The door of the hospital opened and light sprayed out of it. A man with a light topcoat thrown over a white uniform stood in the door and started through it, raising both hands in a gesture that seemed to mean nothing.
“My God!” Helms said again, and there seemed to be astonishment, as well as relief, in his tone. “I never thought it was Stanton—not until I saw him with the gun. And he made me come along.”
“In his room,” Weigand said, and nodded. “Was that it, Mr. Helms? When you went to talk to him?”
“Of course,” Helms said. “He—he was just going out. He had a gun. When I came in he made me go with him. He—I think he was going to try to put it on me, somehow. Use me and—and, I suppose, kill me.”
“You got the gun,” Bill said. His tone made it merely confirmation of the obvious.
“When we stopped,” Helms said. “We were close together. He told me to get out and waved the gun and—I took a chance and grabbed it. And then—then he ran. I don’t know what he was going to do. Maybe—maybe he was still going after Farno even then—to keep him from talking, saying Stanton hired him.” He broke off. “He must have been crazy,” Helms said. “He must be crazy. Even now I—I can hardly believe it.”
And then there was a strange moment and during it the quiet of the night seemed to gather itself once more; to hold them once more. The man in the white uniform began to run toward them, with another man behind him, but they seemed to be running in silence. And Helms looked at Bill Weigand and his face began to change.
“Neither can I, Mr. Helms,” Bill Weigand said then. “I can hardly believe it. Drop your gun, Mr. Helms!”
The command was unemphatic. But Helms’s hand opened, the gun fell.
“That’s right,” Bill said, and his tone was oddly detached, approving. “That’s right, Mr. Helms. It’s all over.” He paused an instant. “I suppose we ought to call it a good try, Mr. Helms,” he said. “Considering everything. A pretty good try. From the moment you found out that Wilming was planning to kill you. Did it make you very—annoyed, Mr. Helms? To think he would have—what was it, Mr. Helms—the impertinence? The unbelievable, unbearable impertinence?”
“Farno!” Helms said, and his voice was angry. “That—”
“No, Mr. Helms,” Weigand said. “He hasn’t talked yet. But he will, of course. That’s why you had to come after him. Because he knew about the trap, didn’t he—the trap Wilming set to catch you. And in the end he knew about everything. As we do now.”
“The hell you do,” Helms said.
“Perhaps not, Mr. Helms,” Bill Weigand said, and his voice was easy now, assured. “Perhaps not everything. But we know enough.” And then Bill Weigand raised his voice and called to Mullins.
“Help Mr. Stanton up, sergeant,” he said. “And then come over here. Our man’s over here.”
Helms was swearing now. He used the same words over and over. There was, Pam North thought, a kind of horror in the repetition, in the very monotony—in the stupid inadequacy of these words to express Donald Helms’s realization of what had happened to him.
12
MONDAY
7:15 P.M. AND AFTER
Jerry North pushed Martini back with his foot, waving it at her, and opened the door. Martini bushed her dark brown tail and widened the pupils of her eyes until almost no blue was visible. She made small deep sounds of excitement; she tried to dodge the foot. When Dorian came in, Martini leaped to the radio, crouched and stared at her, and the bushy dark tail swished. When Bill came in Martini leaped. She landed on Bill’s left shoulder, curled herself quickly back of his neck so that she was a collar of fur and began to lick his ear. There was a jumble of Weigands and Norths and cat just inside the door, and Pam spoke through it with unexpected calm.
“We’re so glad you could make it,” Pam said, almost like a hostess. “Jerry, get your cat off Bill!”
“The best way,” Jerry said, “is to lean over sideways. Then she falls off. Usually.”
Bill leaned over. Martini disapproved, gutterally. She clung; she was defeated and dropped to a chair. She bounced as she landed. She put her shoulders down, hesitated an instant, and ran furiously across the room. Six feet from the curtains she leaped. She landed halfway up one of the curtains, swarmed up it, twisted herself around the corner and reached the board to which the valance was tacked. She stretched out under the high ceiling and looked down at them. She made sounds.
“Just don’t pay any attention to her,” Pam said. “It only makes her worse.”
“Don’t pay—” Bill began, rubbing his slightly abraded, slightly damp, ear absently. He looked at Martini, who was moving as if about to spring. Bill was twenty feet from her, as the cat jumps. He moved farther. He considered. “Is this supposed to be unilateral?” he said.
Pam looked at him, puzzled, and said, “What?” Then her face cleared. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “Unless we lock her up somewhere. We did in Jerry’s room once.”
“Fortunately,” Jerry said, “it was the manuscript of a book we were going to reject anyway. And the author had a carbon. So we were only out the cost of retyping it for him.” He looked up at Martini. “I said we’d lost it,” he said. “It seemed—I don’t know. Simpler.”
“More dignified,” Pam said. “Because it’s so silly to be outwitted by a cat.” She paused. “Of course,” she said, “it isn’t fair that people just think it’s cute of a puppy. It’s no cuter of a puppy than it is of a cat, really.” She looked at her guests. “Slippers and things,” she said. “Come on, Dor. Your things in my room.” She led Dorian down the hall. “We hang everything up in closets now,” she said. “Not on the bed any more, so that’s all right. And it isn’t as if it were winter and fur coats, and anyway I think she likes—”
They went into the bedroom and closed the door, ending that. Bill had nothing to leave, being hatless. He took another look at Martini and was just in time to see her swing herself over the edge of the valance board, catch herself almost instantly, and come rapidly down the curtains.
“One thing she can do,” Jerry said. “She can come down what she can go up. Lots of cats can’t. Toughy I had to climb up after. Martini?”
It was not entirely clear. Jerry realized it.
The cat also realized it. She came quickly across to Jerry, sat down and looked up at him expectantly, waiting for further conversation. She was ridiculously grave and attentive; she was also adoring. Her second-best human had uttered her name.
“The other kind,” Jerry told her, avoiding repetition. “The kind you drink—humans drink. Bill?”
“Yes,” Bill said. He sat down. The cat watched him, looked again at Jerry, who was pouring, and made up her mind. She went to Bill, jumped lightly to his lap, turned once and curled herself, purring loudly. She seemed instantly to go to sleep. Bill scratched behind her ears and her purr hummed in the room. Dorian and Pam returned and Martini raised her head to observe; she sniffed the fingers Dorian dangled for her and rubbed against them gently. Then she returned to sleep.
Jerry passed the drinks. Dorian turned hers slowly in her hands and smiled at it.
“It was nice to have a rain-check,” she said. Her face was shadowed for a moment. “Nice to be here for it,” she added. “I thought for a while—”
Bill reached across the sofa with his free hand and took her free hand for an instant. Then he let it go.
“Teach you not to go out with strange men,” he told her.
“They were strange,” Dorian said. “Literally. Very strange. Piper—there was something dreadful about Piper. He—he kept laughing, you know.”
“Forget it,” Bill said. “Let your nerves forget it. He isn’t laughing now. And Farno isn’t.”
“Did Farno talk?” Jerry asked. “You thought he would.”
Bill nodded. He finished his drink and looked at his empty glass. Jerry mixed a fresh round, refilled. Bill drank and sat looking again at the glass.
“Farno talked,” he sa
id. “Piper talked. Then, today, this afternoon, Helms talked. He—he seemed to think he could explain everything. He seemed to think that if he explained it, everything would be all right. Because it was, after all, a kind of self-defense.”
“Not the girl,” Pam said. “Not the girl—the girl who was going to get married.”
Bill shook his head.
“No,” he said, “not the girl. Not any of it. He’s very mixed up, Helms. Even his confession is mixed up. Because apparently he never did think Wilming would get him. He always thought he was too bright for Wilming. That’s all through what he said. And yet he says he killed Wilming because Wilming was trying to kill him; because if he didn’t kill Wilming, Wilming would eventually kill him. He’s mixed up. And he’s an incredible egoist. That’s almost the only thing that’s consistent all the way through.”
“He’d have to be,” Pam said. “He’s a murderer. Murderers have to be. How else could you?”
“I suppose so,” Bill said. He looked at them. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny, really. I’ve never understood murderers. I’ve never actually met anybody who did. And the murderers can’t make you understand. Anyway, they can’t make me understand. Helms is like the rest.”
Bill swirled his drink.
“Fortunately I don’t have to,” he said. “I just have to find them. Find out how and why. But it’s never really good enough. The why, I mean. Good enough for them to act on. Not good enough to understand.” He finished the drink. “I’m tired,” he said. “Dopey.” He shook his head when Jerry motioned toward the shaker. “In a minute or two,” he said. He continued to look at his glass.
“Take Helms,” he said. “If he really believed that Wilming was going to get him—sometime, somewhere—that he would have to go through the rest of his life watching, taking precautions, then that would be almost good enough. But did he? He says he did, in one place. And then, in the next sentence almost, he’s openly contemptuous of Wilming—contemptuous of what Wilming tried to do, of anything Wilming could do.”
Pam North nodded.
“But you explained it,” she said. “Don’t you remember? When we—when you caught him? It was just Wilming’s impertinence, his unbelievable impertinence. That Wilming thought he could fall in love with Helms’s wife, that he thought he could do anything to Helms—get in Helms’s way at all. Let alone try to kill him.” She paused and looked around the room and then suddenly pointed at the sleeping cat. “As if she thought she were a tiger,” Pam said. “And tried it on a tiger.”
They looked at Martini, visualizing her as a tiger. She did not awaken.
“Of course,” Pam said, “she’s much—much more engaging than Mr. Wilming was.”
Bill nodded to that.
“Not engaging,” he said. “Not bright. Helms is more or less right about him, I suppose. Stumbling, inefficient. Actually, he might as easily have fallen out of the window by himself, I imagine. Saving everybody trouble. I doubt if he’d ever have got around Helms.”
“Well,” Jerry said, “there was Mrs. Helms, after all.”
“Because he was that way,” Dorian said. “Not in spite of it. Because she was sorry for him. And—probably it did all end when Helms came back. As she told us.”
Bill nodded again to that.
“Helms thinks so,” he agreed. “But whether it was that way or not, Wilming didn’t think so. He thought with Helms out of the way, he’d get Beatrice Helms back. At first, Helms says, Wilming sulked—wouldn’t see them—tried to get Mrs. Helms to meet him, come away with him. Then all at once he made a great show of friendliness and wanted to let bygones be bygones. All friends together again. He began to pay attention to the St. John girl, letting Helms see it. That sort of thing. Helms was—he says he was, anyway—willing to try it. But all the same he was suspicious. I suppose Wilming played the part badly. Helms says he couldn’t believe it at first, but gradually he realized that Wilming was looking for a chance to kill him. ‘In his bungling way,’ Helms says. I gather there were one or two actual attempts, or what Helms took for attempts. Once, he says, he is sure Wilming tried to push him off a subway platform. I don’t know. But he was right, of course. Wilming was trying to kill him. So Wilming set the trap.”
“How did Helms find out?” Pam asked.
“Farno,” Bill said. “Farno admits that. He and Helms met overseas—in Cherbourg, I think. Farno was an M.P. He looked Helms up when they were both back, and when Helms decided to have Wilming watched, he gave Farno the job. It was sort of a part-time job, probably. I don’t mean they kept a constant eye on Wilming. Anyway, not until Wilming tipped his hand—as he would, I imagine—on this booby trap. He tipped it, apparently, by being so insistent that Helms come out and then, right after Helms had agreed to, taking the afternoon off. That was Wednesday, when he was supposed to be at the oculist. Helms called up there and found out he wasn’t and, on a chance, sent Farno out to the cottage; because if there was anything up, it seemed to center there. Farno got there in time to hear Wilming working at something—sawing metal, he thought it was. He says he didn’t actually see. He also says it didn’t mean much of anything to him, and maybe it didn’t. He’s not too bright, and he didn’t have as much to go on as Helms had later. I don’t know. Maybe he thinks he’ll be better off if he says that. And Helms bears him out, but Helms probably thinks he’ll be better off if he merely suspected at that point. Makes the murder impromptu.”
They looked at him and waited.
“Because,” Bill said, “his story is that it wasn’t until just before he pushed Wilming out the window that he got the whole thing straight, and got so—what? furious? annoyed?—that he pushed Wilming out without actually planning it. Wilming had already told him to go on out alone. And Friday noon he told him some things he wanted him to do. The major thing was to turn on the gas refrigerator. He was very insistent on that. Helms said he explained over and over that he would have to turn the tank on outside, give it about five minutes to generate—which is a lie, of course, and one that Helms spotted—and then go in and light the refrigerator flame. Helms added that program, and the lie, to what Farno had said about someone cutting metal—thought of a gas pipe being cut—and came up, quite rightly, with a booby trap. And then he said he pushed him out the window.”
“Just like that?” Pam said.
“Just like that,” Bill said. “Actually, I suppose it was pretty much like that.”
“And then,” Dorian said, “he went into his own office and heard the door opening—the other door. And was afraid he’d been seen.”
“Actually,” Bill said, “both Vilma St. John and Dorian did see the door closing. Not Helms, just the door. Vilma worried about it that afternoon and, just before the office closed, went to Helms and asked him to explain it. He’d already had Farno—actually Piper, working for Farno, but Helms didn’t know that; he never saw Piper—follow Dorian and, when it looked as if she were trying to find me, pick her up.”
“Listen,” Dorian said suddenly, interrupting. “That’s why he had me leave the telephone number of Charles, isn’t it? Not so he could tell me they liked the drawing. So I would be called to the telephone and Farno and Piper could identify me. I thought his conversation was—oh, extraneous, somehow.”
Bill nodded. He pointed out that Helms had had to get in touch with Farno, get him on the job. He wasn’t available to follow Dorian from the Esprit office. So Helms had to find out where Dorian would be and arrange for something to happen to identify her.
“He’d kept an eye himself on Vilma, which was easy enough,” Bill went on. “He wasn’t surprised when she came around. He tried to convince her she was mistaken and took her out and bought her a couple of drinks. But the drinks merely made her more certain that she was right and she decided she’d have to postpone her trip to the camp and see the police. And then she went home. Well—he followed her. And caught up with her.”
Bill finished his drink with a certain air of finality and
shook his head at the glass before Jerry could ask.
“And Mr. Stanton wasn’t in it?” Pam said.
Bill leaned back. He seemed relaxed and for a moment did not answer. Then his voice was quiet.
“Only at the end,” he said. “Reverse what Helms told us in front of the hospital. Read Helms for Stanton, Stanton for Helms. Helms planned to get rid of Farno and hang it on Stanton. Just as he did at the end.”
“Unconvincingly, I thought,” Jerry said.
Bill nodded to that.
“Of course,” he said, “we complicated it. He had to improvise. He did make Stanton run toward the hospital. For what it was worth. He pretended to be trying to stop him. But with us there, with Mullins obviously in a position to grab Stanton, he didn’t have any excuse to shoot. So he tried to bluff. But by that time we knew too much.”
He leaned forward, picked up his glass, and raised it to Pamela North. Then he carried it on to his lips, and took it away again and looked at it. Jerry began to get up.
“Well,” Bill Weigand said, “just half a one, maybe. They’re very good—” He stopped abruptly and looked at the cat on his lap. “Cocktails,” he said, carefully avoiding a dangerous word.
But even so, Martini North stirred uneasily in her sleep.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries
1
TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 5:40 P.M. TO 6:05 P.M.
For the first time in more than a year—in fourteen months and some days and some hours—she felt young, as if things were beginning over. So they were right after all; the obvious was almost always right; the old saws came true. You did not believe they would—you knew they never would. Because the experiences other people had—the worn, accustomed experiences—were not the experiences you would have. And then, in the end, they were. In the end you went on living and things began over. In the end you felt young again. And after a while, she realized, she would not even be surprised that this was so.
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