Murder to Go

by Emma Lathen

  “How can anyone remember everybody he talked to?” Morgan Ogilvie asked blearily. “Look here, Captain Stotz, can’t we defer this until tomorrow? Surely these questions can wait until then. It is very late now, and the ladies have already had a terrible shock.”

  Stotz seemed sympathetic to this appeal. He turned appraisingly to the sofa, where Iris Young sat clutching Ted’s hand. Next to her, Joan Hedstrom was white-faced with fatigue. Frank Hedstrom kept a large hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Mrs. Ogilvie, bolt upright in an armless chair, was herself again.

  “Exhaustion won’t help anyone,” Ogilvie declared. He had not been so confident earlier, Thatcher thought, when Stotz wondered aloud why Ogilvie’s Mercedes had been singled out by a murderer. He had been shaken into vehemence. No, he had never seen the man before in his life. No, he did not know what the body was doing in his car. No . . . no . . . no . . .

  This was what everybody else had maintained.

  “Look,” said Ted Young, surprisingly even-tempered, “how about letting us go, Captain? Nobody knows anything about the man.”

  Iris ground out her cigarette, and Hedstrom murmured something that Thatcher did not catch. Robichaux could not hide a huge yawn.

  “Well, now,” said Stotz in that soft drawl, “I suppose there’s not much more we can do here. Sure, you can all go home. I’ll be around tomorrow, after we’ve got a little more to go on.”

  There was a general stir of relief, and Morgan Ogilvie expanded visibly. At his most gracious, he rose. “I appreciate this, Captain Stotz.”

  Stotz nodded as he too rose.

  “We’ll have to send you home in one of our cars,” he said. “The Mercedes is on its way to the lab.”

  Ogilvie was stiffly cooperative. “Of course. And, let me add, I understand fully.” He glanced dubiously at his tight-lipped wife and said nothing further.

  “A couple of other things,” Stotz went on, almost thinking aloud. “This Mr. Browne and his wife. They spent a good part of the evening with you, according to what you say. Now, I guess they went home before you did? Before you found the body?”

  The Pelham Brownes were not in the library, Thatcher realized. In the confusion, he had missed their departure. He knit his brows, trying to recall whether one of those hearty voices in the parking lot had been Browne’s.

  Mrs. Ogilvie broke the silence. “They must have,” she said with majestic certainty. Again her husband glanced quickly at her. Like Thatcher, he knew that the Brownes might very well have left after the body was found. And Stotz did, too.

  “Mmm,” Stotz said ambiguously. He looked around benevolently and added, “Oh, second thoughts. Any of you have second thoughts?”

  “Second thoughts?” Tom Robichaux roused himself to ask. “Second thoughts about what?”

  Captain Stotz was not ruffled. “About not recognizing the man in the car.”

  The chill was immediate. So too was a negative murmur.

  “I see,” Stotz said, with unimpaired pleasantness. “Well, thank you for your cooperation. I’ll have Brady drive you folks home. We’ll probably have a lot more to get our teeth into tomorrow.”

  And John Putnam Thatcher, for one, did not like the sound of that at all.

  Nor did his companions, Thatcher reflected over breakfast the next morning. Nobody had slept well. Even where this was not explicitly stated, it was painfully obvious. As in the case of Tom Robichaux, aggrieved since he prided himself on regular habits—in some realms at least. Iris Young held her second cup of coffee with a hand that trembled slightly. There were shadows ringing her eyes. Her vivacity was gone, she sat silent and remote. Joan Hedstrom too was withdrawn. She had faded overnight. Occasionally she frowned, deep in some inner calculation.

  “Hell,” said Hedstrom abruptly as the telephone trilled again.

  “I’ll get it, Frank,” said Ted Young, pushing back his chair.

  The phone had begun at dawn. Frank Hedstrom was back in the news—with a vengeance this time. Thatcher wondered briefly how these new headlines would affect Chicken Tonight.

  And he wondered even more what Frank Hedstrom was thinking.

  “Captain Stotz,” Young announced laconically a minute later. “He wants us to stick around this morning. He wants to talk to us.”

  “Why?” It was a cry of protest from Iris. Joan Hedstrom closed her eyes against tears. “Why?” Iris repeated.

  “Iris . . .” Ted began with a helpless look toward Hedstrom.

  The answer was obvious, Thatcher thought, feeling as gloomy as Robichaux looked. And thirty minutes later Captain Stotz was spelling it out.

  Looking even larger in Hedstrom’s living room than he had looked at the Calvert Hunt Club, Stotz surveyed the company with an amiability that made Thatcher narrow his eyes. Stotz, it developed, had not had much sleep, either. But he had not tossed on a comfortless bed. He, and many other law-enforcement officials along the Atlantic coast, had been very busy indeed.

  “The body has been identified,” he announced without preliminaries.

  There was a long silence, during which Captain Stotz sat placidly. Finally Robichaux could stand it no longer.

  “Well?” he exploded.

  Stotz was responsive. “The dead man,” he said conversationally, “was Clyde Sweeney.”

  “Oh, dear God!” Joan Hedstrom cried.

  Stotz glanced at her, then went on. “I guess you understand what that means. That means—” and his voice hardened suddenly—“that means that we take it all again from the beginning.”

  Later Thatcher realized that the moment had been photographed in his memory. Joan Hedstrom flinched, as if from a blow. Iris Young turned away, denying what Stotz had said. And Hedstrom and Young froze into immobility.

  Was one of them acting?

  Captain Stotz seemed to think so.

  “That means we stop pretending this doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he explained. “It wasn’t just one of those things. Clyde Sweeney. Got a lot of publicity, Clyde Sweeney did.”

  “All right,” said Frank Hedstrom dully. “You’ve made your point.”

  Stotz exuded geniality. “I’m glad you see it that way, Mr. Hedstrom. Because it’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Sweeney wasn’t down here by accident. He was here because you people are here. That’s why he was at the club last night. And that’s why he ended up dead.”

  Ted Young shot a warning look at Hedstrom and said, “Believe it or not, this is as big a surprise to us as it is to you.”

  “Sure,” said Stotz briefly. “Sweeney poisons a couple hundred people, he ruins a big business, his picture is in all the papers—but you don’t recognize him.”

  There was an edge of desperation in Frank Hedstrom’s voice. “Look, Captain. We don’t—didn’t give a damn about Sweeney. We wanted to know who hired him. And the police haven’t been much help there.”

  Did that ring true? Thatcher asked himself. Certainly it did not impress Captain Stotz.

  “Oh, the police have been more active than you think, Mr. Hedstrom. We’ve just got a long report from New Jersey.” Stotz paused deliberately. Then, swiveling dramatically, he turned to Ted Young. “They’ve been checking on Sweeney’s contacts. Still claim you don’t recognize him, Mr. Young?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Young stammered, flushing, “what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about those lectures you gave to Chicken Tonight warehouse people over in New Jersey. Remember? You spent four days in Trenton giving that course. And Clyde Sweeney was there, Mr. Young. Every single day.”

  Young stared back at him, speechless. Before Stotz could continue, Frank Hedstrom intervened.

  “So what?” he asked angrily. “I know those courses we give. Hundreds of people sit in on them. How the hell could Ted remember one man . . .?”

  Stotz had the answer ready. “Mr. Young has somebody help him with his demonstrations and things like that. Guess who was Mr. Young’s assistant for four days? Cl
yde Sweeney, that’s who!”

  Young had recovered. Due to the respite provided by Hedstrom’s interruption, Thatcher suddenly saw.

  “I’ll take your word that it was Sweeney at my course,” Young snapped. “But stop trying to trap me with it. I saw a body last night in the dark, with a rope around its neck. It didn’t remind me of a casual contact four months ago. Why should it?”

  He was openly defiant. That’s my story, he might have been saying. Try to prove anything else.

  Stotz was pained. “I’m not trying to trap anybody, Mr. Young. I’m trying to get you to open up. But we’re not making progress, are we? I guess we’d better get down to work. Is there a room I can use, Mrs. Hedstrom?”

  Numbly, Joan Hedstrom rose to show Stotz into a small study. At the door a uniformed trooper stood, almost on guard. Stotz took a manila envelope from him and turned to look back into the living room.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said. “Do any of you recognize this?”

  It was a creased silken scarf, gay with brilliant yellow stripes.

  It was also completely sinister. Words were not needed to correct Ted Young on one point at least. It had not been a rope around Clyde Sweeney’s neck.

  “Be careful!” Iris Young spat the words. As they turned to stare at her, Joan Hedstrom uttered a strangled noise of helplessness.

  “Joan!” Hedstrom said in alarm, taking a quick step to her side.

  But as he reached her she found a voice that was almost normal.

  “It’s my scarf,” she said. “Is that . . . is that what . . .?”

  Stotz looked down at her almost pityingly. He did not answer her question. Instead he said, “I guess maybe I’ll start my talks with you, Mrs. Hedstrom.”

  CHAPTER 13

  PLACE ON RACK

  FOR A MOMENT, Thatcher was afraid that Frank Hedstrom might attack Captain Stotz. But the trooper stepped into the room between them, and before anybody could react Captain Stotz and Joan Hedstrom were gone.

  “What the hell is he trying to do!” Hedstrom yelled furiously.

  The trooper stared stolidly.

  “He can’t . . .”

  “Hedstrom,” said Thatcher sharply. “He can question all of us. As he no doubt will. Don’t make a bad situation worse.”

  He waited until he saw Hedstrom unclench his fists before adding, “Use your head. That scarf was used to murder Sweeney. Stotz has to ask your wife when she last saw it. And she’s going to say that it was on the chair or on the desk or somewhere yesterday afternoon. There’s nothing more to it.”

  “He’s right, Frank,” Ted Young said.

  “Furthermore,” Thatcher went on, “that isn’t the most dangerous question Stotz will ask. Not by a long shot. We’d all better prepare for a good many questions.”

  He succeeded in lowering the emotional temperature. Joan Hedstrom’s reappearance, some twenty minutes later, was even more helpful. She managed a wan smile.

  “It’s all right, Frank,” she said. “It’s just . . . oh, anybody could have taken my scarf. I know I packed it, but I couldn’t find it when I was dressing last night.”

  Someone else, Thatcher thought, had noticed those open suitcases in the front hall yesterday.

  “Captain would like to talk to you, Mr. Robichaux,” said the trooper.

  “Eh? What’s that?” Robichaux, jerked out of a short doze, sputtered.

  It was the one light moment in a dreary day.

  And, as he waited for his own turn to come, Thatcher was formulating questions of his own. One of them concerned that revealing exclamation from Iris Young.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon before Captain Stotz left. If he had learned anything from his grueling catechism, he gave no sign of it.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” he said.

  “You mean that’s all?” Hedstrom asked with a bitter smile. He had been closeted fully an hour with Captain Stotz.

  “We’re not ready to make any arrests—yet,” Captain Stotz replied placidly. “I’ll have to ask you not to leave until tomorrow.”

  Accordingly, the departure of the police did not dissipate the tension.

  “I guess I’ll see about dinner,” Joan Hedstrom said uncertainly. Thatcher did not think she wanted to see about dinner, or even to eat. She wanted to leave this room.

  “I’ll help,” Iris Young said.

  Silently, Frank Hedstrom moved to the bar and started to pour drinks.

  “Well, one thing to say for the situation,” Robichaux remarked to Thatcher.

  “What’s that, Tom?”

  “We can leave tomorrow. I’m all for an early start.”

  There were further discomforts before that early start.

  “Now, who the hell . . .?” Hedstrom muttered as musical chimes announced someone at the front door. “If that’s a reporter, I’ll break his neck.”

  It was not a reporter. It was Morgan Ogilvie and Pelham Browne.

  “Good God!” ejaculated Robichaux in subterranean explosion. “Does that idiot want to talk business now?”

  “No, Tom,” said Thatcher wearily. “He wants to talk about murder.”

  And, with the thinnest possible camouflage, this was what Morgan Ogilvie did talk about.

  “I don’t know what I can say,” Ogilvie began after he accepted the drink that Hedstrom handed him.

  “Well, I do!” Pelham Browne interrupted robustly. “I say things are getting out of hand. My God, just because some miserable little crook gets himself killed . . .”

  From across the room, Ted Young spoke without looking directly at either of the newcomers. “That line won’t get us anywhere,” he said distantly. “That little crook was Clyde Sweeney. Or didn’t the police mention that to you?”

  Browne rounded on him. “Yes, the police mentioned it! But he’s still a two-bit crook, isn’t he? Why the hell should the police ask me if I strangled him? God almighty! Just because Tony and I drove peacefully home at a reasonable hour, we get a lot of damfool questions. . . .”

  With detached interest, Thatcher listened to Pelham Browne’s extended, if shapeless, tirade. Sentence followed half-sentence, but the only thing communicated was Browne’s passionate resentment. Its cause was not altogether clear to Thatcher. As a reaction to routine police inquiry, it seemed disproportionately strong. Browne was now embellishing his grievances with a string of obscenities. There had been nothing routine in the interrogation of Hedstrom and Young, but they both had themselves well in hand. Browne was getting angrier by the minute. His normal high color had deepened into a dangerous flush; the veins on his brow throbbed visibly.

  “Did Captain Stotz himself talk to you?” Thatcher inquired idly as Browne paused to gulp his drink. And not his first, either, Thatcher realized.

  “Stotz?” Browne repeated. “No, it was a Detective Something-or-other. Who cares who it was? What burns me is their goddam nerve . . .”

  As Browne mumbled on, Thatcher decided that this outburst had been compounded of one part drink and three parts outrage that the police dared approach the Pelham Brownes with any questions at all. And this reaction followed only cursory official attention. The Maryland State Police had been training their big guns on Hedstrom and Young.

  But Pelham Browne, he reminded himself, was almost as intimately concerned with Chicken Tonight as the men who ran it.

  Thatcher looked around the room. Hedstrom was staring into the middle distance over Browne’s head. He was not listening to this strange diatribe. Young was scowling moodily into his glass. Ogilvie, who was making heavy weather of dissecting his pipe, seemed torn between embarrassment and distaste.

  “. . . told them I went home when I damn well pleased. And why the hell shouldn’t I? Why didn’t they look for whoever killed that little rat instead of wasting their time and mine? That’s what I told them!”

  To Thatcher’s amusement, relief from these maunderings was supplied by Tom Robichaux, possibly the one person in the room giving Browne undivi
ded attention. He was probably alone, too, in thinking that reasoned discourse with him was possible.

  “Now, look here,” he remarked. “Somebody did kill Sweeney, after all.”

  This innocuous observation stopped Browne dead in his tracks. Abruptly, his disjointed remarks collapsed into outright gibberish. Robichaux might not understand this response, but Thatcher did; Browne, in his inflamed condition, thought that Robichaux was leveling an accusation. It might be prudent, Thatcher judged, to intervene.

  Morgan Ogilvie did so. “That’s undeniable,” he said, abandoning his pipe. “And that leaves this Sweeney a mystery man to the end, doesn’t it?”

  Hedstrom returned his attention to the room. “You mean, he’s a mystery because he came down here to Maryland?” he said.

  They were heading toward thin ice again, Thatcher feared, but Ogilvie was more adroit than he had expected.

  “Everything about the man seems to be extraordinarily puzzling to me,” he said firmly. “Take his poisoning your Mexicali and, by doing so, endangering hundreds of lives and actually killing somebody. Now, that’s not the act of a sane man, not as I see it.”

  “Money,” said Hedstrom tersely. “You’d be surprised what people will do for money.”

  Ogilvie shook his head. “No, I would not. Remember, I’ve been in the insurance business all my life. But Sweeney’s list of priorities isn’t—or wasn’t—normal. The crime he was willing to commit was too serious for four thousand dollars.”

  Ted Young took the conversation to the inevitable next stage.

  “Maybe that’s what brought Sweeney down here,” he suggested. “Maybe he was out to collect more money—from somebody.”

  Browne, who was boring Tom Robichaux with some confused anecdotes about his various speeding tickets and other confrontations with police incompetence, looked up.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded truculently.

  Hedstrom exchanged an amused glance with Thatcher. “If you don’t know,” he said to Browne, “you’re the only one in the room who doesn’t.”

  Browne had now attained the drinker’s hieratic wisdom.

  “Well, lemme tell you,” he said portentously, “it’s nothing for you to grin about, Hedstrom. Not funny at all.”