by Frances
They knew of Inspector O’Malley’s idiosyncrasies more from Bill Weigand, who worked under him, as did all Manhattan’s detectives, than from previous direct association. Cases in which the Norths were involved were, in O’Malley’s mind, cases to be avoided—they were, as Mullins also put it, “screwy” cases. (“The inspector likes things simple,” Bill had told them. “Not that he isn’t a damn good cop. It’s just that—” Bill had paused, seeking a word. “He doesn’t like things cluttered up,” Bill had said, and grinned at them, and said that they couldn’t deny they tended to clutter things up. “Not when they aren’t cluttered already,” Pam had said, with some indignation.)
“You asked where,” Jerry said. “The Brass Rail. Nobody knows us there so—”
“And,” O’Malley said, “you didn’t leave your key at the desk, like you’re supposed to. Anybody see you go out? Out of here?”
“Dozens, probably,” Jerry said.
“Anybody you know. Anybody can say, ‘Sure, I saw Mr. and Mrs. North go out of the Breckenridge at twelve minutes after seven, on the nose, and get a cab and—’”
“No,” Jerry said. “And we didn’t get a cab. We walked.”
It could not be said that O’Malley snorted. It could not, on the other hand, be said with confidence that he did not snort.
“All right,” O’Malley said, “what you say is you left here a little after seven, and went to dinner at the Brass Rail, although this hotel is full of restaurants—pretty good restaurants from what I hear—and didn’t take a cab, so nobody can check that out, and—who’d you see knows you at the Brass Rail?”
“Nobody,” Jerry said. “Listen, inspector, people do things all the time they can’t prove—”
“Skip it,” O’Malley said. “You ate this roast beef. So—”
They had gone to a movie. In spite of the earlier dinner, the rather less leisurely atmosphere, they had been late for the movie—gone in, found seats, when the film was, at a guess, about a third run. They named the movie.
“Kept your seat stubs, probably?” O’Malley said.
They had not. Who did?
“H-mmm,” O’Malley said, with meaning. “You got in late, you say. What time did you get back here?”
“About a quarter of eleven.”
“Get a cab back?”
They had not.
“H-mmm,” O’Malley said. “Stayed over to see the first part of this movie, probably?”
They had not.
“Because,” Pam said, “that spoils them sometimes, don’t you think? I mean, if you go in in the middle, they seem—I mean most movies seem—so much better than they are. More—subtle? But if you stay through—and there are almost always cartoons, anyway, and usually the ones where they do dreadful things to a cat—the—where was I?”
“God knows,” O’Malley said. “If you’ll—”
“Oh yes,” Pam said, “if you stay through, it all makes just ordinary sense and you haven’t anything to ponder about. Like in this one—if she felt that way about him, why did she marry him in the first place? They put the explanations first, usually.”
“Look,” O’Malley said, “how can they put the explanation in before there’s anything to—” He stopped abruptly. “That’s enough of that,” he said, with an almost violent firmness—a firmness, Jerry suspected, directed inward, toward the inner O’Malley. “You came in here,” he said, “and found Miss Towne, a woman you’d never met before, on your bed.” He said this to Mr. North, a little carefully, even a little anxiously, he did not look at Pam.
“Jerry’s or mine,” Pam said. “We hadn’t decided yet. Does it matter a great deal, inspector?”
“It—” O’Malley said, loudly, and caught himself. “On one of the beds,” he said.
Jerry nodded.
“Perfectly strange woman,” O’Malley said, “comes into your hotel room while you’re out going to a movie and gets herself killed. Why? How’d she get in? I suppose you’re going to say the door was open?”
“No,” Jerry said, “the door was locked. She must have had a key. Somebody must have had a key.”
“Two duplicates,” O’Malley said. “Both in the mailbox where they belong. You had a key.”
“Yes.”
“She was killed, then?” Pam said.
“I’ll ask the questions,” O’Malley said. “Just let me ask the questions, huh? Sure she was killed. That is—sure she was.” He looked at them closely. “Given poison,” he said.
They were supposed, Pam thought, to react to that; to say, or do, something which would reveal. There was open expectancy on O’Malley’s florid face. They were supposed to look—relieved? surprised? Then it wasn’t really—
“Look like you don’t buy that, North,” O’Malley said, and spoke quickly, spoke hard. Pam looked at her husband and thought, The poor dear. And thought, What an unconcealing face he has, really, because Jerry did not look at all as if he were buying that.
Jerry shrugged. He said he wasn’t a doctor; he said if the medical examiner—
“You thought it was something else,” O’Malley told him. “What?”
“From the color of her face,” Jerry said, “I thought she might have died of asphyxiation. Perhaps—”
He paused.
“Well?” O’Malley said. “What?”
“—been smothered,” Jerry said. “With a pillow, perhaps. There’s a bluish lividity, usually, if it’s asphyxiation and there weren’t any marks to show—”
He stopped, having finally got it—got it from the look of contentment on O’Malley’s florid face; a look almost of a cat who has found cream. (The poor dear, Pam thought of Jerry. Not that most of them really like cream, she thought, for no reason in particular.)
“Very interesting,” O’Malley said. “I’ll have to tell the M.E. that. Took his man a long time just to guess and here you come up with it. You must be a doctor, North. On the side.”
North Books, Inc., had recently published an abridged toxicology. Jerry had skimmed through it, since Pam and he seemed, nowadays, so often to be in situations where some smattering of toxicology and medical jurisprudence might prove helpful. He had read about the bluish lividity. He had—
He stopped the explanation—stopped because O’Malley listened with interest so acted out, nodded so often to show he followed, looked so very much like a cat with cream.
“Sure,” O’Malley said. “That explains that. Funny thing you and this Miss Towne hadn’t run into each other. Before now.”
They looked at him.
“Books,” O’Malley said. “TV. Advertising. All that sort of thing. Same breed of—cats.” He said “cats” with a certain emphasis; an emphasis, Pam thought, of loathing. (“In addition,” Bill had said, when explaining O’Malley’s antipathy to Norths in cases, “he’s heard you have cats. He hates cats.”)
It was unfortunate that Martini, hearing her race mentioned, responded, from underneath the sofa, with a Siamese remark. It was only an answer, really, on hearing cats referred to. But the Siamese voice is seldom dulcet. O’Malley glared at the sofa, with loathing.
“One thing we forgot,” Pam said, thus reminded. “When we went out we left the bathroom door open, so Martini could—that is, go to it. We put her pan in there, you know. The pan with paper in it? And—”
“For God’s sake,” O’Malley said. “So what in God’s name?”
“Only when we came back it was closed,” Pam said. “We thought the maid—wait a minute. The maid was in here. Closed the door and turned down the beds and—”
She was told to wait a minute.
“Well,” O’Malley said, and said it to Sergeant Stein, “where is she? This maid?”
It would, Pam thought, have been unfortunate for Sergeant Stein if he could not, immediately, have pulled a maid out of a hat. As it happened, he could. He did. O’Malley paid this foresight the tribute of a brief nod.
The maid was Rose Pinkney. She was thirty-seven years old and l
ived in Brooklyn, and was a widow, and none of these things mattered, except to her. She worked the evening shift at the Hotel Breckenridge; worked from six until midnight. She turned down beds. (That she and others should be employed to go in the evenings from room to room, knocking on doors of rooms listed as occupied, waiting, saying, “Sorry, the maid,” if they were answered, going in if they were not and taking spreads from beds and folding them neatly, turning down covers and upper sheet at a certain angle, prescribed—that this went on nightly in the Hotel Breckenridge always slightly puzzled Rose Pinkney. Guests could, she supposed, learn to turn down their own beds or, more simply, merely get into them. If she were running a hotel—But she was not, of course, and the work was light and the hours no worse than most hours. Better than cleaning offices in the middle of the night.)
That the routine had come to this puzzled Rose Pinkney even more. News of what it had come to, spread through the housekeeper’s department rapidly, and in many forms. A man had been murdered on the seventh floor, and there was blood all over everything. No, a couple on their honeymoon had shot one another. No—no—on the other hand—
And now she was in the middle of it, which was exciting, but made her ill at ease. She tugged at the skirt of her uniform, which needed no tugging at. The big, red-faced man said, “Miss Pinkney,” and she said, “No, Missis Pinkney, please.” He said, “All right,” impatiently and she flushed slightly. But, firmly, she said, “Missis Pinkney it is, on account of—”
“All right,” Inspector O’Malley said, rather more firmly. “You worked this floor tonight?”
“Corridor,” she said. “Not the whole floor, mister. On account of—”
“Corridor,” O’Malley said. But now he smiled at her. “Of course, Mrs. Pinkney,” he said. “This room?”
She nodded. She looked at the others in the room—at the man in a gray suit taking notes; at the “dark-complected” man who wasn’t doing anything she could see, but who had met her at the door of the suite and brought her in; at the man and woman sitting side by side on a sofa, close together. Probably the ones who had done it, Rose Pinkney thought. Whatever it was. Murder, from what they said.
“To turn down the beds,” she said. “Like every night. If somebody’s rented the room, that is to say.”
O’Malley could be patient, particularly with those who made sense—ordinary, everyday simple sense. (Didn’t talk about movies being better if—) He was patient with Rose Pinkney.
She had knocked at the door of Suite 718 at a quarter after seven, or thereabouts. Being unanswered, she had gone in and done what she was supposed to do. She described it.
“Show us,” O’Malley told her, and was still patient—she was to pretend she was coming in the door to the suite, was to do over what she had done earlier. When she got the idea, Rose said, “Okay,” and went out into the outer corridor and closed the door after her and then knocked on it. Stein went and let her in. She said, “Only nobody’s supposed to be here. If they are, I’m supposed to come back later,” and Stein said, he knew, and that she was to pretend they weren’t there.
She shook her head (thinking it pretty silly) and came into the suite. She went first into the bathroom, and came out of it and closed the door. “See if they need fresh towels,” she said. “If the wastebasket’s full.”
“Sure,” O’Malley said. “Nobody in the bathroom the first time?”
“Mister,” she said, “like I told you, we make sure nobody’s in the room.”
“You always close the bathroom door?” O’Malley asked, and she said, “I guess so,” and thought, and said, “Sure, I guess so.” She was told to go on. She went across the living room. She looked into a wastebasket and went into the bedroom. She came back. “Turned down already,” she said. “Want I should make them up and then turn them down?”
“No,” O’Malley said. “That’s all you do? You did it this way earlier?”
“Nobody let me in,” she said, “on account of, there was nobody here. Like I told you. I used my pass key.”
“When you come in,” Mrs. North said, “do you leave the door open? The door to the corridor?”
Rose looked at Mrs. North. She looked at the inspector, who said he’d ask the questions, if it was all right with everybody and then, “All right, do you?”
She did, she always did. So people would know she was in there. In case they didn’t notice the cart.
“All right,” O’Malley said. “The cart? What’s the cart?”
People didn’t know very much, and that was a fact. (But she did not say so.) The cart was on wheels; it had a rack for fresh towels; a bin for soiled towels; a receptacle for the contents of overflowing wastebaskets. It was left outside a room being worked in. “Nobody said to bring the cart,” Rose said.
“That’s all right,” O’Malley said. “Just getting the picture. And there wasn’t anybody in here when you came in?”
“Nobody I saw.”
“Not even,” Pam said, “a cat?”
“I’ll—” O’Malley said. “Well, you didn’t see a cat, Mrs. Pinkney? Funny-looking cat?”
He looked at Mrs. North quickly, with a fleeting expression of pleasure.
“She looks like any—” Pam said, rising to the bait, and had her hand pressed. “Anyway, she’d go under something until she found out who it was, because she’d know it wasn’t us.”
“Did you,” O’Malley said, “see anything of a cat, Mrs. Pinkney? Or hear anything?”
“No.” But then she said, “Only there was this pan in the bathroom, with torn paper in it. So I figured—your cat, miss?”
“Yes,” Pam said. “A Siamese cat. Not funny-looking at all, really.”
“Mine’s red,” Rose said. “Always have a red cat. Feed yours liver?”
“No,” Pam said. “It’s not really good for them. As a regular diet, I mean. And if you give them some now and then, they get so they won’t eat anything else. But Martini doesn’t like it anyway and—”
“Won’t eat nothing else, mine won’t,” Rose said. “Liver or nothing, that’s the old redhead. ’Cept fish, of course. Likes a piece of fish as well as the next—”
“All right,” O’Malley said, swelling ominously, Jerry thought. “All right!”
“You mean,” Mrs. Pinkney said, “you don’t want me any more?”
“That’s right,” O’Malley said. “Go—go home and feed your damned cat.” This hurt her feelings. Her face showed it. “Sorry if I—” she began, and O’Malley made the effort.
“You did fine, Mrs. Pinkney,” he said. “Didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Well!” she said, and started out. Stein went with her. Stein came back.
“You see,” Pam North said, “how Miss Towne could have got in. Or anybody. Or Miss Towne and anybody. While the maid was in the bedroom before she left and—”
“Listen,” O’Malley said and there was, Jerry thought, an unexpected note in the inspector’s voice—a note almost of entreaty. “Listen, Mrs. North, suppose you let me do it, huh?”
“Of course, inspector,” Pam said. “I was just trying—”
“Just don’t, please,” the inspector said. “That’s all I ask, lady.”
III
It had not been, of course. Inspector Artemus O’Malley had asked a great deal more, and asked much of it over and over, and asked much of it with evident doubt that he was being truthfully answered. But finally, at a little after two o’clock in the morning, he had said that that was all for now and that they could go. This, for a few moments, presented something of a problem. They could not, of course, sleep what remained of the night in Suite 718. They could get another room in the hotel—perhaps. “Let’s go home,” Pam said. “I don’t like hotel life as much as I thought I would. We can do something about Mr. Prentori.”
They packed up again—packed their clothes, got Martini from under the sofa and packed her (and she was furious) and got a cab, after some waiting, and went home. “It’s not
the same without Bill,” Pam said, moodily. “Bill would know that we didn’t have anything to—” Jerry waited, and heard nothing more, except soft and steady breathing. Some time later, he went to sleep himself.
Almost instantly, bells rang and buckets banged and while the Norths struggled out of sleep, there was heavy knocking at the apartment door. “They’ve come for us,” Pam said. “Oh my goodness.” But “they” had not. Mr. Prentori had come, with aides, with buckets, with stepladders. He had come early; it was only seven-thirty when he came. The Norths fled—they fed Martini and put her in the kitchen, and left a note for Martha, and fled. They paused in flight at a near-by Schrafft’s, and had accumulated newspapers by then. The newspapers were full of the death of Amanda Towne. There was in them also a good deal about Mr. and Mrs. North—Gerald North, head of North Books, Inc., and his “attractive wife.” The Herald Tribune reminded its readers that the Norths had been, before, involved in crimes of violence. The Herald Tribune had the discretion to add “innocently” but—rather unkindly, Pam thought—qualified with, “in the past.”
“All we’re going to find out this time is what we read in the newspapers,” Pam said, and read in the Herald Tribune. And Jerry—after scanning the book page quickly, to make sure that the advertisement of Look Away, Stranger had appeared on schedule—went back to the front page of the Times, and read of violent death.
Amanda Towne, whose picture did her credit, had been found dead, under circumstances the police characterized as suspicious, in a hotel suite occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North who, however, had an apartment of their own in Manhattan. (Why they were not in it remained unexplained in the Herald Tribune, although Inspector O’Malley was freely mentioned and his views, which were rather guarded, were fully quoted. If he had passed on the reason for the Norths’ presence at the Breckenridge, that did not appear. Which, Pam thought, was needlessly mean of him.)
The exact cause of Amanda Towne’s death had not been determined when the Herald Tribune went to press. But the Times had “apparently of asphyxiation.” Miss Towne had a suite of her own on the same floor of the hotel—a corner suite, which the Herald Tribune considered “luxurious.” The Times withheld comment. What she was doing in the wrong suite, and doing there dead, was the core of the matter. On this mystery, the Norths—it was reported—had been able to shed no light. The Norths, according to their account, did not know Miss Towne. The Norths, according to the police, said that they had gone out to dinner and the movies, leaving their suite empty—except for a Siamese cat—and had returned to find Miss Towne’s body. They had reported this to the police.
