“Under these conditions,” Foster said. “We bring her here. You’ll be in the same spot you’re in now. If you telephone, we’ll leave—and you’ll be no better off. And you might persuade her to give herself up. All I want is for you two to listen to her first.” He was earnest, now. “I’ve nothing against the police,” he said. “Carey has, I guess. I haven’t. But it’s open and shut for them. Even if your friend doesn’t think so, what can he do? And—if it’s shut, if it’s wrapped up, in their minds, they quit looking anywhere else. Well, I think somebody ought to look somewhere else. Because I’d swear the girl didn’t do it, however it looks. I don’t know her, but I’ve listened to her. I do know Carey. And Carey is certain she didn’t do it. And Carey’s not a fool, North. Not on things like that. Important things. I’m betting on Carey.”
There was a considerable pause. The Fosters, Pam, looked at Jerry and waited.
“The fact is,” Jerry said, finally, “you want us to bet on Carey too. But we don’t know him, so it boils down to this—you want us to bet on you. On the two of you.”
“Well?” Foster said, and now he smiled again.
“I suppose she’s downstairs in a cab,” Jerry said. “I suppose the idea’s to shoot her at us before we change our minds?”
Foster didn’t reply to that.
“You understand,” Jerry said, “that I’ll do my damnedest to get her to turn herself in?”
“Sure,” Foster said. “Well?”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Jerry said. “Bring her up. Bring them both up.”
Bill Weigand sat in his office and drank coffee without character out of a thick, mug-like cup. He had been there all night; he had slept for an hour or two on a couch and slept badly; his mind was filled with a kind of dull anger, a kind of resentment. There were lines deep in his thin face. The telephone rang and he picked it up and said, “Weigand speaking,” and listened. His face did not change. He said, “Sorry, sir. Nothing.” He listened again and said, “Right.” He put the telephone back in its cradle. He returned to the papers on his desk, which were a monument—a monument still in the progress of growth—to the efficiency of the New York Police Department. They represented efficiency, tirelessness; they also represented, Bill Weigand thought wearily, a certain ponderousness, and the momentum of ponderousness.
The machinery started when a certain thing happened. This time it had started, of itself, when André Maillaux had called the police, said Tony Mott was dead by violence. Bill Weigand was part of the machine, Mullins was part of it, Stein was part of it; even Inspector O’Malley was part of it. At any given time, they—and others like them—were apt to be the visible part of the machine. It would be easy to think that they were the machine. Most people, who thought about it at all, probably thought that. Those who read newspaper accounts might easily have a picture of Inspector O’Malley, looking a little like Sherlock Holmes, tirelessly interviewing suspects, poking into dark corners, now and then assisted by a subordinate named William Weigand, Lieutenant of Detectives. Because the major part of the machine was, to the public, anonymous, it probably seemed not to exist.
But it existed and functioned; it consisted of men, but it was, in the aggregate of their efforts, tireless. It consisted of medical experts, toxicologists; of varying specialists at the police laboratory; of men who knew fingerprints, and dust; of men who could tell all there was to tell, and find out all there was to find out, about fabrics and wood and metals. These technicians had gone to work, almost automatically, when a light glowed on a police switchboard and an operator heard André Maillaux’s excited voice. Less automatically, after Weigand pressed certain buttons—it was a machine which pressed its own buttons—other parts of the machine started. While the medical men, and the other experts, worked to find out all that matter would reveal about Tony Mott’s death, these other parts of the machine worked to find out all that could be found out about Tony Mott’s life before his death.
Detectives—Smith and Jones and Robertson, Sibloni, Isaacson, Troblotsky and Murphy—went from place to place and asked questions and listened and wrote down the answers. Whom had Tony Mott known, who had liked him and who had disliked him? Had he loved this woman and hated this one, had this man a grudge against him because he had lost money through Tony Mott, and this man because he had lost love through Tony Mott? Was he suing somebody, or being sued? Had a finger in this pie, where someone did not want his fingers? Had he been in a good mood when he got up the morning of his death? Had someone threatened him five years ago?
Nothing, almost nothing, was too small for the machine, too irrelevant. The machine’s raw material was Tony Mott, in his entirety, in all his relationships. The machine’s product was information, piling on the desk of Bill Weigand, who became the machine’s calculator.
The point was, Bill thought, looking at his desk, that the machine did not stop as automatically as it started. The night before, when he had decided that it was wrapped up, with Peggy Mott wrapped in the middle of it, Bill Weigand had pressed certain buttons which stopped the’ machine. After that, it sought no new raw material. But it seemed still to be full of material which it continued to process. It ground this material into information and deposited it on Weigand’s desk.
Dossiers, for example, continued to arrive. There was one of a man who believed that Mott had defrauded him three years before, and had gone to court about it. There was one of a man who had taken a swing at Mott in a night club, for reasons about which there was variety of opinion. There were several of young women who had known Mott and loved him or hated him, or been married to him or tried to get married to him. There was one of the chef at the Restaurant Maillaux, who was said to have muttered darkly over some criticism Mott was supposed to have made of his Breast of Capon André. Weigand read with tired eyes and a tired mind. He did not see that it now had any particular importance; it was merely that the machine took time to grind to a stop.
“SNODGRASS,” he read. “William. Maître d’hôtel; Associate M. from early days; admits tried to invest when M. needed money; says M. willing until Mott showed interest; Snodgrass then frozen out. Some gossip he resented this and showed resentment Mott. Snod. denies this. Gives age as 43, probably older; born London, naturalized Am. Cit.; married, lives Bronx; recently reported planning open restaurant of his own; says only had thought of it, not decided. Arrived restaurant about 10 a.m. Sat.; says did not see Mott alive. Could have without being seen; see attached.”
“Snodgrass,” Bill thought, and smiled, faintly. An unexpected name for the suave William. Bill saw attached, which was a sketch map of the office area at the Restaurant Maillaux. It told him nothing he had not known; access to the whole area could be had, from the restaurant, from the street (through the storeroom), in a variety of ways. William could have got to the office at any time without passing the receptionist. So could André. So could Tom, Dick and Harry. Bill sighed. “Tom, Dick and Harry”—those inevitable possibilities. The possibilities the defense, any defense, always played upon. The seven million or so in New York, the thousands who knew who Tony Mott was, the hundreds who knew him, well and not so well. How did the police know it was not one of these? A Tom? A Dick? A Harry? Why had they narrowed it to outraged innocence here on trial before this distinguished, perceptive jury? Was it not absurd? A hundred had opportunity as good, might have had a motive better. It was going to happen that way this time, when they put Peggy Mott on trial. (After they caught Peggy Mott again.) The district attorney would have his troubles. The layout of the office was going to be no help.
When they caught Peggy Mott again. Bill Weigand ground out a cigarette, almost instantly lighted another, got up from his desk and walked to the window. Looked out it a moment at a wall and another window, walked back to his desk. Angry impatience boiled up in him and subsided. The machine was functioning; it would turn her up. He could only wait and try not to simmer; wait and hope the newspapers did not get wind of the escape. O’Malley was hot enough al
ready. He rumbled of departmental charges against Stein, against Weigand himself. Presumably O’Malley would calm down—if the news didn’t leak, if the girl and her dark, annoying knight were turned up soon enough. Bill would fight for Stein; probably, with luck, win out. It wouldn’t happen again to Stein, whose sensitive face was sombre, and also a little swollen. It was one of those things. It was also, admittedly, a hell of a note.
Bill Weigand went back to the dossiers. He had come to the women, now, and there were a good many. A tomcat, Tony Mott. An agile goat. “STOCKTON, Mary.” “FRAWLEY, Katerine.” “WOODS, Adelaide.” “D’ALIA, Dolores.” (There was fiction for you. There was a name chosen to become well known, to fall smoothly from many lips. Bill Weigand could not remember that he had ever heard of Dolores D’Alia; apparently it had not worked.) “FRANSWORTH, Anita.” (There was another, in all probability.)
He skimmed the dossiers. FRAWLEY, Katerine, had married Mott and it had lasted three months. WOODS, Adelaide, had told the newspapers she was going to marry Mott, and Mott had said it was the first he had heard of it. FARNSWORTH, Anita—
She had been unlucky; it appeared she had been more earnest, more deeply involved, than Katerine Frawley, than Adelaide Woods. She had not married Mott and had not told anyone she planned to. But, three years before, she had been much with him; Winchell had said she was “that way” and apparently she was. She had been a young actress, for a time a protégée of Mott’s. And then, rather publicly, in a restaurant, when he had been drinking, he had said to her, “Scram, baby. We’re washed up.” And then he had laughed, and several others had laughed. And Anita Farnsworth had disappeared, very suddenly, from the people who had known her, very completely. The machine ground at her disappearance and cleared it up. She had had a “nervous breakdown.” The words were quoted in the dossier. She had been taken by relatives to a private sanitarium; she was still there. The physician in charge was hopeful; possibly, Bill Weigand thought, he was always hopeful. That would be part of his job. The kid had been unlucky. And Tony Mott had been—well, Tony Mott. There was no point in calling him names. That had been taken care of.
Bill found he was reading the dossier again, more carefully, wondering about it—wondering what the story sketched here, in terse words, in abbreviations, had been in its entirety. “Farnsworth, Anita, age about 23—” And then he stopped, suddenly, and read what his eyes had slid over a few moments before. “(Real name Leonard; changed for stage purposes.)” Bill Weigand looked at the words; the name repeated itself over and over in his mind.
Leonard. Leonard. Leonard. Coincidence? It could be, obviously. The long arm, reaching out—phooey! Bill Weigand did not believe it. He looked at the dossier, or seemed to, but he did not see it. He saw Professor Leonard, of Dyckman; tall and rather angular, in his middle forties. He could have had a daughter of twenty-three. Or, for that matter, a sister—a pretty girl named Anita who had been slapped down and laughed at, and who hadn’t been able to take it. Bill Weigand lifted his head and looked at the wall opposite, and did not see it, and the fingers of his right hand tapped on his desk. Wrapped up, finished off. Was it, after all? He got Mullins in, told him to sit on it.
“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. He looked at Weigand and nodded. “Shuteye,” he said. “That’s what you need, all right. No use killing yourself, Loot.”
But Weigand shook his head.
“There’s a guy I want to talk to,” he said. “A guy named Leonard. Remember Leonard?”
Mullins looked momentarily puzzled. Then he nodded, and said, “O.K.”
“Just the same,” he said, reasonably, “you gotta sleep sometime, Loot. You know that.”
Bill Weigand said, “Right,” but there was no conviction in the word.
9
SUNDAY, 12:05 P.M. TO 2:35 P.M.
Pamela North would never have denied that, in almost all things, she was partisan. Sometimes her mind guided her; almost as often her mind was by-passed, now and then, over its indignant objections. Her partisanship was catholic. Beginning with Jerry, it included a sometimes bewildering diversity of persons and objects. Franklin Delano Roosevelt she had been for, partly on a basis of conviction. But, in the end contradictorily, she had been also a partisan of Al Smith and, in a more moderate fashion, of Jim Farley. As far as she could ever determine, when she tried to analyze such matters, she thought General Eisenhower was a great man because he had a sunny, encompassing smile. She was also a partisan of cats, holidays in hot places, martini cocktails, the poetry of Conrad Aiken, trains, Beatrice Lillie, overcooked bacon and Maxwell Anderson. She was, further and in general, for all people who seemed to be having a tough time, whether they deserved it or not.
About Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey she had hoped to retain an open mind. But when they came into the apartment, when they stood there—the girl, for all the poise of her body, the assurance of her grace, so uncertain, so evidently afraid; the black-haired young man, for all his truculence, so uneasy and baffled—Pam North’s hope vanished. Her first thought was, almost in words, “How ridiculous of Bill!” Her mind tugged at her, saying, “Wait now. Wait!” Pam turned her back on her mind.
The girl was beautiful; the man stood close to her, as if to surround her, protect her from danger. He did not touch her, but he seemed to have her in his arms. Pam looked at the girl, saw that she was beautiful, and looked instantly at Jerry. Jerry was also looking at the girl, which was proper and inevitable. Pam smiled, without showing it, and wondered how firm Jerry was going to be now. And Paul Foster, coming in behind them said, “Well, here they are.”
Pamela North crossed the room to the girl, with her hand out, and said she was Pamela North. Her smile said more, and the girl answered it with an uncertain smile of her own. Weldon Carey nodded, and looked dark and angry, and Pam told them to sit down, realizing as she spoke that it would be a little difficult.
“Really, Jerry,” she said, “we do need a larger apartment. See?”
They did. Two Norths, two Fosters, Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey, even without three cats and the Sunday newspapers, filled the small white-and-yellow living-room. Jerry said he saw. Pam sat down where she had been sitting and Peggy Mott sat in another chair. The Fosters sat side by side on the sofa. Weldon Carey did not sit anywhere, but stood, facing Jerry North. He said, “Well?” There was still truculence, hiding embarrassment. Then Martini, unexpectedly to everyone, reared herself against his right leg, hooking gingerly with claws and explained, in a throaty growl which was supposed, by her, to be an ingratiating murmur, that she would like to be taken up. Carey looked down at her, and suddenly smiled and said, “Hullo. What do you want?” Martini repeated her request and, for emphasis, extended her claws so that they delicately touched skin under the trousers. Carey said, “Hey!”
“She does that to Jerry,” Pam said. “She wants to sit on his shoulders, only now yours. She doesn’t usually, except Jerry.”
Carey looked at her, apparently started to say, “What?” and changed it into “Oh.” He bent, scooped up the small cat, held her out to look at her, and put her on his shoulders. She extended herself and swished her tail.
Somehow, Jerry North felt, the situation was slipping away from him. It was a feeling to which he was not unaccustomed. Irrelevance, that was what was the matter with things, Jerry thought, as he often thought. But on the other hand, irrelevance frequently seemed the underlying structure of almost everything. Chekov, he thought, and was momentarily baffled. It was even in your own mind.
“Well?” Carey repeated, but less truculently. With a cat on his shoulders, he seemed to have lost the conviction that events would be clarified by the direct approach. Martini, turning to investigate the source of this new sound, breathed into Carey’s left ear.
“Take her down, Jerry,” Pam said. “She’s disconcerting. Put her somewhere.”
Jerry took her down, put her somewhere. The young cats trotted after, their tails in the air. Jerry returned. Now Weldon Carey was sitting on the
arm of Peggy Mott’s chair. His left arm was along the back of the chair, as if around the girl.
“We’ve barged in,” Weldon said. He had regained some, but not all, of his attack. “They made us—the Colonel here, Mrs. Foster. It was decent of you to let us.” He said the last as a formality. Jerry took it as one and ignored it. He looked at Peggy Mott.
“You’ve got good friends,” Jerry said. “Persuasive friends.” She looked up at him.
“Weldon’s,” she said. “I know I oughtn’t to be here, Mr. North.” She looked at Pam and smiled again, uncertainly again, including her.
“Obviously,” Pam said, “you ought to be in jail. Jerry and I both think that. He thinks you ought to give yourself up.”
Peggy Mott looked at Weldon Carey and nodded. “See?” she said. “Oh—Wel—”
“Is that the point?” Weldon said, looking at Jerry. “The main point? She had nothing to do with it, you know.”
“Not the main point,” Jerry said. “The immediate point. Weigand’s a friend of ours. Even if he weren’t, we don’t help—fugitives.” He looked down at Weldon Carey. “For God’s sake,” he said, “Bill Weigand’s a fair guy.”
“He’s a cop,” Weldon said. “He thinks Peggy killed this bastard Mott. He’ll try to third-degree it out of her.”
“Not Bill,” Pam said. “But let it go for a moment. Mrs. Mott, can you prove you didn’t?”
“I can say I didn’t,” Peggy said. She looked for a long moment at Pam North. “Is it any good?”
What remarkable eyes she has, Pam thought. They must be inches long.
“Yes,” Pam said. She was surprised, momentarily, at hearing herself speak the word. “You know why?” she said then, and now she included all of them. “Because nobody could be as guilty as she looks. You see, Jerry?”
“Listen,” Jerry said. “I—”
“Everything in one direction,” Pam said. “Too perfect. Instead of this way and that way, but mostly this way—all this way. It’s—organized.”
Murder Is Served Page 15
