by Frances
Or, as Mullins would certainly say, screwy. Which Mullins would attribute to the presence of the Norths in it.
4
TUESDAY, 8:35 P.M. TO 9:25 P.M.
Bill Weigand was the better for hamburgers from Hamburg Heaven when he went into a dusty room in the precinct station house and was looked at by two young men. Seated, one was obviously taller than the other—a man in his middle twenties, darkly good-looking, darkly morose. The other was slighter and shorter; he had red hair and a quick face. The dark young man looked at Weigand as if he were measuring him, possibly for a coffin; the other’s eyebrows went up and his face moved restlessly.
But it was the dark man who spoke.
“Your man,” he said, “tells me they shot father.”
The voice accused.
“Sergeant Mullins,” Lieutenant Weigand said, with no expression. “Detective sergeant. What he told you is correct, Mr. Merle.”
“What the hell kind of a town is this?” Joshua Merle demanded. He stood up. Although he tried to hide it, his face was working a little. “He wasn’t somebody you shoot.”
It was an odd statement, but it sounded less odd on the young voice.
“I’m sorry,” Weigand said. “You have my sympathy, Mr. Merle. We’ll do everything we can—.”
“It’s a hell of a time for that,” the dark young man told him. But his voice was not so combative as his words.
“Steady, Josh,” the red-headed one said. “Hold it, fella.”
“Right,” Weigand said. “Take it easy, Mr. Merle. It’s tough—but take it easy as you can.” He turned to the young man with red hair. “You’re a friend of his, I gather?” he said. “You give him good advice.”
“He’s Weldon Jameson,” Merle said. “He’s a hell of a good friend of mine.”
“Right,” Weigand said, mildly.
“I ran into him,” Merle said. “Asked him to come along with me. He felt the way I did about the old—about Dad.”
“That’s right,” Jameson said, quickly. “He was a lot of guy, Josh’s dad.”
The two looked at Weigand. They could hardly have been less similar, but there was a likeness between them. It was more than their youth; the likeness was hard to decipher. It was, possibly, a kind of readiness; a kind of expectation that things would be tough.
Then Merle took a step forward and limped, favoring his right foot. And Jameson sat down in the wooden chair from which he had risen and his right leg did not bend properly at the knee.
Weigand’s glance which accepted this was quick, but Jameson’s noting of it was quicker.
“Crocks,” he said. “A pair of surveyed sailors, Lieutenant.”
“So what?” Merle said. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” Weigand told him. “Navy—both of you?”
“Naval aviation,” Jameson said. “We got out.” He looked at his leg. “The hard way,” he told it.
“Skip it, Jamie,” Merle said. “For God’s sake. You think I—.”
The other looked at young Merle. The command was as clear as if he had spoken.
“All right,” Merle said. “Sorry, Jamie.”
“You wanted,” Weigand said, “to hear about your father.”
He told Merle about his father, accepting Jameson as an auditor. Merle limped once across the room and back and sat down again as Weigand talked. When Weigand had finished, he said he didn’t get it.
“Assuming somebody wanted to kill Dad,” he said. “I don’t know why, God knows, but somebody did. What took Dad to that dump?”
It wasn’t particularly a dump, Weigand told him. It was merely a small apartment. Apparently what had taken George Merle there was a letter from a man named Murdock.
“Ozzie,” Joshua Merle said. “What would Ozzie—I don’t believe that, Lieutenant.”
“Neither does Murdock,” Weigand told him. “Or so he says. There was a letter which seemed to be signed by Murdock, inviting your father to come to the apartment. Alternatively, he may have come to see Mrs. Hunter.”
“What Mrs. Hunter?” young Merle said. His tone was unexpectedly hot. “Mar—Rick Hunter’s wife?”
“Mary Hunter,” Weigand agreed, interested. “Apparently you knew her.”
The young man stared at him. He seemed to be looking through him.
“Did you?” Weigand said.
“What?” Merle said. “Oh yes, I used to know her. Before she married. She married a guy in the Navy. He was killed a while ago.”
He said the last without surprise, as if only the time were a matter of importance; as if the fact of the death were entirely routine. But perhaps this was because his tone was now unexpectedly cool, as if none of it—and particularly none of Mary Hunter—were of importance.
“You mean it was her apartment?” Weldon Jameson asked. His voice held interest; a good deal of interest. “I thought you said it was Murdock’s.”
Weigand shook his head.
“Had been Murdock’s,” he said. “He’d sublet it to Mrs. Hunter. Technically, anyway, it was hers when Mr. Merle was killed there. And she found the body.” He paused. “She says,” he added.
“And you say she didn’t?” Merle asked. His voice was still uninterested. Weigand wondered if it was deliberately uninterested.
He didn’t say anything, as yet, Weigand explained. He merely sought information. He hoped, for example, that Mr. Merle could give him some. Or Mr. Jameson.
“I believe you live with the Merles, Mr. Jameson?” he said, and then wondered why he believed that. Then he remembered that Murdock had mentioned a “Jamie” in connection with the Merle family.
Jameson smiled at the detective; the smile lighted his face. It was also somehow derisive.
“I’ve—been staying there,” he said. “For a few months. Since …”
Nobody interrupted him. He merely stopped with that. He looked at young Merle as if waiting for him to interject. But Merle seemed to be thinking of something much further away.
“Well, Mr. Merle?” Weigand said, when the dark young man still did not answer.
Merle looked at the detective and brought his thoughts back.
“I don’t know what you want, Lieutenant,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Information,” Weigand told him. “I want to find the man who murdered your father, Mr. Merle. Or the woman.”
“All right,” Merle said. “That’s your job. But I don’t know. Jamie here doesn’t know. Why don’t you find out? What did you want me here for?”
Weigand said he hadn’t, particularly.
“Then what did your man here—what did whoever it was here—telephone me for?” Merle said. “How did he know where I was, for that matter? And why drag me around here? Unless—unless you want me to identify him?”
There was that, Weigand admitted, or would be. But tomorrow would have done; there wasn’t much doubt. Mrs. Hunter had identified George Merle; so had papers in his pocket. As he explained this, Weigand himself grew puzzled. Who at the precinct had called this rather surly son of the murdered man? Weigand picked up a telephone to find out.
A few minutes later he put it down, and now he was more puzzled than before. Unless somebody at the precinct was lying, nobody had called young Merle. An effort had been made to reach somebody at the Merle house, and only a servant had been reached. A little later, however, Ann Merle, the daughter, had telephoned and had been told of the death of her father. The precinct had, properly enough, considered the family notified.
“Who called you?” Weigand asked, after he had spent a fruitless moment looking at the telephone. “Who did he say he was?”
“The police,” Merle said. “Just ‘this is the police.’ Why? Wasn’t it?”
“Apparently not,” Weigand told him. “Where were you?”
“At a restaurant,” Merle said. “A place named Charles. Downtown. If it wasn’t the police, who was it? I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Weigand said
. He thought it over. He looked at Merle again. “Neither do I,” he repeated, in a different voice. Still looking at Merle, he picked up the telephone. His glance dropped to the dial long enough for a long finger to spin out a number he knew well enough. He talked for a moment, making no effort to lower his voice. He thanked Hugo at Charles and replaced the telephone.
“But,” he said, “somebody did call you. I don’t know what he said. But somebody called you. A man.”
“He said what I told you,” Merle said, and his voice was hot again.
“Right,” Weigand said, without inflection.
He waited, but neither of the young men added anything. Physically different, they were alike again, looking at Weigand, waiting for him to go on. He went on. He said, but not as if it mattered to him, that the attitude was wrong—the attitude of young Merle. It was, he said, getting them nowhere. He was a policeman; he was trying to find out who killed Merle’s father; he could use Merle’s help. Granted a mystery in Mr. Merle’s presence; granted something odd which needed looking into. The result was that Mr. Merle was there. They would find out why eventually.
“Somebody worked it,” Merle said. “For some purpose.”
“Obviously,” Weigand told him. “Obviously, Mr. Merle.” He started to explain something and decided not to. Under a case, until it was solved, there was always something moving—something in the dark, with purposes of its own; something that slipped away from under the hand; something with purposes as clear to it, and as mysterious to others, as the burrowings of a mole, as the twisting and turning of a mole’s tunnel through the earth. If you knew the direction a mole was going and put your hand down in the path, the soil pressed up against your hand. Signifying mole at work. In an investigation, such a movement as surely signified murderer at work. But that was his problem, not Merle’s—not Merle’s if he was above ground, or Jameson’s.
“For the time being,” Weigand said, instead of any of this—“for the time being, we’ll skip that, Mr. Merle. Have you any idea what your father did today before he was killed?”
It took Merle longer to tell it than it would have taken him to tell it simply. But there was little to it. George Merle had left his home on Long Island about nine o’clock that morning and had been driven to the Long Island Railroad Station. He had caught the 9:25 to New York, and that had put him at the Pennsylvania Station about 10:20—10:18, if the train was on time. Part of this was guesswork on his son’s part; he knew about when his father left; the car had returned at about the interval to be expected if George Merle made the train. There had been nothing said about his missing the train. And, anyway, he never missed trains.
Presumably thereafter George Merle went to the bank; that was to be checked at the bank. There was no reason to think he had not; if he had not gone to the bank, presumably the bank would sooner or later have telephoned to inquire about his absence. He had had lunch with his son.
“Yes?” Weigand said.
At about one fifteen, at the Yale Club. The luncheon had lasted around an hour and a half.
“Right,” Weigand said. “Was that customary? For you and your father to lunch together?”
There wasn’t, Merle said, any custom about it. They lunched together occasionally, when he happened to be in town. He was not in town often—certainly not every day. But it was not unusual, either his being in town or his lunching with his father. And after lunch his father had, presumably, returned to his office.
“And you?” Weigand wanted to know.
The younger Merle had left the Long Island house in time to catch the 11:01 to New York. He had arrived, he supposed, at around 12. He had done various things—
“What things?” Weigand said.
Both young men looked at him with the appearance of surprised interest, and Merle looked as if he might challenge the question. But it seemed to Weigand as if something passed from Weldon Jameson to the taller, somewhat older man, and as if this something checked him.
“I walked across town,” Merle said. He paused and looked at Weigand. “I don’t walk fast any more,” he said. “I looked in some windows. I stopped and bought a couple of ties.”
“At?” Weigand said.
At Saks, Merle told him. He had still had time to kill—it was about a quarter to one. He walked over to Madison and down a little way and into a news-reel theater. He stayed there until it was time to meet his father at the club.
He had planned to go back to Long Island after lunch, but when it was time to catch the train he decided he was not interested in going back to Long Island. Instead he had stayed on at the club, having a drink or two, looking over newspapers. He had tried to call a girl in town and failed to get her.
“She’d moved,” Merle said. “They said they didn’t know where.”
He had met a man he knew slightly at the club and had a drink or two with him, and suddenly grown bored with him. He had remembered an engagement—“a phoney engagement,” Merle said—and had gone out into the summer afternoon still without purpose. He had wandered about the city for a while, looking in windows, killing time. Then he had telephoned Jameson at the Long Island house.
“Without getting me,” Jameson said. “I’d taken the 2:13 in. Do you want to know what I did, Lieutenant?”
Weigand didn’t, particularly, so far as he knew.
“Anyway,” he said, “one thing at a time.”
Merle hadn’t, it appeared, done much of anything with most of his afternoon in town. He had tried to ring up another girl, and she was out of town. He had stopped in at another bar or two and had another drink or two, and then gone down to Charles. He had had several drinks at the bar there and then dinner and then whoever it was called him on the telephone, and told him his father had been murdered. He had started out and had met Jameson just coming in. They had come to the station house. They were still at the station house.
“And where,” he inquired, “does it get you, Lieutenant? Do you think I killed Dad?”
“I don’t know,” Weigand said. His voice was mild. “I shouldn’t think so. I hadn’t thought so, particularly. Did you, Mr. Merle?”
Merle made a remark. It was a truculent remark. He added a single word—“Snafu.” Weigand nodded slowly, agreeing it was all of that. It occurred to him that Joshua Merle was younger than he seemed—younger than the twenty-six or twenty-seven Weigand would have guessed—younger, anyway, in emotions. Jameson, Bill Weigand thought, was looking at his friend with concern.
“Take it easy, fella,” Jameson said. He turned to Bill Weigand. “You can’t accuse a guy of killing his own father, Lieutenant,” he said.
Weigand thought of saying that it was not unheard of and decided not to say it. Instead, in the most matter of fact of tones, he said that he had made no such accusation, even by implication.
“Mr. Merle came here voluntarily,” Bill explained. “And not at my invitation, whatever someone may have wanted him to think. I haven’t, at the moment, any suspicion of anyone. And I haven’t any more questions to ask either of you, at the moment.”
Having said that, he waited.
“Dad—the body—” Merle said. “Do you want me to—?”
Weigand shook his head. At the moment the body would be—not available—for identification. Bill saw no reason for explaining why. He would want formal identification from a member of the family, but tomorrow would do. He would want to talk to other members of the family. For that, also, tomorrow would do. At the moment—.
“Come on, Jamie,” Merle said. “Let’s get out of here.” He moved, limping, toward the door. Jameson followed him, his limp as pronounced, but different. At the door, Merle stopped suddenly, and turned.
“I didn’t mean to—to get tough, or anything, Lieutenant,” he said. “It was a jolt. O.K.?”
It was, Bill told him, perfectly O.K. He watched the two young men go out the door. He wondered what had happened to them—physically and more than physically. Eventually, no doubt, he would find out
. You found out so much when you were investigating murders. Particularly so much that did you no good.
Weigand went out of the dusty room and pulled the door to after him. At the desk he checked again. Still there was no record that anyone had telephoned young Merle at Charles to tell him about the death of his father. That was another thing that would have to be found out about, eventually. He started out and the telephone rang behind him. The desk sergeant called him back. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, in charge of the Homicide Squad, was on the wire. The sergeant looked at Bill Weigand with a certain expression and Bill, curbing himself, looked back with no expression at all. He picked up the telephone and Inspector O’Malley rumbled at him.
Where the hell, O’Malley wanted to know, did Weigand think he was. The question was evidently rhetorical, and O’Malley did not wait for an answer. What the hell did Weigand think he was doing?
“Working on the Merle killing,” Bill told him, in a reasonable tone.
“Well,” O’Malley said, “what about it?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “Not yet.”
O’Malley’s rumble gained in volume, but did not grow more articulate. It was distant thunder on the telephone. Bill waited, making soothing sounds. The rumble subsided somewhat; the voice became almost plaintive.
“Listen, Bill,” O’Malley said. “For God’s sake, listen. This guy Merle wasn’t just anybody. He was—hell, he was George Merle. He ran a bank.”
“I know, Inspector,” Bill said. “It’s one of those things.”
It damned well was, O’Malley told him. And ever since the slip went out the boys had been driving him nuts. “On account of it’s George Merle,” he explained. “The Times and the Herald Trib particularly. Even if there is a war on, the Times says, it’s still George Merle. You know that guy Hardy.”
Weigand grinned into the telephone, but kept the grin out of his voice. He did know Hardy, and that Inspector O’Malley was not really a match for him. Hardy was a good man at his business, which was finding things out whether O’Malley wanted them found out or wanted them kept in, or didn’t—as was often the case—know precisely what they were.
