing a married woman’s other … friend, just to … well, sort of clear the field.…”

  Weigand nodded. He pointed out, however, that possibly they could count out Helms; perhaps Beatrice Helms had counted him out. Then, by eliminating Wilming, Stanton might have eliminated the field. It made it stronger—a little stronger.

  “I still don’t like it,” Dorian said, with tired finality.

  “Why did Stanton hire Wilming in the first place?” Jerry asked, and the others looked at him, waiting. “He seems not to have been particularly good. He didn’t come with any particularly impressive experience behind him. Stanton’s proud of his magazine, damn proud of it. Why did he hire Wilming?”

  “Look,” Pam said, “maybe he did have something on him. Wilming on Stanton. And maybe Wilming got worse and worse, and made more and more mistakes, and Stanton couldn’t fire him and—” She stopped, and Bill nodded. “He did fire him,” Bill told her. It checked her; she nodded without enthusiasm. “Of course,” Pam said, “maybe he just said he did. Now, when Wilming’s gone out the window.” She paused and her face clouded. “Head over heels,” she said. “Sort of—rolling down, through nothing. Oh!”

  “Helms agrees Wilming had been fired,” Weigand reminded her. This did not check Pam.

  “Stanton told him so,” she said. “Because he was—well, in a way, he was going to fire him. I mean—well, in the most literal way. Perhaps the idea amused Mr. Stanton. The play on words. But perhaps Mr. Stanton hadn’t told Mr. Wilming.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “You know,” Jerry said, “I’d hate to sell any of this to a jury. Mrs. Helms. Murder to get a man out of a job he was doing badly.” He looked at Bill. “Which I imagine is the reason you haven’t actually arrested him,” he said.

  Bill Weigand nodded. He said, most of it. Because the rest fitted pretty well. Killing Wilming as he was actually killed so that Helms would not be killed by accident; that fitted. The trap in Wilming’s house fitted Stanton better than any one else, because he lived nearby and because he owned the house and, planning a booby trap, would know how to utilize what was at hand within the house. Nobody, Bill pointed out, would know that sort of thing as well as Stanton—not Helms, who denied ever having been in the house and certainly, even if he lied there, was not particularly familiar with it; not Mrs. Helms, who—He broke off then, and looked uncertain.

  “Naturally, if she had been playing around with Wilming, she may have known the house,” Dorian said. “It would have been convenient. We don’t know she was.”

  “Actually it’s the burglar,” Pam said. “The burglar who wasn’t one. And Mr. Stanton’s shooting him. And—”

  And then they were interrupted. They were interrupted by Beatrice Helms, who threw open one of the french windows which had not been quite closed, and stood in the window opening, with the soft light of the room on her face and hair. She had changed to dark slacks; her face was drawn and anxious above a less dark shirt. She stood there a moment, looking at them, and she shook her head. She shook it angrily.

  “I’ve been listening,” she said. “I … I went for a walk afterward. And I’ve been listening.”

  She wasn’t supposed to be listening, Weigand told her. Or going for a walk. She was supposed to be staying in the room with her husband. She shook that off, her hair, looser about her head than it had been, swaying.

  “Bu Stanton isn’t in love with me,” she said. “You’re wrong. All of you. Crazy wrong.”

  She looked at all of them, and she was both angry and defiant.

  “Only Don,” she said. “I tell you—”

  Jerry North shook his head.

  “Not all of us,” he said. “You don’t—” He half stood and looked at Pam, who said, “Of course.”

  “What difference does it make?” Beatrice Helms asked. “You were all guessing, weren’t you? As far as I can see, you’re all in it.”

  “I—” Jerry began, but Bill was shaking his head. It was pointed. Bill didn’t, Jerry realized, want it any other way than the way it was—didn’t want Beatrice Helms calmer, didn’t want her indignation soothed.

  “Go on,” Bill said. “Go on, Mrs. Helms. How were we wrong?”

  “About Bu Stanton,” she said. “I’m just—well, I’m just Don’s wife to him. The wife of one of his editors. What you made up was ridiculous. And so—” She hesitated.

  “And so?” Bill prompted her.

  “So he couldn’t have had any reason to want Paul … out of the way. Because Stanton did tell Paul he was through and Paul didn’t—well, didn’t have any answer, any hold on him. Paul—” Again she stopped.

  “Paul what?” Weigand said.

  She looked at them and shook her head a little, and then she spoke and there was pity in her voice.

  “Paul cried,” she said. “Just cried. It was—awful.”

  And then she looked at Pam North, and because of something she saw in Pam’s face her own face changed. Almost involuntarily, her eyes shifted so she could see Dorian, and this time her eyes seemed to flee.

  “Of course,” Pam said, and her voice was gentle. “Because he was in love with you, Mrs. Helms. Because he knew—he believed, anyway, that you were in love with him. That was why he could let you see him cry, wasn’t it? When nobody else was there. When he could let go, with someone who wouldn’t laugh or—or be contemptuous. With the woman he was sure of, because she loved him. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. Helms? Because that’s the only time most men would let themselves cry, you know.”

  The two men looked at her, and she nodded. She even smiled faintly.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know? But only after—what shall I say? After things are established. After the man is sure.” She looked at them now, with some surprise. “Heavens!” she said. “Surely you both know that. Even—I mean, both of you must.” She looked at Dorian. “It’s very simple, really,” she said. �
��Any woman could tell you.” And Dorian, still in a voice which was a little tired, said, “Of course,” in a tone which belonged with the words.

  Then all four of them looked at Beatrice Helms and, when she merely looked back at them and then, again as if her eyes were in flight, looked away again, Bill spoke. But all he said was, “Well, Mrs. Helms?”

  She shook her head, without looking at anyone.

  “I’m afraid we have to know,” Bill said. His voice was not without sympathy, but he was insistent. “What Mrs. North suggests—is it true? Were you on those terms with Wilming?” She stopped shaking her head, and she looked at him. “Yes,” Bill said. “We have to know. I wouldn’t ask if we didn’t. You see, I did ask your husband. He said there was nothing between you and Wilming. He said he would have known if there was. Perhaps he was wrong. And … perhaps he did know and lied to me. You see why we have to find out.”

  “Of course he told you that,” Beatrice Helms said. “Of course he did. We talked it over. Because it would be hard to make you understand. And now—”

  She looked at Pamela North, without liking.

  “You didn’t know Paul,” she told Pam. “He wasn’t like most men.”

  “All men are like most men,” Pam said. Then she looked surprised at what she had just heard. “Anyway—” she said, and stopped.

  “However it happened,” Bill said. “However it started, you have to go ahead now. Even if you think I won’t understand.”

  Beatrice Helms looked at him and hesitated, and then, quite suddenly, came into the room and sat down in a low chair. She looked at Bill again and, quite without emphasis, quite impersonally, said, “Damn it.”