Payoff for the Banker

by Frances

  Pam North looked around and said: “Where is everybody?” and Bill Weigand said they were around. Somewhere around. Then he asked a question, suddenly.

  “Mrs. Hunter,” he said, “did you ever, under any circumstances, for any purpose, accept a check from George Merle? For any purpose—to take to your father, for example; to repay you for an expenditure you had made—for any purpose at all?”

  Mary Hunter looked at him and seemed puzzled.

  “Why no,” she said. “Of course not.”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said.

  “Lieutenant,” Mary Hunter said. “Josh didn’t hate his father. He hadn’t any reason to.”

  Bill looked sharply at Pam North, who smiled back, quite blandly.

  “The only reason Josh could have had for hating his father was because of me,” Mary Hunter said. “And Josh didn’t—it wasn’t serious. Not that serious.”

  “All right,” Bill said. “If you say so.”

  Mary Hunter said she did say so.

  “Mrs. North seemed to think,” she said. “Seemed to think you—.”

  “I merely said it was possible,” Pam North said. “I thought if you explained there wouldn’t be any confusion. Or if you and Joshua Merle both explained.”

  “Did you?” Bill Weigand said. “And did you, Jerry?”

  “I,” Jerry North said, “came along for the ride. At a ruinous expenditure of A coupons, not being a policeman with unlimited rations.”

  “Well, well,” Bill Weigand said. “We’ll have to find Mr. Merle presently.”

  Mullins came from around the house and Mr. Potts was with him. They were talking and seemed to be on very happy terms. Mullins stopped for a moment when he saw the Norths and then, apparently in spite of his wiser instincts, beamed at them. He and Mr. Potts came over and Mr. Potts said “Hello, Mary,” before he was introduced to the Norths.

  “Why don’t you have your friends help themselves to a drink, Lieutenant,” Mr. Potts said. He looked informingly at the bar table.

  “But—” Pam North said. Jerry took her by the arm and said “Come on, Pam.” Mary Hunter hesitated. Then she followed the others. From the living room, Ann Merle came out and joined them. She looked across at Wickersham Potts, who smiled and nodded vigorously.

  “Loot,” Mullins said, “I don’t know if it means anything. But young Merle has been trying to get his sister to marry the Jameson guy. Mr. Potts says so, anyway. He thought you’d want to know.”

  Potts smiled. He said that the sergeant put it a little more strongly than he would put it. He merely assumed that Lieutenant Weigand would want to know all there was to know about—“about the people in the case.”

  “Did you?” Weigand said, without committing himself. “Well,” Mr. Potts said reasonably, “in your position I would. I would collect all the pieces.”

  “You have, apparently,” Bill Weigand told him.

  Potts smiled at Weigand.

  “I told you I was interested in people,” he said. “I know all these people quite well. I’ve known them for a number of years, of course.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “And Merle wants his sister to marry Weldon Jameson. I gather she doesn’t want to.”

  “Because of young Goode,” Potts added for him. “Of course. No, she doesn’t want to. But her brother is insistent—almost insistent.”

  “And Jameson?” Bill Weigand said.

  “Oh,” Potts said, “Jameson wouldn’t mind. I don’t think he’d mind at all.” He paused and looked past Weigand into the distance. “A sense of obligation can be a very strange and compelling thing,” he said, with a great air of making an abstract remark. “But I mustn’t harp on it.”

  It might, Weigand told Mr. Potts, be helpful if Mr. Potts would say straight out what it was he wanted to say; what he knew or thought he knew. Mr. Potts told him that that was, of course, a very reasonable idea.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “I know no facts which would help you.” He stopped smiling. “If I did,” he said, “I wouldn’t beat about the bush. I assure you of that, Lieutenant. I merely have opinions—and guesses. As you must have yourself.”

  “Why should Merle have a particular sense of obligation to Jameson?” Weigand said. “Because of the plane accident?”

  “Oh,” Potts said, “Josh won’t accept it as an accident. He calls it criminal negligence. His. He thinks he has ruined Jameson’s future. Because, you see, Jameson was very intent on flying. He always had been, apparently, since he was a boy. And now he can’t. And he hadn’t, apparently, made plans for any other kind of life.”

  The shadow of the house had crept across the flagged terrace and was edging onto the grass beyond. It had grown hot and still on the terrace. Meggs came out again with fresh supplies for the bar table and Bill Weigand, crossing that way with Mullins, decided that it was not formally time for cocktails. Weldon Jameson came out from the living room and poured himself a scotch and his face and eyes showed he had had several before it, although his movements were precise and certain. Meggs mixed Mullins an old-fashioned and Weigand changed to a Tom Collins.

  “This is a pretty wet case, ain’t it, Loot?” Mullins said.

  Jameson limped away toward the swimming pool. Stanley Goode was sitting in the sun by the pool watching Ann Merle, who was back in her white swimming suit and, as Weigand and Mullins watched, dived from the pool’s rim.

  It was cooler in the living room than on the terrace. Bill Weigand started in and hesitated just outside one of the French doors. Mrs. Burnwood was standing in front of a chair which had its back to Weigand and in which its occupant was hidden.

  “—have it,” Mrs. Burnwood said rather loudly, and in an angry voice. “You’re making him think he owns the place.”

  She saw Weigand at the door and stopped and looked at him with hostility. She turned and went across the room and out of Weigand’s sight. Joshua Merle got up out of the deep chair and came across to the French door. His face was dark and worried. He did not seem to see Weigand until he was almost on him and then he did not pause.

  “Still here, Lieutenant?” he said.

  There was nothing to say, and Bill Weigand said nothing. Merle turned left on the terrace and went around the house toward, Weigand assumed, the path which led down to the private beach and Potts’s cottage. After a few moments, Weigand went after him and had a look. There was no sign of Merle. A graveled path descended in terraces. Weigand went down it and, after a little, came out on a small, immaculate beach. A little way off from the beach was the cottage which was presumably Mr. Potts’s. There was no sign of life around, and Bill Weigand went back up the path.

  The reaction to his announcement that Murdock had been a victim, not a murderer, was slow in coming. Possibly he had been wrong in thinking it would come. And he needed it—he needed a blowoff. Because it was not enough to know in your own mind; to be pretty sure you knew. Bill went down toward the pool.

  Joshua Merle and Mary Hunter met in the living room, with no one else around except Pam North—which was the way Pam had hoped it would happen; to contrive which, Pam had suddenly been overcome with a desire to powder her nose when she saw Merle go in from the terrace and had insisted that Mary Hunter must also want to powder her nose. Jerry had smiled at her and shaken his head a little and then he had joined Mullins at the table which held the drinks.

  Mary Hunter had started to turn back when she saw Joshua Merle, tall and angry-looking, but then had straightened and stopped and looked at him. It was a moment before either spoke, and Pam had time to fear that neither was going to speak. Then Joshua Merle said:

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Hunter,” as if from a great distance.

  “Hello,” Mary Hunter said. “Mrs. North brought me here. I—”

  “You don’t have to tell me you didn’t want to come,” Merle said. “You made that clear enough a long time ago.”

  “Josh,” Mary Hunter said. “Oh Josh—why—”

  That, Pam decided, w
as her cue. She took it Neither of them saw her go.

  The terrace was deserted. Jerry and Sergeant Mullins were walking across the lawn toward the swimming pool and Laurel Burke was with them—walking between them, with the movements, Pam decided, of a dress model. Pam started to follow them, and resented the necessity of following them—of following anybody—and stopped and said, “Damn!”

  “I might as well go home,” she thought. “Get Jerry away—get Jerry and go home. Because Mary and Josh have got to work it out themselves from now on. If there is, after all this time and Rick Hunter and everything, anything to work out.”

  “Oh,” a gentle voice said, “I think there is, Mrs. North. I think you were very wise to bring Mrs. Hunter out.”

  “I often talk out loud,” Pam said to Wickersham Potts. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ve tried not to, but there it is. I suppose it wasn’t any of my business, really.”

  “No,” Mr. Potts said, “speaking strictly—I suppose not. But one’s business is so limited if one sticks to it too religiously. Mine, for example, is playing an organ.” He paused to consider. “Which I play extremely well,” he added. “Probably as well as anyone in this country. You’ve heard me, perhaps?”

  “Oh, yes,” Pam said. “It was very fine. Only I suppose I don’t really appreciate the pipe organ, Mr. Potts. Not that it isn’t—tremendous.”

  “I also play the flute,” Mr. Potts said. “For my own amusement. A flute is much more amusing than an organ. But, of course, limited. But even an organ does not occupy a whole life. Not even mine.”

  “No,” Pam said. “Do you think, too, that Mary and Josh ought to explain things? Quit misunderstanding each other? Just—just because it is so foolish to let an old lie—it was a lie, I suppose.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. Potts said. “Dear old George was a very intelligent liar, when he wanted to be. And he often wanted to be. You see, he hated Mary’s father. So he—eliminated Mary. He often eliminated people. On the other hand, he contributed very handsomely to the church and so helped pay my salary.” He considered. “I don’t know that that strikes a balance, entirely,” he said. “But there it is.”

  “And he got himself murdered,” Pam said. “There that is, too.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Potts said, “do you think there is a connection? I rather thought—but no doubt you are right.” He considered again. “At any rate,” he said, “in the sense that everything is connected with something else. In the end.”

  Pam said that that was what she had meant. Then she spoke suddenly.

  “Do you know who killed Mr. Merle, Mr. Potts?” she said.

  Wickersham Potts looked at her, and she thought afterward that his eyes had narrowed slightly.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Pam said. “I think I do.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Potts said, “we can both be wrong. There are so many side issues. And it is so difficult to tell which is a side issue. Miss Burke and her baby, if there is a baby. Mr. Murdock and his murder, if he was murdered.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, “he was murdered.”

  Mr. Potts nodded.

  “Mary Hunter and Josh,” he said. “And, of course, the money—all the money. And the smallness of young Merle’s allowance. And the accident which kept him out of the Navy. It is really very complex.”

  They were still standing near the French doors. Potts looked around them.

  “All this,” he said, “it’s quite impressive, isn’t it. Have you seen my little place? Really, it’s the Merles’ little place too, but they let me rent it. For years now.”

  “No,” Pam said.

  “I’d like you to,” Mr. Potts said. “Would you care to?”

  “Why yes,” Pam said. “Very much, Mr. Potts.”

  And that was not really accurate. But she did want, quite a good deal, to know why Mr. Potts wanted her to see his little place.

  Mr. Potts directed her down the terraced path toward the beach, and up the other path from the beach to the cottage. He pushed open the door and she went in ahead of him. The living room was large for a place which seemed, from outside, so tiny—it was large and underfurnished with chairs and tables which seemed light and clean. It was a room beautifully, miraculously, free of clutter.

  “Mr. Potts,” she began, when she heard footsteps behind her, “it’s—”

  And then, blindingly, without warning, her head pained with incredible, flaring violence and blackness came in from the sides as she felt herself falling. She spent the remaining moment of consciousness thinking that this was very odd of Mr. Potts, and very unlike him.

  Her head ached as she had never known it to ache, in great swirls of pain. She tried to raise herself from the polished floor against which her cheek was pressed and the pain hurled her down. She lay for a moment and the pain was less intense and she pushed herself up to sit on the floor, holding herself up with her hands thrust out in front of her. She shook her head, and the pain came back, but she could remember more clearly.

  Mr. Potts had asked her to come to see his cottage, and she had thought he wanted to tell her something. And he had let her precede him into the cottage and there had been footsteps behind her as she was admiring the room and—

  She was looking at blood. A little rivulet of blood, like spilled water but less fluid, was creeping across the polished boards in front of her. As she looked it stopped creeping; it was a red finger of blood, motionless on the floor.

  Pam North made herself turn. Wickersham Potts lay a few feet away from her. He lay on his face. The blood was coming up around a knife in his back.

  Pam fought back the blackness which came up around her. She pushed at it desperately with her will, but her will was not strong enough. Darkness engulfed her again and she pitched forward onto the floor. One of her hands, as she lay huddled on the floor, was an inch or two from the finger of blood which pointed away from Wickersham Potts, late organist of St. Andrew’s, amateur in human behavior; Mr. Potts, who in the end had encountered a professional.

  Jerry North and Bill Weigand found Pam and she was still unconscious. She regained consciousness in Jerry’s arms and looked up at him and said, “Hello, darling. What happened?” before she remembered what had happened. Then she turned her face and pressed it against Jerry’s arm and he held it there. Without moving, her words muffled, she said: “Mr. Potts, Jerry. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said.

  Pam lifted her head, but she did not look at the body.

  “He was such a nice little man, Jerry,” she said. “At first I thought he hit me. I couldn’t see why.”

  Bill Weigand stood up beside Potts’s body. He said that, if she felt up to it, it would help for her to tell what happened. Jerry said, “For God’s sake, Bill!” But Pam sat up, still in the circle of Jerry’s arm, and said she was all right. She still did not look at the body.

  She told them of coming to the cottage with Mr. Potts, of hearing footsteps behind her and of being struck. As she remembered, she put her hand up and touched the back of her head gently.

  “It’s all right, Pam,” Jerry said. “Just a bump. A pretty big bump. He didn’t try to kill you. You were just—in the way.”

  Pam smiled at Jerry to reassure him. Her smile quivered a little.

  “I thought Mr. Potts hit me,” she said. “But then I knew he didn’t.”

  “When you came to,” Bill said. “And then fainted again. I gather you must have, because you knew he was dead.”

  “I think I did,” Pam said. “It’s blurred. But before that, I knew it wasn’t Mr. Potts.”

  “How, Pam?” Jerry said. “Did you see him?”

  But Pam shook her head, slowly, bewildered.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “That’s all blurred too. I don’t think I saw anybody—except Mr. Potts, of course. But I just remember thinking ‘why, it isn’t Mr. Potts at all’ while I was falling. The first time, that must
have been. Because the second time it was Mr. Potts, of course. Only it’s all mixed up.”

  “Never mind,” Jerry said. “It will come straight.”

  “If it does,” Pam said, “I’ll know who it was—I mean, who it was all the time. Mr. Merle and Mr. Murdock and now Mr. Potts—I’ll know the whole thing.”

  And as she said that an odd feeling came over her. It was a cold, unhappy feeling; it was like the feeling of a great disappointment.

  They started out, Pam a little shaky even with Jerry’s supporting arm about her. When they were at the door, Bill Weigand turned back suddenly and went to the body. Gently he turned it so he could see the face. There was no doubt about it. Mr. Potts looked, in death, very surprised indeed.

  Most of them were back on the terrace when Bill Weigand and the Norths reached the top of the terraced path and came around the house. Weigand counted them up as they walked toward them—Joshua Merle and Mary, sitting side by side; Weldon Jameson and Stanley Goode sitting in a little group of which Ann Merle was the third; Laurel Burke with Mullins close to her, as he was supposed to be; Captain Theodore Sullivan of the State Police, by himself. Meggs at the table mixing drinks. Mrs. Burnwood—no Mrs. Burnwood.

  Weldon Jameson started up as he saw them coming. He said, “Mrs. North! You’re hurt!” and started toward them.

  “She’s all right, Mr. Jameson,” Bill Weigand said. “She—bumped her head.”

  “How—?” Ann Merle began, but Bill stopped her.

  “I’m going to tell you,” he said, and his voice was distant and level. “All of you. Meggs!”

  Meggs came across the terrace.

  “Ask Mrs. Burnwood to come out,” Weigand told him. Meggs said, “Yes, sir,” and went into the living room. They waited. After a few minutes Mrs. Burnwood came out and looked at Weigand without cordiality.

  “You sent for me?” she inquired, as if she were expressing an impossibility. “You sent for me?”

  “Yes,” Bill told her. “Please sit down, Mrs. Burnwood.”

  She looked very surprised. She sat down.

  “Now,” Bill Weigand said, still standing. “One of you stabbed Mr. Potts in the back within the last half hour. You were very successful. You killed him. Before that, the same person slugged Mrs. North and knocked her out. I don’t know why whoever it was didn’t kill her, too, but apparently that wasn’t the intention.”