Murder Out of Turn

by Frances Lockridge

  “Where is Lieutenant Heimrich?” Mrs. North said from the kitchen. Weigand said that Heimrich was checking up on things.

  “He’ll be back,” Weigand added. “Where was I?”

  “So—” Mrs. North echoed, from the kitchen. “What Blair knew.”

  Weigand said, “Oh.

  “Well,” he said, “suppose Blair had a hunch who the murderer was and then, going away from here, perhaps, saw something that made him suspicious and followed along to investigate. And suppose the murderer heard him, or saw him, and laid what we might call an ambush and, when Blair stumbled into it, slugged him.”

  “I like that theory best,” Mrs. North said, making rattling sounds with the coffee-pot. “Only what was the murderer doing that was suspicious? Have you any idea about that?”

  She came in and sat down and said she had to wait for the kettle to boil. She looked quickly at Mr. North, who was lying back on the pillows with his eyes closed. But his color was all right, and as she watched he opened his eyes, intercepted her gaze and smiled. Mrs. North smiled back.

  “Well,” Weigand said, patiently. “Do you two want to listen?” She looked at him quickly, and he was smiling at them. There was a friendly sympathy and understanding in his smile.

  Mr. North opened his eyes and Mrs. North turned to Weigand.

  “Have you any idea what the murderer was doing, if Blair was following him and saw?” she said.

  Weigand nodded.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “we have. A very good idea. Have you two forgotten what started this? The light in the empty cabin?”

  “No,” Mr. North said. “I was going to ask—did you find something there?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “We found something there, all right.”

  “Somebody murdered?” Mrs. North asked. Her voice sounded shocked. Weigand smiled.

  “Not this time,” he said. “Although I know how you feel. No; we found a can—just a can.”

  “A can?” Mrs. North said.

  “A two-gallon can, made to hold kerosene,” Weigand explained. “There wasn’t any kerosene in it. It was the can that wasn’t there this afternoon. Somebody put it back.”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. North.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Somebody used it, as we thought, and tonight he put it back. Wiped it off very nicely too, I suspect. That’s one of the things Heimrich is checking up on.”

  “But why?” Mrs. North said.

  That, Weigand pointed out, was easy. They couldn’t be allowed to find the extra can the murderer had needed, to change gasoline for kerosene at the Corbin cabin, in the murderer’s possession. The simplest thing was to put the can back where he got it. So he did.

  “Tidying up,” Weigand said. “They do sometimes.” He paused. “And sometimes that’s the very way they give themselves away.”

  “Did he?” Mrs. North said. “This one, I mean?”

  Weigand shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Not that I can see at the moment. But maybe he’ll get too tidy, as time goes on.”

  There was a rap at the door, and Heimrich followed it in. He inquired after Mr. North and said he certainly looked banged up. He had just telephoned the hospital and asked after Blair. There was no change, and as yet no certainty. Blair might live and he might not. He had learned from Van Horst that the can discovered in the empty cabin was, as nearly as Van Horst could remember, the can which was supposed to be there. He had also learned that there were no prints on the can, but merely a glove smudge on the handle. The smudge of an ordinary cotton work-glove, apparently.

  Weigand nodded and said he had expected that, naturally. “Naturally,” Heimrich nodded.

  “Well,” Weigand said, “where was everybody? Or where did everybody say?”

  Heimrich looked annoyed, and said that that had turned out to be something. He said you’d think people would stay home nights, but apparently nobody had. Weigand looked sympathetic, and waited.

  Heimrich, dividing the round with Sergeant Kelty, his second in command, had tried to check on the whereabouts of all the cabin occupants at the time of the attack on Blair and Mr. North. They had found it heavy going.

  “Take the Wilson house,” he said. “Somebody persuaded Mrs. Wilson to take a sedative right after dinner and she went to her room and went to sleep. Apparently she’s still asleep. And Thelma Smith went to her room after she fixed the dinner for the two of them and had washed up. She could have gone out and come back half a dozen times with nobody the wiser, however.”

  Art Kennedy and Dorian Hunt weren’t there at all, after about six. They decided it would be easier for Mrs. Wilson if they got away for a while, so they drove into Brewster in Kennedy’s car for dinner.

  “Anyway, that’s what the Smith girl says,” Heimrich added. “They’re not back yet; must be quite a dinner.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “They’re together, anyway.”

  His voice sounded cold, and his mind felt rather cold. It let Dorian out of it, clearly; except for remotely probable collaboration between her and Kennedy. But it also put her with Kennedy. Weigand was surprised to find himself not liking Kennedy. He kept thinking of a phrase he was sure he had never used, and did not think he had ever heard, and applying it to Kennedy. “Unlicked cub,” Weigand said to himself about Kennedy, with animus.

  “Of course,” Heimrich said, “there’s no way of knowing they’ve been together all this time. They could have come back and separated when they got here for some reason and—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “That’s clear enough. How about the rest?”

  Heimrich looked faintly surprised at the irascibility in Weigand’s tone. He told about the rest.

  Dr. Abel had, according to his own account, run out of cigarettes about—

  “What time did this happen?” Mr. North said. “Did anybody notice?”

  It had happened, Weigand told him, a few minutes after eleven o’clock—say 11:10. It was almost one o’clock now.

  Dr. Abel, Heimrich went on, had run out of cigarettes a little before eleven, and, thinking he wanted some exercise anyway, walked the mile or so from his cabin to Ireland’s and then walked back. He had stayed at Ireland’s a while, so it had taken him at least three-quarters of an hour. During that time, Mrs. Abel had been alone in the cabin.

  The Fullers had, at any rate, stayed at home, according to their joint account. Nobody had come in.

  Hardie Saunders, after leaving the North cabin and the detectives, had walked along the path to his own cabin, according to his own statement. Blair had been there, then, but a trooper came after him in a few minutes. Saunders had sat around in front of the fire, by himself and having a drink, and waited for Blair to come in. Blair hadn’t come.

  Van Horst had had dinner with the Askews, stayed until about eleven and then walked home. He said he had got home by ten after eleven, but nobody had seen him. Old Marvin had, his daughter had told them with considerable asperity, gone to Danbury with some friends, and might be expected to come home, drunk, any time in the next few hours. “Or few days,” she added, disgustedly.

  Several of the occupants of the cabins in “drunkards’ row,” which was some distance up from the shore on the far side of the lake, had gathered in one of the cabins and discussed various things, including the murders, and any one of them might have gone out and—

  “I think,” Weigand said, “that our man or woman—either could have done any of the things that have been done—is somewhere in the group we’ve been concentrating on. If he isn’t, God help us.” He paused. “We could do with His help anyway,” he added. “Failing that, I think I’ll go to New York tomorrow—today.”

  “What’s that?” Heimrich said, suspiciously. “I thought we’d agreed that you—”

  Weigand held up a hand to stop him and advised him to take it easy.

  “I’m sticking around,” he said. “I’ll be back in the evening. But I have a hunch there’s a city end to this
thing that we don’t know enough about. There’s something in the past of all these people, and it’s a city past. This is only where they play, remember. The city’s where they work.”

  Heimrich began to nod agreement as the other spoke.

  “Where they work,” he said. “And where they get into trouble, maybe. So—”

  12

  MONDAY

  9 A.M. TO 11:40 A.M.

  Lone Lake and the cabins scattered around it looked calm and peaceful enough at nine—no, nine-five—in the morning. The sun slanted across green grass, and trees still green as with midsummer threw long shadows. But even the shadows were bright. The lake itself was quiet and shining under the sun, and only the most modest of ripples moved across in procession, treading on one another’s heels. It did not look to be a place of murder; did not, anyway, until you caught through the trees a glimpse of the charred front wall and partly fallen roof of the Corbin cabin, or until you saw the police motorcycles leaning on their standards in front of Ireland’s store.

  There weren’t, Weigand thought as he turned by the store and went back along the road he had first traversed some forty-odd hours before, nearly enough cops. The interdict to movement which he and Heimrich had finally decided upon when they called Sunday a day after it was by more than an hour Monday, would take some enforcing. Anybody who wanted to ignore it, and go to a little trouble, could leave the lake almost at will and go to New York or where he chose. Anybody who wanted to leave could go a long way, if he chose, and leave them to chase after. A cordon around a hundred acres, wooded and undergrown, with paths in all directions and roads in most, would have, Weigand decided, to be quite a cordon. But perhaps moral suasion would suffice; certainly one might assume it would suffice to keep at the lake all who had nothing in particular on the conscience, or no great compulsion to go elsewhere. The trouble was that that group would probably not include a murderer.

  “Not that it wouldn’t be a help if somebody did decide to run for it,” Weigand told himself, as he turned into Route 22 and headed for New York. The speedometer needle of the Buick climbed contentedly around the dial. It hesitated at fifty, while Weigand thought abstractedly; it was encouraged by his returned attention and went around to sixty. It revolved to sixty-five and then to seventy as the car rolled downgrade and swung on a broad curve. It subsided abruptly as Weigand braked for a hidden roadside and circled back when the hidden road was empty. Then it sagged back again as the car slowed for the curve into Brewster, ignored the by-pass road, and poked into town. Weigand parked neatly within the diagonal markings to the curb and went for a telephone. There were papers spread on a shelf before a store and he picked one up, dropping pennies.

  The Lone Lake murders would do better if there weren’t a war, he thought, but they were doing rather well. Left-hand side of the page instead of right, of course, but two columns in the Herald Tribune and a deep single column head in the Times and the whole of the first column. Breaking too late Saturday for the Sunday mornings, the story had lain dormant over Sunday and been worked on thoroughly. Running quickly down the Times column, Weigand saw that they had most of it, and some background. They had identified Dorian Hunt as the daughter of Clayton Hunt, for one thing. And Helen Wilson was placed as Hunt’s former secretary, who had testified at his trial. The Times writer had been inclined to favor Helen Wilson as what one might call the pivotal victim, apparently. There was less about Jean Corbin.

  “I should have been quicker with this call,” Weigand thought, as he headed for a drugstore with a public telephone shield in its window. He made for the two booths in the rear.

  The door of one of the booths was closed and there was a presence within it, vague to Weigand’s abstraction. The other booth was empty, and Weigand pulled its door closed behind him. Gasping slightly, he reopened it partly. The previous occupant had, apparently, spent a long time in it, smoking a cigar of particular violence. Weigand fished in his pocket for a coin and lifted the receiver from the hook. Then he halted, with the receiver held in air, and listened. The door of the next booth must also be a crack open, or the soundproofing was markedly inadequate. At any rate, what the person next door was saying was almost clear.

  It was a man, and some familiarity in the voice caught Weigand’s mind. He could not instantly place it, but he could listen. That was a cop’s prerogative.

  “—that’s all,” the voice said, in a tone of direction. “If they ask you anything, you never heard of her. Or—make it you have heard of her, just; you have an uncertain feeling that she was somebody I knew slightly. Do you understand?” There was a pause. “What?” the man said, and then, after another pause: “Of course not. That is why there is no reason for me to be involved, or embarrassed.” There was another interval for speech at the other end. “No,” the man’s voice said, “not today. Yes, cancel that. I can’t even guess how long.” There was still another pause. “Quite,” the voice said. “That is precisely what I mean. I shall rely on you, then.”

  There was a click as the receiver went up. The door scraped and a tall man came out—a tall, lean man, with an air of very superior confidence, and just a touch of academic abstraction. Weigand said, “Well!” to himself as Dr. James Harlan Abel crossed the drugstore and exited with dignity.

  So there was somebody Dr. Abel wished for the moment, not to be known as knowing, was there? Or should it be “of having known”? Weigand thought of following and finding out and decided it would keep. He looked up a number and gave it to the operator. He got back his nickel and deposited forty cents. A sweet impersonal voice told him it was Bell, Halpern & Bell good-morning. Weigand wanted to speak to somebody in charge, and gave his name.

  “Lieutenant William Weigand,” he added, for emphasis. “Of the Homicide Bureau.”

  It got results. It got the second Bell, no less. The second Bell spluttered. He was an excited Bell, full of grievance, and with, it developed, his hair full of newspaper reporters. Weigand told him, crisply, what was wanted. Nobody, insider or outsider, was to be allowed to disturb anything in Jean Corbin’s office. Or in Helen Wilson’s or, further, in Thelma Smith’s. The second Bell said, “Quite,” and that he understood, to the first two. He said, “But, Lieutenant—” to the last.

  “Miss Smith is no longer with us,” the second Bell explained. “Friday was her last day. I’ve no doubt that she cleared out her desk before she left, and we moved Miss Collins up to her desk this morning.”

  “Fired?” Weigand inquired, with rude directness.

  The second Bell did not approve the word. But from his circumlocution it developed that the word would, rather crudely of course, fit the fact. Miss Smith had, to put it more delicately, resigned. Her resignation had, to be sure, been requested. Weigand said, “Um-m-m,” thinking it over.

  “I’m driving in now,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you when I arrive. Will you see that it’s possible?”

  The second Bell indicated that he was a very busy man, of course, but that it would be made possible. Weigand left the telephone booth with a couple of new things to think over. A steaming globe of coffee beckoned him from the soda-counter, and he responded gratefully. He drank coffee and thought it over. Then a third thing to think over appeared. It appeared in a gray-green woolen dress that had come from some place where dresses were ably contrived, and a gray-green hat of barely darker shade with a jaunty ornament of yellow. It moved with unmistakable lightness and grace in clicking brown shoes, that looked at once sturdy for the country and impracticable for art. Watching Dorian Hunt pass him unseeing and walk toward the evidently very popular telephone booths in the rear, Bill Weigand decided that she dressed for town precisely as he had hoped she would dress. Lieutenant Weigand wondered what the hell she was up to, and why she had ignored the explicit instruction to remain at camp. He decided to find out.

  Her telephone call was brief. She came from the booth toward him and this time he stood up, waiting. There was an almost imperceptible break in the rhythm
of her walk as she saw him, but then she came on. She acknowledged his presence, and their previous contact, with a movement of the head which was as noncommittal as it might be, and was about to pass on.

  “No, Miss Hunt,” Weigand said. “I’m afraid you’ll really have to see me. Or had you forgotten you are supposed to be at the lake?”

  She stopped and turned toward him.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” she said. “It’s necessary for me to go to town. So I decided to go to town. I’m catching the 9:40. And if you and Lieutenant Heimwahr object, I’m very sorry.”

  “Heimrich,” Weigand explained. “As no doubt you remembered perfectly. Why is it necessary for you to go to town?”

  She considered the question and decided to answer it. But her tone made it clear that the answer was purely voluntary.

  “I have some sketches to deliver,” she said. “To Braithwaite’s. They are due this morning, and I deliver sketches when they are due. Making sketches is, you see, the way I make my living. Just as you make yours hounding people.”

  Her voice was entirely dispassionate, which didn’t help. Weigand found that he felt angry with her, which was odd. There was no reason that an uninformed slur on his occupation should stick instead of rolling off.

  “I’d like to see the sketches,” he said. “It would be interesting to see sketches that are more important than murder.”

  He held out his hand, gesturing toward the wide leather briefcase which dangled from one gray-green shoulder. When she stared at him he merely stared back, and waited. Then she said, “All right, why not?” suddenly and opened the case flat on one of the fountain stools. There were half a dozen sketches in it.

  “These are the sketches,” she said, lifting two from the top. “They are what is called fashion sketches, to be reproduced in newspaper advertisements.” She explained slowly and carefully, obviously to the subnormal. “On this side of the sketch are some of the dresses Braithwaite’s has for sale. On this side are the old-fashioned dresses which suggested them. They’ll call it something like ‘Today and Yesterday’ probably.” She looked at him, pretending anxiety. “Is it quite clear now, Lieutenant Weigand?” she asked.