by Frances
“That was unusual?”
“If she was on to something, it was. If she thought there was something juicy to be found out about a subject in—hell, in Timbuktu—she’d like as not send me there. But not this time.” He pawed his red hair. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Not like Mandy. Did she get anything hot?”
It did not appear that she had. She had not, certainly, got Cunningham, who apparently had disappeared. Gray couldn’t, from his knowledge of Amanda Towne, guess what she had been after?
He could not. It was a new wrinkle to him. He supposed she had had something under her hat; something she wanted to keep there. All he could say was, it wasn’t like her. Who had she got to check this Cunningham out, or try to?
Weigand did not know. All he knew was that the letter, obviously an answer to a letter of hers, had been signed “Ned.” Gray shook his head at that; said he didn’t know anybody named “Ned” either. But, if she wrote to the Little Rock station for information, there had, obviously, been nothing particularly secret about what she wanted.
“Except,” Gray said, “from me. I guess from all of us actually working on the show.” He shook his head again; again said that it was a funny thing. “Must have had something she thought was hot,” he said. “Wanted to spring it on us.”
Weigand agreed, and again regretted having wakened Tony Gray (who said, “Oh, the hell with that”) and went. It appeared, certainly, that Amanda Towne had wanted to spring something on somebody.
The “In” basket was heavy with paperwork, much of which had nothing to do with the Towne-Barnes case. That, Weigand put aside. There was alibi data, and Bill glanced at that. Everybody had been some place other than the Towne suite on Wednesday evening and Russell Barnes’s apartment on Thursday afternoon. Which was to be expected; which was in one case not true. (If, of course, any of the people so far questioned was involved, in itself by no means certain.) If one of the alibis was concocted, they eventually would turn to the matter of cracking it. There was no special point in that until they knew which one to put in the jaws of the cracker.
Detective Freddy Willings had, apparently, been right in his hunch. One of the red sofa pillows from Amanda Towne’s suite had disclosed traces of lipstick—type and brand identified, and identified as that used by Amanda Towne. It also disclosed traces of face powder.
And this, of course, did not really prove anything. A woman may get powder, and lipstick too, on pillows in her apartment. Still—
There was the final, complete, report of the autopsy on the body of Amanda Towne. Asphyxia by smothering was proved and—Bill studied a paragraph. Almost microscopic fragments of cotton fiber had been found in the lungs, dragged there—it could be assumed—in the final desperate reaching of the lungs for air. Magnified, tested, they appeared to be from a red dyed fabric. The material appeared, in short, to have been scuffed from, inhaled from, the fabric which covered the pillows. (See supplementary correlated report.) Material had been forwarded to the fiber laboratory of the FBI for verification.
Detective Willings’s hunch now looked very good indeed. Weigand drummed briefly with his fingers on his desk top. It appeared that somebody had taken a long chance in a hotel corridor. Presumably because the alternative chance was longer still. Or, had seemed so, with the maid approaching from room to room. And, ironically, had not been.
He reached again to the “In” basket.
A Carl Cunningham, giving his address as Little Rock, Arkansas, had checked in at a large, medium-price, hotel in the theatrical district at ten forty-three the night of Wednesday, November 13. He had checked out at seven-thirty on the morning of Saturday, November 16—half an hour before the precinct man had got there. He had arrived without reservation. No description of any value was available from anyone in the hotel. (The bellman who had taken him to his room thought he had had one suitcase, and thought he was tall, and knew that he had taken dozens of men to rooms that Wednesday night.) Cunningham had printed his name on the registration blank. His room had rented for seven dollars, single. He had signed for no meals and made no telephone calls.
So—assuming it was the right Carl Cunningham, which was an assumption worth precisely nothing. The room he had occupied was being cleaned when the precinct man arrived. That had been stopped, probably too late.
The telephone rang. Bill picked it up and said he was speaking and heard a familiar voice.
“Bill,” Jerry North said, “have you got anything on this man Cunningham? Know where he is?”
“No,” Bill said, and listened to Jerry North swear with bitterness. When Jerry paused, Bill Weigand said, “Why, Jerry?”
“Because,” Jerry North said, “thanks to a blithering jackass named Kingsley, Mr. Cunningham has got us where it hurts. If he wants to. And you can be damn sure he does want to. Because—look, can you come up to the office? Or can I come down there?”
“I’m—” Bill said.
“And also,” Jerry said, “the idol of the literary world, the darling of Book-of-the-Month, seems to have taken it on the lam. As you would say.”
“No,” Bill said. “I almost never do. You’re sure?”
“You’re damn right,” Jerry said. “Checked out. His lecture-agent says he’s gone south—Savannah, he thinks, or maybe Jacksonville or maybe God-knows-where, for a long weekend with some new friends. That’s what his agent says. But it looks to me—”
“I’ll come up to your office,” Bill Weigand said. “Take a Miltown. Right?”
“Right,” Jerry said. “I think North Books is in a hell of a spot.”
North Books, Inc., did not seem in a spot of any kind when Bill walked into its office suite. It seemed calm enough. There was, indeed, no one in it—except in the office of Gerald North, president and editor. There there was little calm. Jerry had not followed advice. He was untranquilized.
He said, “That rat,” and then, pointing at a book open on his desk, swinging it to face Bill Weigand, “Read that. Just read it.” Jerry thereupon ran his fingers through his hair. Bill read as directed. When he had read a page he whistled softly. When he had read four pages, he looked up at Jerry, and saw that Jerry’s face was stricken. Bill went back and reread.
Since Look Away, Stranger was a serious novel, and with a Southern locale to boot, it was not entirely clear what, precisely, was going on in the scene which ran from page ninety-three through page ninety-seven. Murkiness predominated; one moved with the author through a fog of allusion, and partly (Weigand assumed) in the present and partly (if he was any judge) in the past. But enough was clear—too much was clear.
The character who, to a degree, emerged from the encircling gloom was one “Carl Connington”—a tall thin man, with long black hair; a former Chicago newspaperman (Bill Weigand was almost sure) and a one-time instructor at a State university. (Bill was quite sure of that; the fact was almost explicit in the narrative.) “Connington” was also a writer; he lived in a shack which seemed to be many miles from anywhere—either in mountains, or in a swamp. And—he was hiding there. Whether he hid from the law, or from private retribution, was not a decision readily made—Byron Kingsley was, most evidently, not a man to blurt things out. But it was clear that, in one fashion or another, a nefarious past was about to catch up with “Carl Connington.” It was also clear that “Connington” had coming whatever was coming.
It seemed most likely, after second reading, that “Connington” was a murderer. A murderer at best, and what at worst hardly bore thinking about. Bill Weigand, as he reread the last page, considered—as it were, tried on “Connington” for size—the various evil deeds of which mankind is capable; reflected (between the lines) on the less savory activities of ancient Grecian kings and those, equally numerous if less poetically described, of modern New Yorkers. There was also, of course, the Marquis de Sade.
“What had he done, actually?” Bill asked, when he had finished.
“What?” Jerry said, and then, “Oh—it never does come clear. Not
to me, anyway. Murder, at least. Toward the end a couple of men—maybe cops, maybe gangsters, maybe just symbolic monsters—come and take him away. At a guess, he killed somebody in Chicago. Kingsley is one of those authors who says what he’s written will have to speak for itself. But—that isn’t the point. Not to me.”
“No,” Bill Weigand said, “I can see it wouldn’t be.”
“Almost the same name,” Jerry said. “The same description, apparently. The same past—Chicago, teaching. The same—” A kind of wail had entered his voice. He heard it; he broke off. He steadied himself.
“If,” he said, “there is actually a man named Cunningham and he has done the things this Fergus of yours says he has, and looks the way Kingsley says he does, he can sue the shirt off my back. Invasion of privacy, aggravated libel.”
“Your shirt,” Bill said. “And Kingsley’s? Not just his? Isn’t there something in the contract—”
He did not finish, because Jerry was gloomily shaking his head. Oh, there was something in the contract. But, in practice, it represented hardly more than a publisher’s pious hope. Of course, Kingsley would be sued; he and North Books, Inc., would be sued jointly. For, Jerry unhappily thought, millions. If there really was a Cunningham—if people were not making him up—
“A man named Cunningham has been in town,” Bill said. “He checked into a hotel Wednesday and checked out this morning. We’re trying to find him.”
Jerry had not doubted there would be a Carl Cunningham, or that he would answer the description of the “Carl Connington” of Kingsley’s book—or that he was now somewhere taking matters up with a lawyer, which was no doubt what he had come to New York to do. Unless—
“Of course,” Jerry said, “if he killed Amanda Towne. To say nothing of her husband. That would help a lot.”
“Right,” Bill said. “I can see that. Or—if he really did kill somebody in Chicago years ago.”
“There is,” Jerry said, “no use looking on the bright side of things.” He put his head in his hands. “Authors!” he said. “The most irresponsible—The most impossible—Working off old grudges without the least idea that—”
He continued in this strain for some time. Bill Weigand listened with sympathy, having little else to offer.
XI
Jerry North had gone to the office on Saturday morning to be alone with his thoughts, and because Pam had, in any case, an appointment to have her hair done. She offered to cancel the appointment; she suggested that it would save money, which apparently was going to be of the essence, if she did her own hair. They had not, Jerry told her, come yet to so desperate a pass. They would, he promised her, fight to the last ditch. She had gone doubtfully, but she had gone.
When Bill Weigand left, and could do no more than hope, for Jerry’s sake, that Cunningham, the illusive, was also Cunningham, the murderer, Jerry remained for some time alone with his thoughts. He told himself sad stories of the bankruptcy of publishers; considered how he would work out as a janitor—or perhaps a night watchman—and what he would do to Byron Kingsley when he got his hands on him. (This was not as cheering as it might have been; he remembered that Kingsley was, after all, a very large man.) He thought that, when it comes to matters of libel, publishers are at the mercy of authors, who may pay old grudges off under thin disguise. Thin! Kingsley had, evidently, made no effort whatever to disguise the identity of Carl Cunningham, the “real person” and “Carl Connington,” the—whatever he was. Torturer of small children, probably—
One could think that Kingsley—the this-and-that, the so-and-so—had deliberately with malice aforethought, invited this. Except that nobody—not even a novelist—goes out of his way to have the shirt sued off his back. Not even to spite a publisher, who will similarly lose his. Unless he so hates the publisher that—
Jerry entertained only briefly the thought that Byron Kingsley had aimed this hidden knife at his particular back. Look Away, Stranger had been to other publishers before it came to him; Kingsley could not have known at whom he struck. It could hardly be that he so resolutely hated publishers as a race. Of course, to hear some authors talk—
Jerry rejected the notion. Even an author has regard for his own nose. And yet—and yet there was something so overt about the Cunningham-“Connington” device—something so flagrant—
Jerry North stopped against the blank wall of a startling idea. It was impossible. It was unheard of. It was—it was not impossible, even if unheard of. The more he thought—
The telephone on his desk, plugged through from the switchboard, shrilled at him. He grabbed for it. Perhaps Bill had found Cunningham; perhaps Cunningham had admitted—
“Jerry,” Pam said. “Are you all right?”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “I guess so. Are you done already?”
“Jerry,” Pam said. “I looked at the charge slip. I never thought of doing that before and—”
“Never mind,” Jerry said. “We’ll sink with flags flying. And hair curled. Lunch?”
“Of course,” Pam said. “I’ll open a can of something nutritious. Beans? Only—the painters are still here. In the kitchen, now.”
He had not meant that. He had meant lunch out. As if nothing had happened, as if the heavens still arched.
“An Automat,” Pam said. “The food is really very good and—”
“I know,” Jerry said. “The food is admirable. The Algonquin. In about—about how long?”
“We shouldn’t,” Pam said. “Fifteen minutes.”
Jerry needed the martini, brought in a glass damp with cold, by Raul himself. It did him good. The second did him better.
“How much do they charge for martinis here?” Pam asked, looking with reproach. That anything so delicious should cost what it probably did!
“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “Forget it a minute. They could have been in cahoots.”
Pam put her glass down carefully. She looked at Jerry with concern.
“Cahoots?” Pam said and then, quite unintentionally, “Ca-who?”
“Cunningham and Kingsley,” Jerry said, precisely as if “ca-who” was the word he had been expecting. “Listen, Pam. Suppose—”
Suppose a novelist and another person, both unscrupulous, enter into conspiracy to defraud. The other person offers his person, his good name. The novelist provides the craft.
Carefully, with intent not really to disguise, the novelist draws a character from life—from the life of his co-conspirator. He disguises the name only slightly—as “Carl Connington” for Carl Cunningham. He describes real physical characteristics as precisely as his skill permits. He is equally meticulous in reproducing actual incidents in the life of his confederate. But, to the actual, once the parallel is established beyond question, the novelist adds aspersion of a libelous nature. His fictional character may be an undiscovered murderer; perhaps an escaped convict; certainly a person reprehensible in character and suspect in action. (These things must not, of course, really correspond—a murderer in real life is not libeled if made a murderer in fiction.)
Then—get the novel published. Then—the confederate sues. He sues, of course, both novelist and publisher. Any sums recovered from the novelist are only a matter of arithmetic. Any money recovered from the publisher is shared, at a ratio agreed upon. Everybody is happy—except, to be sure, the mulcted publisher.
“H-mmm,” Pam said. “Has it ever been done?”
Jerry did not know that it ever had been done. Or, conversely, that it had not. He could not see any reason why such a fraud could not be carried out.
“Wait,” Pam said. “I don’t think Mr. Kingsley would—”
“If he isn’t a crook,” Jerry said, “he is an irresponsible half-wit. He—”
“Wait,” Pam said. “Aside from that. I don’t think he’s that kind of man, but aside from that. He’s already made a lot of money out of the book. He’s going to make a lot more. Particularly when the movie payments come through. If Cunningham sues—even if he threat
ens to sue—the movie company will run like a scared rabbit. And, if he won, couldn’t he make you stop publishing the book? Wouldn’t he have to?”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “The movie sale is off. The book is called in. We go bankrupt. And Kingsley loses more than he gains. But—he wouldn’t know that in advance. Nobody could tell that Look Away, Stranger was going to turn out the way it did. It might have sold—oh, three or four thousand. All they needed, really, was to get it published.” He finished his second drink. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “it’s the only sure way I know to make money out of writing a book.”
Pam said, “H-mmm,” and sipped. Then, suddenly, her eyes widened. She said, “Jerry!” and went on without pause.
“Don’t you see,” Pam North said, “if it was that way—he won’t sue. Because it’s a golden goose. I mean—eggs. Nobody breaks golden eggs. They would have thought of that if they were as scheming as you think. Wait—that’s why they haven’t sued already. Because—”
“My God,” Jerry said. He looked at Pam with admiration, and, inwardly at himself with chagrin. Of course, she was right. For a moment the world brightened. But it then occurred to Jerry North that this might very well be a false dawn, resulting from the acceptance of theory as fact. It might be that the scheme to defraud existed only in Jerry’s mind. In which case—
Jerry looked fixedly away. It happened that his fixed gaze seemed, to a bartender across the room, to be fastened on him. The bartender smiled cheerfully, nodded, and began to mix. The movement unfixed Jerry’s gaze. Well, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t felt the first two. He guessed. Pam, far away, was saying something. He said he was sorry, and what?
“—with the murder,” Pam said. “Do you think we really ought to, when they’re so expensive?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jerry said. “Probably we’re just pretending there was this scheme. Probably he’ll sue any minute now. For hundreds of thousands, including punitive damages. What murder?”
