“I’m getting in touch with the Los Angeles police,” Weigand said, his tone noncommittal.
“Listen—”
“No,” Bill said. “Not suggesting any action. Now. You’ll let us know what you hear?”
“Probably,” Latham said, and stood up slowly, painfully.
“Long hot baths help sometimes,” Bill said, and stood up too.
“I’ve heard,” Latham said, with scepticism—scepticism which, on the basis of Bill Weigand’s own experience, was fully justified. Latham went, slowly, carefully, a man trying to glide.
“You thought he might sing?” Mullins said. “To protect the girl?”
Bill shook his head.
“Not yet, anyway,” he said. “And—I rather doubt he’ll need to, Mullins. And whose canary have you been eating?”
“O.K.,” Mullins said. “Could be this man says he’s a doctor. Cat doctor?”
“Gebhardt,” Weigand said. “You mean—he isn’t?”
“Oh,” Mullins said, “sure he is. Got a place on Park Avenue, like he says. Must be money in sick cats.”
Bill waited. Mullins held out to him a memo form—a memo from the Traffic Department.
A summons for illegal parking had been placed under the windshield wiper of a pale yellow Cadillac, standing within inches of a fire hydrant. License checked out as belonging to Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, residing in Chappaqua, with offices at—Park Avenue.
Place of violation—the block between Fifth Avenue and University Place on East Tenth Street. Time of violation—4:10 P.M. the previous day.
“Five minutes’ walk from where Ackerman got it,” Mullins said. “Three, if he hurried.” He looked at Bill Weigand with hope in his blue eyes. “Man could walk pretty fast to grab on to two hundred grand,” Mullins suggested, holding out another silver platter.
The platter, Bill thought, was by no means empty. Its contents were, actually, more substantial than a hunch—a hunch resting, admittedly, on a foundation of thin air.
“Right,” Bill said. “Ask him about it, sergeant. Ask him if he hurried. Or, send Nate, if you like.”
“The pleasure,” Sergeant Mullins said, as he stood up, “the pleasure will be mine, loot.”
The telephone rang and Bill picked it up, at the same time motioning Mullins to be on his way. “L.A.’s on,” Bill was told and said, “Right,” and then, “Morning, captain. Didn’t take you long.”
“Happened it came to me,” a police captain three thousand miles away told Bill. “Happened I’d handled it. About this girl—”
16
Pam went down the two steps from sidewalk level and tinkled her way into the breeders’ nook. The first room—the display room—was empty, as it had been before. “With you in a minute,” Madeline Somers called, evidently from the next room, and there was the scratchy sound of paper being torn. Pam, from long experience, immediately identified Miss Somers’s activity. Miss Somers was changing cats’ toilet pans, shredding fresh newspaper to replace the old. “It’s Mrs. North,” Pam called back. “No hurry.” She sat. She heard more paper torn. A cat shop, she thought, must run to a good deal of newspaper.
There was then the sound of something being opened—of course, a cage. There was the sound of something being closed. Miss Somers came through the curtains, wearing the same beige-colored suit, clutching a small Siamese, who spoke, as before. Miss Somers said, “Good morning. Isn’t it a lovely day? Here’s the little doll.”
She started to put the little doll on the display pedestal.
“Let me have her,” Pam said.
“Well,” Miss Somers said, and hesitated. “She’s shedding, you know.” She looked at Pam’s fall suit—a darkish suit, not colored to match Siamese. Pam held out her hands. She said, “Aren’t they always?” and accepted the little cat, who turned and looked up at her. Not really pointed. And beautifully colored eyes. “Nice baby,” Pam said. “Pretty baby.” She put the cat on her lap, and began to run knowing fingers over the small, but wiry and muscular, little body. No flabbiness—sometimes even young cats—
The young cat—possibly the future Winkle—began to purr, mistaking palpation for caress. “Pretty baby,” Pam said, and scratched the cat behind the right ear. Miss Somers looked on.
“Wasn’t it,” Pam said, “dreadful about poor Mr. Ackerman?”
She said it to say something—said it because she felt that Miss Somers was expecting her to say something, and she was not yet quite ready to say yes, they would take the little cat. Also, of course, Ackerman had been an acquaintance—an associate, really—of Miss Somers. It seemed only proper to note his passing.
“Ackerman?” Miss Somers said. She said the name as if she had never heard it before.
“Floyd Ackerman,” Pam said, as one who chooses among many. Blankness remained on Miss Somers’s pink, firm face. Then it faded. “Oh,” she said. “The antivivisection man. What about him?”
“Dead,” Pam said. “It seems he hanged himself. Unless somebody did it for him.”
“Goodness,” Miss Somers said. “The poor man.”
Her tone was one of entire detachment. A customer wished to discuss a topic of no interest; a proper saleswoman feigned interest. And Pam North felt herself blinking, inwardly. She continued to probe the cat’s supple body, to the cat’s audible pleasure.
“I thought you knew him,” Pam said. “That’s the reason I mentioned it. Wasn’t that he here yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” Miss Somers repeated. “Floyd Ackerman?”
“I thought—” Pam said. “I was wrong, obviously. A thin man? With very large glasses?”
Miss Somers shook her head, as if Pam were speaking of the incomprehensible, and in a foreign language.
“I don’t remember any—” she said, and interrupted herself. “Oh,” she said. “I do remember. That was a man to fix the refrigerator. I have to keep perishable food, of course. For them.” She gestured toward the curtains. “The thing broke down. What ever made you think it was Mr. Ackerman?”
Pam searched her mind. What, in effect, had? A connection—
“Oh,” she said. “He’d taken a manuscript to my husband once. And his name came up—because Mr. Blanchard had written a letter about him in the Times—and Jerry—Jerry’s my husband—described him.”
Miss Somers shook her head. The shake indicated that this seemed remote, inadequate.
“Oh yes,” Pam said. “Dr. Gebhardt—you know Gebby?”
Miss Somers smiled, this time. The smile was that of a woman who, after treading fog, has got solid earth under her feet.
“I certainly do,” she said. “Wonderful vet, Gebby. And such a delightful—” Again she broke off. “Only,” she said, “what about him?”
“He,” Pam said, “said you were a member of this committee. Mr. Ackerman’s committee. I suppose I just put two and two—” She shrugged slim shoulders, more or less in apology.
“The Committee Against Cruelty,” Miss Somers said. “I am, as a matter of fact. I got several letters asking me to join and finally—well, it was only five dollars.” She paused again. “Actually,” she said, as one who confesses, “I thought it might be good for business. People who are interested in cats—some of them might—well, you see how it is.”
The little cat seemed to have gone to sleep on Pam’s lap. Pam stroked the top of the cat’s head, gently.
“Of course,” Pam said. “About the baby here—”
“I never laid eyes on this Mr. Ackerman,” Miss Somers said. “What did you mean somebody did it for him? There wasn’t any—you mean somebody killed him?”
There was the to-be-expected shocked disbelief on the word “killed.”
“Probably,” Pam said, “I shouldn’t have said that. There wasn’t anything—” For an instant the words echoed in her mind. She had been about to say that there had been nothing about that possibility in the newspaper accounts. Had Miss Somers been about to say the same thing? Nonsense. Miss Somers had, clearly,
not heard of Ackerman’s taking off until Pam mentioned it. So—
“I really shouldn’t have,” Pam said. “The police obviously don’t—”
“Oh,” Miss Somers said. “I’d almost forgotten that you and Mr. North sometimes work with—you mean they think it was murder? Not suicide? This friend of yours—this detective—”
There was a change in Miss Somers’s attitude. She was interested now, Pam thought. Of course, people are interested in murder stories. And, probably even more, in feeling themselves on the inside of things, possessors of knowledge hidden from the general.
“It’s only a possibility,” Pam said. “Probably by now they don’t even think that any longer. They have to consider all possibilities, of course. Even the most unlikely. About the baby—”
“Oh yes. Forgotten what you came about, almost, hadn’t we? She is a doll, isn’t she. Muscular little thing, isn’t she?” Miss Somers had not, clearly, mistaken palpation for caressing. “I’m sure, you and your husband will be delighted with her. Pity he couldn’t come with you. I always think it’s best if both—well, parents—” Her tone apologized for the possible sentimentality of the word—“agree about a kitten. He knew you were coming, of course?”
The question ticked in Pam’s mind. Did this sturdy, pink-faced woman think she was sneaking off behind Jerry’s back and—Nonsense, Pam told herself. An entirely reasonable enquiry, deserving an entirely reasonable answer.
“Only that I might,” she laid. “You see, we didn’t know whether you’d be open. If you weren’t, I might have got the car and gone to a cattery. There’s one up near Chappaqua Gebby says is very reliable.”
“I know the one you mean,” Miss Somers said. “I’ve bought several there myself. They do run a little more to Burmese, of course. I’m glad—watch her!”
The warning came a cat’s leap too late. Pam had removed her hands from the little Siamese queen. The cat, who had seemed to be asleep, had, evidently, been waiting—waiting to use the smooth strong muscles, to take the exercise a young cat needs. She was out of reach in an instant; she was out of the room in two. She darted between the curtains, tail high, a cat on her own again.
“Goodness!” Pam North said, and darted after her. “Can she get out—I mean—”
For a moment, Madeline Somers did not follow. She turned, she watched Pam—watched until Pam had disappeared between the curtains.
“There’s a back door,” she called, then. “I think it’s closed but—I’ll get that. You—look under things.”
Pam was already looking under things—in the middle room she was looking under cages. Cages lined either side of the room—a dozen cages in all. Only three had cats in them, Pam noticed, as she crawled under—as she said, “Here baby. Pretty baby,” and then, as a tryout, “Come here, Winkle. Come here.”
The little cat did not. Pam crawled out and stood for a moment, looking at three cats in cages, before crawling under the cages against the other wall. A long-hair with an amazing tail—probably a Coon cat. The male Siamese she had been shown the day before. And—an all-white Manx. Apparently Miss Somers had held two of a kind—two of an uncommon kind, at that. But the issue now was the cat who might, in time, become Winkle. Pam went under the other row of cages.
No cat. A pile of newspapers, ready for future shredding. The uppermost with a three-column cut of wrestling lion cubs. A familiar picture—of course, on the split page of that morning’s Times. It was odd that Miss Somers—
“She’s out here,” Madeline Somers called. She called from the room beyond. “Come and help.”
Pam went. She went quickly; went through a doorway into a much larger room. “Close the door quick,” Madeline Somers said, and Pam closed the door, quick, behind her.
The room she closed herself and Madeline Somers—and, it was to be assumed, a small quick Siamese—into was, clearly, the combination office and shipping room of the breeders’ nook. In the rear, under a window, near a door (which, Pam supposed, led to a back yard) there was a desk, with a filing cabinet beside it. Along either side, for almost the full length of the room, there were wide counters. The one on the left—under which Madeline Somers was looking, with a flashlight to aid her—held equipment for those concerned with cats. There were cat beds (which it was unlikely, Pam thought, any cat would ever use) and carriers for cats. There were boxes containing proprietary substitutes for torn up newspaper; there were half a dozen disassembled scratching posts, squared posts and wide bases waiting to be wedged together. There were wooden shipping cages, for cats destined to travel by express. There was a small carton of catnip mice; a larger carton which, from the stenciled marking, contained “Kitty Houses.” Whatever, Pam thought briefly, they might be.
The counter along the opposite wall was less laden—a counter, Pam thought, again briefly—set aside for the actual wrapping of outgoing cat accessories. Pam began to look under it for the little cat.
The space under this counter was almost entirely occupied by cardboard cartons of various sizes—emptied cartons which had, evidently, once contained cat toys; larger cartons, stenciled with manufacturers’ names, in which scratching posts had arrived; two cartons as large as wardrobe trunks, in which bulky merchandise—cat carriers, at a guess, or cat cages—had been sent to the breeders’ nook.
“Here baby,” Pam began to say, and began to crawl in among the cartons. “Nice baby.”
Here the little cat would be, if anywhere. Boxes—all kinds of boxes; empty boxes, most of them with hinged tops open. Into and out of boxes an agile cat—and this one was all of that—could go indefinitely, the searcher always a box or two behind. Pam began to haul boxes from under the counter, shake them, set them aside and upside down. No cat.
“The little devil!” Madeline Somers said, from behind Pam, apparently from under something. Pam hauled out cartons, piling them behind her. It was dark under there. What she needed was a flashlight. She came out.
Miss Somers had also come out. She was standing with her back to the counter, looking at Pam.
“Probably in one of these,” Pam said, indicating, and, at the same time, beginning to look about for a flashlight. She looked first on the counter under which she had searched—the almost bare counter. Above the counter, set in brackets, was a wide roll of heavy wrapping paper; next it, on a spindle also set in brackets, a cylinder of heavy—very heavy, ropelike—binding cord. Brown cord, a quarter of an inch or more in diameter—
The free end of the cord—the thin rope—had a loop knotted in it. The knot had a name—the name swirled, beyond reach, in Pam North’s swirling mind. Just now—almost just now—
Pam whirled from the counter.
“A bowline!” she said, and was conscious that she spoke loudly. “That’s what they call it—a bowline. That’s what—”
She stopped. Madeline Somers was holding the square club of a scratching post in her hands—lifting it in her hands. Pam could see the hardened muscles in Madeline Somers’s sturdy forearms and whirled and ran toward the door she had come through.
“You little snoop!” Madeline Somers said, loudly. “You prying little—”
Pam reached the door and tugged at the knob, and knew that she hadn’t time for that. She started to turn to face the woman with the square club. But only started—
He had cast into thin air—more precisely, perhaps, into smog—and caught something. Which was gratifying. Bill Weigand looked at his penciled notes. The question remained—what had he caught? He tapped the desk top with fingers, tapping out a rhythm. A rhythm of enquiry, of speculation.
His last question on the telephone had been whether the man he talked to was sure. He had got a patient sigh; it had been suggested to him that he, a cop, ought to know better than that. He had been told, once more, that there was nothing to suggest that the girl had not caught her heel in a loose metal edging of a stair tread and pitched, headlong, down a steep flight of stairs and broken her neck at the foot of them.
“We c
hecked it out,” the captain in Los Angeles said, again. “And the insurance investigator checked it out—checked it out hard and long. Nobody wanted to sue, as it turned out, but they weren’t taking chances. Somebody turns up and—wow! Because the tread was loose, and the owners had been notified and hadn’t got around to it. If the Rush girl had had hungry relatives—Anyway, no soap—high heels and a loose metal strip. They couldn’t get away from it. Only, they did get away with funeral expenses, because no relatives turned up. So—?”
Bill had thanked him and now tapped his fingers on his desk. He had had, admitted to himself he had had, higher hopes. Madeline Somers was in it—there was that. But, apparently, she wasn’t in it, not really in it, and there was that, too. Bill Weigand reviewed.
Two women sharing an apartment in Los Angeles—a walk-up, they on the second floor. Had shared it for a week, only, and that—Bill Weigand used his fingers now to count back—and that almost a year and a half ago. May of the previous year. A woman named Louise Rush; a woman named Madeline Somers. Neither employed; both recently come to Los Angeles. Both looking, but apparently in an unhurried fashion, for employment. No immediate financial pressure on them, evidently. The apartment had been reasonably expensive. They had, for all anybody could discover, done themselves rather well.
They had started out on a May evening to go to dinner, Louise had gone first. She had caught her heel on the metal strip, and plunged down. Madeline had clutched for her, missed; had hurried down after her and found her friend dead; had called—had screamed—for help.
There had never, really, been any suspicion against Madeline Somers. She profited nothing. The girls had, from what little could be learned of them—they had not had time, apparently, to make friends who could be asked—been on the best of terms. At the restaurant they had eaten in most frequently, a waitress had got to know them by sight. She said they seemed to get on swell. If anything, the last couple of times before it happened, they had seemed unusually gay. Laughing and joking and lighted up. She had thought that one, or both of them, had got good jobs or something.
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