Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  But, so far, Mrs. Nelson had not been interviewed. She and her husband were not at their home in Rye. They were away for the weekend.

  “Um-m,” Pam North said to that and, on being looked at and waited for, said, “Just um-m.”

  How many other relatives there were, and the closeness of other relationships, they did not yet know. They would, undoubtedly, find out.

  “Like dragon’s teeth,” Pam North said. “All coming up in surrogate’s court.”

  “Like—?” Jerry said and then, “Oh. Of course.”

  At the time Fitch was killed, around eleven o’clock Saturday morning, Naomi was, she said, having breakfast. Her maid could vouch for that. She had heard of his death a little after noon, from Wesley Strothers. “He was so—so sweet,” Naomi said. “I suppose I should have insisted on playing the matinee, at least, but he just wouldn’t have it.”

  “Strothers called again, while I was there,” Bill told the Norths and Dorian.

  Bill had been standing to leave; Carr, after a questioning look at Naomi, had said, “O.K. But I’ll be around,” and stood also. Then the telephone rang. Naomi Shaw flowed across the room to it, hesitated a moment, said, “Yes?” and then, “Oh, yes, Wes.” She spoke very softly, the hesitancy—the hesitancy which had defied so many descriptions—was evident. Her voice was sad—much sadder than it had been when she talked to her former husband, to Bill Weigand.

  “Oh, Wes,” she said, after she had listened for several seconds. “I don’t know, Wes. It’s all so—so new—so hard to—” She had not finished. She had listened again. In the same sad, soft voice she had said she did understand. She did appreciate. She listened again and said, “Oh—I couldn’t. Not next week,” and again stood, gracefully, the fingers of her free hand just touching a table top, and listened. “Perhaps,” she said, then. “Perhaps, Wes. I—I may as well, mayn’t I? Now that it’s all—all—” It appeared she ran out of words at that. She listened again. “All right,” she said. “Monday, then,” and then, after a brief pause, “You’re very sweet, Wes.” She replaced the receiver, gently. She stood for some seconds, looking down at the telephone. She turned from it, and it was, Bill said, as if she had reached a decision. She had looked at Bill Weigand and at the browned, square man who had been her husband, and it was as if she hardly saw, or did not clearly remember, them.

  But after another few seconds she said, “Oh. Wes Strothers. He has to know, of course.”

  “The show must go on,” Carr had said, and Bill Weigand had expected the duel between them to be renewed. But the girl had merely, tiredly, shaken her lovely head, not in negation, but in, Bill thought, weary acceptance—acceptance of cliché, and of fact. She had looked, not at Carr, but at Weigand, and had said, “Haven’t you finished, now?”

  Bill had, for that place, that time. He went, and took Carr with him. But he had finished with Carr, also, for the time. He dropped Carr at Carr’s hotel on lower Fifth Avenue.

  “So,” Dorian said, “she’s going to go on in Around the Corner?”

  So, Bill told her, he gathered from what she had said to the play’s producer. It would, Pam North said, please Sam Wyatt. It would please a good many people—in time, a good many thousands of people.

  “I may as well say it,” Pam North said. “It’s an ill wind. Will she get a lot of money, Bill?”

  There was a lot of money, Bill told her. Enough so that even a part of it would be a lot. Enough so that, if Mary Shaftlich continued to be Naomi Shaw, it would be because acting was more than a means to livelihood.

  “It is,” Dorian said. “Everything she does proves it. All she did last night.”

  The telephone rang. The call was for Bill, and Dorian said, as much to the cat called Sherry as to anyone, that it never failed. “Never,” Dorian said. “Never.” She stroked the long, delicate bone—the seemingly so fragile bone—of the little cat’s slender jaw. Sherry purred, more or less in her sleep.

  “Right,” Bill said into the telephone. “I’ll go around and see.” He hung up, with that.

  “It’s never been known to fail,” Dorian said again, this time to her husband.

  “The cousin,” Bill said. “Mrs. Nelson. Has something to tell us.”

  “I suppose,” Dorian said, “in Rye?”

  Mrs. Nelson was not in Rye. She was at the Barclay. So, it might not be too long.

  “I’ll be here,” Dorian said. “If they’ll have me. Or at home.”

  Bill kissed the top of her head. He went. “Why I ever married a policeman,” Dorian said. She was told, by Pamela North, that she knew perfectly well. “Oh—that,” Dorian Weigand said, and scratched Sherry behind the right ear. But then Sherry spoke in a querulous voice, and at once dropped to the floor, where she stretched, rather elaborately, and scratched behind the same ear. “You’re an ungrateful cat,” Dorian told her. “Anyway my foot was asleep.”

  She stood up and also stretched, less elaborately but with almost equal grace.

  They had another cup of coffee around and Jerry went to commune with Mr. Braithwaite, who could never remember, from one page to the next, what his characters looked like; who had, too often for comfort, made the forgetful authors’ category in The New Yorker.

  “It’s too bad,” Pam said, “we didn’t bring our sewing. Publishers are as bad as policemen.”

  They could, Dorian supposed, but in the tone of one who supposes nothing of the kind, go to a movie. They did not. Instead, Dorian sketched cats and Pam, luxuriating in it, did part of a crossword puzzle, until stumped by the one-time skipper of the Golden Hind. After that, she watched Dorian’s quick pencil—and thought of murder.

  At a little after four the telephone rang again. Dorian looked up quickly, with hope. But Jerry answered in his study, and did not call, so it was not Bill. Jerry came out, instead.

  “Wyatt again,” he said. “Apparently he wants his hand held. I suppose we’d better.” He appeared pleased.

  “He seems to have a very lonely hand,” Pam said. “If he’s as dull as he must be, I don’t see why you publish him.”

  “Sam?” Jerry said. “He’s not—”

  “Not Sam,” Pam told him. “Mr. Braithwaite, of course. Anybody can see anything’s better than reading him.”

  “Oh,” Jerry said, and was not quite guilty. “Braithwaite is adored by thousands. Get your bonnets.”

  Dorian, evidently included, hesitated. There was, she said, a chance—perhaps one in a hundred—that Bill would finish with Fitch’s cousin, would telephone.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “he’ll know you’re somewhere.”

  Since there was no questioning this, Dorian Weigand tied up her drawing pad. They went to the cocktail lounge in which they last had held Samuel Wyatt’s hand. Wyatt was there, and snapped fingers at them. His eyes brightened on observing Dorian, as was the custom of male eyes. But it was evident he was morose.

  7

  Sunday, 4:20 P.M. to 6:15 P.M.

  They sat in one of several semi-circular alcoves, on a curving banquette. Sam Wyatt snapped his fingers and a waiter came; Wyatt made it clear that he was host. But, with the orders given and the waiter gone, Wyatt drew invisible designs on the table top with the forefinger of his left hand, while absently snapping the thumb and middle finger of his right. In these activities, he seemed engrossed; seemed, indeed, to have forgotten that he had applied for hand holding. Watching his nervous hands, Pam North thought they should be held—by someone.

  “The Last Mile,” Wyatt said, suddenly. “That was the title.” He now looked at the Norths, at Dorian Weigand. “That’s what it was, all right.” They looked blank. “Guy goes to the electric chair,” he said. “Cell to little door—the last mile.” He looked from one to the other. “God,” he said.

  The waiter brought drinks. Wyatt looked at him, as if without recognition, with set face.

  “First it’s months,” he said, and looked at his drink as if he could not imagine its purpose. “Then it’s weeks and the appeal
’s denied, and the governor won’t act, and you keep on hoping. You know there’s nothing to hope for, but you keep on hoping. Then it’s hours, and you think, ‘It’s not yet—not next minute or the minute after. It’s really a long time.’ But then it’s only an hour and then half an hour and then you hear them coming. The floor’s cement and their feet make a gritty sound and they come past one cell and past another cell and then—then they stop. And then they put the key in the lock and it’s the greatest harshest sound ears ever heard and then—”

  Wyatt stopped speaking. He shuddered. He seized his drink and half emptied it. He put it down and clutched the table edge with both hands.

  “You hang on to something,” Wyatt said. “The bed, maybe. They have to drag you away and you grab hold of the bars and they break your hold and then you’re out in the space between the cells and all the others are looking at you from theirs and—” Again he stopped. And now he looked again at the others. He snapped his fingers.

  “Imagination is a curse,” he said, in quite another voice. “What’ll you all have to drink?” They looked at their glasses, which no one had touched. “Oh,” Wyatt said. “You’ve got drinks, haven’t you?”

  He shrugged, jerkily.

  “Me,” he said, “I’m scared. They’ll railroad me.” He looked, angrily, at Jerry North. “You know damned well they will,” he said. “The man who finds the body.”

  “They won’t railroad you,” Jerry said. “Quit writing it, Sam. Save it for the novel.”

  “Novel?” Wyatt said, encountering a new word, an unexplained word. “Novel?” He snapped his fingers. “Oh,” he said. “That. That’s out for now, Jerry. What would I do with any more money? Just pay it to the government.” He paused again. “Anyway,” he said, “the last book I did brought me—what? You’re the publisher.”

  “Not much,” Jerry said. “But—by the author of Around the Corner. That’ll make a difference. Even if it is closed.”

  “Closed?” Wyatt said. “It’ll run for years.”

  “Then Bill was right,” Pam said. “He thought she would.”

  “Bill?” Wyatt said. “Who’s Bill?”

  They told him. To the name, Dorian added, so that there would be no misunderstanding, “My husband.” Wyatt looked from North to North.

  “Whose side are you on?” he asked them. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “Nobody’s,” Pam said. “That is—Bill’s, of course. But yours too. If it’s possible.”

  He looked at her with care. He snapped his fingers. He said, “I’ve got nothing to hide,” with great emphasis.

  “The play,” Jerry said. “What about the play?”

  “Close for a week,” Wyatt said. “Nay gets over this polo player.” He paused. “Do it in a day, myself,” he said. “But she’s a girl. Reopen a week from tomorrow, she smiles through her tears, show goes on. Runs two hundred more performances. Maybe they’ll close one night. Be a nice gesture. ‘There will be no performance of Around the Corner tomorrow night, in honor of the author’s electrocution.’”

  “Come off it,” Jerry said. “The play’s set, then?”

  “So Wes Strothers thinks. Talked to Nay last night. She as good as agreed, he said. And—why not? No more polo player. May as well go on being an actress. It’s an ill wind.”

  “That,” Pam told him, “is precisely what I said.”

  “Well,” Wyatt said. “Did you? What we all need is a drink.”

  Jerry agreed to that; Pam and Dorian did not, on the assumption it would be a long time until dinner.

  “Mr. Wyatt,” Dorian said, “why do you say you’ll be railroaded?”

  “Handiest,” Wyatt said. “I found him.” He paused. “The poor guy,” he said.

  It was no reason, Dorian told him. He must have an odd idea of the way the police worked. Merely the finding of a body—Dorian’s tone properly diminished that.

  “Mrs. Weigand,” Wyatt said. “You seem a very nice girl. You’re a very good-looking girl. Where’s your mind? I’m making eighteen hundred a week, less ten per cent. This polo player’s going to spoil it. So, why shouldn’t I spoil the polo player?” He shook his head; he snapped his fingers. “Don’t think this husband of yours hasn’t thought of that,” he said.

  “All right, Mr. Wyatt,” Dorian said. “Have it your way, then. You killed Mr. Fitch to keep the play going.”

  “Now you’ve got it,” Wyatt said, with approval. “Knew a girl with green eyes would be bright under the surface.” He looked at her closely. “You know,” he said, “they are green, or damned near. Very uncommon thing, green eyes.”

  “Really,” Dorian said. “Did you kill Mr. Fitch? Because my husband would like to know.” She paused. “I think,” she said, “that I will change my mind about another drink, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “Thought you would,” Wyatt said, and snapped fingers for a waiter. “Have to tell you, though. I didn’t kill the polo player. Just pushed open a door and there—” Sam Wyatt stopped.

  “I thought,” Pamela North said, in the sudden silence, “that it was the housekeeper—Mrs. Lemmings—who opened the door.”

  “Hemmins,” Wyatt said. “Lemmings are rats or something. Try to swim oceans. Get drowned. She did, as a matter of fact. The other was just a way of speaking.”

  “Because,” Pam said, “she would be the one, of course. It was her house, in a way.”

  “I told you,” Wyatt said. “She did. I’d never been at the place before, except once, at this party. Not like Wes, who was there half his time.”

  He snapped his fingers. They waited. He addressed his remarks to his almost empty glass, looking up from it only now and then.

  “Had to shop around for money,” Wyatt said. “Wes, I mean. A thousand here, two hundred there.”

  “Yes,” Pam said.

  “Takes a lot of money,” Wyatt said. “They say it’s stagehands. Ever notice how it’s always somebody like stagehands?” Nobody said anything, and Wyatt, after a considerable pause, asked where he was. He was told. He continued, speaking in small jerks.

  Someone had introduced Strothers to Fitch. Fitch had glittered in Strothers’ searching eyes; he had appeared likely to exude money. In the end, he had. Wyatt did not know how much, but it had been enough. In the course of the campaign, Naomi Shaw had been “dangled.”

  “Kind of a door prize,” Wyatt said. “Know how it is. Put up the money and meet the pretty lady. Enticement to angels. Nay is, as a matter of fact. All on a very high level. Worked out that way. Worked out that way too damned much, as it turned out. Here was Fitch all ready to marry somebody else—lady polo player from what I heard—and he meets Nay and—” Snapped fingers substituted for a word.

  “The one she told Bill about,” Pam said and Wyatt looked at her blankly. “You remember,” Pam said, to Jerry. “Miss Shaw told Bill in the—the make-believe. A Miss Somebody.”

  “I’m damned,” Wyatt said, “if I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Latham,” Pam said. “A Peggy Latham. I didn’t know she played polo.”

  “Oh,” Wyatt said. “Way of speaking. Probably doesn’t. Rides to the hounds or something. Comes to the same thing.”

  “Not for foxes,” Dorian Weigand said.

  Wyatt regarded her, as blankly as he had regarded Pam. He shrugged, jerkily. Anyway—

  Anyway, Fitch had dropped the lady polo player. Just as he had dropped somebody for the lady polo player. “All,” Wyatt said, “on a very high level.” He snapped his fingers. “Phyllis,” he said. “That’s how it went. Phyllis introduced Wes to Fitch, and Wes introduced Fitch to Nay.” He looked at them. Now they looked blankly back. “Phyllis Barnscott,” he said. “Girl in my play. Very nice girl, as blondes go. Knew her way around. Where was I?”

  “I,” Jerry North said, “am damned if I know, Sam.” He looked at the others. “Does anybody know where Sam was?” he asked.

  “He started,” Dorian said, “with Mr. Strothers, who, I take it, is the pro
ducer, and Mr. Fitch. With Mr. Strothers’ having been at Mr. Fitch’s half his time.”

  Wyatt snapped his fingers. He looked at Dorian Weigand with admiration.

  “Knew I started somewhere,” he said. “Well, that’s all I was saying. Wes and Fitch got pal-sy. Each one a new breed of cats to the other. Broadway. Meadow Brook. The twain meeting. Wes told me about it—about—” He stopped. He said everybody needed another drink; when the others did not, had one himself. He said he was doing all the talking. And at that, suddenly, he smiled and his face changed entirely.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “that’s what I wanted, probably. Somebody to talk to. I’ve been wandering around. Making up stories about being in the electric chair. Very realistic stories. Got to feeling, hell, I had to talk to somebody. Wake myself up from—nightmares.”

  In that instant, he was very serious.

  “Also,” he said, “I thought you two—I didn’t expect Mrs. Weigand—could—well, fill me in on what to expect. Since you’re in with the cops. Do I walk out of here into handcuffs?”

  “I don’t think anybody does, yet,” Pam said. “There are—there seem to be a good many people. A Mr. Carr. And Mrs. Nelson, of course.”

  “The woman who wanted me to make a speech,” Wyatt said, and looked around the room with what appeared to be apprehension. “Does she get the money?”

  “We don’t know,” Jerry said, and spoke firmly. “Do we, Pam?”

  “Of course not,” Pam North said. “How could we?”

  “Probably does,” Wyatt said. “She’s some kind of relative, she says. A cousin, or something.” He snapped his fingers. “Funny thing,” he said, “the polo player called everybody cousin. Funny how people fall into habits like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Makes them think they’re different.” He brightened. “Maybe they’ll pick this Nelson gal.”

  “You know,” Dorian said, “you have the strangest ideas, Mr. Wyatt. Do you really think the police just—‘pick’ one person out of a crowd? Say, ‘I’ll take that one’?”