Curtain for a Jester

by Frances Lockridge

  “Yes,” Bill said, “in a way it does. Anything else?”

  There was nothing else. Martha Evitts was still missing. John Baker was still missing. Sylvester Frank was still—

  “No,” Bill said. “Not Frank any more. You can call them off on Frank.” He explained, briefly. He replaced the receiver. He looked at Pam and Jerry North, who waited.

  “A man named Behren,” Bill told them. “It seems he was at the party last night. It seems that he—”

  “But the butler told us that,” Pam said. “He said Mr. Barron was there. The man with the scar.”

  “No,” Bill said. “This man’s name is Behren.” He spelled it. “Alexander—” He stopped. Albert Barron. Alexander Behren.

  “Well,” Bill Weigand said, “I’ll be damned if he didn’t.”

  “The red-haired man,” Pam said. “It has to be, Bill. Red hair turned to gray hair!” She turned to Jerry. “Red herring indeed,” Pam North said. “I told you—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “You did. And—Mr. Behren, who’s supposed to be dead, identified the man Monteath killed in Maine.” He continued to look at the Norths. He smiled faintly.

  “Everything clear now?” he asked.

  IX

  Thursday, 7:20 P.M. to 9:35 P.M.

  Martha Evitts raised her cup to her lips. But she put it down, the coffee untasted. She looked at John Baker, across from her at a small table in a small restaurant near Times Square.

  “What it comes down to,” she said, “is that you’re not what I thought you were. Are you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “In what matters to us.”

  She shook her head.

  “Different,” she said. “Completely different.” She paused. “Older,” she said. “For one thing—older.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “But that’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s all right. But it doesn’t matter much, does it?”

  “I’m the same man,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, exactly the same man. I wish you’d believe that.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I try. I try to believe so many things. You—you don’t help me much, John.”

  “All I can,” he said. “All I can right now. I’m sorry it’s that way, but it is.”

  “You’re mixed up in something.”

  He said she could call it that. He drank coffee.

  “Again,” he said. “I had nothing to do with killing Wilmot. I don’t know who did. I was there—at the penthouse—about something else. I expected to find Wilmot alive. Leave him alive.”

  “You followed this man—what’s his name? Monteath. Mrs. North saw you. You didn’t deny it.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. I don’t. And—I can’t tell you any more about it.”

  He was told he asked a lot.

  “All right,” he said. “I ask a lot, Martha. But, I didn’t kill Wilmot. I didn’t want him dead.”

  “You could,” she said, “tell me anything. I wouldn’t be—upset. It’d be better than the way it is.”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you,” he said. “Not now.”

  “Nor,” she said, “tell the police?”

  “Nothing that would help,” he said. “Probably nothing they don’t suspect, anyway. Or will get on to before long. You’ll just have to believe that—well, that things will be all right.”

  “I’m trying,” the girl said. “I’m trying very hard, John.”

  “Then,” he said, “drink your coffee.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to make a telephone call,” he said. “Wait for me. Then I’ll take you home. Sit here and drink your coffee and—quit worrying.”

  “That’s fine,” Martha said. “That’s wonderful.”

  “You’ll wait?”

  “Yes, I’ll wait. I’ll drink my coffee.”

  He looked across the table at her. He smiled suddenly, and his face changed. He’s the other John, now, she thought. She said, “I’ll wait.”

  He still hesitated, but only for a moment. He went between tables to a telephone booth near the restaurant entrance. He dialed a number. When he was answered he said, “This is Baker.” Then he listened.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’d think so. He went there.”

  He listened again.

  “How important is it?” he asked, and again listened. He said, “I suppose he could” and listened again.

  “It forces our hand,” he said. “But, if it’s forced, it’s forced. When?”

  As he listened, he whistled. He said it didn’t give much time. He said, “O.K., I see what you mean.” He hung up the receiver and went back to the table. He looked at Martha Evitts’s cup. He said, “You didn’t drink it all.”

  “Almost,” she said.

  “Martha,” he said. “I can’t take you home after all. There’s something I’ve got to do. Will you go home?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I may as well.”

  “And stay there?”

  “Yes.”

  “The police may show up,” he said. “Tell them what you know, if you need to. They’ll know it by now from these Norths of yours, anyway, Tell them you don’t know where I am.” He smiled faintly. “By then you won’t,” he said. “All right?”

  “I guess so. I guess it has to be.”

  “For a while,” he said. “You ready now?”

  She was. They walked together to the Times Square station of the IRT. She went toward the uptown express platform.

  “I go the other way,” he told her. “Stay at home?” She nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. She smiled. It was not a particularly good smile.

  John Baker went to the other express platform. He took a downtown train. He was still on it when it tilted down into the tunnel beneath the East River.

  Acting Captain William Weigand sat at his desk. He ate a hamburger on a roll and drank coffee. The coffee tasted of cardboard container; the hamburger tasted of nothing in particular. Weigand used the telephone. His voice traveled some hundreds of miles and was heard by a uniformed state police officer in a barracks in Maine.

  “I appreciate it was a long time ago,” Bill said. “I realize you’ve looked it up once for Sergeant Stein. It looks like meaning more now.” He listened. “Right,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

  He held the telephone in one hand and the hamburger in the other, eating because, with no time for a proper dinner, one has to eat. He felt the beginning of that sense of urgency which so often came when, finally, a case began to take shape. But logic lagged behind; what he had hold of remained, to the mind, amorphous. More accurately, Bill thought, he seemed to have a case in either hand, as in one hand he held a telephone receiver and in the other a hamburger on a bun. He waited for a man in Maine to consult records of years ago.

  “All right,” the man in Maine said, “I’ve got what there is. It isn’t much. This man Monteath, summer resident, killed a man he says tried to break in. The man was identified as Joseph Parks by a man who said he was a friend of his. Fingerprints checked. Small-time crook from your town.”

  “No charges against Monteath?”

  “Nope.”

  “No suspicion there was any funny business?”

  “Not on the record,” a twanging voice from Maine said. “I wasn’t on the case. The man who was on it got himself shot five-six years ago. If he had any suspicions they don’t show on what we’ve got.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “I’m interested in this man who identified Parks. Alexander Behren, we have it.”

  “That’s the name we’ve got here,” Maine said.

  “How did Behren happen to show up?” Bill asked. “Read about an unidentified man being shot? I suppose he was unidentified until Behren showed up? No papers on him.”

  “Seems not,” Maine said. “Hold it.”

  Bill held it, this time briefly.

  “Behren showed up the next morning,” Maine said. “Guess he didn’t read about it, because how could he? Wasn
’t printed yet. Seems he reported a friend of his had been going to meet him somewhere and hadn’t. Described the friend, and it fitted. Looked at Parks, and sure enough.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “He could have known when he showed up what he would find?”

  “Well,” Maine said, in the accents of Maine, “he could have. Said he didn’t, apparently.”

  “Do you know whether he had any contact with Monteath? Behren, I mean. After he turned up?”

  “Nothing to show. Wait a minute. Probably didn’t. Monteath’s wife was in a hospital down in Portland. Pretty sick, seems like. Monteath wanted to get there, and apparently the boys let him. Pretty early in the morning he left.”

  “You’ve got the name of the hospital?”

  The state police office had. He gave it to Weigand.

  “One more thing,” Bill said. “I don’t suppose your record gives a description of Behren?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Nope,” Maine said. “No reason it should, is there?”

  “None,” Bill said. He thanked Maine. He depressed the buttons on the telephone set, released them. He wanted somebody in authority—a resident would do, a telephone operator would not—at a hospital in Portland. He replaced the receiver and spent some minutes in thought, which produced little save more questions. Had there, for example, really been blood on Clyde Parsons’s topcoat? Had the coat really been in the penthouse at all? Sylvester Frank was a liar. But, how much had he lied? The telephone rang.

  “Got a doctor up there,” the police operator said. “He do?”

  “Put him on,” Bill said. “We’ll have to find out.” He waited. A distant voice said, “Hello? Dr. Farley speaking.”

  Weigand identified himself. He said he was interested in finding out what he could about a Mrs. Arthur Monteath, who had died in the hospital late in July of 1940. Could Dr. Farley help him? Or put him on to someone who could?

  “I doubt it,” Farley said. “I can’t, anyway. Not here then. I can try records, but there may not be anybody there. It’s late here.”

  “I know,” Bill said. “It’s late here too, doctor. See if you can get me switched, will you?”

  It took time. A faint sound indicated that a bell might be ringing somewhere in a distant hospital. Then the ringing stopped. Then Weigand was asked what number he was calling. But then a voice said, faintly, “Records.” “I’m ringing your party,” another operator said, and Bill Weigand said, “Please. This is police business. Stay out, will you?”

  “You rang,” Records said, distantly. “I’m sor-ree,” an operator said, elaborately. “Excuse it please.”

  “Is this the records room?” Bill said, raising his voice above confusion. “There’s no need to shout,” Records said.

  Bill was sorry, or sor-ree. He explained.

  “Really!” Records said. Records was young, female. “All those years ago?” The years might have constituted a lifetime; Bill supposed, from the voice, that in this case they constituted the major part of one.

  “It’s important,” Bill said. “Police business. I’m calling from New York.”

  “Well,” Records said. “I’ll look.” A distant madman was to be humored. “What was the name again?”

  Bill gave it and waited. He did not wait long. Mrs. Arthur Monteath had been admitted to the hospital on July 27, 1940. Myocardial infarction. She had died on July 29, after a second heart attack. Body had been claimed by her husband.

  It was what Bill had expected. It was all there was to it—a young woman, recently married, on vacation with her husband in a little cottage near the sea, where the beat of water against rocks was never silent, had had a heart attack and two days later had died of it, or of another. There was no point in carrying it further.

  “Can you give me the name of the doctor?” he asked. “Of the nurse? Is either of them there now?”

  Records could. The doctor had, she thought, left Portland. The nurse—“Oh,” Records said. “That’s Aunty.” Records gasped slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The night superintendent of nurses, now. Yes—I suppose she’s here. But I’m afraid she’ll be too busy to—”

  “Try,” Bill told her. “Give me her name and try.”

  Ten minutes later, Bill Weigand put the telephone receiver in its cradle and sat looking at it. The warm friendliness of a middle-aged voice was still in his ears. If he were in a hospital, he would like to have Alice Blanchard as his nurse. “The poor, poor thing,” she had said, of Grace Monteath. “She was so young, really. It was so sad her—her not wanting to live. I’ve thought of her so often, wondered so often.”

  Bill wondered now.

  Grace Monteath had had a heart attack; a serious enough attack, but no more serious than many people had and recovered from, and lived for years after. She had been brought to the hospital by her husband on a summer morning. She had been put to bed—given digitalis, and oxygen and anti-coagulant drugs. And, the prognosis had been favorable. She had not gone into shock; there was every prospect that, with a few weeks of rest and treatment, she would recover sufficiently to lead an almost normal life. They told her that, and she did not seem to hear them.

  The doctor had been able to reassure Monteath, to tell him there was no immediate danger. He had driven back to the cottage “to get their things, you know” and had returned the next day, quite early. He had seen his wife briefly, with the nurse present. Grace Monteath had seemed cheerful enough, then. She had said, “Of course I’ll be all right, darling.”

  “I remember how she said that,” Nurse Blanchard said. “It was for him, really.”

  Monteath had said nothing about what had happened at the cottage earlier that morning; of that Nurse Blanchard was sure. He had not stayed long; the doctor would not let him stay long. Later in the day they had heard at the hospital of the shooting, and had cautioned Monteath not to mention it. He had said that he knew better than to do that, and he had not when he visited his wife again that afternoon. “He spent most of the day at the hospital,” Nurse Blanchard said. “He was terribly upset, of course.”

  By then, Nurse Blanchard had begun to suspect Grace Monteath did not want to live. “She just lay there, waiting to die.” The nurse could not understand it. “She had so much to live for, and she loved him so much, and he loved her so much.”

  Mrs. Monteath had fallen into a light sleep the evening of the day after her attack, and she had talked in her sleep. She had said, “I’ve spoiled it all. Spoiled everything” and “I didn’t mean to, Art. I didn’t—” Her voice had trailed off, then. But, a few minutes later, she had spoken again, this time excitedly. “Don’t try to do anything,” she had said. “There’s nothing anybody can do. Not anybody, Art. I’ve spoiled it all.” She had had morphine to quieten her; had been quiet through the night.

  But when she wakened the next morning, Grace Monteath had lain with her eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling. She had not wanted food, not wanted anything.

  Nurse Blanchard, on duty again, had been disturbed by her patient’s condition, although physically there had been no change—had been nothing to change the originally hopeful prognosis. When it was almost time for the doctor to make his morning calls, Nurse Blanchard had gone to the door to watch for him, to ask him to see Mrs. Monteath before the others. She had stood in the open door, looking down the corridor, and then had heard the sound behind her.

  Mrs. Monteath had thrown off the covers, the oxygen tent. She had thrown herself out of bed, violently; she had stood and then—

  “It was as if she was trying to dance,” Nurse Blanchard said. “It was—the last thing she should have done, of course. If she had wanted to live.”

  It had, quite literally, been the last thing Grace Monteath had done. She had cried out in her strange dance and collapsed while the nurse was still crossing the room toward her. She had died a few minutes later of a second attack.

  “Which she wanted to happen,” the nurse said. “Which she made happen.�
�

  “She couldn’t have been sure,” Bill Weigand said. “Even violent exercise might not have killed her.”

  “No,” Nurse Blanchard said. “But—it did. And, she wanted it to.”

  Monteath had not been told of the circumstances of his wife’s death—not by Nurse Blanchard certainly; she was almost sure not by the physician. He had been let believe she had died peacefully, after a second attack which, while it had not been thought probable, had always been a possibility.

  “What good would it have done to tell him?” Nurse Blanchard asked.

  “None,” Bill said. “You’re quite certain she hadn’t heard of this business at the cottage. The shooting of this man?”

  “I’m as sure as I can be,” Nurse Blanchard said. “Nothing that would worry her. We always try to avoid that.”

  Weigand looked at the telephone and did not see it. In effect, Grace Monteath had killed herself because she no longer wanted to live. Because she had “spoiled” something, “spoiled everything.” And someone—almost certainly her husband—was not to try to do anything, because there was nothing that could be done.

  And somehow, Bill told himself, that is linked with this. It was irrational to decide so; there was no evidence to support the decision. But Bill knew there was a link. Call it a hunch. Call it that strange, urgent tightening of the nerves. It was linked by Monteath himself. By a man named Behren. Or, now, a man named Barron—Albert Barron.

  Bill consulted a telephone book. There was half a column of Barrons, including several Alberts. He used the telephone. The Albert Barron who was associated, as sales manager, with Wilmot’s Emporium, lived in Mount Kisco. He had a telephone number, and Bill asked for it. For a long time a telephone rang somewhere in Mount Kisco, and was not answered. Bill hung up while it was still ringing.

  He drummed with fingers on the surface of his desk. He took up the telephone again, got another number from the files. Mr. Bertram Dewsnap lived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn which seemed, at the moment, almost as far as Mount Kisco.

  Bill called Mr. Dewsnap. This time the telephone was answered. Mr. Dewsnap was anxious, as always, to be of help. No, he had no plans for the evening. He would be at home. If Captain Weigand wanted to come, to ask about this new thing which had come up, Mr. Dewsnap would be waiting to give what help he could. He couldn’t imagine what it would be, but still—