A Key to Death

by Frances

  The small, precise man seemed to feel a point was made. The point escaped Acting Captain William Weigand.

  “Mr. Schaeffer died in an accident,” Bill said. “So I gathered, at any rate.”

  “Quite,” Karn said. “Precisely, captain. Mr. Schaeffer fell downstairs.”

  Once more, Bill Weigand read the letter from Samuel Schaeffer to his partner—his last letter to his partner.

  “You and Mr. Webb discussed this?” he said.

  “Mr. Webb,” Karn said, “agreed with my suggestion that, because of the circumstances, it had better be shown to you.”

  Bill nodded slowly.

  “Asked me to give it to you,” Karn said, “since he was leaving for the day.”

  Bill looked at him.

  “Why yes,” Karn said, “Mr. Webb left about twenty minutes ago. I presume he had an engagement.”

  IX

  Wednesday, 1:35 P.M. to 4:25 P.M.

  Things had not, for Pamela North, worked out as anticipated. To begin with, it had at first proved impossible to get Phoebe James on the telephone. Pamela had tried at noon; the hotel switchboard, after a brief pause, had regretted that Mrs. James did not answer. After a further pause, it had discovered that Mrs. James had gone out, was expected to return at one.

  There are few things more aggravating than to prepare oneself for the pounce, only to discover that the quarry is beyond reach. Any cat will agree to this; Martini, consulted after Pam had replaced the telephone, appeared to. She would, Pam told Martini, merely have to wait. But, prepared for movement, she had found inaction trying, and waited only some ten minutes. She had thought then that one might get some shopping done in an hour or so, and taxied uptown to try it. There had been only time for two pairs of resort shoes and a new bathing suit; no time at all to try on the summer print so enticing on the mannequin. Pam had made a mental note of the print and, at one-fifteen, again telephoned Mrs. James’s hotel. She got a maid, this time; then Phoebe James.

  “I wondered—” Pam began and Phoebe James said, “I hoped you’d call. Can you come and have lunch with me? I’ve been frantic about Nan.”

  Pam could; Pam did. Mrs. James herself opened the door, and did not lack poise, although there was worry on her handsome, intelligent face. They had sherry, very dry and very pale, before a low fire, and lunch afterward, and nothing was as Pam had envisioned it. From the beginning, Pam felt herself off balance, having found no opportunity for the pounce. The tension for which she had prepared herself was not much in evidence. “Frantic” had, apparently been only a manner of speaking. Mrs. James, although they talked of kidnapping, and of murder, remained poised—too poised to be pounced upon.

  “It’s really frightening,” Mrs. James said, but she spoke slowly, her voice low, controlled. “First Forbes. Now Nan. I can hardly believe it about Nan.”

  “I know,” Pam said. “To walk in like that and—” She waited.

  But then Mrs. James diverged. She said she lived two lives and that now, with this outer life so difficult—“so tragic”—she felt that she lived neither.

  “All morning,” she said, “my people were strangers. The people I know best. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Pam shook her head.

  “Your husband would,” Mrs. James told her. “The people in the book I’m writing. All morning the people outside—Nan and these racketeers—kept jostling in.” She sipped from her glass, refilled it, and refilled Pamela’s. “You’ll think I’m unreal,” she said. “I get you here to talk about Nan—about all this dreadful thing, and I talk about myself. The man I loved is dead and one of my best friends disappears, and I spend the morning worrying about what a woman named Daphne—I don’t know why I named her that, either—would say to a child whose father had left them both—not what she would say, but the words she would use.” She shook her beautifully shaped head, with its dramatic streak of white. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll tear it all up,” she said. “It’s wrong.”

  “You were here?” Pam said. “All morning? Because I telephoned earlier and they said—” (But I’m off the track, Pam thought.)

  “Oh,” Phoebe said. “I was here. But that’s a rule—until one, I’m never here. I should have given you the other number.”

  Pam waited, and she explained. The mornings were for work, and the hotel switchboard had instructions. There was, however, another phone line, which did not go through the switchboard. The number was known to few: to a literary agent, to a publisher and two magazine editors; to a few friends. “Write it down,” Phoebe insisted, and Pamela—after a somewhat prolonged search through her bag, found a stub of pencil (somewhat chewed, since Pam had taken up cross-word puzzles) and the back of an envelope with space left for a telephone number—wrote it down.

  “About Mrs. Schaeffer,” Pam said, putting her hands firmly, as she hoped, on the steering wheel. “You came there last night to—”

  “Talk,” Phoebe said. “Reginald called me. He’s telephoned everybody—everybody who knows her. He’s—I suppose you could say he’s beside himself. Whatever that means. Do words worry you, Mrs. North?”

  “Well,” Pam said, “not particularly.”

  “Clichés,” Phoebe said. “They’re so elusive, often. ‘Beside himself.’ I mean he’s disturbed. Anxious. Why didn’t I say that?”

  “I don’t know,” Pam said. “Why is he?” (Again, she’s put me off the track, Pam thought.)

  The question seemed, momentarily, to surprise Phoebe James.

  “Didn’t you—” she began, and then said, “But why should you have known?”

  “Oh,” Pam said, in a certain fashion.

  “Yes,” Phoebe James said. “That’s the way it is. Has been for—oh, a year and a half. Two years. But, the strange thing is—not lovers. At least, while Sam was alive. Nan says that and—I believe her. That’s odd, isn’t it? If it’s true, it’s odd. That I should believe it, odder still. Because, nobody believes in innocence. There’s no benefit of any doubt any more, is there?”

  “Well,” Pam said.

  “So Reg Webb’s world is upside down. And mine is—both mine are. A woman named Daphne—I’ll change that name—is stricken dumb. And—I’m not.” She shook her head. “I’m certainly not,” she said.

  They had been finishing lunch, by then. The maid removed dishes, brought coffee and small, colored pastries. Pam succumbed to their bright temptation; Mrs. James did not.

  “I’m not always this way,” Phoebe said, after the maid had gone. “I’m—well, I’m flying apart. You know those sparklers—Fourth of July sparklers—how the sparks shook every way? I feel like that. Not so bright, not so gay. But like that. Or—like crying.”

  She did not seem near tears; her voice remained quiet, under control. It occurred, momentarily, to Pam, that Phoebe James was talking of another Phoebe James, and that both—the observer and the observed—were beyond access.

  “I don’t always talk so much,” Phoebe said, now. “What were they looking for at Nan’s? What do the police think?”

  Pam did not know. She thought the police did not. Presumably, something which bore on Forbes Ingraham’s murder. Presumably, then, something Ingraham had given her—or was thought to have given her—at his office, the day before he was killed. Presumably, then, something concerned with, and revealing of, Halpern and the union, and the racketeers. Perhaps the same thing the (presumably) same people had sought in the law offices. Did Mrs. James know about that? She did. Reg had told her. She shook her head, hopelessly.

  “At Mrs. Schaeffer’s,” Pam said, “things were taken out of drawers. In the bedroom. Piled up neatly. You weren’t in the bedroom?”

  “No. You know that.”

  Pam described the bedroom; described it slowly, carefully; watched Phoebe James as she talked.

  Mrs. James listened. She seemed to listen carefully. But if she was enlightened by what she heard, or surprised by it, or frightened by it, none of these responses was revealed in her expression. Wh
en Pam finished, Phoebe James said only that they must have been looking for something small, and this was not at all the right answer. Pam had expected a guilty start, at the very least. (She has always wanted to observe one.)

  “You don’t see anything strange about it?” Pam asked, after a pause had lengthened.

  This did elicit what appeared to be surprise.

  “Strange?” Mrs. James repeated. “Strange, my dear? Isn’t it all—strange? If you want to use such an inadequate word.”

  “Everything in neat piles,” Pam said. “The dresses carefully spread out. Why neat piles?”

  Phoebe James shook her head, and seemed perplexed.

  “Neat men?” she suggested, as one responds in a guessing game.

  “That’s it precisely,” Pam said. “Don’t you see? Not men at all. Men would have burrowed.” She paused, again waited response. “Like woodchucks,” she said, helpfully.

  Mrs. James did not appear to be helped. She looked at Pam North, her eyes widened.

  “Women,” Pam said. “Don’t you see? A woman, anyway. Piling things up neatly so they wouldn’t be mussed. A woman who—who just couldn’t help doing that. Probably hardly realized she was doing it. A woman who couldn’t—just couldn’t—paw things around.”

  The eyes which had opened widely at Pam North’s previous remark, now narrowed slightly. After a moment, Phoebe James nodded her head, slowly. She said, slowly, not with certainty, that she did, now, see what Pam meant.

  “It’s a small thing,” she said. “Not conclusive, but—have you talked it over with anyone? Mr. North? Your policeman friend?”

  “No,” Pam said. “I—I just thought of it.”

  “And,” Mrs. James said, “telephoned me. Why, Mrs. North?”

  “Oh,” Pam said. “Why—because I wanted to see what another woman thought of it. And—and because you asked Jerry and me to help. And—”

  “And,” Phoebe James said, “because I’m perhaps the kind of woman who doesn’t, as you say, ‘paw’ things? Or, you assume I am? And—wait—you think I came back, not to talk, but—to finish up?”

  “Well,” Pam North said.

  “You’re impetuous,” Mrs. James said. “Very impetuous, aren’t you? Does it ever get you into difficulties, Mrs. North?”

  “Difficulties?” Pam said. “What kind of difficulties?”

  Mrs. James shook her head at that. She said that Pamela North was not stupid, and said it so that the words had the quality of an accusation.

  “You get a notion in your head,” she told Pam. “That a woman was involved in kidnapping Nan. You think—‘could it be Mrs. James? Who admits she was in love with Forbes Ingraham. Knows that a younger and prettier woman was’—how would you phrase it, Mrs. North?—‘making passes? Making passes at Forbes Ingraham. Says she knows the passes got nowhere, but that’s only what she says.’ Isn’t that what you thought? That I might have killed Forbes. Then, because she knew something, Nan Schaeffer. But tried to make it appear that these gangsters had kidnapped her. And so—you come here to find out. Come alone. Or—did you tell somebody you were coming?”

  “Why,” Pam said. “Of course I—of course I did.”

  “No,” Mrs. James said. “I asked that, remember? If you’d talked it over with your husband. Or the police. You said you hadn’t. And—you drank sherry I offered you. And food I served.”

  “We both—” Pam began, and stopped. She remembered a pastry. It had been a very pretty green pastry. Pistachio, it had been. Surely it was pistachio? Not—

  “So nice not to have to watch your figure,” Phoebe James said, with serenity. “To be able to eat pastries. I haven’t been able to for years. But, of course, I’ve lived much longer than you have, haven’t I?”

  Why does she phrase it that way? Pam thought. What—what an unpleasant way to phrase it. As if—Pam did not believe any of this. She assured herself she believed none of it. It was much cooler than it had been in front of the low fire. It was almost chilly.

  “You see where impetuosity might lead, don’t you?” Mrs. James asked her, in a very pleasant tone.

  Pam leaned forward a little in her chair. She looked, intently, into the other woman’s face.

  “You’re—what do they say? Getting your own back,” Pam said. “Aren’t you?”

  “If you want to think so.”

  “Because it’s all so very—so very made up,” Pam said. “So full of holes. The maid. The man at the desk downstairs. I wasn’t sure of your room number, and I asked. The elevator man. He said it looked like more snow. The—”

  “There might be ways of filling the holes.”

  But then Phoebe James smiled slightly, as if at a joke of her own. Pam was not certain that she knew she had smiled so.

  “Mrs. James,” Pam said. “Were you here last night? At”—she paused, remembered—“at eleven-fifteen?”

  “When Nan was kidnapped,” Phoebe James said. “You’re persistent, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Pam said. “When she telephoned me. Because—she’d telephone you, wouldn’t she? An old friend. Probably she knew the number of your private telephone. But—she had to look my number up, didn’t she? Why didn’t she call you?”

  “Perhaps she did,” Phoebe James said, slowly. “Perhaps—will you believe me if I say I was here? Until—oh, about midnight? When I went to her place—found the police there?”

  “Why didn’t she call you?”

  “As I say, perhaps she did. But—I’d taken the receiver off. Told them downstairs not to put any calls through on the line from the switchboard. I had to try to think. But—things got worse and worse. Then I went to Nan’s.”

  She spoke flatly. She looked intently at Pam North.

  Then the telephone rang. It was very loud, it sounded violent, as if there were suddenly a great hurry about something.

  Phoebe James had to walk the length of the long room to the telephone. She walked quickly, and with grace. She picked up the telephone and said, “Yes?” and then, “Wait! I can’t—Nan?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Nan!” Phoebe James said again. “I can’t—where are you, Nan?”

  Again she was silent, her face intent.

  “Listen,” Phoebe said. “Listen, Nan! We’ll come. You call the police. We’ll come.” She hung up. She almost ran back up the room.

  “Come on,” she said. “Nan! We’ve got to go to her. She says—she says they’re coming back!”

  Pam hesitated. Phoebe James was at a closet by the door; she jerked a coat from a hanger and a handbag from a shelf; she was at the door.

  There seemed no time to think. Pam went after Phoebe James.

  Dr. Arn was at the hospital. At the hospital, he was in surgery, not available. He would be told, when possible, that Captain Weigand had called. Bill Weigand drummed with his fingers on his desk top; he looked out through a small window, which could have done with washing, and discovered that it was now snowing heavily in West Twentieth Street. The telephone rang, and he answered it; he said, “Go ahead, Thackery.”

  Detective Thackery of Rackets went ahead; he was succinct. They had been too late in seeking the man named “Smiley” Bland; “Horse”—“man named Horsman it turns out to be”—had galloped. “Anyway,” Thackery said, “they’re not where we looked, and we looked in the right places.” They looked still; Bland and Horsman would be found, eventually. That went without saying; Thackery did not bother to say it. For the moment—

  Joe Smithson had taken a morning plane to Miami.

  “Guess he don’t like cold weather,” Thackery said. “He took a woman with him. Have we got enough to have them picked up when they land?”

  “No,” Bill said. “I haven’t, anyway. You identify the woman?”

  They had not. It was not Smithson’s wife. “Or his regular girl.” Both remained in New York; Mrs. Smithson ostensibly indifferent; the “regular girl” expressing eager desire to get her hands on that two-timing so-and-so. “Looks
like something’s sort of messed up his love life,” Thackery said, in a tone of no regret.

  All they knew about the woman was that she was wearing a mink coat which looked like money. (Told of that, the “regular girl” had amplified her description of Smithson, filling in a number of gaps she had left in her first impromptu remarks.)

  “Little under medium height,” Thackery said. “Nice figure. That’s all we’ve got so far.”

  “Nothing to indicate she wasn’t going willingly?”

  “To Miami?” Thackery said. “This time of year? Why—oh. You’re thinking of the Schaeffer dame? The one who was snatched?”

  The Schaeffer dame had, Bill admitted, crossed his mind.

  “The woman with Smithson wasn’t kicking and screaming,” Thackery said. “Not’sfar as we know.”

  “Right,” Bill said, and thanked Detective Thackery of Rackets and suggested they hold Horse and Smiley, on whatever charges came to mind, when Horse and Smiley came to hand, that they send him photographs of all three. But that had already been done, Thackery told him. Bill hung up, drummed on his desk top again, told Mullins, at another desk, that Records was taking its own sweet time, as usual, and called the Fourteenth Precinct. He learned that Matthew Halpern had left his room at seven-thirty, crossed the street for breakfast at a diner, walked to his office; that he was still in his office. Nobody had bothered him; he had not, so far as they knew, bothered anyone. Eyes were nevertheless being kept on him.

  Weigand drummed again on the desk top. A messenger brought an envelope containing photographs and Bill looked at them. The telephone rang. It was Staten Island, this time, reporting nothing in particular to report. The bouncy youth was still unlocated. They had tried the ferry and got, “Listen, I don’t have to look at them” from the man who, from midnight on, had collected from ferrying motorists. Widened enquiries in the neighborhood in which Mary Burton had lived and died had added nothing to what they knew.