Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  But Sergeant Mullins was leaning across the desk. Sergeant Mullins was pointing at his wrist watch. It showed ten minutes of eleven; Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley was in his office in West Twentieth Street. In ten minutes, Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley would begin to wait. Inspector O’Malley was not good at waiting.

  “I’ve got to go,” Bill said. “Got to see Art—the inspector.”

  “No!” Pam said. “When you’re tired already!”

  “Pam,” Bill said. “Don’t go off on your own, will you? This time?”

  “With you so tired already?” Pam said. “And Jerry to his ears in Braithwaite? Would I be likely to?”

  Bill was only partly reassured. But there was no time.…

  Sirens on police cars are supposed to be used only in emergency. But Inspector O’Malley, in the minds of Sergeant Mullins and Acting Captain Weigand, constitutes a permanent emergency. The Buick snarled at traffic on Park Avenue, at traffic on Fourth. Traffic patrolmen shrilled whistles for it, and held up hands. Mullins drove.

  It was something he had heard, Bill thought. Something he had heard, and not taken in. Something that cleared up the whole problem, made it fit again as it had fitted the night before, made it—

  “Well,” Bill said. “I’ll be damned!”

  There was no longer weariness in his voice.

  Mullins turning right off Seventh Avenue into West Twenty-first, did not take his eyes from the roadway. But he said, “O.K., Loot?”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “O.K. I think, sergeant. I’m pretty sure it is.”

  They were three minutes late at Inspector O’Malley’s office, and so had only to wait a quarter of an hour for Inspector O’Malley. Waiting, Bill Weigand was restless. That way again, Sergeant Mullins thought. Shouldn’t be long now.

  They listened to Inspector O’Malley. They said, “Yes sir. That’s right, sir.” They were models of policemen listening to an inspector of police. They were told that it was their baby, and that O’Malley couldn’t do everything, and that they were young cops, with a lot to learn. They were told not—for God’s sake not—to let the Norths mess it up. They were told to get on with it—and permitted, after only forty-five minutes, to do so. They drove back, quietly, to the office.

  Samuel Wyatt sat on a bench; sagged on the bench. His clothes seemed, more than ever, too large for him. As Bill Weigand and Mullins went through the squad room of Homicide East a detective on duty there jerked his head toward Wyatt, said, “Man wants to see you, captain.” Bill crossed the room and stood in front of Wyatt, who regarded the dusty floor. After waiting a moment, Bill said, “Yes, Mr. Wyatt?”

  Sam Wyatt looked up, then, as if he had been suddenly awakened. He snapped fingers on both hands, simultaneously. He said, “This last meal. The one they can choose. Do they actually eat it?”

  “Sometimes, I suppose,” Bill said. “I don’t really know, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered?”

  “Yes,” Bill said, “I’ve wondered. I don’t think about it much.”

  “Although you’ve sent people there.”

  “Probably that’s the reason,” Bill said. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I’ve been sitting here trying to imagine it,” Wyatt said. “Feel how it would feel. What a man would order. I’ve read that a good many of them order roast chicken. Or steak. You’d think it would be something strange, wouldn’t you? Some unfamiliar food they had always wondered about. Escargots, perhaps. Have you ever eaten them, captain?”

  “Yes,” Bill said, “I’ve eaten them. They’re very good.”

  “I never have,” Wyatt said. “I’ve been trying to think why. Did you ever have a manicure? A professional one, I mean.”

  “No,” Bill said.

  “Neither have I,” Wyatt said. He snapped his fingers. “Well,” he said. There was a certain finality about it. It was almost, Bill thought, as if now, with these things settled, he might get up and leave.

  “You wanted to see me,” Bill said.

  “You probably think I’m nuts,” Wyatt said. “Or—pretending to be nuts. For future reference.”

  “I hadn’t thought that,” Bill said. “Come in the office.”

  They went into a small inner office, which was entirely utilitarian, the window of which needed washing. Bill sat at his desk and Wyatt sat opposite him. Wyatt snapped his fingers several times.

  “You want to make another statement?” Bill asked him.

  Wyatt looked at Sergeant Mullins, sitting at a smaller desk with a notebook in front of him. He looked back at Bill Weigand. He snapped his fingers once more.

  “Somebody,” Wyatt said, “is trying to frame me.” He looked at Weigand very intently. “I suppose that’s an old story,” he added.

  “I’ve heard it before.”

  “Wasn’t it ever true?”

  “Sometimes. Not often, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “It is this time. I’ve been thinking it over—walking the streets and thinking it over. That’s the only answer. That’s why Mrs. Hemmins was killed. Because I had a motive for killing her. To stop her from repeating her story that I ‘had a cold’ when she let me in.”

  “You denied that,” Bill said. “So—it would have been your word against hers. You pointed that out, you know.”

  “All right,” Wyatt said. “Only—she was telling the truth. She’d have made people—feel she was telling the truth. That’s supposed to be my motive.”

  “Then you had been in the apartment earlier?”

  “He was dead already. I realized nobody would believe—”

  “Mr. Wyatt,” Bill said. “Why are you telling us this? Now?”

  “Because,” Wyatt said, “I wouldn’t kill her to keep her from telling what happened and then come to you and tell it myself.”

  “So, since you are telling us, you didn’t kill her? And, if you didn’t kill her, you didn’t kill Fitch?”

  “You can see that,” Wyatt said. “I couldn’t see any other way. It all—all kept piling up. The way it was planned to pile up.”

  “All right,” Bill said. “Keep on telling us.”

  “He was dead before I got there. I got in a panic. I could see the way it would look, imagine what you people would think. I—I imagine things very clearly.”

  “Very,” Bill said. “Go on, then.”

  Wyatt went on. As he did so, he snapped his fingers often. As he did so, he talked more rapidly, so that Mullins’ quick pencil darted; so that, once or twice, Mullins said, “Hold it a minute. What was that?”

  Saturday morning Wyatt had gone to Fitch’s apartment—to Fitch’s rooms on the second floor of the duplex—to make another appeal, to try once more to persuade Bradley Fitch to arrange somehow so that Naomi Shaw would remain in Around the Corner. “We had thought of some new arguments. He’d said, O.K., he’d listen. That was the night before.

  “You think it was just because of the money coming in,” Wyatt said. “It was more than that. It was—hell, all those people laughing. At my play.” He snapped his fingers then. “Can’t make an outsider understand that,” he said. “All the same, that was part of it. I don’t say all. Part.”

  He had rung the upstairs bell. It had not been answered. He had tried a second time. Then he had tried the knob of the door, and the knob had turned.

  “Don’t know why I did,” he said. “Instinctive, I guess. I wanted to see him pretty bad. Maybe I thought he was asleep and—anyway, that’s what I did.”

  The door had opened. It had opened enough so that, without entering the room, Sam Wyatt could see Fitch lying on the floor, could see the evidence of his final, violent illness. “I thought there was blood in it,” Wyatt said.

  “There was,” Bill said. “He hemorrhaged. That’s why he died so quickly. You didn’t go into the room? See if you could do anything for him?”

  He had, Wyatt said, started to leave without going into the room. But then he had decided he could not do that, a
nd had gone in. He had felt for a heartbeat.

  “He was dead,” Wyatt said.

  “You can’t tell that easily,” Bill told him. “Perhaps—never mind. You decided he was dead. Then?”

  Then he had gone out and closed the door. And then—

  “I thought, suppose it turns out somebody killed him? Nobody’ll believe I wasn’t the one. I’d better get out of here. I wiped the doorknob and then—then I thought, somebody’ll have seen me coming up. The doorman or somebody. So—”

  He had, he said, “plotted it out.” Someone might have seen him enter the building, and even go into the elevator. But—nobody could tell whether he had gone to the ninth floor or the eighth. “There’s no indicator on the elevator,” he said.

  “No,” Bill said.

  Instead, therefore, of leaving the building, as he had first thought of doing, Wyatt had gone down one floor and rung the bell there; had, with Mrs. Hemmins, found Fitch’s body for the second time.

  “If I was wrong about his being dead the first time,” Wyatt said, “we were there again in—oh, in a few minutes. So if there had been any chance—But he was dead when I first saw him.”

  “All right,” Bill said. “So that’s—”

  “It was that cat,” Wyatt said. “There was no sign of a cat up there. Then, just before she let me in, it hit me. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have said anything to make you believe I had been there before—you did believe that, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bill said. “I believed that, Mr. Wyatt.”

  Wyatt nodded. He snapped his fingers. But, he said, he had gone too far to turn back. He had to bluff it out. Particularly after he had lied once, nobody would believe that he had not lied completely.

  “I was a damned fool,” he said. “What it comes to, I got myself into it by trying to get out.”

  “If you didn’t kill Fitch,” Bill said.

  “I didn’t. Doesn’t my telling you this prove it?”

  “No,” Bill said. “Think it over. Carry it another step.”

  “I don’t—” Wyatt began. But then he said, “That would be ingenious, I suppose. To tell why I’m supposed to have killed the poor old girl to keep her from telling, to prove I didn’t kill her.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m not that ingenious,” he said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “All right,” Wyatt said. “You think I’m lying both times. Well—it was a chance I had to take.” He shrugged. “I wonder,” he said, “if anybody ever did ask them for escargots?” He waited. “Well?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “Mr. Wyatt, between the time Mrs. Hemmins heard the upstairs doorbell and the time she let you in downstairs, half an hour elapsed. And—when she heard the doorbell upstairs, she also heard someone—presumably Mr. Fitch—walk across the study to answer the bell. But, you say Fitch was already dead. And—you say you were there only a few minutes.”

  Wyatt shook his head sadly, hopelessly. He snapped his fingers. But then he brightened, and snapped his fingers again.

  “That was whoever killed Brad,” he said. “She—” He lost confidence again. “I guess she didn’t hear the bell when I rang it.”

  “Why? If she heard it one time, why not the other?”

  “It’s no use, is it?” Wyatt said. “I told you what happened, but it’s no use.”

  “You can’t explain why she would hear the bell one time and not the other?”

  Despondently, Wyatt shook his head.

  “Unless,” he said, “she Was making a noise herself. Or—when I rang was somewhere she couldn’t hear the bell.”

  “Where?”

  “How would I know?” Wyatt said, and spoke hopelessly. “I don’t know the layout.”

  Mullins looked at Bill Weigand and seemed about to speak. Bill shook his head, just perceptibly.

  “About Mr. Strothers having been there yesterday evening,” Bill said. “You were right about that.”

  Wyatt nodded dully, without interest.

  “He went to ask Mrs. Hemmins if she wanted to work for him. When he moves in the fall. He says she was all right when he left.”

  “Sure,” Wyatt said. “I supposed it was something like that.”

  “This stag party,” Bill said. “The one Fitch gave the night before he was killed. You say you left early?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I got bored, I suppose. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  He was not answered. Instead, Bill said, “All right, Mr. Wyatt. Thanks for coming in.”

  Wyatt looked at him in, apparently, complete surprise.

  “You mean I can go?” he asked, and seemed incredulous.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Not too far. Where will you be this afternoon?”

  Strothers, Wyatt said, had called a rehearsal. To tighten up a couple of scenes. To “keep the boys and girls up to it.” Wyatt said he supposed he would be at the theater. He stood up, but tentatively, as if he expected to be pulled down. He moved toward the door. He put a hand, doubtfully, on the knob.

  “I take it,” Bill Weigand said, “that you didn’t read the newspapers this morning?”

  Wyatt stopped, turned, looked more puzzled than he had before. Then he shook his head. “My God,” he said, “I’ve got enough to worry about. Anyway, there wasn’t an opening last night.”

  He waited.

  “I hadn’t realized that,” Bill said. “Run along, Mr. Wyatt. We’ll be seeing you.”

  Wyatt went.

  “Loot,” Mullins said, “Mrs. Hemmins went back into the servants’ quarters after she heard Fitch stirring around—after she heard the bell ring. To wait for the servants’ buzzer. If the upstairs bell rang again, maybe she wouldn’t hear it. Maybe she was banging things around.”

  “Right,” Bill said.

  “Funny, Wyatt didn’t think to bring that up.”

  “No,” Bill said. “Not very. He’s not supposed to know the layout, remember. He’s said that. He can’t suddenly know it now, to get himself off a hook.”

  Mullins nodded, thoughtfully, to that. He said, “Another thing, Loot-I-mean-captain. You figure he doesn’t really know about the Shaw babe?”

  Bill was drumming, lightly, on his desk with the tips of his fingers. He said it was possible.

  “And Strothers doesn’t? Don’t any of them read the papers?”

  Bill imagined that Strothers knew.

  “Then what’s the point of this rehearsal?”

  “There cap be two points,” Bill said, and still spoke abstractedly, still looked at the opposite wall, and spoke as much to himself as to Mullins. “One, he knows Miss Shaw will be back. Two, he’s decided he can get along without her. Put somebody else in. Like Miss Barnscott, for example.”

  Mullins thought for a time. He said it was all screwier than ever. The telephone interrupted him. He said, “Mullins speaking,” and handed the telephone to Weigand.

  “Right,” Weigand said, after he had listened for a moment. “Ask her to come in, will you?” There was another moment. “Yes,” he said. “Both of them, of course.”

  Weigand and Mullins watched the door. It was only a matter of seconds. Naomi Shaw came through it first.

  12

  Monday, 1:30 P.M. to 2:25 P.M.

  Pamela North and Dorian Weigand sat in the last row of the orchestra of the Forty-third Street Theater, their backs to the barrier. They were waiting to ask Phyllis Barnscott whether she had murdered Bradley Fitch, and afterward Mrs. Rose Hemmins and whether, subsequently, she had arranged the kidnapping of Naomi Shaw. “Although,” Pam had said, “I don’t really think that. The other things, yes. Because she knew Mr. Fitch had hangovers, having been with him so much and probably, when you come down to it, in the mornings. And she would be the one to get breakfasts and clean up afterwards and that explains the tea-towel.”

  Dorian had said, “Well—” to this. She had said it several times, first on the telephone when she had been invited—
urged—to accompany Pam when things were put up to Phyllis. “Because,” Pam had explained, “I promised Jerry, and Bill, or as good as, that I wouldn’t go off on my own this time, and if you’re with me, I’m not, am I?” Dorian had noted that this was somewhat specious but had then added that it would be very pleasant to have it turn out Phyllis Barnscott. “Because, frankly,” Dorian had said, “she’s a patting blonde.”

  They had not found the bright, blond actress at the Algonquin, as they had hoped. But there they had encountered Jasper Tootle, finishing an early lunch, and from him learned that Phyllis had been summoned to rehearse. “Taking advantage of the layoff to tighten up some scenes,” Jasper had explained, but had shaken his handsome head over it, and admitted he didn’t know precisely why. “With Nay God knows where,” he had added.

  They had found a sign in front of the theater which told them “No Performance Tonight” and had found the lobby empty and, although one of the ticket windows was open, no one behind the grille to question their entrance. They had found their way in; it appeared that anyone who cared to could find his way, this Monday afternoon, into a theater which, only a few days before, had spilled over. They had taken the first seats they had come to, since it had been instantly apparent that they would have to wait before they could charge Phyllis Barnscott with murder.

  The curtain was up and light glared on the stage. It glared from a single, powerful bulb on a standard, a little to the right of stage center, as they looked at it from the auditorium. There were people on the stage, in the glare. There were also, less brightly lit, people in the orchestra seats. A flight of temporary wooden stairs ran up from the orchestra to the stage. A tall, slightly stooped man was standing with his back to the light, talking to those on the stage, but with his voice raised to carry to others in the seats.

  “—all stick around,” he said. “The assumption we’re going on is, she’ll get back. Be found—get back somehow. If she doesn’t—O.K., we’ve wasted time. If she does, we’ve rubbed the rust off, and there’s a hell of a lot of rust. O.K.?”

  Nobody said anything. The light on the stage reached only a little way into the auditorium; beyond its limit the shadows deepened. Here and there in the shadows, cigarettes glowed. There seemed, indeed, to be a good many people in the theater, scattered widely, but for the most part in the rows closer to the stage. But at one side, well back, a cigarette glowed and diminished, glowed again. And halfway back, on the other side of the house, there were two dark figures, sitting side by side.