Murder Out of Turn

by Frances Lockridge

  “She’s just fainted, you idiot,” Mrs. North said. “Can’t a girl faint? Under such fine circumstances?”

  Weigand looked at her anxiously, but she seemed very sure. And when, at Mrs. North’s direction, he laid Dorian flat on the ground—“so she can get blood in her head,” Mrs. North explained—Dorian lay white and still only a few moments and then opened her eyes again. Seeing Weigand still bending over her, she smiled a very little and closed her eyes again. Weigand decided it was all right.

  19

  MONDAY

  10 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT

  Mrs. North laid logs on the fire in the cabin and poured kerosene over them. After a moment of rising white smoke, the kerosene puffed into flame and the logs caught. They sat for a moment watching the fire, with only dim lamps burning. They looked battered. Dorian Hunt, her green dress stained dark at the shoulders, snagged and pinned up at the side, leaned back against cushions on the couch. She was pale and quiet, and the light made a dark shadow of the bluish swelling on her left temple.

  Weigand’s hands were bound in white, and he used the fingers awkwardly with his cigarette, and one side of his face was reddened by the flames which had touched it for a moment. Mr. North sat with his injured arm swung across his chest and adhesive holding a pad of white on his damaged head. Only Mrs. North and Mullins of the five were unscarred, and Mullins, sitting in a shadow, was half asleep. For a time nobody said anything, and then Weigand said, with a kind of sigh, that it was over.

  “He kept talking about it all the time,” Dorian said, then. “All the time after he grabbed me and we started, he kept talking.” She thought about it. “It was dreadful,” she said. “He seemed—oh, I don’t know—proud. Until he realized that somebody was chasing us.”

  She stopped and looked at the fire.

  “He was going to kill me, you know,” she said. “Just like that. He said it very calmly and logically—that he had to kill me because I had seen him after he had killed Blair. Saw him running away.”

  “And he hadn’t killed Blair,” Weigand said. “Again he hadn’t killed Blair. Blair will outlive him, the chances are. But it was close.”

  “Was it?” Mrs. North said. “Very close?”

  Weigand nodded, and lifted his drink. He said it was close enough.

  “A matter of a few seconds,” he said. “Blair was almost done. But they brought him around. He’ll live to testify.” He hesitated, and turned to Dorian.

  “Dorian—” he said. He said her name slowly, as if waiting for contradiction. She said, “Yes, Bill?”

  “I see it up to a point,” he said. “You had gone to ask about Blair? Right? And you saw Saunders running away and he realized you had recognized him. And he’d had experience with hasty killings, and was going to make sure, so he took you along for—for later action. Right?”

  Dorian nodded to each “Right?”

  “But what made him wreck the car?” Weigand asked. “He was going all right until then. We were gaining, but he was going all right. What happened?”

  “A match,” Dorian said. “I remembered the curve and thought it was a good time.”

  “What kind of a match?” Mrs. North wanted to know. Dorian said just an ordinary match. She said it was this way:

  “If we got away,” she said, “he would kill me. He made that clear enough. If I grabbed the wheel, or anything, I would wreck us, only maybe I wouldn’t be strong enough. But if I could wreck the car, at the right time, I’d have a chance—a better chance. So I said would it be all right if I smoked, and when he said yes I lit a match.”

  “Oh,” Weigand said. “I see.”

  Mrs. North said that maybe he did, but she didn’t. “A match?”

  “I held it up toward his eyes quickly” Dorian said. “Just when we were coming to the curve I lighted it and held it up. And it blinded him; it—”

  “The flare,” Weigand amplified, when she hesitated. “The sudden light in relative darkness. The eyes contract like a cat’s, and when the light goes out, you’re blind for an instant. Can’t see the road. So you smash.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. North said, “of course. I’ve done it. Only not smashed up.”

  Mr. North made sounds from his chair.

  “You’ve done it to me,” he said. “Not meaning to. And we’ve almost smashed.”

  “Listen—” Mrs. North said. She felt the others looking at her, and saw Weigand smiling. “Oh,” she said. “All right. For the moment.” She thought. “There seems to be a lot of fire in this case,” she said. “Gasoline in fireplaces. Matches. Cars burning.” She looked at their fire. “And it looks so peaceful,” she said.

  “What I don’t get,” Dorian said, after a moment, “is how you all knew. I didn’t know—I was groping. But all three of you did know, didn’t you?”

  “Well,” Mr. North said. “Yes, eventually. Bill first. Then Pam. I trailed pretty badly.”

  “But how?” Dorian wanted to know. The Norths looked at Weigand. It was, Weigand said, merely through falling for a slip. Saunders’ slip.

  “He should have got rid of the kerosene,” Weigand explained. “Or bought some more. But he had just the wrong amount.”

  Dorian shook her head.

  “I’m too tired to think,” she said. “Tell me. Was it something somebody said?”

  Weigand nodded.

  “Something Blair said,” he explained. “Something he said and almost got killed for. He said he had gone back to the house that evening and built a fire.”

  Dorian thought it over, and shook her head again. Weigand told her that it was only a tip, of course; not evidence. But they had evidence. Motive—that was clear. Saunders knew that Jean Corbin was trying to get the Quench account away from him. That was the only account he had that amounted to anything; on it his agency stood or fell, and with it his professional future. He knew that the account was apt to go if she stayed alive, because of Fillmore’s confidence in her ability. With Jean dead, Saunders believed the account would be safe. He was probably right in that belief. And there were subsidiary motives. She had helped edge him out of Bell, Halpern & Bell. She had been his mistress, and left him bitter and with hurt feelings. But chiefly it was the Quench account.

  “That much we knew,” Weigand said. “But there were others with motives, both for killing Jean and for killing Helen Wilson. And it was impossible to pin down opportunity very exactly. Too many people had it. We were in the position of being able to prove if we knew, but not knowing. Then we remembered what Blair had said.”

  “Speak for yourself, Bill,” Pam North said. “Not Jerry and me.” She paused. “I,” she said. “No, me. Do not speak for me.”

  “About building the fire,” Dorian prompted.

  Weigand nodded.

  “We knew,” he said, “or we assumed, that the person who had arranged the trap for Jean had done certain things. He had taken two cans, one full of gasoline, to her cabin. He had emptied the kerosene from the can in her cabin into the empty can, and filled her can with gasoline. That left him with an empty can and a can of kerosene. The natural thing, and as it seemed to the murderer—Saunders as it turned out—the safest thing, was simply to put the kerosene back in his own cabin and use it up. So—

  “But Saunders himself, not thinking it would help us, let out the fact that Saturday morning, Blair had used up the last drop of kerosene in their cabin in filling the lamps. And then Blair let out—”

  “That he built a fire that evening!” Mrs. North said, not waiting. “And since everybody builds fire with kerosene—”

  “But do they?” Dorian said. “And couldn’t he have bought it?”

  “I said it wasn’t evidence,” Weigand explained. “It merely was a moral certainty—it won’t be any use in court. Defense counsel will ask just that. But we knew that it was a universal custom at the camp to build fires with kerosene. We knew that Marvin doesn’t sell kindling, and nobody has ever indicated that any of the campers went out into the brush and cut thei
r own. So we could assume, for our own purposes, not a jury’s, that if Blair built a fire Saturday evening he built it by pouring kerosene on the logs. Only where did the kerosene come from?”

  He held up his hand.

  “Your second question,” he said. “Yes. Well, we checked with Ireland yesterday. We got a list of people who had bought kerosene the day before. And neither Saunders’ nor Blair’s name was on the list. Somewhere else? It was possible. But why, since everybody did buy kerosene from Ireland, since it was the most convenient place, and since it must have been a habit—why? Defense counsel will call this thin. But it goes back to this—habits don’t break themselves. If they are broken, they are broken by human decision, for a purpose. And what innocent purpose did anyone have, on Saturday, for breaking a habit about the purchase of kerosene?”

  He waited. Nobody said anything.

  “Right,” he said. “That was the way it looked to me. So now, what have we got?” He paused, but not for an answer. “We’ve got the unexplained appearance of a two-gallon can of kerosene in the Saunders-Blair cabin between sometime Saturday morning and late Saturday evening. And what do we want? Somebody who has picked up two gallons of kerosene in that period without buying it or borrowing it—somebody who has just found it! Blair or Saunders.”

  He took a drink.

  “Both have motives,” he pointed out. “Saunders has a strong motive for killing Jean Corbin. Blair has a strong motive for killing Helen Wilson, and possibly, a slighter motive for killing Jean. But when we think it over, we know it’s Saunders.”

  Mrs. North shook her head at that.

  “When Blair gets slugged, you mean,” she said.

  “No,” Weigand told her, “when we think it over. Unless we want to base it on Blair’s very slight motive for killing Jean—the apparent fact that she was ditching him for somebody else. Because, if we base our deduction on the appearance of the kerosene in the cabin between Saturday morning and Saturday evening, we know the killing of Jean is the primary crime. She’s not killed because she knows something about the murder of Helen Wilson, because the trap is set for her before Helen is murdered. In logical sequence, Jean was murdered earlier than Helen, not later, in spite of the fact that Helen died first. So—Helen was killed because she knew something about Jean’s murder before it happened. Say she—”

  “She stumbled in on him, he said,” Dorian told them. “He had just finished setting his trap Saturday afternoon—when he had gone to put on the stew—when she came in. She was going to leave a tennis shirt for Jean, you remember. She was surprised to see him there, because she knew Hardie and Jean weren’t friendly. He put her off, somehow—he didn’t say how. But he knew that, when the gasoline exploded—he thought it would explode, he said—Helen would remember that he had been there, and tell the police. He was very calm about it. ‘So of course I had to kill her,’ he said. ‘You see that, don’t you?’ Then he said: ‘Just as I have to kill you.’”

  Dorian shivered momentarily.

  “It was—” she said, and hesitated. “Awful,” she finished. It was a lame word, but it did not feel lame in the half-darkened cabin.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “It had to be that way. So he killed her, slipping away for a moment from the Fullers’ party, after he had seen her go out. Then he acted, I think, very much like an innocent person all day yesterday—or did, so far as we could tell. But he undoubtedly listened to us when we were questioning everyone?” Weigand looked at Dorian for confirmation. “Yes,” she said. “He said he listened.”

  “He heard nothing of importance,” Weigand went on, “until we were questioning Blair. Then he heard Blair tell about building the fire, remembered he had told us that the can had been emptied, and decided that Blair might put two and two together or that we might and have Blair as a witness. So he decided it would be necessary to kill Blair. And Blair—well, Blair apparently made it easy for him. We’ll find out when Blair is better. But we can assume, meanwhile, that one of two things happened: Blair thought it over himself and grew suspicious and watched Saunders. Saunders decided to take back the empty can he had borrowed from the cabin, and Blair followed him and gave himself away and got slugged. Or, perhaps Blair didn’t put two and two together, but guessed where the empty can had come from and, because he thought we suspected him, kept watch on the unoccupied cabin on the chance the can might be put back. The first is more likely.”

  He seemed to have finished. Then he started to speak again, and did not form the words which seemed ready to be formed. The three who were awake waited. Mullins snored gently.

  “And the rest?” Mrs. North said, finally. “The others with motives?”

  Weigand shrugged, his hands spreading.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Things that cropped up, as they always do in a murder case. It is like—well, it is as if a side of a house falls away, or is bombed away. You see all the rooms people have been living in; you see all sorts of things you aren’t asking to see; pry into things that don’t have bearing. Only, in a murder case, one of those rooms may have the secret, so you have to open them all up. It is—trying for the people whose secrets come out undeservedly. But that is the way it works.”

  His voice sounded tired. He finished his drink and stared into the fire. Mrs. North, after a moment, fixed him a new drink—she mixed them all new drinks. Her movement awakened Mullins, who looked interested. He got a drink.

  “So Helen was just—unlucky,” Dorian said, after a time. “She stumbled into it—into death.”

  Weigand’s head agreed.

  “Stumbled,” he said. “And died out of turn. Yes.”

  “And Saunders will be convicted?” Mr. North said, from where he nursed his arm and his glass.

  “Oh, yes,” Weigand said. “I should think so. Certainly.”

  He was abstracted, staring into the fire. He felt tired, and oddly dispirited. They finished their drinks. After a time, Dorian stirred, and then stood up. Even in weariness, Weigand thought, watching her, her movements flowed into one another.

  “I’d better go home,” Dorian said. Her voice was weary, too; her tone abstracted. “To the Wilsons’, that is—until tomorrow. It—” She stood in front of the fire, and did not finish whatever she had started to say.

  “Why not here?” Mrs. North said. “There’s no reason for you to go.”

  Dorian shook her head.

  “Things,” she said. “All my things—”

  She started toward the door. Weigand stood up, suddenly.

  “May I walk down with you?” he said. The words came quickly, hurriedly. Dorian looked at him and smiled and said she would be very glad—He followed her through the door, into the moonlight. They walked down the path, needing no other light than the moon’s. Her face was very white in the moonlight.

  “You’re tired,” he said. He said it as if the words were part of something more which was not to be said. She did not answer, directly. But then she spoke.

  “About the picture,” she said. “I’m sorry about that—but—” She hesitated. “I was nervous,” she said. “Frightened. And it seemed to me that I had to keep the picture hidden, because it would bring Father into it. Can you understand?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “It doesn’t seem odd.”

  “I knew she had it,” Dorian said, after a little. “She showed it to me, once—oh, a long time after the trial and everything, when we were friends. You see—Father sent it to her after the trial, to show that he didn’t—”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “I see how it was.”

  They walked on. She was a little ahead as they went along the path past Van Horst’s and came to the Wilson house. The porch was sprayed with moonlight falling through trees. Weigand stopped suddenly at the foot of the porch steps, and Dorian went up them and then turned to face him. There was a pattern of leaves on her dress, but her face was clear in the light.

  “Well—” Weigand said. The word hung in the air, as he looked at her.
/>   “Well?” she echoed, and there was the beginning of a smile on her white face. “It’s been—strange, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “I wish—” He did not say what he wished. He merely kept on looking at her. His gaze did not seem to make her restless; the smile which had come upon her lips clung to them. She waited, he thought, for him to go on. But she was not disturbed that he did not go on. They stood so for rather a long time before, finally, she spoke.

  “Well,” she said, “goodnight—policeman.”

  There was something in her saying of the word which made it a different word. She held out her hand and he took it and still looked into her face. The smile was still there.

  And when he went away, after a moment, the smile somehow went along. After a little the smile was very bright in his mind, and he could hear her voice softly. When he got back to the Norths’ he felt fine, and full of conversation, and Mrs. North looked at him interestedly. Mr. North, however, said that one thing about the country was that nobody ever got any sleep.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

  1

  TUESDAY, JULY 28:

  4:50 P.M. TO 5:30 P.M.

  Max Fineberg sat on the running-board and the late July heat sat on his shoulders. The heat, that afternoon, sat on everything; it was a damp and steaming burden on the city of New York. The air was faintly hazy but the sun beat wickedly through it. Hot light glanced from the shiny top of Max Fineberg’s taxicab and beat back from the glass of windows across the street.

  Mr. Fineberg, his head sagging against the support of his hands, was worried and afraid. He wished he were somewhere else, doing something else. He wished somebody would tell him how he was going to make the next payment on his shiny cab and that he knew how Rose was feeling in the hospital and that his, until recently, instructor in economics at C.C.N.Y. would explain what a cab driver was to do with a dollar fifteen on the clock after ten hours of hacking and with the day almost done.