by Frances
Beck told it. He told it quietly, as matter-of-factly as his voice permitted. To begin with, he also had been at Miss Lawrence’s the evening before with other friends meeting at a convenient place for food and drink and conversation. He had left about 1 o’clock, most of the others remaining.
“I came here,” Beck said. “I had some work to do. I work best at night, in a locked room, with no one else around. I do not even use a secretary.”
“Right,” Weigand said. “And—?”
At a quarter of three, Ann Lawrence had telephoned. Beck had answered impatiently; had grown more patient when he heard the girl’s excited voice. She had wanted to know whether John Elliot had come to Beck’s apartment. Beck had said, “No, why should he?”
“We had a dreadful quarrel,” Ann had said, according to Beck. Beck remembered well, evidently. He could quote verbatim. “We had a dreadful quarrel and he rushed out. I want to talk to him. And he isn’t at his apartment. I have to talk to him.”
“She was very excited, Lieutenant,” Beck said. “Very disturbed. She thought he might have come here. She was afraid that—well, that he might behave impulsively. It appeared that the quarrel was serious.”
Beck had told her that Elliot had not come there, but had tried to reassure her. He promised that if Elliot did come, he would see that he telephoned her at once. But he was sure everything would be all right. He asked how long it had been since Elliot had left the house on Gramercy Park.
It had been about twenty minutes, she said, Beck told Weigand, who listened without comment. “I told her that that barely gave him time to get home. He lives over in the Sutton Place district. If he got a cab he might, with no traffic to speak of, just have done it. But cabs are hard to get now. I told her all that.”
“By the way,” Weigand said, “you’re sure it was Miss Lawrence? You knew her voice?”
Dan Beck seemed surprised.
“Of course,” he said. “There was no doubt in my mind—there isn’t now. I knew her quite well.” He paused. “A lovely girl,” he said. There was a moment’s pause. Bill Weigand sipped his drink.
“Right,” Weigand said, then. “She said he had left, and she was still alive. But of course you see the hole in that, Mr. Beck.”
“That he might have gone back,” Beck said. “Of course, Lieutenant. But he didn’t. I can testify that he didn’t.”
He did testify. Although he had tried to reassure Ann Lawrence that Elliot had come to no harm, Beck himself was worried. He was afraid that, if the quarrel with Ann had really been a serious one, John Elliot might do something—something—
“Rash?” Weigand said, supplying the inevitable.
“Rash,” Dan Beck agreed.
So, after he had finished talking to Ann Lawrence and sat for a few minutes—not more than two or three—worrying, Dan Beck had telephoned Elliot at his apartment. And Elliot had answered.
“He had just come in,” Beck explained. “He came in after Ann telephoned him, probably while she was talking to me.”
Elliot was, Beck could tell from his voice, excited and unhappy and in no mood to remain alone. So Beck had urged the younger man to come to the André, and Elliot had agreed and come. He had, however, refused to telephone Ann and that Beck himself had done, a few minutes after three. He had told her that Elliot was all right, and would be more completely all right after he had slept on it. She had been relieved.
“And?” Weigand said.
And Elliot had stayed in Beck’s apartment for a couple of hours, talking and having a few drinks. When he finally left he was much quieter and had agreed to call the girl and make things right the next day. He had been bitter when he came; he was not bitter when he left. He had left around five o’clock, planning to go home and to bed.
“So you see,” Beck said, “he could not possibly have—harmed Ann. It was physically impossible, which is what you want to know. It was emotionally impossible, too. But that is not, I realize, a tangible point. The alibi is, isn’t it?”
Weigand nodded. It was a very tangible point; it was tangible enough to clear John Elliot, if the Medical Examiner remained certain Ann Lawrence was dead at four that morning. This would annoy Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley. If it held. With that testimony, from a man of Beck’s standing, they would never convict Elliot.
He asked a few questions. Beck was certain he had really talked to Ann Lawrence; he was certain about the times. Weigand made notes and nodded.
“The second time you called her,” he said. “The time you called to tell her Elliot was all right. Did she seem to be alone?”
“Alone?” Beck repeated, as if it were a new idea. “I didn’t—wait, I see what you mean. Let me think.” He thought. There was a slightly puzzled look on his face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t thought. I heard no one else, certainly—no other sounds, as you do sometimes. But I’m not sure she was alone. Now it seems to me there was something in her voice—as if—as if—”
“As if there were someone else there?” Weigand suggested. “A—a conscious note? As if someone else were listening?”
Beck shook his head.
“Really,” he said, “I’m not sure. It may be I am imagining it now, because you suggested it. But I’m not sure there wasn’t something like that—a difference in her voice. But it is all very intangible.”
Weigand stared at his glass. The case seemed to be made up of facts which were too abrupt and unrelated; of intangibles which were too elusive. Beck, he decided, was one of the abrupt and unrelated facts; the baked apple was at once a fact and an intangible. Weigand’s mind felt cluttered. And if there had been someone, who was not John Elliot, with Ann when Beck called, her back that made a small, annoying addition to the clutter. The beautiful voice of Dan Beck sounded again.
“I hope this isn’t disconcerting; Lieutenant,” Beck said. “I suppose, in a way, it must be. The boy’s behavior—You must have felt that the case was cut and dried. But I knew you wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”
“No,” Weigand agreed. “Of course not, Mr. Beck. We appreciate it, your help. Your promptness. People aren’t always so helpful.”
“I know,” Dan Beck said, in his soft and beautiful voice. “I know. People—misunderstand. I have experienced that too, Lieutenant. We must—reason with them.”
A half smile made the words only half serious, ringed them just perceptibly in marks of quotation. Bill Weigand found himself smiling in return, and in acquiescence. He finished his drink, glanced at the watch on his wrist, and stood up. Dan Beck looked up at him.
“I realize, of course, that you have much to do,” Beck said. “But couldn’t you have another drink, perhaps? Before you go?”
The voice was friendly, inviting. Weigand shook his head, with regret.
“Then,” Beck said, standing up and holding out his hand, “it is pleasant to have met you, Lieutenant. I hope what I’ve told you hasn’t really been—disconcerting.”
“Murder is usually disconcerting, Mr. Beck,” Bill Weigand said. “And full of complications. Probably you have merely removed a complication.”
Bill took the offered hand. The grip was firm but not athletic. Behind Weigand at the door there was the small sound which meant the reappearance of William.
“Lieutenant Weigand is leaving, William,” Dan Beck said, with polite regret.
“Yes sir,” William said, also with the faintest hint of sorrow in his tone. “If you will come this way, sir.”
Weigand, his hand shaken once more and released, went that way. It occurred to him that there must be a button in the arm of Beck’s chair, convenient to summon William. Or William read minds—or listened at doors. The last seemed improbable, as below the dignity of the establishment.
Weigand followed William down the corridor and into the foyer. He went through the door William opened for him and found the elevator waiting. Apparently its operator, also, could read minds—or could be summoned by a signal
operated from within the apartment. It would be comfortable to be of the elect, Weigand thought, entering the elevator. It started down as the door was still closing.
Weigand’s face was level with the floor and the closing doors were still a crack. So his glimpse of the slightly opened door of the Beck apartment—the door William had closed behind him—was momentary and obstructed. Weigand had only time to glimpse a pink face surmounted by white hair; the face, from its height above the floor, of Mary, who was Mrs. William. For some reason she had decided to have a final look at him. Little old ladies could be curious, apparently. Weigand said “hmm” under his breath.
The elevator carried Weigand to the lobby floor of the Hotel André.
Weigand’s legs carried him to the hotel office and there he looked at telephone records. They were unsatisfactory. There was no record of incoming calls; there was no record of outgoing calls from the Beck apartment at the proper early morning times. But Weigand did not allow himself to be pleased, because he was afraid he knew the answer. He enquired, and got the answer. Beck had two telephones, one on a private line which did not pass through the switchboard. So he could call as he liked, and nobody the wiser.
Weigand tucked more facts into his mind and went out through revolving doors into a world where snow still fell placidly. He flicked the accumulation from his windshield with his gloves; he started the Buick’s motor and let the wipers struggle with the snow that was left. After a little huffing and puffing, they managed it. Weigand drove east through quiet, slushy streets and came to a small, sedate apartment house in the Sutton Place district. He parked in front of it. He found the doorman inside, out of the snow and leaning confidingly against a boxed-in radiator.
Weigand did not expect to find much in John Elliot’s apartment. He found more than he expected; to begin with, he found far more apartment. He would, he decided, looking at the apartment and the furniture in it, have to revise his tentative guess about Elliot’s financial status. He was no indigent writer, scratching small checks out of the pulp paper on Grub Street. For a writer he was, evidently, doing fine.
The apartment had only a living room, a small bedroom, a bath and something which was half a kitchen. But the living room stretched for twenty feet or more along one side of the apartment building and was almost as wide as it was long. Its ceiling was high; heavy yellow curtains looped at each window from close to the ceiling to the floor and the floor was deep in carpet. The furniture, low and modern, had cost money. As a recent furnisher of an apartment, Weigand guessed that it cost a lot of money. Mr. Elliot had not stinted himself. Under book cases which ran along one wall there were cabinets and Weigand looked into them. Mr. Elliot had had a thirst, or expected one, and had not planned to stint himself.
Bill Weigand wondered why all this surprised him, since he had had no particular reason to think that Mr. Elliot was a poor man. Then he remembered. Mrs. Pennock had asserted that Elliot was after. Ann Lawrence’s money. At the time he had had no reason not to accept this, but now he wondered. From the looks of things, Elliot had enough money of his own. Or—or perhaps, of course, he was already getting some of Ann Lawrence’s money. Possibly he was a financed writer, on one basis or another. For his art? Or his arts? That would need finding out. But it was hard to believe that Ann Lawrence had needed to buy devotion. Her picture had not looked it; the descriptions of her had not sounded it. Another thing to check on. There were too many things to check on; too many facts with intangible meanings, too many intangibles without factual foundation. Weigand stood in the middle of the living room and looked around it and sighed. Looking at the room, he tried to guess more about Elliot.
He was a man of taste, and money and leisure to gratify it. He probably dressed well. Bill went to the bedroom and opened the bedroom closet. He dressed well. He made himself comfortable as he worked. Bill went back to the living room and crossed to a low desk and pulled at a handle. A typewriter came up out of the desk. Weigand looked at it, saw that the platen was unmarked by key impressions—why should it be? he wondered—and let it clunk back into the desk. Then the telephone on top of the desk rang and Bill, without hesitation, answered it.
“Finding anything?” a man’s voice said, cheerfully.
Bill Weigand removed surprise from his voice before he answered.
“Who did you want?” he said.
The voice advised him to come off it.
“This is Elliot,” he said. “John Elliot. You’re in my apartment, whoever you are. Patrolman? Sergeant? Inspector, maybe?”
“Lieutenant,” Weigand told him. “Why don’t you come home, Mr. Elliot?”
The voice laughed.
“Wouldn’t you like me to?” it enquired.
“It would save time,” Weigand told him. “Just time, Mr. Elliot. If you are Mr. Elliot. You’re being a damn fool, you know.”
“How’s the cop?” the voice enquired. “The one I had to slug?”
“Bad,” Bill lied for him. “Very bad. You’re in trouble there, too, Elliot.”
“Hell,” the voice said. “I don’t believe you, Lieutenant. He was coming to when I left.”
This was profitless, Bill Weigand thought. Elliot needed spanking, at the least.
“If you are Elliot,” Bill said, “you’d better go to the nearest police station. Because we’ll catch you. And we don’t like guys who slug cops.”
Weigand didn’t, the voice told him, make it sound enticing. However, eventually, he might do just that. Go to a station house and give himself up.
“With my lawyer,” he said. “Mouthpiece, you’d call it.”
“You’ve been reading the wrong books,” Bill told him. “I call it lawyer. You’re still a damn fool, Elliot.”
“Maybe,” the man said. “But I’ve got things to do. I’ve got to see a person—about a murder. I’ve got to do that first.”
His voice had changed, suddenly. He wasn’t being amusing now. He sounded as if he meant to see a man about a murder.
“In a mirror?” Weigand asked. “Where are you?”
“Hell, no,” the voice said. “I didn’t kill anybody. Didn’t his nibs tell you? And I’m near enough. And not too near.”
He had to be, Weigand decided. Near enough to see who went into the apartment or—or to see a car with tell-tale red headlights. Probably that was it. And so he had gone somewhere near and telephoned. Why? Just to be cute?
“Listen,” the voice said. “Are you still there?”
The man—call him Elliot—wasn’t being playful now.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I know the person you want—maybe. I’m going to find out. If it works out the way I think it will, I can clean it up for you.”
“If you know anything, spill it,” Weigand said. “Don’t mess around with it. You—”
But there was no use going on. A dead telephone wire would not be interested. Mr. Elliot, if it had been Mr. Elliot, had hung up and gone away. Cursing softly, Weigand dialed headquarters and said the right things to the right people. Elliot, if he had been in the neighborhood, had better move fast. But hell—he would move fast. You didn’t catch men that way. Not in New York, anyway. Not with what the newspapers liked to call “cordons” “thrown” around areas. A cordon was merely a good many men, peering through a dimout made dimmer by falling snow. It wasn’t a wire fence. The chances were prohibitive that Mr. Elliot would, for the time being, continue on whatever path he had laid out for himself.
There were too many people in this, Weigand decided; too many people behaving irrationally; too many who seemed determined to bang head on into hostile stone walls. Mrs. Pennock, who was probably up to blackmail, which was dangerous. Mr. Elliot who, if he were not himself a murderer—and somehow Bill doubted at the moment that he was—was looking for trouble if he decided to turn detective. And Elliot wouldn’t, Weigand thought, know what to do about trouble if he found it.
“I’d rather trust Pam,” he thought, irrationally. She had a knack of getting
out; a knack so far just equal to her knack for getting in.
Bill looked around the apartment again. He opened drawers and saw papers in them—papers that somebody would have to go over, as time went on. But not necessarily tonight. There was a part of a manuscript in one of the drawers and Weigand skimmed over a few pages. It appeared to be a novel. It gave Weigand an idea. He might as well use Elliot’s telephone, and cost Elliot a call. He dialed the North’s number and, after a moment, Jerry said “hello.”
“Bill,” Weigand said. “Do you know a writer named John Elliot? Did he ever send your firm a manuscript or anything?”
There was a brief pause.
“No,” Jerry said. “It doesn’t mean anything to me, off hand. Of course—”
“Of course,” Weigand agreed. “The world’s full of writers. You’re only one publisher. But you never heard of him?”
“No,” Jerry said. “I didn’t. And listen—Pam’s out somewhere. About that damned apple, I guess.”
“And Dorian?” Weigand asked. His voice was quick.
“She’s here,” Jerry told him. “She’s all right. But where’s my wife?”
“Is Mullins with her?” Weigand asked. Jerry said he guessed so. That had been the plan, at any rate. He and Dorian had been told that four was a crowd and had gone to the Norths’ to wait. They were still waiting. Jerry was acid.
“Damn your corpses,” he said. “I am now going back and make another attack on Dorian’s virtue.”
He hung up. Bill hung up, grinning. He didn’t think Pam North was in any danger. Yet, anyhow.
VI. Tuesday, 10:45 P.M. to 11:30 P.M.
Cleo Harper’s conversation was oddly eager; it was as if she had been hoarding words and had now, inexplicably, turned spendthrift. Pam North had been sorry for her from the moment she came down, her pale eyes reddened as if she had been crying, a moist handkerchief in her working fingers. She was too tall and too thin, her pale hair was too pale. She stood a little stooped because she was too tall and that embarrassed her. The room she came into was harsh and impersonal. It was a room in which nobody had ever lingered; Cleo Harper was a girl with whom nobody had ever lingered. They belonged together, Pam thought—a girl who was going nowhere and a room to which nobody ever willingly went; a room in which, probably, young men had waited uneasily for girls to come down to them from the upstairs rooms of Breckley House, and from which young men and their girls had fled a little anxiously, as from something inimical.
